Brain Biases: How Attention, Memory, and Emotion Shape Decisions
The Brain as a Cognitive Miser
The brain is a miser, meaning it is energy-efficient and avoids unnecessary effort. It avoids overthinking and relies on shortcuts to make decisions quickly. Cognitive miserliness helps the brain process information without being overwhelmed, making everyday decision-making faster and easier.
Strategies of Cognitive Miserliness
- Efficiency: The brain prefers to make decisions with minimal effort. This is why we often rely on simple judgments or shortcuts, like first impressions or rules of thumb, to make quick choices.
- Novelty: We are attracted to novelty and naturally direct our attention to new and interesting things. We don’t spend time on things that look familiar.
- Familiarity: The brain likes familiar things because they’re easy to understand and don’t need much effort to process, which is why we often prefer things we’ve seen before.
Attention: Focusing on What Matters
Attention is our brain’s way of focusing on important things and ignoring distractions. This is key in marketing since grabbing attention helps people notice ads or products. It is the cognitive process that makes it possible to position ourselves towards relevant stimuli and consequently respond to it. It is involved in novelty detection.
Types of Attention
Attention types include sustained attention (focusing over time), selective attention (choosing one stimulus among many), and divided attention (attending to multiple stimuli at once).
Memory: Retaining Information
Memory refers to the psychological processes of acquiring, storing, retaining, and later retrieving information. Attention helps us remember things. The more focused we are on something, the more likely we are to remember it. So, if a brand catches a customer’s attention, they’re more likely to remember it later.
Emotion: Influencing Decisions
Emotion is a strong feeling, often triggered without us realizing it, that influences our actions and decisions. It involves arousal (low to high intensity of emotion), valence (positive or negative direction), and motivation (approach or avoidance orientation). Emotions prioritize events, making them more memorable by engaging the limbic system.
The Link Between Emotion and Memory
Emotional experiences are more likely to be remembered than neutral ones because they activate the brain’s memory processes. Brands use emotions to make people feel something, which helps them remember the brand longer. For instance, ads that make us laugh or feel inspired are memorable because of the emotional impact.
Priming: Subtly Influencing Behavior
Priming is a powerful tool for creating favorable impressions and guiding consumer behavior without direct persuasion. These stimuli are often conceptually related words or images. It occurs quickly, automatically, and effortlessly.
Priming in Marketing
In marketing, priming can subtly influence consumers’ perceptions and behaviors. For example:
- Playing relaxing music in a store can make people feel calm and spend more time shopping.
- Adding a fresh scent in a store can make it feel cleaner, making products more appealing.
- Online, a brand might use green colors to attract eco-friendliness, subconsciously priming consumers to view the brand as sustainable and appealing to environmentally conscious buyers.
Sensory Branding: The Hotel Experience
A well-designed hotel provides a multisensory brand experience to enhance customer engagement. The brand setting is crafted to make a lasting impression through the coordinated use of sight, smell, sound, taste, and touch.
Brand Setting: The brand setting includes both tangible and intangible elements that influence the customer’s perception, such as interior design, ambient lighting, and the layout of the hotel space.
Sensory Branding:
Sight: Visual elements like elegant décor, warm lighting, and aesthetically pleasing designs make the space feel luxurious.
Smell: A unique scent diffused in the lobby and rooms produces relaxation and cleanliness, reinforcing the brand’s identity, and creating a welcoming vibe.
Sound: Soft music in common areas creates a calming atmosphere, encouraging guests to feel relaxed.
Touch: Comfortable bedding and high-quality furniture contribute to a premium feel experience.
Taste: A welcome drink or restaurant with locally inspired dishes enhances the sensory experience and strengthens the brand’s connection to the location.
By appealing to all five senses, the hotel creates an experience guests remember as warm, welcoming, and comfortable.