Emotional Energy is More Real Thank You Might Think

Daniel Kahneman

It turns out that when you’re feeling emotionally or mentally “drained,” you’re more right on with your wording than you know.  You are actually losing real energy, in the form of blood glucose stored (in finite quantities) in the brain. Now, cutting-edge research gives us insight as to how we can grow our stores of mental energy.

In his  book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, renowned psychologist Daniel Kahneman tells the following story about eight judges in Israel:

A disturbing demonstration…was recently reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The unwitting participants in the study were eight parole judges in Israel. They spend entire days reviewing applications for parole. The cases are presented in random order, and the judges spend little time on each one, an average of 6 minutes. (The default decision is denial of parole; only 35% of requests are approved. The exact time of each decision is recorded, and the times of the judges’ three food breaks–morning break, lunch, and afternoon break–during the day are recorded as well.)

The authors of the study plotted the proportion of approved requests against the time since the last food break. The proportion spikes after each meal, when about 65% of requests are granted. During the two hours or so until the judges’ next feeding, the approval rate drops steadily, to about zero just before the meal. As you might expect, this is an unwelcome result and the authors carefully checked many alternative explanations.

It’s no surprise that we get cranky when we haven’t eaten, but it is surprising and slightly alarming that judgments we assume to be wise and rational correlate with meal times.

The phenomenon is called “ego depletion,” and its implications go beyond simple changes in mood. Any brain activity that takes mental effort, like concentration, willpower, sympathy, and deliberate thought, all drain large amounts of energy from the same glucose stores. Once those store are depleted, we are less capable of mental effort and we fall back on our default, intuitive systems. These systems do not have the ability to filter or exert willpower, causing our behavior to fundamentally change.

We become irritable, easily distracted, capable of less self-control, unmindful of what we say, more likely to succumb to temptation, and show low endurance. Sound familiar? To the brain, being depleted is similar to being drunk.

The “Shaken Self”: Self-Confidence and Product Choice

I’m always excited when science finally catches up with marketing.

A man walks into a sociologist’s office, and is asked to write a short essay highlighting his healthy life habits. He does so. Afterwards, he’s offered a choice of two small rewards for his work: an apple, or a pack of M&M’s. He makes his choice and leaves.

After that, another man walks into the sociologist’s office, and is asked to write a short essay highlighting his healthy life habits. As he’s about to begin, the sociologist asks him to write it with his non-dominant hand. After he does so, he is offered a choice between an apple or a pack of M&M’s.

This second man, who wrote with his non-dominant hand, is significantly more likely than the first to choose the apple. Why would that be?

A lot of excellent research is starting to emerge dealing with the relationship between “state” self-confidence (short term mental states) and purchasing habits. The study I’ve just referenced came out of Stanford last year. It was published in Advances in Consumer Research by Leilei Gao, S. Christian Wheeler, and Baba Shiv, and talks about the concept of the “shaken self.”

Jon Stewart, Gen-Y, and Brand-centrism

In my most recent MBA class on leadership, we covered generational differences. We learned that there are certain workplace-related traits that can be ascribed to Baby Boomers, for example, that is not a part of the Gen-X or Gen-Y experience. As a leader, one may therefore relate differently to employees of one generation as opposed to how they relate to members of other generations.

For example, regarding relationship to authority (taken from the Lake Forest leadership presentation on generational relations):

• Those of the “Veteran” generation (born 1935-45) will generally respect authority and hierarchy. They generally want to be told what to do, and will deliver on explicit direction.
• Those of the “Boomer” generation (born 1946-59) will generally challenge authority. This is the Vietnam/disenchantment generation, and therefore want a more democratic organization.
• Those of the “Gen-X” generation (born 1960-79) are generally unimpressed by authority. This is the latchkey generation that had to figure things out on their own, and they are the first generation to want to know what people in authority can do for them.
• Those of the “Gen-Y” generation, or Millennials (born 1980-2001) are capable of respect for authority, but only such authority as can demonstrate competence in their eyes. This is the generation of immediate gratification, and wants those in authority to show them what they can do for them right now!

Jon Stewart

With this background, I’d like to introduce a fascinating video clip featuring Jon Stewart on a youth vote panel in 2000. You’ll notice that the clip seems dated, and Stewart’s persona is a little more raw and unguarded from what we see in current times. Watch the clip, and then join me back for a discussion on some of the points…

This clip is a great example of a Gen-Xer (Stewart) talking to a Millennial (the woman to his immediate right). Stewart displays a condescending attitude to that entire generation which may or may not be deserved, but in terms of how one the generational attitudes that both people express, it fits right in with the model on how these generations regard one another.

Here are a couple of points:

1) The point about Gen-Y’s brand agnosticism is perfectly valid. People born after 1980 do wield a disproportionate amount of consumer power simply because they are the generation most open to dumping their current brand in favor of another. They feel the same way about the places they work, and will change companies on a whim.

2) The presentation from which I got this information has a slide called “Connecting with Y-ers,” which suggests things like “be encouraging,” “coach instead of tell,” “give them attention,” “give them recognition,” “use irony and humor,” etc. I’m going to diverge from the presentation at this point and say that this is bullshit. I’m more in line with Stewart’s line of thinking: just show competence. Make good stuff. He enjoys a particularly young demographic without necessarily trying to “speak the Gen-Y language.” Although, to be fair, Stewart is a fan of the more-than-occasional dick joke, and that’s going to have a slightly younger draw.

Let me know what you think. And please share the discussion using the links below. Although, if you’re from Gen-Y, I’m apparently going to have to say pretty, pretty please…

Related Articles

• Branding Lessons from Jon Stewart (mediabistro.com)

How To Use Body Rhythms to Captivate People

This comes from a book that my friend clued me into, called Winning Body Language, by Mark Bowden.

One of his chapters talks about using body language to take advantage of the way our minds deal with predictability and interruption.

 

Image via Wikipedia

 

Pattern interruption is a fascinating topic, and this isn’t the first context where I’ve bumped into it. Here’s a brief bit of background on the concept:

Our world contains much more observable data than the brain can handle, so we take in and process far less information than is available to us. Most of our reactions to the world are based familiar patterns that our subconscious mind has been conditioned to deal with while our conscious mind tunes out.

For example, when you greet someone and shake their hand, it is entirely possible you will never remember shaking their hand at all. Handshakes are so automatic and predictable that we do it without really ever consciously acknowledging what’s going on. We have an internal model for repeated behavior based on how handshakes work, and we assume that handshakes will work identically. Our body just does it, and the rest of our mind can tune it out. We are certain about our situation, and comfortable in that certainty.

We go through the same tune-out process when commercials come on, or when we see banner ads on web sites. That’s why advertisers love the concept of pattern interruption.

Obviously, advertisers don’t want you to be doing any “tuning-out” when their ads are presented. But more than that, there are special psychological implications if you can snap someone back into conscious focus at the moment that their brain is accessing a pattern. If you create uncertainty right at that moment, your subconscious mind gets cut off in the middle of what it was doing, and that creates a couple seconds of hyper-awareness and disorientation.

Five Behaviors That Communicate High or Low Status

Previously, I have remarked on an area of interpersonal dynamics called the Status Transaction. This concept comes from one of the fathers of improv theatre. It says that humans, just like other pack animals, communicate in subtle behaviors that convey where they stand with regard to each other.  We establish an unconscious structure of deference and social value in order to keep our relations mostly harmonious. As Johnstone remarks, “In the park we’ll notice the ducks squabbling, but not how carefully they keep their distances when they are not.”

This principal is the key link between acting performance, marketing, and social psychology. It is the subtext of human life. It represents the unvarnished, true meaning of people’s communication. It is, either consciously or unconsciously, a crucial factor in honest and authentic acting portrayals, because it factors into a character’s key attitudes. It also factors into how we feel attraction to one another. Also, it has repercussions in group psychology, and therefore also in marketing messaging. People arrange their little worlds in ways that cultivate and communicate status. Status, recognition and validation play a central role in most people’s secret dreams and ideals.

We tend to associate high status with certain favorable traits, like wealth or physical attractiveness. People speculate that correlation came from evolution; in order to survive, we will tend to associate ourselves with those who have means, and signs of healthy DNA. Our conspicuous consumption is an example of a status-driven tendency.

 

Maximum status gaps make for some of the best comedy

 

What people may not know is that most status communications are conveyed through ordinary, everyday behavior. Johnstone discovered this through improv exercises. He started with large-gap status differences, like king and butler. He then reversed behaviors so that the butler behaved in a high-status manner, and the king deferring to the butler. And, improv comedy was born.

In real life, most status-communicating behaviors are hard to fake. That’s why we get the creeps when someone who has the appearance of status (e.g. wealth) behaves in a way that seems incongruent. Most people who try and put on a short-term game persona usually fail at it. Their insecurities “peek out” through the cracks.

Based on the search keywords that lead into People-triggers, there are a lot of people searching for a discussion on which behaviors communicate high status, and which communicate low status. Johnstone talks at length about this in his book, Impro, and there are many other status discussions around the blogosphere. One blog that shows a lot of insight into this subject is appropriately named, The Statustician, and I would recommend checking it out for a more in-depth discussion.

So, for your experiments in interaction on stage and in life, here is my list of the top five behaviors that communicate interpersonal status.

Why We Want What We Can’t Have, and Can’t Have What We Want

I was walking a friend of mine home the other day, and she was telling me about the kinds of men she had been meeting recently. We started talking about whether you could be into somebody just because they were “off-limits” to you in some way: already attached, emotionally unavailable, constantly busy, runs in high social circles, borderline-inappropriate age difference, etc.

She was pretty sure that she wasn’t affected by any of these considerations, or at least, not consciously. My gut, on the other hand, was telling me that the “off-limits” factor might be pretty significant. I once staged a live adaptation of the book, “He’s Just Not That Into You,” and I remember a lot the reprinted letters in the book were sent by women in some of these very situations.

One was sent by a woman who talked with a lot of enthusiasm about how busy her “boyfriend” was in the filmmaking business, and how “important” that made him…so important in fact, that she hadn’t heard from him in forever. Another talked about how secretive her boyfriend was, and how his unwillingness to tell her anything substantive made him “intriguing.”

While researching, I found the blog Miss Adventures in L.A., in which the author goes into great detail about her obsession with a man who makes himself very unavailable.

Many of these writers openly admit that their obsessions make them sound perhaps a little pathetic, but I don’t think they are pathetic. I think there’s something inescapably attractive about that which is inaccessible. Askmen.com agrees. Their dating advice columns say flat out that “Women don’t feel attraction for men that are pushover wuss bags. Women feel attraction for men who are a challenge.”

-Your Ads Don’t Work on Me. -Oh, Yes They Do…

Advertising is more effective than you think

Some fascinating information coming from Psyblog this week on the effectiveness of persuasion.

In an entry called, “The Third Person Effect,” Psyblog author and University College researcher Jeremy Dean shows us how we are not as invulnerable to advertising messaging as we think we are.

Ever since advertising became truly popular, consumers have generally maintained that while they can understand how advertising would have an effect on others, it cannot possibly have an effect on them. They are too savvy, and too in-control of their mental faculties to be influenced by such ham-handed messaging.

Dean reviewed work by Richard M. Perloff and Bryant Paul (et. al.), who themselves reviewed over thirty studies on people’s attitudes on advertising influence. He found that:

… participants thought others would be influenced by the message, but that they themselves would remain unaffected. When psychologists looked at the results, though, it was clear that participants were just as influenced as other people. This was dubbed the ‘third-person effect’.

Know Your Audience: The Desires and Insecurities of the 21st Century

I’ve wanted to write this article for a long time, but it took me finding a brilliant essay called “The Rise of the Caring Industry,” by Ronald W. Dworkin, to fill in the last piece of the puzzle.

Our whole culture and self-image shifted in the 60's. Is it still shifting, and where is it going?

I’m a great fan of the show Mad Men, in part because they portray the seismic societal shifts in the late fifties and early sixties – the rise of the aggressive individualism that ushered in our modern culture. The protagonist of the show, Don Draper, is a very flawed individual but has an excellent sense of where 60′s society is trending, and what people will want as a result.

So I wonder, what conclusions would someone of his excellent understanding of people and culture draw about the self-concept of the 21st century man or woman? How can we lesser observers cultivate a clear vision of society’s dreams and desires, so as to better inform our literature, plays, and messaging?

After reading the essay I mentioned above, I got a handle on a concept that had been eluding me for a while:

Dr. Mark Leary of Duke University has established that our concept of self-esteem is actually a self-perception system, feeding us back an idea of our own value to others. I believe this is one of the chief psychological insights of our time, because it pinpoints the true source of our waxing mass insecurity. We cannot feel secure about our own identity without receiving feedback from others acknowledging our social value.

Enter Dr. Ronald W. Dworkin, an M.D. and Ph.D. who writes on the dangers of society’s over-reliance on psychological care, and psychoactive drugs. He sees the uncontrolled rise in professional psychological care-taking as a result of the “mass loneliness and mass unhappiness” resulting from the societal changes in the Mad Men era.

Come to Marketing, Where Stereotyping is Still Encouraged

There are two very noticeable constants that connect the 60′s advertising world of Mad Men to the modern ad agency: 1) the actual agency names, which are mostly still around, and 2) the permissibility of flagrant and often pejorative stereotyping as a means of doing effective business.

“Oh, we’ll give them this new thing, and they’ll all love it. They always do.”

I went to school in the time of the political correctness movement, and then finally settled in a career involving mass segmentation – which is to say, professional pigeon-holing.  So I now do for a living that which was impressed on me by my teachers and “bad” and “wrong.”  I’m just lucky, I guess.

Now, I’m not repudiating the practice (or even “refudiating” it, for the sake of the overly-stereotyped “Mamma Grizzlies” out there!).  I actually kind of like the irony of it. We were all taught in grade school to see past common stereotypes and value each individual as a unique snowflake, only to discover that humans actually do break down into easily identifiable, quantifiable, and predictable groups.  Except we now call them personas rather than stereotypes – because we’re not in the dark ages anymore.

Top Ten Marketing Secrets from Don Draper

Here are the top ten timeless advertising lessons we can all learn from Mad Men’s Don Draper:

 

 

Don Draper, from the AMC series Mad Men