Category Archives: Evolutionary Psychology

The Psychology of Entertainment: What We Find Funny

Did you hear the one about….

A rabbi, a priest and a prostitute walk into a bar….

Knock Knock….

A lot of decidedly unfunny academic papers have been written about what makes us laugh (the one I referred to for this post was  Robert Storey, “Comedy, Its Theorists and the Evolutionary Perspective,” Criticism 38.3 (1996), Questia – what a hoot!). Freud has his own ideas that involved a sudden release of psychic energy, sort of like a mental steam release valve. It’s a sign of the dryness of the academic world to note that there is vigorous academic debate about what we find funny.

At the risk of examining an inherent human trait that’s probably better left alone, if we’re going to look at the psychology of entertainment, we have to look at what we find funny. And to begin, let’s look at what makes a baby laugh.

Getting a Baby to Laugh

babylaughBabies get humor at a pretty early age. Most babies start laughing in their first half year of life. So, obviously, there must be some fundamental qualities of humor. In understanding what we find funny, it’s helpful to look at what makes a 5 month old baby laugh.

Think about how you get a baby to laugh. A game of Peekaboo is usually effective. Tickling and gentle rough housing can usually elicit a chuckle. A adult face zooming into close proximity while babbling verbal nonsense also seems to do the trick.

Now, if we look closely at each of these activities, we start to realize there’s a macabre and twisted underbelly to humor.

Peekaboo generally works best with the primary care givers, the parents. The closer the adult is to the baby, the more likely you’ll get  a smile or laugh. But the game basically mimics the disappearance of the person closest to the baby and then brings them back. Now you see me, now you don’t, and now you see me again.

Tickling and rough housing is a toned down mock attack. The same is true when we jam our faces into that of an infant and spout baby talk. We get them to laugh by scaring the bejesus out of them. Is it any wonder that babies seem to be balanced on the fine line between laughing and crying during most of these activities? It doesn’t take much to slip from humor to fear. As the baby gets tired or if a stranger tries the same game as the parent, you’re more likely to get tears than laughter.

The Primal Building Blocks of Humor

This starts to tell us what the primal elements of humor might be. For a baby, we take a threatening situation and down play it dramatically, letting the baby feel that it’s just play. The baby picks up signals from us that there is no real threat, leaving them free to enjoy the game.  In this benign version of toned down danger, the baby builds coping skills for the world around them. This mastery of our environments, our ability to align things with a sense what’s right and achieve congruity, continues to play a critical role in what we find humorous as we get older.

By the way, humans aren’t the only animals that laugh. Other primates, such as chimpanzees, also laugh, and there the dividing line between hostility and humor is almost non existent. The toothy grin in a primate is not too many steps removed from baring your teeth in preparation for battle. And a smile is the primates sign for submission to a superior.

This line between danger and pain is one that humans continue to ride through our lives, and some enjoy the journey more than others. Some smile and laugh like idiots on a roller coaster (myself included), others are paralyzed in fear. But the difference between the two extremes is not as far as you might think. Research seems to show that both feelings originate from the same centres of the brain and it’s our threshold for sensation stimulation that separates laughter from screaming.

The Psychology of a Joke

The jokes we find funny can tell much about us as individuals. Again, jokes rely on closing gaps of incongruity, a sudden revelation that suddenly allows a situation that highlights a discrepancy to make sense. We master the situation when we “get” the punchline, the source of the humor.

But the funniness of a joke depends on our frame of mind. What we find incongruous and the things that offer a pleasing solution to that incongruity differ from person to person. A highly religious person may be offended by a dirty joke that would be gang busters amongst a bunch of guys having a drink after work. The different view of context and competing emotions of disgust render the joke unfunny to more “upright” recipients.

This dependency on cultural context can help explain why jokes seldom translate well from culture to culture. The more the joke relies on a frame of reference steeped in the uniqueness of a culture, the less likely it will be to successfully cross borders. In 2002 a study was done to find the funniest joke in the world. The winner was:

A couple of New Jersey hunters are out in the woods when one of them falls to the ground. He doesn’t seem to be breathing, his eyes are rolled back in his head. The other guy whips out his cell phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps to the operator: “My friend is dead! What can I do?” The operator, in a calm, soothing voice, says: “Just take it easy. I can help. First, let’s make sure he’s dead.” There is a silence, then a shot is heard. The guy’s voice comes back on the line. He says: “Okay, now what?”

The classic elements of humor are all here. The initial situation, the set up, the twist and the sudden understanding of the twist, resulting in, apparently, universal laughter. Notice that the context is so broad and independent of a cultural context that anyone, anywhere, should “get it”. There is nothing culturally specific about this joke.

But now let’s look at what the winner in the US was:

A man and a friend are playing golf one day at their local golf course. One of the guys is about to chip onto the green when he sees a long funeral procession on the road next to the course. He stops in mid-swing, takes off his golf cap, closes his eyes, and bows down in prayer. His friend says: “Wow, that is the most thoughtful and touching thing I have ever seen. You truly are a kind man.” The man then replies: “Yeah, well we were married 35 years.”

The humor in this joke depends on understanding how fanatical some males are about golf, a context familiar in the US, not as familiar in Sri Lanka or Zimbabwe.

The funniest joke in Canada revealed a nastier side of our culture:

When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ballpoint pens would not work in zero gravity. To combat the problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 billion to develop a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to 300 C. The Russians used a pencil.

Much as we Canadians love our neighbors to the south, we also love to see the U.S. get it’s comeuppance. The humor of this joke depends on a shared cultural perception of Americans “overdoing” it on the world stage. Canada’s reputation as a source of world class comedians and satirists has been honed by this love/hate relationship with the U.S. Perhaps it’s not coincidental that this same tendency has produced some of the world’s best known observers of human behavior and social peculiarities, including Malcolm Gladwell, Steven Pinker and Marshall McLuhan.

In tomorrow’s post, we’ll talk about how we process humor and why we can laugh at both Oscar Wilde and Three’s Company.

The Psychology of Entertainment: Why We Love Ross, Rachel, Chandler, Monica, Joey and Phoebe

friendsIn a post last week, I dove into the question: Why are some TV shows enduring hits, some flash-in-the-pans and some none starters?

What separates a M*A*S*H, Friends or Cheers from a Baby Bob, Mama’s Family or Veronica’s Closet (Huh..you say? Exactly my point).

The difference, according to researchers Cristel Russell, Andrew Norman, and Susan Heckler (“Chapter Fifteen People and “their” Television Shows: an Overview of Television Connectedness,” The Psychology of Entertainment Media:  Blurring the Lines between Entertainment and Persuasion, ed. L. J. Shrum. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004) is our degree of connectedness with the show. Do we take the characters and situations into our own lives? Do we build a bridge between our reality and their fantasy? The stronger the bridge, the more durable the connection will be.

Successful Sitcoms have to go beyond the “Sit”

Imagine you were in a pitch for a new sitcom. “We have 6 20-something friends in Greenwich Village who hang out at a coffee shop and talk a lot” or “we have a middle aged sports writer and his family who move across from his Italian mom and dad in Long Island.”  In a Hollywood pitch for a new sitcom, it will typically be the “sit” part that gets pitched – what’s the situation? This is where the concept tends to trump character in most premises. But situations are only of fleeting interest to us humans. Situations engage the mind in the same way a puzzle or brain teaser would. They can introduce a partial picture and our curiosity wants to resolve it to our satisfaction. We want to see how the situation turns out. By the way, this mastery of unresolved situations is the basis of the appeal of humor and drama as well. But situations don’t have “legs” when it comes to consistently engaging us. We have limited attention spans for situations. Once we resolve them, or feel that we’ve resolved them, our attention moves on. This is the way it works in the real world. Life will throw us situation after situation, often several in a day. If we lingered over each one longer than was necessary, we’d never move forward. We’d keep getting caught in situational “eddies”, separated from the main current of our lives.

It gets worse. If situations can’t be resolved in a timely manner, we grow frustrated and bored with them. Our brain starts telling us, through our emotions, that it’s time to move on. So, for a show to be successful, it has to introduce a parade of situations, just like real life would.

So, how does a show keep us engaged in between situations? What keeps us tuned in? The characters. Characters are what we connect to. Characters engage us at a completely different level than situations. Situations are an intellectual challenge. Characters create emotional bonds. We care what happens to them. And this caring, this connection, provides the emotional overtones that keep the situations consistently interesting.

Let’s look at the mother of all entertainment situations, the budding romantic relationship. This has universal appeal. We all (hopefully) experience love. And we all experience sexual attraction. This is something we can relate to. When it’s simmering between two characters we care about, it’s almost irresistible. Hollywood has tested this formula thousands of times in all different situations. They have mastered the ability to mercilessly tease us through the various stages of outright hostility but inner intrigue, unrequited love, flirtatious exploration, tentative connection, secretive romance, open declaration, romantic entanglement, betrayal, the inevitable break up, and then, the cycle can start all over again. It seems contrived because it is. But it works. I’ve just described 10 seasons of Friends. The truth is, however, that we would have never stuck it out if we didn’t care about Ross and Rachel, Chandler and Monica, Joey and Phoebe. The appeal of Friends was the appeal of the characters, not the situations.

Tomorrow, I’ll look at humor. What strikes us as funny, and why? Why is there a fine line between a baby’s laughter and tears? How can we find both Tyler Perry and Oscar Wilde funny? What part of the brain processes humor? Why is this different in men and women?

The Decline and Fall of Our Mythologies

What happens when information swamps our common myths? What happens to humans when facts overtake commonly shared fantasies?

In yesterday’s post, I started by looking at how our culture might be moving too quickly for myths to keep up. This is important because human’s have historically used myths to create a “oneness” of mind. Myths often come bundled with behavioral codes and societal rules. Myths have dictated how we should think and act. Myths rule the mob.

But in the last century, one sweeping technical advance had two very different impacts on two different parts of our world. Today, I want to examine the impact of TV in North America and Communist Russia.

The Death of Mythology in America

bowlingaloneIn his book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam noticed that American values did an abrupt u-turn somewhere in the middle of the 60’s. After a decades long trend of increasing participation in community activities, Americans stopped spending time together. They went to church less often, belonged to fewer service organizations, attended fewer PTA meetings, stopped having dinner parties, stopping playing Bridge with the neighbors and quit their bowling leagues. Not coincidentally, the percentage of voter turnout in elections also started to drop. Americans, once the most intensely community minded people on earth, stopped spending time with each other.

This trend didn’t make American’s bad people, however. At the same time that American’s became less concerned about the well being of their immediate community, they became more concerned about universal issues such as civil rights, equality of women, international piece, religious persecution, sexual intolerance, freedom of speech and nuclear disarmament. At the same time we were becoming less engaged with our communities we were becoming more open minded and tolerant in our ideologies.

bowlingalonegraphThe chart shown, from the BuyerSphere Project, provides one hint about why this mental about face may have happened in the middle of the 60’s:

As you can see, the 50’s and 60’s were also the decades where most of us brought TV into our homes. In 1950, only about 12% of American homes had TV. By 1960, that number had exploded to 78%. This meant we spent more time in our homes, which naturally meant we spent less time outside the home, interacting with others. That alone might explain our withdrawal from our communities. But a simple reckoning of where we spend our time wouldn’t explain the ideological blossoming of America. I believe it was more than just where we were spending our time. I believe it was what we were spending our time doing. As we viewed the world through a flickering blue screen, our common myths were being slowly but surely destroyed.

Myths rely on an absence of information. Myths depend on a singular point of view, supported by carefully chosen and disseminated information, in the guise of facts. The more singular the culture, the more important it is to carefully restrict the flow of information. Societies where there are strict codes of behavior and adherence to one ideology have the tightest censorship rules and the most virulent propaganda.

The Myth of the American Dream

While America in the first half of the 20th century was philosophically a democratic, pluralistic society, it was, in practice, a culture heavily bound by commonly held myths. In 50 years, America was rocked by two world wars and a decade long economic crisis. Well over half of these 50 years was spent united against a common enemy and sharing in common hardships. We were sustained by our mythologies – the importance of hard work, the ultimate rightness of democracy, the ultimate wrongness of tyranny, the ideal of the American dream. Our channels of information carefully supported these myths and filtered out dissenting facts. Even in the 50’s, the imagined spectre of Communism helped us maintain a common mythology, leading to McCarthyism and other irrational behaviors.

But in the 60’s, the electronic window of television provided a new channel of information. The history of television typically runs a similar path wherever it plays out. In the beginning, it is a tightly restricted channel that offers governments and other power structures an unprecedented opportunity to build and strengthen common mythologies through controlled programming and propaganda. But, over time, the leash on TV programming inevitably gets loosened. It’s difficult to keep too tight a reign on a communication medium that travels freely over the airwaves. The common mythological view gives way to a pluralistic, fragmented pipeline of information. We see other realities, other ideologies, other cultures. As awareness seeps into our collective consciousness, our myths start to die. Our “oneness” gets fragmented across multiple ideological and sociological lines.

This, I believe, is what happened to us, starting in the 60’s. Television forever changed how we looked at the world. TV provided the lens through which we lost our innocence, discovering other truths beyond the American mythology. Putnam also cites TV as one of the factors that eroded our social capital. I suspect it played a bigger part than even he imagined.

The Death of Mythology in the USSR

communist-poster-1967-grangerIf the effect of TV was earth shaking in a democratic America, at least it appears that most of our institutions will survive the transition. Our governments are essentially built on the same foundations they were a century ago. The same was not true for Communist Russia. There, the very structures of government crumbled along with their myths.

In the analysis of the decline and fall of Communism in the former Soviet Union, the role of television has only been mentioned in passing, but the timeline of the introduction of TV and the decline of the Soviet Communist government are suspiciously aligned. State controlled TV was introduced in the Soviet Union at roughly the same time as in North America (just before World War II) but its spread was delayed by the war. Also, the saturation rate of TV in the Soviet Union lagged far behind America. In 1960, when 78% of Americans had a set in their homes, only 5% of the Soviet population could watch TV. It wasn’t until the mid 80’s that over 90% of Soviets could watch TV. This coincided almost exactly with the introduction of glasnost (transparency, openness and freedom of information) and perestroika (a restructuring of government) by Mikhail Gorbachev. Demands for more openness and freedom moved in lock step with the adoption of TV and the lessening of restrictions on programming.

If the pervasiveness of myths was an important factor in the history of America, the very mythology of Communism was the foundation of Soviet history. History was literally rewritten to make sure that available information aligned with the mythology currently in vogue. And this mythology, the utopia of Communist ideology and the depravity of capitalism (myths that run directly counter to our western ones) kept the emotions of Soviets aligned for the first 60 years. But just like their American counterparts, TV provided Soviets with a glimpse of reality beyond the mythology. There were other channels of information that began to erode faith in the myths. The speed of TV surpassed the durability of the myths. The rest, as they say, is history.

The Accelerated Demise of Our Myths

The decline of our myths started with the introduction of TV, but the fragmentation of our ideologies and realities has been accelerated dramatically by the Internet. We are bombarded by information, much of which comes to us through unedited, unrestricted channels. The Internet is a massive organic hotbed of differing opinions from millions of different voices. Myths can hardly hope to survive in such an environment.

My original question was: what happens when information strips away our myths, along with the social codes embedded in them? What happens when our common views are shattered into billions of different fragments? If the introduction of TV caused the social fabric of America to unravel and the Soviet empire to crumble, what will the digital onslaught of information do?

What indeed?

Living Between the Disconnected Dots

We’ve been in transition for a long time. And it’s starting to wear us down.

Cognitive anthropologist Bob Deutsch had a column this morning that talked about the crisis of time we’re all experiencing in our lives. It seems we’re always rushing to do something. In the column, Bob had a paragraph that jumped out at me:

The consumer finds himself at a cognitive impasse, where America is presently “between mythologies.” We are not what we once were, and we do not yet know what we will become. This is a hard place for a culture. Worse, because of the speed of the culture, and the perceived complexity and unpredictability of things, people experience the world as a series of unconnected dots.

Myth-Beggoten

virginofguadalupewikiHis line – ‘between mythologies” – was particularly interesting. Humans are animals that need to share a lot of things. We are herding animals and this need to herd drives much of our behavior. We look for commonalities and feel more comfortable when we find them. It gives us a sense of belonging that is very important. And myths are an essential part of that formula.

For our entire history, our shared acceptance of myths has united us. Myths govern our view of the world. They are the tools we have invented to explain the unexplainable. But, one by one, science and technology have stripped down our myths and thrown them into question. Myths come from the deeper, darker recesses of our brain, down in the sub cortical regions of our neural basement. They don’t stand up very to the cold hard light of rational reasoning. And increasingly, we are forced to be reasonable about the things in our life. Information drives us towards reason, and we have more information thrown at us than ever before.

Moral Reinforcement

Myths also served another purpose. They gave us rules to govern our behavior. Most of our myths were religious in nature and came with a corresponding code of social behavior. The basic rules of herd survival,  including fairness and reciprocal altruism, were baked into the package. That’s why a variation of the Golden Rule is found in every single religion in the world.

But, when the myths start to break down, what happens to the rules of behavior that came bundled with them? We start to get confused. Things start to become disconnected.

The Atheist Next Door

There’s a mix up of cause and effect that we struggle with when we talk about things like religion. Even if we renounce our religion, we don’t suddenly become evil people. Just because atheists don’t believe in God doesn’t mean they’ve freed themselves from the obligation to do right  by their fellow man.  In fact, if you had to pick someone to be your neighbor, an atheist wouldn’t be a bad choice. Statistically speaking, the percentage of atheists in prison is far less than the percentage of atheists in the general population. Atheists are also less likely to get divorced. When you look at the types of behavior that govern the continuance of social harmony, atheists have a far better track record than most segments of the population.  Religion doesn’t cause morality. Morality superseded religion. You could say morality begat religion. Unfortunately, a lot of the less noble instincts of our species also got tied up in the whole religious bundle – including the tendency of humans belonging to different herds to try to kill each other.

But when our myths, including religion, start to slip away under the scrutiny of rationalization, we start to feel cut out from the herd. We start to become disconnected from our sense of “oneness”. We still try to do the right thing, but the reason why isn’t as clear as it once was. If we stop to think about it, we can come up with a Dawkinesque rationalization using things like game theory and “tit for tat” reciprocal strategies, but it was a whole lot easier just to believe that God would smite us if we weren’t nice. The fact is, we don’t take much time in our lives to “stop and think.” We cruise through live 95% of the time on emotional autopilot and myths are great guidance systems for emotions.

Myth-drift

So, back to Deutsch’s point. What happens as we drift between mythologies? The Pew Forum on Public Life and Religion has shown that the percentage of “non religious” people in America has grown from just over 7% in 1990 to over 16% in 2007. What is perhaps even more telling is to see how that group breaks down. Only 1.6% were atheists and 2.4% agnostics. These are the ones who were, to some degree, proactive about severing their ties with an accepted mythology. 12.1% were simply drifting away from their mythologies. They were wandering out there, beyond the idealogical boundaries of the herd.

Deutsch talks abut the increasing pace of our lives being the culprit in our sense of disconnection. And, in that drive to do more in less time, we tend to sample life in little commoditized chunks. Ironically, in the same email that continued the link to Deutsch’s article was a sidebar with the top 10 franchises of 2009, courtesy of Entrepreneur magazine:

Top 10 Franchises Of 2009
1.    Subway
2.    McDonald’s
3.    7-Eleven
4.    Hampton Inn/ Hampton Inn & Suites
5.    Supercuts
6.    H & R Block
7.    Dunkin’ Donuts
8.    Jani-King
9.    Servpro
10.    am/pm Mini Market

It was a fitting echo to Deutsch’s words. The most successful businesses are the ones that slice off some aspect of our lives and serves it up to us fast and shrink wrapped, preferably at a cheap price.

I’m not so sure we are simply “between mythologies” as Bob Deutsch suggests.  I suspect we’re moving too fast for myths to keep up. Myths, by their very nature, have to grow to critical mass to be effective. Historically, myths were the foundation for global religions. Today, myths are email strings that quickly get exposed on snopes.com. We deconstruct myths before they get a chance to gain enough traction to serve their purpose: uniting us in a common view. We have access to too much information for myths to stand much of a chance of survival. That’s where I’ll pick up in tomorrow’s post.

The Library of Human Behavior: 11 More Titles for Your Reading List

First published October 22, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Last week, I shared 11 titles that explore the intersection between marketing, psychology and neurology. In retrospect, though, I think I approached this backwards. While the titles I discussed are all interesting (and fairly easy reads), they are somewhat dependent on a fundamental understanding of why humans do what we do. So this week, I’ll share a good starting library of human behavior, which can then be applied more generally.

“The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are”  — Robert Wright.  If you’re on the fence about or simply do not believe in evolution (along with 50% of Americans) you probably want to stop right here. The first three titles in this list are by authors who together create a pantheon for evolutionary psychology and Darwinism. In the first,  “The Moral Animal,” Wright employs an interesting literary device: exploring human behavior by referencing biographical details in Charles Darwin’s own life. He discusses monogamy, child rearing, differing attitudes towards sex and self-deception, among many other mysteries of the human condition. A compelling and highly intelligent read.

“The Selfish Gene” — Richard Dawkins. This book was first published over 30 years ago, and somehow still manages to remain controversial. Perhaps it’s because Dawkins’ assigning the human characteristic of selfishness to our genes has confused many, many readers. If you take the time to read the book, Dawkins explains at length that humans are not necessarily selfish. In fact, one chapter is titled: “Nice Guys Finish First.” Dawkins’ premise is that our genes only care about propagation. That’s it. End of story. Morality and all the ethical trappings that go with it only survive if they help the gene meet this one objective.  A couple of other noteworthy nuggets in this book include the first introduction of memes — ideas that share the propagation directives of genes — and an exploration of how the impact of genes can extend into all aspects of our lives and society.

“The Third Chimpanzee” — Jared Diamond. Diamond starts off the book by stating that we share 98% of our genes with chimpanzees, then spends the rest of the book describing how that remaining 2% can make all the difference. In that thin wedge of genetic difference lie all our culture, achievement and history. Some human achievements are admirable, even remarkable. Some are regrettably base and cruel. Diamond chronicles both the good and the bad, along with a warning: our dominance of our world may end up spelling our doom. A professor of geography who combines the eye of a naturalist, the curiosity of a sociologist, and the ponderings of a philosopher, Diamond makes “The Third Chimpanzee” a masterful book.

“The Stuff of Thought” — Steven Pinker. Following in the steps of Noam Chomsky (up to a point), psychologist Steven Pinker uses language as a door to explore the shadowy recesses of how our minds work. This book is a seminal piece of work in this area. Pinker is masterful at exploring complicated concepts without “dumbing down” his commentary.  He has written an entire library of books worth reading, but this is as good a place to start as any.

“Descartes’ Error” — Antonio Damasio. Damasio was introduced to the common masses in Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Blink,” but Damasio’s work on somatic markers and the role of the prefrontal cortex in how we make decisions goes much further than Gladwell was able to cover. “Descartes’ Error” delves deep into our gut instincts, explaining why pure rationality is an unworkable model for humans. To paraphrase Descartes’ famous quote: We feel, therefore we are.

To round out my 11 suggestions, here are six other titles worth exploring:

“The Mind and the Brain” – Jeffrey Schwartz

“Synaptic Self” – Joseph LeDoux

“A Whole New Mind” – Daniel Pink

“Mapping the Mind” – Rita Carter

“The Emotional Brain” – Joseph LeDoux

“The Female Brain” – Louanne Brizendine

The Meeting of the Mind and Marketing: 11 Books to Read

First published October 15, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

It’s official! With this column, I break David Berkowitz’s Search Insider column count record, with 225 of my own. And to commemorate the occasion, I wanted to follow up on a request that came in response to my column two weeks ago. I had warned any would-be students of human nature that this wasn’t a quest to be taken lightly. A few readers responded by asking for a recommended reading list.

So this week, I went through my bookshelf at home and jotted down a list of titles that I found particularly insightful or interesting in understanding the human condition. Today, I offer them as suggestions for some fall or winter reading. I came up with 22 titles, so I’ve broken them into two groups. This week, all the titles are specifically for those who want to explore the intersection between marketing and the way our minds work.“How Customers Think” — Gerald Zaltman. Harvard professor Gerald Zaltman has carved out a nice little career by exploring the psychology of consumerism. The foundation of Zaltman’s approach is his metaphor elicitation technique. Metaphors are linguistic keys to some of the darker workings of our mind, and Zaltman shows how these can be used as a Rosetta stone to unlock consumers’ true feelings towards brands and products. A fascinating approach suffers a little from Zaltman’s dry and overly academic writing style, but it’s a very worthy candidate for the list.

“The Culture Code” — Clotaire Rapaille. If Zaltman is a little stodgy and academic, Rapaille is an unabashed French nouveau-riche pop psychologist who has used his decidedly qualitative approach to dig down to the cultural common denominators behind our brand relationships. This book looks for those labels cultures apply to some of the best-known brands in the world. Being French, Rapaille brings an occasionally charming European cultural arrogance to his subject (i.e. in France, the culture code for cheese is “alive”, but in the U.S. it’s “dead”). This is  an easy and interesting read; while you might have some quibbles with Rapaille’s findings, he has plenty of willing customers among the Fortune 500.

“Buy-ology” — Martin Lindstrom. Lindstrom’s ego is almost matched by the insight he brings in his latest book. Lindstrom is the self-styled guru of brand perception and has written before on how our senses interpret brands. In “Buy-ology,” he goes one step further and launches an extensive brain scanning research project to see exactly what happens in our brains when we think about brands. For example, do the warning labels on a pack of cigarettes have any impact on our desire for a smoke? Does product placement really work? (The answer, in both cases, is no, according to Lindstrom) Don’t worry about getting caught in academic jargon here. Lindstrom keeps it light and readable.

“Why Choose This Book?” — Read Montague. Baylor University neurologist Montague was behind the original Pepsi Challenge fMRI test — and in this book, he takes on no less a challenge than explaining how we make decisions. The writing style’s a little uneven, as Montague tries to balance his academic background with a style overly determined to appeal to a wider audience. That said, Montague knows his stuff and the insights here are solid, supported by both his own and others’ research.

“Predictably Irrational” — Dan Ariely.  Ariely follows in the footsteps of behavioral economists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky by looking at some of the common irrational biases of humans. For example, why does a 50-cent aspirin eliminate a headache better than a 5-cent generic brand, even though the pills are identical? And why would offering your mother-in-law $300 for a fabulous meal be an unforgivable social transgression, yet be expected in a restaurant? The territory has been covered before, but Ariely deals with a highly interesting topic with a nice, light touch.

“The Mind of the Market” — Michael Shermer. Last but not least, Michael Shermer delivers what I consider to be a tour-de-force on this topic. Shermer’s approach is well-grounded in evolutionary psychology (he labels it evolutionary economics), so he and I share a common approach to understanding consumer behavior. He strikes the right balance in his writing, delivering solid information without worrying too much about how it might play for a wider audience. This is probably my favorite on this list.

If these six titles whet your appetite, here are some other titles you might consider:

“Driven” by Paul Lawrence and Nitin Nohria

“Why We Buy” by Paco Underhill

“The Paradox of Choice” by Barry Schwartz

“The Advertised Mind” by Erik Du Plessis

“Brain Rules’ by John Medina

Next week I’ll share another 11 books, as well as some reader suggestions. Feel free to keep the suggestions coming!

The Prerequisites for Being a Student of Human Nature

First published October 1, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Last week I asked for input on the upcoming Search Insider Summit. Of the seven possible topic areas I presented, the highest level of interest was in the role of human behavior in digital marketing. You, the Search Insider faithful, have made me very happy. But being an avid student of human nature, I feel it’s only fair to warn you what to expect as you continue down this path.  Some years ago, I too was intrigued by human behavior and thought it would be interesting to “learn a little bit more.” But learning about human nature is pretty much an all-or-nothing proposition. Think of it as having a baby. The first few minutes of the process might be fun, but soon you learn you’ve just signed on for a lifetime commitment. You’d better make sure you’re ready.

The True Meaning of Customer-Centricity

I’ve been criticized in the past for using the term “customer-centric” (the practical application of studying human nature), but I suspect it’s because the term has lost its original meaning as it’s been adopted into the lexicon of “Dilbert-speak.” Customer-centric is one of those terms bandied about in board meetings and corporate retreats, along with “synergistic” and “holistic.”

But customer-centricity represents much more than a quick paragraph in the annual report. It’s the core you build a company around. It’s a commitment that lays the foundation for everything an organization does: the people it hires, the way it develops products, the way it formulates business processes, the way it markets and even the way who sits beside whom in the office gets decided. Customer-centricity is a religion, not a corporate fad.

There Aren’t Any Shortcuts

As I found out, if you are going to commit to learning more about human behavior in the goal of becoming a better marketer, don’t be surprised when you discover that this commitment can’t be met in a one-hour session or by reading a book. Humans are a lot more complex than that. There’s a lot of weird and wonderfully quirky machinery jammed in our skulls.

I was humbled to learn that people devote their entire lives to exploring just one tiny part of why we humans do what we do. Joseph LeDoux, one of the world’s foremost neuroscientists, has spent years exploring how fear is triggered in rats. Ann Graybiel  at MIT has made a similar commitment to exploring the role of the basal ganglia in how habits form and play out.  Antonio Damasio’s  extensive work with patients with pre-frontal cortical lesions led to his somatic marker theory, foundational insight into the area of human behavior Malcolm Gladwell explored and popularized in his book “Blink.” These are all tiny little pieces in the overall puzzle that is human behavior, yet each of these is integral in understanding how we respond to marketing messages.

Beyond the Cocktail Party Quip

Today, several years after I started down this road, I hope people find my insights on human behavior interesting. There’s that brief light bulb moment that happens when “what” is matched with a plausible “why” — when a psychological or neurological trigger for a puzzling human trait is identified.  “Hmm – that’s really interesting,” is the common response, and then it’s on to the next thing (possibly mumbling something about me being a “pedantic bore”). Yes, it is really interesting, but it wasn’t a quick or easy path to get here.

Sometime ago I decided a quick primer in human behavior would be interesting. I started with the more accessible books (such as Gladwell’s) and was instantly hooked. I next moved to books by academics doing the actual research that provided the fodder for Gladwell and other’s popularizations: LeDoux, Damasio, Edelman, Rose, Pinker, Chomsky and others.  Before I knew it, I was wading through academic papers. Today, the bookshelf in my home office is packed with fairly hefty tomes on everything from evolutionary psychology to the social patterns of the 20th Century. My wife and kids can’t remember the last time I read a book that didn’t have a brain on the cover.

I share this as a warning. I discovered developing even a basic understanding of human behavior is at least a multiyear commitment. I’ve never regretted it, but I also know that this is not everyone’s cup of tea. But here’s what I also discovered along the way. Even a basic understanding will give you a whole new perspective on pretty much everything, including marketing. The one common denominator in all marketing is that it’s aimed at people. If you’re ready to start the journey, I’m sure you won’t regret it.

Fear, Greed and the Google Parallax View

First published December 18, 2008 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Greed is right.

Greed works.

Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

Greed, in all of its forms — greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge — has marked the upward surge of mankind.

— Gordon Gekko, “Wall Street”

Yesterday, I listened to an interview with Canadian businessman Stephen Jarislowsky. Jarislowsky is one of Canada’s richest men, our version of Warren Buffet. And he said something simple but profoundly important in the interview: Greed is strong, but fear is stronger.

Gekko is right. Greed does drive us. It is evolutionary. It’s hardwired into us. Harvard professors Nitin Nohria and Paul Lawrence identified the drive to acquire as one of the four primary drives of humans But as Abraham Maslow pointed out, there is a hierarchy of human needs and drives, and fear will always trump greed.

Our society has been defined by greed but I don’t agree that greed is right. It forces a zero-sum mentality, which, due to the blessings of fate, has resulted in a inequitable division of resources for us here in North America. The world’s possessions are seriously out of balance, and there is no way to redistribute without severe pain for those that currently have the possessions. Bill Clinton has been warning us about this for years, and it’s now beginning to happen. That is the pain we’re just beginning to feel, and we’re afraid. So, our evolutionary transmission has geared down into the first gear of survival: fear.

The interesting thing about this, from our own little slice of the world, is that we see our collective human consciousness captured in the query logs of Google. As we switch from greed to fear, we see search volumes reflect that. That’s why, in the past year, we’ve seen number of searches for “recession” catch and surpass the number of searches for “mortgages.” We’ve gone from dreaming about acquiring to worrying about defending, and whatever we’re thinking about, we search for.

This is a powerful demonstration of the power of search. It shows just how accurate a barometer it is of our collective mood. And mood determines reality. Our emotions are the jet fuel of our drives. They are our internal guidance systems that keep us on track to realize our goals. Our emotions, in aggregate, swing the economy, and the nation with it, from boom to bust. And there’s no better indicator of that then the searches we do on Google. John Battelle had it right. Google is the database of our intentions.

There has been endless speculation about whether search will weather the financial crisis. The question is really not worth asking. The fact that search has so accurately reflected the shift of our confidence shows how essential it is. Yes, people will use it less to search for things to buy and use it more to search for ways to survive, which will impact advertising revenues and cause pain (and hence, fear). But it is what it is. The search patterns show who we are and what’s on our mind.

But there will also be an interesting side effect that search marketers will have to adjust for. Kevin Lee called it aspirational searches. Just because we go into defend mode doesn’t mean we stop dreaming. Greed can be pushed out of the driver’s seat temporarily by fear, but soon we start planning our escape. Fantasy is a favorite activity of ours. Look at the boom of the movie industry through the depths of the Great Depression. Even though we can’t afford a new car or a trip to Mexico, we can still pretend that we can, and this ersatz consumer activity will also show up on Google’s query logs, causing much head-scratching about the sudden drop in conversions.

We’ll adapt to the new reality and we’ll survive. That’s why fear exists. It allows us to marshall our resources and focus on the threat. And eventually, greed will once again turn on the tap. The balance between these two forces has been swinging back and forth for hundreds of thousands of years. But never before have we had such a clear view of how it happens, thanks to search.

P.S. Just realized, because of the way the holidays stack up on the calendar, that this is my last column for 2008. It’s been a true pleasure spending each Thursday with you talking about search, branding, the brain and anything else that crossed my mind. Thank you for listening (and responding). I look forward to picking up the conversation again in 2009!