[BEST OF] 5 Drivers That Motivates Human Behavior

The Mystery of Our Own Brains

Louis: Understanding people is very popular, isn’t it? And so what I find fascinating about this subject is that we all have a brain, right? We can all agree on that. We all have a brain and yet we have very little clue on how it works our own brain. Right. And even more, less of a clue on others brains and how they work. So why is that?

Susan Weinschenk: Oh, why don’t we understand how our own brain works and how other people’s brains work? Yeah, well, first of all, and there’s kind of three levels because there’s just the mechanics of understanding how brains work, right? Our knowledge about neurons and networks and all of that, the electrical, the chemical. So there’s that angle, right? And we’re just starting to learn, really learn about that. I mean, we’ve obviously been exploring it for probably 100 years or more, but our tools and techniques were so poor. And there’s still probably, I’m sure, 30 years from now we’ll look back and think that what we were doing in the year 2017 was ridiculous. So the tools are getting better. We’re trying to understand the mechanics of it. So there’s that part. And then you’ve got just the understanding of yourself, right, and how your brain works and how your thoughts work and what’s going on in there. And then you’ve got the understanding, as you said, of other people. It’s hard because most of our mental processing occurs unconsciously. And so in terms of understanding our own thought process, our own way our brain works, how creativity works, how our problem solving works, most of that is unknown to us. And there is some very interesting research now that’s giving us clues and cues as to what’s going on and how we react and how we process information. But it’s not very, you know, what we might say. Intuitive. Right. Because what we know is the conscious part. That’s our conscious thoughts. And our unconscious brain works really differently than our conscious thought. So it’s just, it’s, it’s is such kind of a bizarre thing, isn’t it, that we, we are walking around with this powerful computer in our brain and we have no clue what it’s doing. And then of. Because we don’t understand what’s going on in our own brain, it’s really hard to know what’s going on in somebody else’s. And then they don’t even know. So if they try to tell you what’s going on in their brain, they don’t know either. And that’s, of course, the basis of why studying and understanding people and their interactions with each other is so fascinating to me. That’s why it’s so much fun. If we knew everything, it wouldn’t be so much fun to study.

Louis: Yeah. And we wouldn’t have marketers for sure. No, it’s true, isn’t it? If we knew exactly how people reacted

Susan Weinschenk: to specific things, if everybody knew and if everybody reacted logically in exactly the same way. You’re right. I’m sure the job of marketing would be really different. But that is not the case. And I’m sure there’s at least five years left and probably a lot more.

Louis: Yeah, I think standing up, it’s never going to be over. So, like, it reminds me of this saying. I don’t remember where I read it, but they say, like, we have the body of 10,000 years ago, the humans, what was the species that we were? Hobo erectus. So we have the body of Homo erectus and the brain of I don’t remember the name, but basically the brain of the species that were before us hundreds of thousands of years ago. I need to find that in order to quote it. Anyway, so you framed that pretty well. Marketers are struggling to make people care about what they are trying to sell. They are struggling to understand why certain people do what they do. They’re struggling to understand how they can convince people to take certain decisions. And that’s even with us spending millions or even billions on research on human behavior and stuff. So today we’re going to try to dig into what motivates people to take action and some proven ways that people take decisions based on science, not just based on what we think is the right way. So can you tell us a little bit about the basis of that? What motivates people to take action and how did we manage to get this data?

Unconscious Processing and Two Types of Decisions

Susan Weinschenk: Well, I’m going to go back again to this idea of unconscious mental processing. Because if you want to understand why people will take an action or why they won’t, I think there’s basically two things you have to understand. One is that the fact that most mental processing, therefore most decision making is happening unconsciously. And that means we have to. And we could talk about that more because it means you have to be a lot simpler and more basic in order to grab attention and then in order to make it more likely that someone will take action. And then besides that, the other thing is that there is definitely very particular, I mentioned before the mechanics. And there’s very particular areas of the brain that respond to certain things. There are parts, for instance, there’s a part of the brain, I’ll just give you an example so we can get concrete. There’s a part of the brain that is active when you are making what’s called a value based or goal based decision. So if you are thinking, should I buy a new laptop now? Should I wait till the end of the year, Should I get one of those ultra thins? If you’re trying to make that kind of decision, you are definitely engaging this part of the brain that makes these value based decisions. But that’s not the only kind of decision that people make. So there’s another part of the brain that is active when people are making what we would call a habit based decision. So if you are in the grocery store and you decide to buy some cereal, chances are you’re going to walk to the cereal aisle and grab the cereal that you always buy. There are certain products that we buy and use in a very habit based way. We don’t really think about it, we don’t really do comparisons. And what’s really interesting is that the latest research is showing us that those two parts of the brain cannot be active at the same time. So if one is active, the other is silent if one is, and vice versa, which means you’re either making a value based decision or a habit decision. And the interesting thing is that the kind of messaging and the way you would talk to those two parts of the brain is really different. So if someone normally makes a habit based decision, right. They just make it, they’re not thinking about it, it’s totally unconscious. And then you start introducing to them value based, start talking about features and comparisons and why they should buy this one. You are essentially turning off the habit based part of their brain, turning on the value based part. And you may not want to do that. If they normally buy your product out of habit, that may not be a good thing. Now if they normally buy another product out of habit, your competitor, right. Then maybe it is a good thing for you to switch off the habit part. So it can get a little complicated. But if you understand the science behind it, that will help a lot. And you’re making a decision about what’s the best way to approach people and when is the best time to approach people.

Louis: So correct me if I’m wrong, but am I correct in assuming that when you take a value based decision, it’s more of an active process, right? And a conscious process. And when you do a habit, when you take a decision based on habit, it’s much more of an unconscious part, which, and your brain probably doesn’t consume a lot of energy doing this task, right?

Susan Weinschenk: That’s correct. Although there’s an interesting twist. So you know, it’s the brain, it can’t be too simple. So what you said is correct. Except if you, if we go back to the value based part, I am making a value based decision. But what’s also feeding into that are some unconscious things like what is my self story, how do I view myself? So for instance, if we go back to the computer example, if, if I, if I think of myself as someone who’s very tech savvy, I always have the latest gadgets, right? I may not be consciously aware that that’s my self story, but that will influence how I filter the conscious value based information. You’re feeding me, right? So is the message that you’re feeding me as I’m comparing these products, are you giving me information in which this particular model seems like the Latest thing, the thing that someone who likes to be the first one on the block to own. Do I get the information from you that that’s this model over here. But that might be happening unconsciously. So they both do. Anything you do involves the unconscious. You just have to assume that. But with the value based decision, there’s both the unconscious and the conscious. With the habit, it really is primarily unconscious.

Self-Stories: The Internal Narratives That Drive Behavior

Louis: So how does one build models like this on this unconscious level?

Susan Weinschenk: What do you mean? How do they build models? Yeah, go ahead.

Louis: It happens in a subconscious level that you have certain models in your head of the person you are, the person you want to be. How is it built? Is it built from education? Is it built from birth? From your DNA? Is it built from the friends you have and the connections you have? What’s the influence?

Susan Weinschenk: Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Louis: Okay. Everything.

Susan Weinschenk: Everything, everything. And it can change too, right? You can. Self stories are really, really powerful. And you can, your self story can change. Now interestingly, your self story can change unconsciously. You’re not aware that it has changed. And you can also consciously change your self story. You can actually make a decision and say, you know, instead of being someone who is always behind on technology or instead of being someone who is

Louis: always

Susan Weinschenk: late, always late, I’m going to choose to change this. And you can do that. And then there’s things you can do to make that change easier. In fact, there’s some wonderful research by a guy named Timothy Wilson who wrote a book called Redirect and I love that book. And it’s all about the power of these self stories. And this is based on research he’s done and research by many others and you know, based. I think he has come to this conclusion and I definitely have come to it from reading his material that if you want to get long term behavior change, the only way to do that is if someone changes their self story because otherwise they’ll change their behavior. But if their self story goes against that, they’ll eventually revert to whatever their self story is.

Louis: So let’s take a concrete example. I want to become a better writer. And I’ve been writing every day for the last two months in order to get better at it. And my self story is starting to become, I’m actually a good writer and I start to believe that I can be a good writer. And basically what you’re saying is that if my story, my self story, what I tell myself, what I truly believe in is that I am a great writer. It’s much more likely that I will That I will stick to writing in the next few months or even years.

Susan Weinschenk: Right. I mean, it’s not obviously it’s not magic, right. You don’t just say one day I’m going to be a great writer and then don’t do anything about it and just poof, you’re a great writer. Right. You said you’ve been writing every day. Right. You have to do all the other things with it. But if you didn’t decide, hey, I’m going to change my story and I’m going to be a great writer, then it’s likely you wouldn’t stick with it. That there’d always be. If you still have the self story of I’m just not someone who can write that’s going to just stick with you and no matter what you do, you won’t do it enough. You won’t give it your all. You’ll self sabotage yourself because you have that self story in you that says I’m not a great writer.

Louis: That’s a fantastic topic. And we could get into that in more details for the full episode. But what I wanted to dig into today was the drivers of human motivation. So why do people do things? So you wrote this book called the seven Basic Drivers of Human Motivation. Can you tell us what are those seven drivers?

Driver 1: The Power of Stories and Narrative

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah, yeah. So we’ve been talking about one of them because one of them is stories. Okay. And there’s actually two parts to stories. One is the self stories we’ve been talking about. But the other thing is also just the idea that we are very. We process information best in story format.

Louis: So

Susan Weinschenk: if you’re trying to communicate with someone, tell a story. That’s the best way to communicate. So stories is one of them.

Louis: Sorry to cut you. I don’t want to do that. But it’s really important for marketers listening. We talked about that in a lot of episodes. We basically said, don’t do spreadsheets, instead tell stories. It’s true.

Susan Weinschenk: Always tell stories. Always. You can always throw in some numbers, you know, but to illustrate the principles after the story. Yeah, it’s just, it’s honestly the best way our brain processes information. Your brain can’t tell the difference between you having an experience and you having a pretend experience through a story. So when you listen to a story or you watch a little video clip of a story and it’s well done. And we could even talk about what that means because there’s research on that in terms of the chemicals, the brain chemicals that are released when a story goes through a certain Arc. You know, you’ve probably heard of the story arc. Well, there’s a researcher who has, Paul Zak, who has actually measured chemicals that are released by the brain during different parts of the story arc. And so we know why a certain story arc is really powerful. But when you’re watching a story or listening to a story, your brain actually thinks you’re the character and you’re having the experience. So it’s a very visceral, real experience. So, yes, stories, very, very important, very powerful if you want to get your message across.

Louis: And this is why it’s so important as marketers for marketers. That’s such a powerful statement, and I think we need to repeat it. When you tell a story to somebody else, when you write an email telling a story, when you tell the story of your company, when you start your blog post with a story, people will really think it’s their own story. They will act like their brain will think that it’s their own story, and therefore they will be engaged. They will experience it. That’s such a powerful statement, and perhaps you can read into that a little bit more. You said you mentioned the story arc, so can you explain a bit more what it consists of?

The Science of Story Arcs and Brain Chemistry

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah, you know, this was. I find this so interesting, the history of this, because there was this guy named Gustav Freytag, which I’m probably not pronouncing correctly, and in. In like 1880, this is a long time ago, he analyzed, like, the great stories from up to that point and then going all the way back to Greek tragedies and that kind of thing. And he was the first one to start talking about this idea of a story arc. And what he did was he analyzed all the best stories and found that they had kind of a similar flow. So they start with setting the stage, like having a context. Okay, here’s the situation, here’s the scene. Then they introduce an actor. They introduce the main character, which can be either a good guy or a bad guy, protagonist or antagonist, someone you’re going to root for or someone you’re going to hope fails. Right? But you introduce this character. Now, the character. Then right away, after you’ve got the scene, you’ve got the character, the next part of the. That’s why it’s called the arc, because it now goes up. There has to be some kind of conflict, some kind of tension right away where there’s a problem, you know, and for. If it’s a. If it’s a protagonist, someone you’re rooting for, you know, then it’s A problem you want that person to solve. If it’s an antagonist, you know, it’s a bad guy, and he’s doing something really bad, right? So you introduce that tension, and then you have to, you know, you have to let that go for a little while, but not too long, because then you have to introduce, you know, then you have to get to the crucial turning point, right, where it all comes to a head, and something’s going to happen. You know, either the good guy’s going to be able to, you know, rescue the princess, or the bad guy’s going to, you know, get caught and get killed. I mean, it’s got to be that moment when it all comes to a head. And then. Then after that, you have this downward curve of the arc where all the loose ends get tied up, and then you have what Gustav called denouement or resolution, where it all comes to a close. And that’s like the arc of the story. And of course, it makes it sound very simple, but then there’s, how fast do you raise the tension? How long do you let it go? And these are the things that can make a story. We’ve all, I think, heard someone tell a story in which they go on and on and on and on, and you’re like, okay, now it’s getting boring, right? So you’ve got to be able to play with the story so that you can get that arc, right? And I mean, this is what Paul Zach did was what he found was that when you have that rising tension, your brain releases cortisol, which is that a chemical that gets you ready. You may have heard of it as the fight or flight. You get ready to either fight or run away. So there’s tension, there’s stress, and that stress is going to grab your attention, and so that’s why you’re paying such close attention. You want to know, wait a minute, what’s happening? What’s happening? And you’re actually gearing up as though you were the person in the story at the top when it comes to a head. If this is a character that. Well, probably either way, but especially if it’s a character that you like, you’re going to release oxytocin, and that’s a bonding chemical, and that makes you feel empathy. So you’re either going to feel empathy for the main hero or you’re going to feel empathy for the victims that the bad guy is doing things to. And this keeps you engaged in the story, and it makes you care. So now you are emotionally connected to the people in the story. So, you know, these are the. And then on the way down after that, oxytocin, you release dopamine. And dopamine is an interesting chemical. Most people think of it as a reward chemical, but it’s actually anticipation. It makes you want to know what’s going to happen next. It keeps you curious, and it actually makes you take action. So it’s a really important chemical. So this is why stories that are well done, if they’re well done with this arc, they grab people, they pull them in, and they get them ready to take action. It’s. It really is very, very powerful. And it can be hard sometimes. I know these things right. And I don’t even do them right all the time. And sometimes it’s just hard. I know when I give presentations, I’ll often spend a fair amount of time thinking, wait a minute, okay, what stories am I going to use and where am I going to use them? And I know I need to do it. But sometimes it’s to come up with a story that’s really good. It’s not necessarily an easy thing.

Louis: Yeah, it takes effort. If it was easy, everybody would do it, I suppose. But what you’re telling me reminds me of this book I read recently, and you probably have read it, or at least heard of it, called Sapiens the Histories.

Susan Weinschenk: I love that book.

Louis: So in Sapiens, it’s basically the full history of mankind from the apes and us evolving from them up until today, basically. And there is this part which I remember vividly, where they say the difference between us and all of the other animals is not the fact that we can talk and they cannot talk. So dolphins, for example, can talk. There are species that can talk to signal danger. There are basically a lot of other species that have languages. The author says the only difference between us humans and the rest of the animals is the fact that we can talk about stuff that are not real. So we can tell stories.

Susan Weinschenk: That’s right.

Louis: And this is fascinating because that explains a lot of things around the fire. Thousands of years ago, when we had not much to do, we were telling stories to keep ourselves entertained. Right. So I’m interested in do we know why we connect so well with stories? Is there a particular reason why humans connect so well with stories?

Susan Weinschenk: You know, I don’t know, as you asked that I’m thinking about any of the research that I’ve read, and I don’t know that. I mean, if you’re thinking about an evolutionary perspective, there must be some kind of advantage to processing information in this way. But I’m not sure exactly what that would be or what would be the alternative. Right. So I don’t know. I don’t know. I just know that we definitely do.

Louis: Right. So that’s the first basic driver.

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah. So we got six more. Okay. Okay.

Driver 2: The Need to Belong to Groups

Louis: Yeah. But there’s no time. There’s no point rushing.

Susan Weinschenk: So we can go through another one. All right, so here’s another one. Another one is the need to belong. So we have a deep desire to be part of a group, to be part of a tribe. And this is also, you know, has basis in biology. There is research that just really came out in the. It’s been suspected for a while, but it just came out in the last year or two to show that if you don’t have enough really good social ties, if you don’t feel that you’re part of at least one or more groups, your body will actually start to shut down and you will develop any number of the chronic diseases. So there’s an inverse relationship between the quality of your social ties and your likelihood of dying from diabetes, heart disease, and other kinds of the chronic illnesses that we have in our civilization. So it’s sometimes called failure to thrive syndrome. And your immune system starts to shut down if you don’t have these ties. So we really need to feel connected to other people, and that definitely drives our behavior. And there are a lot of things that we will do in order to become part of a group or remain part of a group. There’s things that we won’t do because we feel it will exile us from the group. And we all have tribes and groups, and we usually have more than one. Right. We have our family, we have our tribe at work, and we might again, related to our self stories. We might think of ourselves as, you know, oh, I’m someone who likes to do, you know, I’m part of a cycling group, and so I’m part of that tribe. So we have usually more than one tribe. And these social ties are really, really important. So that’s a way to motivate people. And a lot of this is unconscious. And a lot of this just has to do with the way you word things. For instance, some wonderful research done by Gregory Walton that showed that if you use nouns instead of verbs, it implies a group. So what he did is his researchers would call people up and they would ask them, are you going to vote in the election tomorrow? Or they would say, are you going to be a voter in the election tomorrow? So it was either go to vote or be a voter. 11% more people voted. If he asked the question as be a voter, his theory is that it invokes a group identity. And he did this with not just voting, but all different kinds of things. Again, largely unconsciously. If we feel that by taking a particular action it means we’re part of a group that we want to be part of, then it’s more likely that we’ll take that action.

Louis: So I have two questions for you. The first one is what will people like? What are people willing to do to remain in a group? What is the extent of this behavior?

Susan Weinschenk: Oh, well, you know, depends on the group and depends on the situation. But I mean, we know of cases in history where people will do quite extreme things. I mean, they might kill someone to remain part of a group. I’m not suggesting that that’s a good idea. And some groups, your tie to that group might not be that strong. And it’s like, no way, I’m not going to do that. So it depends on the group and how important it is to us and how many other groups we have. If you’ve got one group and that’s the only group you feel part of, you’ll be probably do almost anything to stay part of that group. If you have many groups and this particular one you don’t care that much about, then it might be easy for you to drop it.

Louis: And you might be willing to do like to kill someone or to go to extreme extent in order to stay in a group, because it’s literally a matter of life or death. As you said at the start, it’s such a profound behavior for us because biologically speaking, we know that it’s needed for our survival. So that’s really interesting. Am I right to say that your self story might change depending on the group you are in?

Susan Weinschenk: Definitely, yeah. All of these things. A lot of these things. Not all, but many of these seven drivers are connected and related. So if I have a particular self story, that’s going to probably sway me to become part of this group rather than that group and vice versa. Right. If I’m part of a group that changes my self story.

Louis: That’s fascinating. So how can marketers apply this principle in their daily work?

Susan Weinschenk: Well, you know, a lot of it has in terms of the need to belong, a lot of it has to do with just being very careful about how you phrase things. So the nouns versus the verbs, letting people know what other people are doing. That whole idea of social validation. I mean, this is why ratings and reviews are so powerful. Five million people have already viewed this video. Well, I’m going to watch it. So making sure that. That you are letting people know what other people are doing, especially if that’s good for your product, and then using wording that makes them feel that not just that they’re buying a product, but that they are joining this group of people who. And then you have to fill in the blank.

Louis: Okay, so that’s number two. What would you do? The third driver.

Driver 3: The Power of Habits

Susan Weinschenk: All right, let’s go to another one. So another one is habits, which we kind of mentioned before. So much behavior is habits, and sometimes you may have heard, oh, it’s so hard to make a new habit or break a bad habit. But it’s actually very, very easy to create a habit because we all have hundreds of them and we don’t even remember creating them, so it couldn’t be that hard. But there’s a certain science behind how to get people to create a habit. But habits are very powerful. If you can establish a habit that your product is part of, that might stick for a really long time, and that’s one of the products are more likely to be related to habits, and others are less likely. But if you can get that going, you may have that person for a very, very long time.

Louis: So how does one create a habit? What’s the process involved?

Susan Weinschenk: So habits. In order for a habit to get created, there’s a couple things that have to happen. One is that the action that creates the habit and maintains it, the action that, you know, the thing you do with the product has to be really easy and small. So, you know, it’s. You can create a habit around, oh, let’s say, you know, there’s an app on your phone. Like, you know, how do you listen to podcasts? Oh, I listen to podcasts with this app. So. So, you know, it’s not a big deal to find a podcast app, install it on your phone, and open it. Right. I mean, these are not difficult things. They don’t take a lot of time. They don’t. They don’t require a lot of skill or special knowledge. Right? So in order to create a habit, the actions have to be fairly easy and fairly fast. So that’s one thing. Another thing is we know from the research and anybody. I don’t know if you studied psychology in college, but anyone who took a basic psychology course might remember Ivan Pavlov and classical conditioning and his research on dogs and saliva and that kind of thing. So what we know is that when there are visual or auditory cues that will cause a habit to be created. So for instance, I mean, most of us have a habit that when a notification pops up on our screen and our computer, we look at it and we click, oh, you have a new email. It’s really hard to ignore those, right? Or if your phone makes a noise because there’s text messages come in, it’s really hard to ignore that because you hear the ding or you see something flash. We are very sensitive to auditory or visual cues. So if you can attach an auditory visual cue to your product and have that kind of alert or notification, it will make it much easier for using that to become a habit. And then the third thing is, especially if it’s unpredictable, interestingly. So again, why do we react so quickly when our phones make a noise or a notification appears on our screen? It’s because, because we don’t know when it’s going to happen. If a notification is always there or if it always shows up at 9am it’s not going to, it may not become habitual that we check it. So one of the reasons we go and click on Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter is because we don’t know if a message has come in. And we want to find out because by now we’re addicted. So those are the things that make it easier to have a habit.

Louis: A few months ago, I was at a stage in my life where I was checking Twitter, LinkedIn and any type of notification based system environment almost every 30 minutes because I was in a. I was just bored, I was just burning out and I wasn’t really happy. And that was kind of my habit to try to get out of it. And it’s crazy how addicted I was to those.

Susan Weinschenk: It’s very hard, it’s very hard to get out. You have to really, you know, go cold turkey, as they say. I don’t know if that’s a phrase that you’re familiar with, but first of all, if you want to break a habit, actually, interestingly, the easiest way to break a habit is to install a new habit in its place. And you can do that by connecting the old cue with a new action. But if you want to stop reacting to Facebook and LinkedIn and so on, you have to turn off all notifications, right? So you don’t get any more alerts. And then you really have to do what I call a reset. I mean, you have to, for instance, you know, go away somewhere where there is no Internet, no cell phone signal for a week so that you aren’t checking anything, right? And then when you get back, you have to put, put in place your new habit. So for instance, so many people, when they first thing they do when they get in the office or having a cup of coffee in the morning is they’ll do that check, right? They’ll check Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter. And so you have to have a new routine. So what is the thing? So I’m not going to sit down with a cup of coffee at the table and my laptop anymore. Now what I’m going to do is sit down with my favorite book I’m reading, right? So you have to establish a new routine in order to break the old one.

Louis: That’s funny because it’s exactly what happened. So a few months ago I took like three or four weeks holidays. I didn’t check my emails for three weeks. I didn’t check LinkedIn, Twitter or anything for three weeks. And exactly as you said, it reset my routine. And when I came back, I set up plugins to block sites that I would visit out of habit. And now I’m happy to say I’m free of all of those addiction. And I don’t. I only Check Twitter or LinkedIn once a month and I schedule posts in advance for the episode to go out, for example, and I feel much more relieved. So anyway, it’s not a therapy session for me or for anybody. But I think the power of habit is incredibly powerful. And this is why in marketing, a lot of people will tell you to start small. This is why so many marketers are doing lead magnets, even if I don’t like this term, basically asking for an email against a guide, which is a small commitment, it’s a small thing, and then you move on to something bigger and then bigger and then bigger. So this is related to this driver, isn’t it?

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah, definitely. Right.

Louis: So that’s three drivers.

Driver 4: Instinctive Responses to Fear, Sex, and Food

Susan Weinschenk: That’s three. All right.

Louis: That’s already a lot.

Susan Weinschenk: Number four, let’s do another one. Let’s do instincts. So one of the things that drives behavior are just automatic reactions that humans have to fear, danger, sex and food. So this is just the way we are and it’s just to keep us surviving. We have a part of our brain sometimes called the old brain or the reptilian brain. And it’s all about keeping us alive. And so we are particularly sensitive to messages that have anything to do with food, anything to do with sex, or the implication that we might get sex and then anything to do with fear or danger. There’s a, you know, that, that, that, that’s a whole nother world. Right. Fear, fear of loss. Just getting our, our arousing, our, that, that fight or flight with the cortisol. So, you know, and, and I always tell people, okay, I’m not saying that this is necessarily a good idea and that you should try and get everyone afraid or sex crazed or hungry, but you should know that those things are very, very attention getting.

Louis: How did scientists prove that this was the case?

Susan Weinschenk: That fear, sex and food.

Louis: Yeah, I’m just wondering in terms of testing what type of.

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah, so for instance, with the new EEG and the ways you can measure what psychologists called arousal, which we don’t mean just sexual arousal, we just mean general level of interest. And you can measure that now very easily. With EEG you don’t have to do the brain scans. You can just put that you’ve probably seen or maybe you’ve had someone on your show that has talked about the technology which now makes it very easy to connect these skull caps up. And you can do readings from just the outermost portions of the brain and you can measure and that, and also respiration, your breathing rate, and then galvanic skin response, which is measuring minute amounts of sweat. And by doing that, you can see when people are getting ready for action, when they’re aroused, when they’re interested. Pupil dilation is another one. These are the three things that get the most immediate and strongest response.

The Ethics of Behavioral Science in Marketing

Louis: That’s fascinating. And that really gives me the next topic that I want to talk about, which is the ethics of such knowledge. But before that, we haven’t agreed together on this. So I’m telling you that on the show, I’m putting you on the spot, but we’ve done the 4 first driver anyway, so. So yeah, I know now that food, sex, danger, fear, all this kind of stuff can entice people to do something I want them to do. So marketers have this knowledge and some marketers might definitely use it against people’s will in order to manipulate them or make them do something they don’t necessarily want to do. So where is the line between the two? What are the ethics of behavioral science in general?

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah, you know, this is such an important question and it’s one that my colleague and I are working on. We actually, in our workshops that we teach, we’ve been starting to put in questions about ethics. And he’s working on a workshop and he has a talk and he’s working on a workshop just around ethics of these behavioral science techniques. And I think, you know, and we’re having debates with people about, you Know, well, how would you measure it and how would you determine whether something is ethical? I think it really. I don’t have an answer. I was going to tell you, I’ll start there about the ethics of it because we’re still working on it. But I think that, but you have to. We do have a theory that I’m not even going to try and explain because it’s complicated and I probably can’t do it justice in a short amount of time. But I’ll give you a hint. You look at the potential for damage in the average person with whatever you’re doing, right? So what is the potential that an average person getting this message, interacting with this product because they got the message is going to, it’s going to hurt them. And then you also look at what is the potential for damage to not the average person, but the extreme. I mean, we can think about, for instance, you know, let’s say you have a website where people can go do online gambling, right? So for a lot of people, probably for most people, you know, that would be, you know, they’ll waste some time, they’ll lose a little bit of money, but it’s not going to ruin their life. But there is a small amount of people who get addicted easily to gambling and for them it could ruin their life. Right. So we’re actually working on a mathematical formula of these two questions. What is the potential for damage to the general population? What is the potential for damage to the extremes? And actually we’d like to come up with a score.

Louis: Oh yeah, that would be interesting. But what springs to mind straight away is the product itself. So like here we are talking about the product itself, like gambling, that kind of stuff and the damage it can have. But what if as a marketer I use kind of shady tactics to promote a good product? Right?

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah, that’s the other question. So that’s the other part of the equation we’re working on. Yeah, I think, I think it’s a problem. I do think it’s a problem. And yet, and yet if you don’t do any of these things, there would be no advertising and no marketing. I don’t know the, you know, I don’t know the answer to this. I don’t know the answer to this. You know, so you could say, oh well, it’s okay to invoke, you know, to try and get someone to change their self story, but you shouldn’t invoke fear or, you know, sex or hunger. And it’s like, well, I don’t know why not you know, like, wow, isn’t it just as manipulative to try and get them to change their self story? You know, like, why is one. Why is one better or worse than another? Yeah, I don’t know yet, but we are working on it. So maybe when, if I come back on the show, we can actually spend some time talking about ethics.

Louis: Yeah, that’s something we talked about with a guest. I mean, we talked about it with many guests, but with Laura Roeder, who’s the CEO of a social media company, and she was saying the line is basically don’t lie. Right. If you start as a marketer, start lying, then this is when.

Susan Weinschenk: I mean, there are definitely. Yeah, there’s definitely. There are some lines. You know, don’t break the law, don’t lie. But I think we need to me, that’s like, yeah, okay, we gotta draw some other lines that aren’t as far out as that.

Louis: Right. So, Susan, I had a lot of other questions to ask you, and I won’t have the time to ask you that. But before I let you go, I always ask this question at the end of every episode. So outside of all of the books you wrote that I’m obviously going to mention in the show notes and that I already mentioned in the intro of this episode, what are the top three resources you would recommend to listeners?

Susan Weinschenk: Besides my books?

Louis: Yeah, besides your books.

Susan Weinschenk: Well, let’s see. That’s a good question. I think I love books. So probably I’m going to give you three books rather than perhaps a podcast and so on. So I would definitely say the book redirect that I mentioned, which is about the whole idea of self stories. I think that that’s a really powerful book and would really help marketers. Of course, all my choices are going to be behavioral science oriented. You knew that, right?

Louis: That’s fine.

Susan Weinschenk: I think another one that I’m going to recommend is book by Daniel Kahneman that you may know of Thinking Fast and Slow. Do you know that book? Yes, and that’s a wonderful book that covers one of the drivers we didn’t get to talk about, which is what I call tricks of the mind. And then let’s see, what would be the third one that I’m going to suggest? I guess maybe the Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, which is another. Another one of the drivers we talked about.

Louis: Very interesting. Cool. So just to mention your book again, I’m going to start from 2008 onwards. So neural web Design. Hundred Things Every Designer Needs to know about people, 100 more things every designer needs to know about people. 100 things every presenter needs to know about people. How to get people to do stuff. And I think that’s it. I haven’t forgotten any.

Susan Weinschenk: No, that’s good.

Louis: But I have to say once again, I will mention those books in the show notes and all, but they are all really interesting. I mean I love reading about behavioral science in the way you are describing them, which is really easy to understand for anybody and backed up by science, not backed up by what you think is right, which is even more interesting. So. So once again, Susan, thank you so much for your time.

Susan Weinschenk: Yeah, I really enjoyed it.

Louis: Thank you. That’s it for another episode of everyone hates marketers.com and this is the moment where I tell you to subscribe to our email list. So before you leave and go to another podcast or listen to another episode, I don’t treat email list the way people usually treat their email lists. I read treat that as a one to one conversation. So I’m going to send you very short personal emails every two weeks. I would say I’ll inform you of guests in advance. I’ll share with you my numbers and how many listens we get and I’ll also ask you for your feedback in terms of the questions we can ask future guests. And perhaps I can also have you on the show someday. So don’t be afraid to subscribe. I’m not going to spam you and you can always, always unsubscribe for sure if you wish. The second thing we need from you is your harsh and honest feedback. We know that this show is not perfect yet and we always can improve. So you can send us your email@feedBACKYone hatesmarketers.com Good or bad? Please feel free to send me an email. And the last thing I’d like from you is that if you did like the episode, please share it to your friends, your colleagues or whoever might like it. And also please review it on itunes or another service that you might use to listen to your podcast. Because if you leave us five star review, it means that more people will be likely to listen and we can spread the word quicker. So thank you so much once again and Aubrey. And that’s it for another episode of everyone hates marketers.com thank you so much for listening. I’m super, super grateful. I’d love for you to consider subscribing to my daily newsletter Monday to Friday called Stand the Out Daily. I send very short, hopefully interesting, surprising, shocking, entertaining content to help you stand the out. It’s at everyone hatesmarketers.com you can subscribe for free and obviously unsubscribe whenever you want. I’m just going to read a couple of emails that I got recently as a reply. Juma said, your content attacks the mind primarily, which is such a good thing because most of us are skilled at what we do, but we don’t have the courage to do it our way. Mark, who just subscribed a couple days before, said, this is my first issue of your newsletter. Love it. Glad I subscribed. Brianna Said, I just realized this morning that my email habit is now to 1. Skim through the list. 2. Select all unread industry email except yours. 3. Delete and don’t think twice. 4. Quickly scheme yours. Amy said, Also loving the new content is coming from you. It feels really lovely. Candle said, I like your writing a lot. It really resonate. There’s so much out there. It’s good to touch the authentic. And Chloe said, where is the I love this email button? Brilliant. I hope you subscribe. You’ll be joining more than 14,000 subscribers at this stage, which is crazy. It’s the size of a small stadium. Anyway, thank you so much. See you on the other side.

Susan Weinschenk: Sa.