Brands and brains with welfare and behavioural economics

While psychology is the scientific study of the human mind and its function, particularly those that affect our behaviour in a particular situation, marketing goes the extra mile to take an advantage of such behaviour. Psychology understands the unconscious and conscious phenomena and how the human brain digs deeper than one’s knowledge. While in marketing we study the market-driven economy and capitalism, the selfish aspects of money minting, and profit-making machines which we also justify by stating that humans are rational beings and can take decisions based on trade-offs. Thus no intervention is required. We question the ethics and morality of brands or businesses. So, in layman's language, the marketers take advantage and justify by saying humans know right and wrong and so who is anyone to blame. Brands selling a pack of cigarettes without questioning morality often tend to blame a huge demand for it. Thus, proving the supply and demand equation is often enough to keep the market self-sufficient.

The battle of morals, right or wrong, and rational irrational are never-ending questions. I believe the most destructive tool of a man is his mind. It all lies within him. From simply perceiving and interpreting things as they are to solving complex equations. From climbing rocks to writing heartbroken poetries. It is the mind that can empower and destruct. The mind makes many decisions in our lives. Consciously or subconsciously we perform various routine actions in our lives which are linked to our past, inherited stimulation responses. Neocortex makes us human. Our decision making has powerful emotional component. When any stimulation is received our brain tries to understand it on the basis of previous experiences. All through our lives, events and emotion create an imprint on the brain, a pattern that makes it hard for the logical part of our brains to get off. This pattern is like a short cut activated every-time we face similar situation. In this article we will dig into how advertisements feed on our decision-making ability.

Every day we are bombarded with tons of advertisements in our day-to-day lives. On average a human is exposed to 10000 ads a day which makes it 30,00,000 a month and 6,30,00,000 a year.

Before we understand what brands do while marketing their product let us understand our brains a little. We will closely look at the thinking behaviour involved in terms of system 1 and system 2 thinking theories given by Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking, Fast and slow. Advertisements tend to play with these systems thus it is important to understand them. Humans tend to observe. Based on our observations we respond in system 1 and system 2 way of thinking. System 1 is our instant, fast perceptive response to stimuli. When we look at and sense an external stimulus we tend to perceive and based on the impulse conclude our findings. For example, the below picture you shall look at will instantly tell you that the expressions of the man are that of guilt, sadness, pain and anguish.

An automated response based on our past experiences is produced. This requires little or no effort and a sense of voluntary control. On the contrary, if I asked you to multiply 256 by 678, this will consume energy and will require you to allocate conscious attention and a lot of mental demand. System two is when you start thinking logically and analyse. Companies stating sugar-free or diet drinks, 100 % natural are trying to play with your system 1 thinking. They with ease want to capture your thinking 1 by not letting you set foot into the system 2. They know if you were to switch the back of the product and actually read the components, it would drain you. Hence constantly stating sugar-free and providing available heuristics will trick your brain into priming and believing it. Advertisements tend to trick your system 2 thinking. For example, getting into technical and logical arguments while buying a product can be difficult. Hence symbols tend to trick your brain and do the system 2 thinking for you. For example, if you were to buy a new car. You would want to look into the details. Mileage, cost, engine, fuel type, transmission, etc. Yet all of these messages without being logically listed are plugged deep into your memory in just 30sec of an ad running on a screen or maybe a 2-sec poster you looked at while driving on a highway. They neatly can tempt you into buying a product with just a glance at it. Probably that is why symbols help us interpret with ease.

I would like to interpret the same system of thinking in another way too. A book by John Berger states many interesting ways in which we perceive and literally see things in our surroundings. He states in his book that we only see what, we look at or rather what we want to look at. We are constantly looking at the relationship between things and ourselves. Our vision is continuously active, continuously moving, continually holding things in a circle around itself. Constituting what is present to us, as we are. This makes me curious whether are we all really perceiving things in just system 1 or system 2 or we see it as we are. An analytical mind would look around for analytical relations to itself and a system 1 mind would look and perceive things in a much more intuitive, simple, solved manner. So can the same advertisement be looked at differently by two people with different thinking abilities?

Let us try to understand this with an example. For example between the World Cup being aired on tv, an advertisement for a phone runs. The ad tries to capture your mind by trying to provide you with system 2 thinking in your system one. Along with just how the phone looks, you can see how aesthetically they provide information on the ram GB, screen size, etc technical details of the products. They do not want your brain to reach system 2 thinking thus try to stop your mind at system 1. Someone who isn't a system 2-thinking individual might hop in and love the idea of it. Whereas if an individual sees it from an analytical perspective might want to switch to system 2 thinking while actually considering buying the product.

People frequently hold the misconception that the left side of the brain is used for analytical thinking while the right side is used for creative thinking. This idea of left-brain and right-brain thinking is ancient. It is simple to see why this concept has been incorrectly linked to system 1 and system 2 type thinking. The rational, logical thinking of System 2 is comparable to that of the "left brain," and System 1's thinking is similarly akin to that of the intuitive, creative Right Brain. The brain isn't really just trying to use its left or right side. It works as a whole. Our brain looks at it from either of the systems and jumps to the further. System 1 just helps makes our decision faster for you do not want to spend half an hour deciding which milk packet to buy. Yet at the same time you wouldn't want your brain to trick you into making a quick decision as to which car to buy. Each system functions for the betterment of our decision making ability yet we are trapped by such advertisements being aired. We being rational humans tend to prove our irrationality.