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PAUL CONNER | Founder & CEO         (Chief Emotive Officer)

Since 1982 Paul has served a wide variety of industries, has conducted numerous types of research, has used almost all data collection techniques, and has direct client, agency, and supplier experience.  His most prominent past research positions include Associate Research Director at DMB&B Advertising and Vice President of Market Research at Charter Communications.

In 2002, Paul was frustrated that traditional consumer research techniques often fall short in revealing why people really do what they do.  So he began a search for better solutions and quickly found emotions to be the key.  Seeing from recent research in neuroscience and psychology that emotions drive behavior (including consumer behavior), he opened the doors to experiEmotive^® analytics, which has since transitioned to Emotive Analytics (EMA).

In addition to his direct research experience, within the industry Paul has published, spoken at conferences, and taught graduate & undergraduate classes in statistics, advertising research, and qualitative research. 

Paul gets hands-on with Emotive Analytics projects, but has also developed key relationships with high-level (mostly Ph.D.) emotional assessment experts and brings them to EMA projects as Associates.

ASSOCIATES | High-Level (many Ph.D.) Emotional Experts

Clinical Psychologists 

If anything defines what clinical psychologists do, it's "emotional assessment."  These Associates use their clinical skills to understand why consumers emotionally buy what they buy.  In addition to skilled explicit interviewing, they bring expertise in special implicit interviewing techniques such as projectives, hypnosis-interviewing, and neurolinguistic programming (NLP).

Psychodramatists

A powerful non-traditional emotional assessment technique is psychodrama.  Founded by J.L. Moreno, psychodrama naturally activates emotions via re-enactments of relevant (consumer) behavior.  Our psychodrama Associates are certified in this technique, which requires years of intensive training.  Once you work with our psychodramatists, you may never want to conduct another traditional focus group.   

Social & Cognitive Psychologists

Focusing more on quantitative emotional assessment, these Associates are experts in misattribution or "Implicit Association" techniques that reveal compelling, yet hidden, emotions.  Integral to the development and execution of our Emotional Profiling technique, we've adapted their well-tuned knowledge of how to assess implicit social emotions (like various forms of prejudice) to consumer applications.

Psychophysiologists & Neuroscientists

Emotions start as physiological reactions to internal or external stimuli that potentially impact our well-being.  Therefore, emotional assessment can (and probably should) start by measuring bodily indications of emotion (e.g., in the brain, face, heart, eyes, breathing, etc.).  Our psychophysiological/ neuroscience Associates are trained in techniques such as fMRI, EEG, EMG, EKG, GSR, respiration, and non-facial muscle movement to name just a few.

Anthropological Ethnographers

Since emotions fire and begin to affect (consumer) behavior immediately in the natural environment, all techniques except "naturalistic observation" are flawed to a degree because they can only assess remembered or hypothesized emotions.  Our anthropological ethnography Associates are experts at capturing how consumers feel in the natural environment and what stimuli within this environment activate emotions that drive their behavior.