EmoBlog

This is my first in a series of five blog articles that address how specific aspects of emotion impact consumer behavior.  I start with one of the more basic aspects, and one that I’ve written about, spoken about, and work to address in my research.  For some of you, this will be a redundant review (so forgive me).  For others, it may be a refreshing new insight.  Mostly for the latter group, please know that…

What does this mean, really?  It’s pretty simple.  Much “emotional processing” occurs without our awareness.  By emotional processing I mean how the neurochemical systems devoted to emotion in our bodies – most importantly our brains’ – react to stimuli in our external and internal environment.  I don’t want to turn this into a neuroscience review, but I’m talking about what happens in…

• Sensory components (e.g., seeing, hearing, and touching);
• Brain components in what’s referred to as the limbic system (e.g., the amygdala, hippocampus, and hypothalamus) and various cortical areas (e.g., the orbito frontal and insular cortices); and…
• Peripheral “biometric” components (e.g., breathing, heart rate, and skin conductance).   

(If you’re interested in this area, you can search for authors such as Antonio Damasio, Michael Gazzaniga, Jaak Panksepp, Mark Solms, or Joseph LeDoux.) 

When these systems react, they do so with the goal of guiding our decisions and behavior toward solutions that will optimize our well-being, be it at the most basic level of survival or just making sure we ultimately “feel” as good as we can.  The point of this article is that this “emotional influence” can and does happen without us even knowing it.  And that’s important because in order to fully understand why people do what they do, why they buy what they buy, we should use methods to assess these unconscious emotional influences.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not saying we’re never aware of what our true feelings are and how they’re affecting our decisions and behavior.  We can be and are.  However, often we’re fooled about what’s influencing us or we don’t want to admit emotional truths.  So to get the full picture, we need comprehensive (i.e., implicit and explicit) emotional assessment.

Many studies demonstrate that emotions can and do operate unconsciously to affect our behavior.  I’m sure the numbers are in the hundreds, if not the thousands.  I’ll cite three.

Supporting Study 1: Subliminal Priming Drives Beverage Choice.  In a research setting, Winkielman, Berridge, and Wilbarger (2005) measured how much of a certain beverage thirsty respondents drank and how much they said they were willing to pay for that beverage.  However, before they took these measurements, they subliminally (i.e., below levels of awareness) exposed half of these respondents to pictures of happy faces and the other half to pictures of angry faces.  In pre-tests, these faces were proven to evoke positive (the happy faces) or negative (the angry faces) feelings.  These researchers found that respondents that had been exposed to happy faces drank more of the beverage and said they would pay more for it than respondents who had been exposed to angry faces.  This was consistent with much other research showing that “goal-directed” people (in this study operationally defined as “thirsty”) more readily engage in, and are more positive toward, action that fulfills their goal when they are in good moods vs. bad moods.  Since the only difference between these two groups of respondents was their subliminal exposure to the happy or angry faces, and since explicit self-reports of how they were feeling were no different between the two groups, the research showed that the unconscious emotional manipulation was what caused the differences in the amount drunk and how much they would be willing to pay for the beverage.

Supporting Study 2: Choosing Dasani Bottled Water.  Drawing upon Robert Zajonc’s classic work demonstrating that mere exposure to (vs. conscious deliberation of) a previously neutral stimulus is all that’s needed to develop an increased liking for it (liking being a positive feeling), Ferraro, Bettman, and Chartrand (2005) investigated whether increasing incidental exposure of a brand of water (Dasani) could unconsciously increase choice of that brand.  Showing respondents photos of people engaged in everyday activities, the researchers varied the number of photos that contained Dasani bottled water embedded within the photos.  (Note: The respondents did not know that choosing bottled water was the purpose of the research.)  Allowing respondents to choose different bottles of water as a ‘thank you’ for participating, they found that Dasani was chosen more than the other brands as the number of Dasani exposures were included in the photos.  However – and here’s the unconscious connection – this effect only happened for respondents who were not explicitly aware that Dasani was in the photos!  The research showed that additional exposures to Dasani led to greater unconscious liking for it and increased choice of it.

Supporting Study 3: Implicit “Loving” for a Frozen Food Brand.  Using the Emotional Profiling technique we developed, I and my colleague, Keith Payne, recently investigated the Emotional Profile of a frozen food brand.  Based on well-founded social/cognitive psychology methods, the technique measures how targeted respondents feel both ‘implicitly’ (i.e., without deliberate reflection) and ‘explicitly’ (i.e. with deliberate reflection) about the targeted object, in this case a frozen food brand.  When we examined which of the emotions (both implicit and explicit) in the brand’s profile most predicted share of purchase for that brand, we found that only feeling implicitly loving toward the brand significantly predicted this important outcome measure.  None of the emotions explicitly “felt” toward the brand had a significant impact on its share of purchase.

Most people, including marketers and marketing researchers, have a hard time believing that unless a consumer feels a certain feeling and can tell us about it, then it must not be affecting his or her behavior.  But the truth is that this isn’t always the case.  Emotions work “surreptitiously” to affect their behavior.  So, as I always do, I recommend always building ways to assess emotions’ ‘implicit’ (as well as explicit) impact on targeted consumer behavior.

So much for the first in this series.  Subsequent articles will discuss…

• How stronger emotional associations improve sensory processes.
• How emotional associations affect cognitive strategies – ways in which we think about things.
• How cognitive load affects emotions’ impact on behavior.
• How different methods of “emotional conditioning” affect preference for a brand or product.

Until next time…

In this feature Emotive® analytics seeks feedback from experts in areas related to emotional assessment.  The initial questions come from Paul Conner.  However, follow up questions can be submitted using the form below the article.

This installment of Ask the Emotional Expert features Paul Bolls, Associate Professor, Strategic Communication and Co-director of the PRIME Lab at the University of Missouri, Columbia.  The PRIME Lab is dedicated to studying consumers’ neurophysiological reactions to various forms of media.

Conner:  More and more we are learning that emotions drive humans’, and therefore consumers’, behavior.  What are your thoughts about that?

Bolls:  It’s not at all surprising that marketing researchers, particularly those working in the area of neuromarketing, are concluding that emotions are the fundamental driver of consumer attitudes, decision-making, and ultimate purchase behavior.  Neuropsychologists have discovered that human emotion, at its most basic level, consists of foundational “approach and avoidance” motivational processes. Activity within these motivational processes gets translated into specific emotions and feelings associated with products and brands. This overarching emotional process determines our more enduring attitudes towards brands which then in turn shape our decision-making and behavior towards specific brands of products. Marketers who do not grasp how critical emotional processes are in determining the degree to which consumers are willing to approach their product, and the role marketing communication plays in associating emotions with brands, are setting themselves up to lose ground to competitors that truly understand how to connect with and sell to the emotional brains of consumers.

Conner:  Tell me generally what you do in The PRIME Lab to study the issue of emotions driving consumer behavior?

Bolls:  In the PRIME Lab, which is housed within the Missouri School of Journalism, we focus on studying how different ways of producing an advertisement impacts emotional processing of the message. We primarily focus on understanding how very specific features of advertisements engage distinct emotional processes during real-time exposure to them. Basically, we study how brand messages can effectively evoke emotional processing that is likely to serve marketing objectives. We combine psychophysiological measures of emotional processing — heart rate, galvanic skin conductance, and facial EMG — with self-report measures of emotional experience, attitudes, memory, and behavioral intentions to fully understand how specific advertising executions are processed by targeted consumers.

Conner:  Can you share an example or two of studies you have conducted that have led to important insights for marketers?

Bolls: Recently, my colleagues and I have done some work examining features of health messages — specifically anti-tobacco messages. In doing this, we have studied the effectiveness of negative graphic images in TV advertisements that evoke strong aversive emotional activation. This research has provided insight into how emotionally aversive content in advertising can in some contexts, when executed appropriately, be extremely effective. The presence of disgusting visual images in anti-tobacco ads when combined with message copy focused on physical health threats resulting from tobacco use was found in our experiments to evoke strong defensive responses in viewers that can potentially decrease memory for the message. However, also including efficacy related copy that is intended to increase confidence in a smoker’s ability to stop smoking was found to dampen smokers’ defensive responses to negatively graphic messages, potentially making such messages more persuasive. It seems like the traditional school of thought in designing public health campaign messages has been to either completely steer clear of emotionally aversive messages or try to scare the daylights out of the target. Our research suggests clear strategies that reflect a more intelligent approach to the execution of negatively graphic health messages that unfortunately few public health campaigns have managed to adopt.

In the realm of radio advertising I have done some work studying how listening to radio ads produced to evoke visual mental imagery is an extremely engaging, emotional, personally relevant experience. High imagery radio ads engage visual cognition and have the potential to positively boost brand attitudes as well as purchase intentions. However, this potential is most realized when emotional images evoked by the radio ad are highly connected to the advertised product. A lot of radio advertising either completely fails to evoke emotional visual imagery or stumbles in associating evoked emotions with the advertised product. What is extremely exciting to me about this line of research is that it is applicable not only to traditional radio advertising, but to any form of audio advertising potentially delivered through podcasts, Internet radio, as well as other websites.

Conner:  What advice or direction would you give to marketers interested in employing some of these techniques?

Bolls:  I think marketers first and foremost need to fundamentally understand both the implicit and explicit emotional associations targeted consumers make with their product’s current design, packaging, as well as brand messaging. Armed with this understanding, marketers can then move towards figuring out how to elicit foundational patterns of appetitive and aversive emotional responses in targeted consumers that will promote a strong favorable emotional relationship between consumers and the brand, purchase behavior and brand loyalty.

Conner:  OK, here’s your chance!  Without getting too salesy, how would you plug your work at The PRIME Lab?  What might you be looking for from people who read this interview?

Bolls: As a research lab housed in a major university, the primary mission of the PRIME Lab is basic research into the design of emotionally powerful brand messages that are more likely to achieve marketing objectives. This is best accomplished through collaborations between academic researchers, like myself, professional marketers, and other marketing researchers. In the process of conducting our basic research we offer the opportunity for testing specific advertising executions. I thoroughly enjoy discussing how the emotional human mind processes brand messages and the implications of this for effective message design. So, if anything in this interview has piqued your interest, I would love to talk with you to discuss any questions as well as the possibility of conducting work in the PRIME Lab that meets specific research needs you might have.

Feel free to contact me at 573-884-0170 office, 573-673-5030 cell, or bollsp@missouri.edu.

Conner:  Thank you very much!

This article will be most revealing and valuable if you first know and/or believe the following about emotions:

1. Emotions, which are triggered by experiences and thoughts, ultimately inform and direct consumer decisions and behavior.
2. Emotions’ influence is difficult to assess because it is often hidden from view — either operating in the consumers’ unconscious or being guarded by consumers when asked directly about how they are feeling.
3. For this reason, effectively assessing emotions’ influence on consumer decisions and behavior needs special techniques — ones that get at emotions’ “implicit” or “hidden” nature.

These points have been firmly established in neuroscience, psychology, or marketing research in recent years.

(If you’ve read any of my previous articles, presentations, or reports, I apologize for starting this way because this information is redundant.  Blah, blah, blah, there he goes again, emotions, emotions, emotions.  Sorry, but it’s important!)

Accepting the need for special techniques to effectively assess emotions’ implicit influence, there are many to choose from. They include projectives and laddering, which are often used in traditional interviewing, along with less traditional interviewing techniques such as psychodrama, metaphor elicitation, neurolinguistic programming, and even the highly misunderstood hypnosis-interviewing.  They also include naturalistic observation techniques, commonly called ethnography.  These days neuromarketing is becoming very popular, so “hot” implicit emotional assessment techniques include psychophysiological emotion indicators such as fMRI, EEG, other biometrics, and facial coding & electromyography to name a few.

However, there is one family of implicit emotional assessment techniques that is not as well known or used in consumer research as the ones just mentioned.  But these techniques can be just as effective, if not more.  This family of techniques is commonly called Implicit Association or Misattribution.

These techniques come primarily from social and cognitive psychology and they are often used in those disciplines to expose hidden negative emotions or attitudes, like various forms of socially unacceptable biases.  Noted experts in this family of techniques are Anthony Greenwald (the inventor of the Implicit Association Test) and Russell Fazio (well-known for initiating implicit “priming” techniques). However, there are dozens of others.  (Send me a note at pconner@experiemotive.com and I will send other names.)

These techniques, which allow quantitative emotional scoring and graphing, work by first quickly (and sometimes subliminally) presenting representations of objects of interest (e.g., brands).  This “priming,” as it is commonly called, activates unconscious emotional associations respondents have with the targeted objects.  After this, respondents are misdirected to complete a feelings task that appears unrelated to the priming.  For instance, they might be asked to indicate whether or not a group of letters on the screen (some of which form actual feeling words) represent a real word or not.  Or they might be asked to rate how much an ambiguous image conveys a particular feeling.  Implicit emotions toward the targeted object are “measured” by observing the respondents’ performance on the misdirected task after being primed with the targeted object’s representation vs. being not primed at all or being primed with some sort of neutral control representation.

The graph below shows what can result from this type of an approach.  This is an Emotional Profile that we recently developed for a well-known consumer foods brand.

This graph neatly illustrates how those with higher shares of purchases for this brand felt about the brand explicitly (in red; within their awareness and willingness to share) and, most importantly, implicitly, too (in blue; outside of their awareness or willingness to share).  This provides information that would not have been possible using traditional explicit self-reports alone (which is most often used in market research).  Furthermore, additional analyses (e.g., multiple regressions) can confirm which of these emotions most drives purchase or brand preference.  In this study, implicit (not explicit) loving was the emotion that most drove share of purchases for this brand.  Again, this insight would not have been possible from traditional explicit self-report methods.

For more information on this type of technique, please visit our “Your Brand’s Emotional Profile” page and/or download our Samsung/Sony report.

So if you are interested in, or already believe in, the importance of emotions in consumer behavior, and if you are interested in an effective technique for revealing emotions that self-reports miss or misrepresent, consider Implicit Priming.

I hope this has been valuable.  As always, please submit your comments, contact me directly, or share this article with others (by using the e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn icons above).

Until next time…

Much of the success of selling emotional research depends on convincing prospective clients that consumers’ (and all humans’) decisions and behavior are essentially emotional.  If prospective clients believe this, and if they have the resources and desire to conduct consumer research, it logically follows that they should, and will, conduct “emotional research.”

Marketers who don’t believe this most often say that logic or practicality or rationality or reason or deliberation or thinking or some other synonym that represents “the left brain” is the primary reason why consumers buy their product.  (Or, speaking from their personal experience, they say, ”I don’t buy things for emotional reasons.  I think it out!”)

Convincing disbelievers is a critical hurdle to selling emotional research.  So let’s “think” through this for a moment…logically.  And in thinking through this, let’s not even refer to the countless studies in neuroscience and psychology confirming that decisions are really emotional.  (For some good references, see Educational Resources on this website.)

When people say that their buying decisions are “logical” and not emotional, what are they saying, really?  (Admittedly, there are many definitions of “logic,” and I will be representing my interpretation of one of them here.  But stay with me.)

One notion of logic relevant to consumer decision making refers to the process of mentally determining the likelihood that certain features of a product or buying situation will lead to a particular goal.  After engaging in this rational, deliberative, logical process, the “logical” choice is the product with features that will most likely produce the goal.  For instance, being “logical” in determining which air conditioner to buy would involve bringing to mind several features of several air conditioners and determining which of these features will most likely lead to the goals of staying the coolest for the least amount of money.  No emotion there, right.  It’s all pretty much “probability-math,” isn’t it?  “Probably” the air conditioner with the highest energy rating will save the most money.  “Probably” the air conditioner with the least number of repair calls will stay the coolest and save the most money.

But to really address the reason for the decision, we have to question the goals, don’t we?  Logic helps us determine likelihoods of obtaining particular goals.  But how and why do we determine particular goals? In the air conditioner example, why are staying cool and saving money chosen as the goals?

Laddering is an effective technique researchers use to get at the reasons why people do things, including why people buy things.  So let’s do some laddering.  What is so important about staying cool?  Staying cool feels good (to those who want to stay cool).  What is so important about saving money?  Saving money helps us have more money which helps us buy more things which help us have more things that ultimately make us feel good.

So if we “logically” go through the process of assessing why we make certain decisions (by some form of laddering), don’t we logically arrive at an emotional benefit? Try it out.  Keep asking yourself why you bought the last thing you bought.  Where do you end up?

(Sometimes at the end of the laddering process, people just throw up their hands and say “because I wanted to” [buy that thing]!  Well, isn’t “want” emotionally-based?)

Again, I could certainly approach the question of why people decide to buy certain products (either logically or emotionally) by looking at neuroscientific evidence.  Maybe a future blog will do this.  But for now, I hope I have at least provided a “logical” argument for the truth of emotional decision-making!