CXL — Digital Psychology & Persuasion: Week 2 — Day 1

Topics Covered on Week 2 Day №1

After I finished off with Attention Basics, I went on to complete the “Decision Making and Emotions” section of the course. This particular module had 3 sections on it and all the highlights from these sections are described below:

4 Factors that influence decision making: Following are the 4 key factors that influence decisions:

1. Cognitive Biases:

In brief, cognitive biases are the systematic error in thinking that affects the decisions and judgements of an individual. There is a large number of cognitive biases and we already discussed this particular factor in previous modules as well.

2. Memories:

The majority of the studies have shown that past experiences can impact massively in the future decision-making process. This tells us that, if a person has had a good experience from a decision they’ve taken, then they’re most likely to make similar decisions in the future as well. Similarly, if a person has had a bad/negative experience from a decision they’ve taken, then they’re most likely to avoid making similar decisions in the future.

3. Reason:

Abductive Reasoning is mostly based on creating and testing a different hypothesis based on the available information. This type of reasoning produces the best daily decision-making that works perfectly with the available information, which is often incomplete.

4. Emotions:

Many studies have shown that decision making is more of emotional activity. A neuroscientist named Antonio Damasio previously did an experiment where he tested the brain of a person whose emotional part of the brain was damaged. The results showed that that part of the brain seemed perfectly normal. This particular experiment concluded that decisions are based on emotions.

Persuasive Journey Mapping:

This section of the course was taught by Bart Schutz where he mainly focused on showing us several experimentations and AB Testing as to what worked for his clients and what didn’t.

Firstly, he mentioned individuals doing thousands of tests every single day and mentioned sort of a marketing full-form of “BIG” which is elongated as:

B — Behavioral

I — Intelligence

G — Gap

This BIG explains a sort of huge gap between Experiments done by us and Customer Intelligence.

After this, he went on to discuss how brains work (Very much Complex Working Structure). A customer is a dual-processing brain. System 1 is a sub-conscious and emotional part of the brain whereas System 2 is a conscious and rational part of the brain. He then went on to show an example about the differences between 2 systems by showing some mathematical expressions and other various factors to show why 2 systems of the brain need each other to operate normally. Therefore, for us as a marketer, it’s essential to know how these 2 systems of our customer’s brain work to convert as many of the customers as possible. However, the conscious and rational side of the brain is often not involved during the decision making process for the majority of the customers & normal human being. Therefore, System 2 needs a real focus for an effective decision-making process. The tutor then went on to show different case studies and AB Testing showing the examples of System 2 related factors.

He then went on to show about things like Mental Accounting and how he increased the conversion rate of a bedding company by adding additional persuasive content to the website. And lastly, he briefly showed us an experiment (i.e. Marshmallow Test) that he conducted on his kids just to find out which of their system is in control. The result of this experiment was that one of his kids ate the marshmallow right after he put it on the table. Hence, Bart Schutz was worried about his children since his child was already 6.5 years old and was supposed to pass the test. This tells us that System 2 of the Brain of his child was not as evolved as he thought it is and self-control wasn’t there. Therefore, we humans are not as rational as we think we are.

Master the Moment of Decision Using Applied Neuroscience Methods for Measuring Attention, Emotion & Memory:

This section of the course was taught by Karsten Lund where he went very deep on brain psychology and the decision making process. Firstly, he went on to show about how his 75% of AB Tests have failed (i.e. only 25% Success Rate which is very fair and good) and then went on to discuss how many decisions a normal human being makes every single day (i.e. About 3000 decisions per day). And these decision-making processes are enhanced by the 100 billion neurons present in the brain that communicates with each other (i.e. Connection) to enhance and broaden the decision-making process. Hence, big or small, all the decisions come with the same setup. And if this is combined with the 3 concepts i.e. Attention, Emotion & Memory and they’re just perfectly aligned, then we’re able to make decisions. After this, Karten went on to describe these 3 concepts in details by giving an example of a women & Godzilla. So, how the whole process works is that, once we give attention to something unusual/sensitive/different/great/funny/interesting, our brain gives an emotional response to that and that memory will be stored almost forever. Therefore, if we combine these aspects of the brain with our web page/landing page, we can even measure the emotional reaction and edit the pages based on the engagement/interaction of the potential customers. And, if we can plant these emotional experiences/reaction to peoples brain (i.e. Memory), then it would be great & beneficial.

Lastly, Karsten went on to show 2 of the famous advertisements to show the emotional impact of both the advertisement and showed us which worked and which advertisement didn’t (also gave the reason why it worked/didn’t work).

So, after I was done with this section, I went forward to the other module which is “Learning and Memory”. This particular module had 2 different sections focusing more on the psychology of learning and the psychology of memory.

Psychology of Learning:

This section of the course contained 3 unique learning processes and their implications to online marketing and persuasion as a whole.

1. Classical Conditioning:

In Brief, Classical Conditioning is a process in which some kind of association is formed between a previously neutral stimulus and a stimulus that naturally induces a response. After this, there we some examples of the Classical Conditioning that helped us deeply understand what it is.

2. Operant Conditioning:

Operant Conditioning is a process that tends to modify our behaviour by using some positive & negative reinforcements. This type of conditioning is very popular among teachers & parents.

3. Observational Learning:

This is the type of learning that occurs by observing and imitating what others are doing.

4 processes are important for Observational learning to make it work effectively:

1. Attention: The level to which an observer notices any intimated behaviour
2. Retention: The ability to retain the learning from the imitated behaviour
3. Reproduction: The skill & physical ability of the observer to imitate the behaviour
4. Motivation: perceived rewards must outweigh perceived costs for the observer.

Therefore, after this section was completed, I went on to the next module i.e. Psychology of Memory.

Psychology of Memory:

There are 3 major processes that are involved in memorizing anything, and those 3 processes are described below:

1. Encoding:

This is the process of changing any sort of information to a usable form.

2. Storage:

This is the process of storing the encoded information for future use/references.

3. Retrieval:

This is the process of bringing the stored memory into conscious awareness.

Also,

There are 2 types of memory,

1. Short-Term Memory: These types of memory last for about 20–30 seconds and people can even store 3–4 of these at the same time.
2. Long-Term Memory: These types of memory are capable of enduring much longer and they can last for days/months/years/decades.

How we can apply this to online marketing is by using tools related to Eye Tracking, Goal Setting etc. There are plenty of tools related to these and some of them includes hotjar, user zoom, user testing etc.