252. Priming (Refreshed Episode)

Welcome to episode 252 of the Brainy.

Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy Today's episode is all about Priming.

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Let's get started.

You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here's your host, Melina Palmer.

Hello, hello, hello everyone.

My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Today's episode is all about Priming. Now, this is something I talk about all the time. So if you've heard me speak or have read my books or have been listening to the podcast for a while.

Chances are this isn't the first time you're hearing about this concept.

Next to framing, it's probably the thing I talk about the most. While framing's lesson is that how you say something matters more than what you say, priming shows us that whatever happens just before a moment of decision or action is very important in influencing the decision that's made.

Yes, there are many examples as we get into the episode, so I'm not going to get into it too much right now.

In the it's not about the cookie framework. Priming is the scent of the cookies.

Or the burnt popcorn.

When we're talking about change management, like.

In my second book, what your employees.

Need and can tell you. At the core of priming, we have the way that the brain filters information and how we make associations. These can be very literal, like how when we see an apple in the grocery store and are reminded of the company and that could even influence our behavior. As you're going to hear about in the episode, it can also be more of a filter that impacts how we see people or think about a product or service, or impacting how we work with others, we we can be primed to buy products or buy in on ideas by using all of our senses, and it's important to consider them all as you think about your own messaging. As you listen to the episode today, I want you to be thinking about all the senses and how they can impact behavior. For example, when a gas station wanted to increase their sales of coffee, they didn't just do ads for coffee, they used the scent of fresh coffee at the pumps and sales increased 300%. Taking a step back and thinking holistically about your experience and looking for opportunities that are outside the norm are a great way to incorporate priming and all the senses into your messaging. Whether it's from a sales side or internal communication or anything else. So again, as you listen today, I encourage you to think with all your senses and wonder what might that look like or taste like or smell like? When this episode first aired in the fall of 2018, I hadn't yet done the series on all the senses, but those are available for you now and linked in the show notes, along with lots of other helpful resources, related past episodes and books and articles, and all sorts of great stuff. Those show notes can be found within the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com 252 all right, let's talk about Priming.

As you know, one of my favorite ways to start a foundation show is with a game or a series of questions to help you see how the concept works before I start explaining it. And today's episode is no different. So I want you to listen closely to what I'm saying and get ready to answer when I get to the question ready, okay? Of the Brainy Business podcast, I am the host, you are the audience I love the very most. Tonight for dinner will be having roast. It might be rude if you were to boast, drive out to the shore so you can see the coast. What do you put in a toaster? If you said or thought toast, you were wrong. Of course you do not put toast into a toaster. You put bread in a toaster and you know that. So why did you say toast? It's because I primed you and your brain with a lot of words that rhymed with toast to make you give that answer quickly. And if you had the willpower to say bread or pop Tarts or Eggo waffles or whatever you choose to put in your toaster, congratulations. Even if you were not tricked this time, which could be because I primed you on the prime in this priming episode, you can likely still appreciate how the concept works. Of course, it's not just about rhyming, it's a lot more than that, as I'm going to be talking about on this episode. Remember Back to episode 11, the Behavioral Economics Foundation's episode on anchoring and adjustment, how your brain hears a number and then adjusts up or down from there when it's making a guess, that is a form of priming, especially when it's done intentionally, like I did when asking you questions about penguin populations or the number of countries in the world. It's important to remember that your brain is lazy and incredibly busy, so it takes these shortcuts like priming all the time. After all with your subconscious brain evaluating 11 million bits of information per second, it needs to make snap decisions. And a whole lot of them, like throwing out the rhyming word toast instead of bread when primed, your subconscious remembers it recently heard a number or a statistic or something that influences the next assumptions it makes, even if they're not remotely related. I'm going to tell the necklace story again because it relates here. About a year ago, I was giving a presentation to a group of female entrepreneurs, something I do a lot. I asked asked everyone to think of the last two digits of their Social Security number. Then I asked them to look at my necklace, which was particularly blingy. And I asked them to think about how much they thought the necklace was worth, what I had paid for it. And do you know what happened? As I explained this to the audience, I said studies have shown someone with a higher last two digits like 89 will value the item item higher than someone with a lower last two digits like one two. One woman raised her hand and said the last two digits of my Social Security number actually are 89. And when you asked me about the value I thought 89. And then I thought no, that's stupid. I'll say 65. This is the power of priming, the root of anchoring and adjustment. For the record, the woman with the lowest last two digits, which were 00, so definitely the lowest, she valued the necklace at only $35 compared to 65 from the other woman. As a reminder, the effects wear off quickly as our brains are quickly churning through information. So it's not like your Social Security number is tied to your account balances, but primes are everywhere. And it's not just about anchoring and adjustment. Though my favorite Snickers advertisement example revisit episode 11 to hear about it in detail, which increased the sales of Snickers bars by 38% simply by using the number 18 instead of the word them and is all about the prime. In this case, the number 18 is the prime which becomes the anchor your brain adjusts from. And this is why 10 for 10 sells more than $1 each. Or even limiting the number of cans of soup someone can buy primes them to think higher. Now I'm guessing you can see why this was a later foundations episode. Easy to relate back to some of these things I' talked about already. Okay, so let's talk about some more priming studies and examples that you have not yet heard about on other episodes. As I said, priming is about more than just numbers. It can also be done with words. For example, one very famous study had participants who were students at a university. As is often the case in these studies, they all performed a scrambled sentence test which they were told was to test their language ability. Each person was tested one at a time and they were given a set of 30 sentences to unscramble and did not know they were divided into two groups. One was given neutral sentences that did not include any primes. The other group was primed with words that would be considered stereotypes of elderly people, including Florida, old, gray, careful, sentimental, wise, bingo, forgetful, retired, wrinkle, ancient, helpless and cautious. When they completed the test, the facilitator told them how to get to the elevator to leave. Another person happened to be sitting in the hall. It looked like they were waiting to speak to another professor, but actually they were part of the experiment and had had a hidden stopwatch. It was their job to time the participant from the moment they stepped out of the door until they got to a specific spot on the floor about 10 meters away. And guess what they found? Those primed with the elderly stereotype took longer than the neutral group to get down the hallway. They actually walked slower leaving the room. And remember, of course, these are all university students who were not. Nobody was actually elderly or old. Of course, after they made it to the end of the hallway, someone caught up with them and did a more complete debrief. They were asked if they had noticed any stereotyping type of words or made any connection to the elderly. They said no. They were asked if they thought the study influenced them in any way and of course, course they said no. As we can see, they were wrong. This research study also did a test with rude and polite priming words compared to a control group. Each person was told to do their word scrambles, then to come down the hall and find a professor when they were done to be given their next task. When they got there, the professor was having a conversation with another student who again was actually part of the experiment and had a stopwatch going. And they waited to see how long people would wait before interrupting to get their next task. After 10 minutes of waiting, it was presumed they would essentially wait forever without interrupting. So the professor just went ahead and gave them the next task. It was a meaningless task, after which they were debriefed and asked if they thought the first test had any impact on them. They of course said no. But the study showed that people were much more likely to interrupt in the rude condition than neutral or polite. In fact, it actually came out in A linear fashion. The least likely to interrupt were the polite group. And it was about double that to get to the neutral group. And it nearly doubled again to be in the rude group. Crazy, right? Okay, before I tell you about this next one, I think it's important to put out a disclaimer. Me sharing the study results does not mean I agree with the negative stereotypes presented. I'm merely the messenger of the information. Okay. In this one, they tested two competing stereotypes that would live within the same person. All the participants were Asian American female undergraduates. They were asked to fill out a pre questionnaire which had the priming words on it. One group was primed with female terms, like questions about if the floor of their dorm was co ed or single sex. And the other group was primed with terms about being Asian American, like whether their parents or grandparents spoke languages other than English. These groups were both compared against a control group. All three groups were then given 20 minutes to complete a series of 12 difficult math problems. After their time was up, each individual completed a final set of questions, indicating, among other things, their scores on the math section of the sats, how much they enjoyed participating in the experiment, how talented they were at mathematics, and their thoughts about the goals of the research. Participants were then paid and debriefed. All the participants were good at Math. Their average SAT score was 750. But what happened? Those who were primed in the Asian identity group did the best. They answered an average of 54% of the questions they attempted correctly. This was better than the control group, which was at 49%. And the female identity primed group did the worst. An average of only 43% being answered correctly, 11% less than the Asian identity group. And unfortunately, this is not the only study on gender priming. Other studies have found that women have more stereotypical beliefs about women being better at the arts and worse at math in studies where they've been primed with those sorts of terms. The lesson here? Prime yourself and psych yourself up before you take any test. For sure. And for any of you that are doubters of visualization or manifesting the life you want or vision boards or any of that, I challenge you to consider how easily the brain can be primed. I've linked to an article from Forbes and another from Business Insider about the power of visualization. But of course, there are tons of books and articles out there, so I'm not going to get too deep into this. What I will say is there's a reason Olympians train their brains as well as their bodies. The Business Insider article talked about a study which compared four groups of Olympic athletes. Group one did 100% physical training and no mental training. Group two did 75% physical training and 25% mental training. Group three was a 5050 split and group four was only 25% physical training and 75% mental. Guess which group did best in the Olympics? That's right, group four. That was the one that only did 25% physical training and three quarters of their training was mental.

Amazing.

And if you want steps on how to use visualization in your life and business, the article from Forbes laid it out really nicely. The link is of course in the show notes, but here are the steps. Number one Know what you want to do this, they say to Ask yourself, if I had nothing holding me back, what would I want to see in my life? Step 2 Describe your vision in detail. Ask yourself, if I had a magic wand to make anything happen, what would my life look like? Step 3 Start visualizing and create the emotions. Ask what would I feel if all my visualizations came true? Step four Take daily actions. Pretty sure you've heard me say that before. To do this, ask yourself, what is one thing I could do today that would help me get closer to the life I want? And finally, step five have grit and persevere. Ask what would help me persevere when I'm faced with a challenge? If you need any more convincing, Oprah swears by visualization. So okay, moving on to the next type of priming. We have talked about numbers and words. Now we're moving into physical objects. In this first study, when participants were on their way to the study, they unexpectedly bumped into the lab assistant with very full hands, books, a clipboard, papers, and one item the participant was asked to hold for just a second either a cup of hot or iced coffee. That was it. They had no idea this was part of the experiment. They held the cup and after giving it back, they went on to the study where they read a story about a person and gave feedback and ratings on the person they read about. Are you ready for this? It's seriously crazy. So if you are able to sit down, you might want to. Either way, listen to this. Students who held the cup of iced coffee rated a hypothetical person they read about as being, quote, much colder, less social, and more selfish than the students who held the hot coffee. What? Seriously, this blows my mind. I guess the lesson here is to always drink hot tea or coffee and get hot drinks for people you want to make a good impression on. But Seriously, is that crazy or what? In another study, participants were three times as likely to clean away crumbs after a snack, which was intentionally crumbly when there was a faint scent of cleaning products in the air than when there wasn't. And other studies have shown that people in restaurants are more likely to order seafood when they can smell lemon in the air. Oh, and participants that were asked to recall an action like betraying a friend were twice as likely to choose to take an antiseptic wipe for their hands than those who remembered times they did a good deed. According to the researchers, this was the subconscious brain wanting to take any action to cleanse itself of these bad deeds, these bad memories. And the really crazy thing was, after wiping their hands, they were then less likely to agree to volunteer their time because they had wiped their hands clean and were no longer burdened by the guilt. I guess the brain is pretty quick to move along, right? Another really crazy study found that when people were in a room that had a briefcase on the table, they were more likely to be confrontational than when there was a backpack instead. In that case, they were much more cooperative. And again, as with all of these, no one recalled it being there or called it out or thought it influenced their behavior in any way. So here is the thing to take from this. Everything you do and say matters. And similarly, whatever was said or done right before, everything you do or say matters. I always had concern about doing radio or TV commercials because I didn't know what was going to come on right before my advertisement. And this is obviously why maybe I would know what was in the show, but not everything that could trigger the subconscious and definitely not all the commercials that were going to be included. How would they influence the likelihood that someone would be in a buying mood or converting mood when it came to my commercial? While you can't control everything, it is worth looking at the things you can control. For example, when I bought billboards, I always looked at every option to choose which ones I wanted and which ones I didn't didn't. And speaking with the people who sold the billboards, they let me know that most people don't do that. They just take the recommendations that they're given. So take the extra step to evaluate if you're spending the money and buying things for me. Ones that were in stressful intersections or by a shady store or area of town. No thanks. Don't need that kind of negative priming. And if you're an avid listener of the show, you've heard me say many, many many times in conversations about pricing that what comes first matters much more than the price itself, right? Well, now you really know why. It's the priming. You're either priming someone to be ready to buy, or you're priming them to be overwhelmed or uncomfortable or rude or bored or concerned about budget. Do me a favor, take a look at your website and be honest. Is it priming people to have confidence in what you're offering? Is it simple? Is it clear what you want them to do? Or is it cluttered and confusing? Before getting to the pricing or conversion question, what about your sales conversations? Are you priming people to feel confident in your services and take action, or are you priming them to go? Think about it. As you've seen in these priming examples, small things, just a few simple words can make a huge difference. And of course, use the freebie worksheet to help you work through some of these things. If you find people are always rude when they talk to you or treat you like you're cold and distance, it could be a bad prime. Something as simple as drinking a cold drink can make a difference. So take a look at what's going on around you and in your interactions and see what you might be able to change and test if it makes a difference. And if you manage to have like, if you switch from cold drinks to hot drinks and people start being warmer toward you, please let me know. I can't wait to hear how you use priming in your everyday interactions. Okay, the final prime I am going to talk to you about today gets into logos. In this study, students were watching a video and had a very brief exposure to a logo. It was only 30 milliseconds, so no way the conscious brain would pick it up. This is what you could almost call subliminal messaging. Half were shown the Apple logo and the other half were shown the IBM logo. The result? Those who saw the Apple logo were much more creative in a subsequent task than those who had the subliminal prime of the IBM logo. And of course, as far as they are concerned, they didn't see any logo at all. Similarly, those who saw a Disney logo were much more honest in the subsequent tests than those who saw the logo for E. Have you ever heard people say you become like those you spend the most time with? Or that you should dress for the job you want, or you should fake it till you make it, or anything like that? It seems there really is some truth to that. You're priming your brain to take on the traits of Those outside influences I also really like. I've read articles and seen where people do. They say if you stand in a superhero pose, you're more likely to be confident in your actions for the day. And again, it's just priming your brain in the way that you want to be approaching your day and your life. If there are brands you admire, consider putting their logos up around your office. Even if you don't think you're noticing them, your subconscious clearly is. And also note just how quickly a brand, a really strong one, is recognized and categorized. What are the traits of your brand? If someone saw your logo for 30 milliseconds, would it influence that person's behavior? How would it be positive or negative? Or would it be too jumbled and complex to have any impact at all? This is a lesson in the benefits of boiling down your message to its most refined point. Can someone get what you are and what makes your brand different in a second or less? I think a lot of us probably have some work to do. Lastly, I want you to remember this as well. In all these studies, people said they were not influenced by the items or words or numbers or whatever it had to be, or that they didn't even see them. It's like when people say they do not notice Facebook ads or billboards or the radio. It may not register on a conscious level, but it's getting in there and it can have an impact even if people don't realize it. Many other studies have shown that if people are presented with advertisements, say they're flipping through a magazine in the waiting room that's actually a fake, with advertisements for made up companies mixed in to prime their behavior. The people who flipped through and saw the fake ad, even for just a second, are more likely to recognize or choose that brand. In the studies that followed, marketing and advertising takes dedication and focus, consistent presence and messaging to break through the clutter and making sure you are using the right primes to keep things moving in the proper direction instead of derailing the whole thing. Know who you are and what your brand is about in its simplest form. It takes effort to get it this simple, but you can do it. I know you can. If you can't say what you're about.

In just a few words, your customers can't either. So what got your brain buzzing as you learned about priming today? For me, as I said at the.

Kickoff of the show, I love priming.

It's so, so important for people and brands to understand and to know that the little things matter. So many things we don't think should.

Be a big deal.

Often called supposedly irrelevant factors or SIFs, in a term coined by Richard Thaler and really featured in his book Misbehaving, which is of course linked to you in the show, notes those SIFs make a huge difference in behavior and are an opportunity to look at Priming Is there something you're doing or saying something in the meeting room or that was in the waiting room or on the show immediately before you're at, or that was said in the meeting before your meeting that's having an impact on this moment right now. While you can't control and know everything, it is important to be aware of as much as you can and control what you can. It is likely more than you're thinking about now, I'll almost guarantee it. But don't get bogged down with every experience and every factor. That's a great way to get stuck.

And avoid doing anything.

Instead, I recommend you pick one moment or experience that matters. Maybe it's the pricing page on your website, or the script your sales team uses, or the communication you need to send to your team about an upcoming change.

Whatever it is, really dig deep on.

All the ways you can incorporate priming in that experience. Back way up, zoom way in. Think through things that seem weird, like smell or taste, and how they could come into play.

Even though it's a little bit funky.

To try it out, I promise it's worth it. You don't need to use everything, but it is good to consider it all as you evaluate and improve these critical points in your experience. One more thing that's so important to consider with priming is to know that this isn't exacting and you should not expect the results to be fully generalizable. For example, don't force your team to only drink warm beverages to encourage a warmer environment between team members. While I joked about that a bit in the episode, the thing you want to take away from this is how literal the brain can be in its associations and how it can impact behavior.

Look for things that might be causing.

Issues, imagery, word choice, smells, metaphors, and other associations to see how they could be impacting your experiences. If they're aligned, great. If not, consider the context and look for opportunities to test new stuff that can improve the experience and outcome. Don't just take it at face value and assume that it'll be exactly as it was in this other experience because, you know, things just don't generalize in that way and that's why testing is so important and good news. We have an awesome new episode with Sarah Thompson in a couple weeks talking about semiotics and metaphor, which you're going to love. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast now to be sure you don't miss that one. And if you want to learn more about Priming and the senses in the meantime, they have a full chapter in part two of my first book, what your Customer Wants and can't tell you.

So if you want to expand your.

Thoughts on this and dig in even more on Priming and how to apply it in your work, go ahead and flip to chapter six in your copy of the book. This is also very heavily featured in.

What your employees need and can't tell.

You as well in the it's not about the Cookie Framework. Links to both of those books and their related past episodes, along with your free Priming worksheet and more are all waiting for you in the show notes@the brainybusiness.com 2 and just like that, episode.

252 on priming is done.

Join me Friday for a brand new episode with Troy Campbell.

It's going to be a lot of fun.

You don't want to miss it.

Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me. And remember to be thoughtful.

Thank you for listening to the first the Brainy Business Podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness. Com.