According to an LA Times article, brain imaging shows intricate meshing of marketing messages with brain areas for fear, anxiety, motor impulses, and sense of self.
Cool images: Images deemed "cool" activated a brain area known as Brodmann's area 10, associated with identity and social image. -- Cool fools: These participants could be impulsive shoppers. Thinking about an object in terms of social identity may produce a powerful reward signal.
Uncool images: Images judged "uncool" provoked activity nearer the center of the brain in an area involved in monitoring conflict.-- Uncool at any price: These participants may be experiencing distress as they envision themselves with the "uncool" object.
In the political realm, it appears that the image of the viewer's "own" candidate generated activity in the middle of the front brain, an area that responds to reward. There are signs of neutral bonding with the preferred candidate, and the opposing candidate provoked activity in the brain area associated with reasoning and emotional control -- negative emotions or a suppression of emotion.
Both major US political affiliations had these reactions in common. The article further discusses differences between Republicans and Democrats, as to activation levels of the amygdala's anxiety level, and in responses to the image of a "strong leader."
These investigations are still incomplete and unrefined, and the interconnecting links have yet to be established. Students of neurolinguistic programming, who have for twenty years accomplished something similar without machines, could predict that once the algorithm is fully sketched out, environmental elements like lighting, rhythm, speed, color, vocabulary, aroma, vectors for movement, volume, personnel selection, and more will come into play to "strum" brains to the desired arousal. These elements, known as submodalities, are already in play as many accomplished people traverse their own lives with the help of knowledgeable guides who apply this data. For instance, the difference between decision-making patterns based on "toward," or desire-based motivation, and ones based on "away-from" or anxious avoidance, is old news, and dictates strategies that need not wait for brain-scan machinery.
Marketing and political messages are iconic examples of persuasion that implies happiness and seldom delivers it in any robust way, especially if the communication exploits emotion to serve a covert agenda, in conspiracy with an agitated amygdala in the clue-impaired mark.
Genuine self-knowledge is the best defense in order to maintain intelligent independence of mind. Our illusions about ourselves, including the delusion that we easily see and shed our illusions, are the manipulators' best friend. Ignorant of our own driving reality, we flee fear or chase desire, and rationalize our decisions after the fact. Even one of the researchers had an epiphany when she saw her own brain activity.
At [one] extreme were people whose brains reacted only to the unstylish items, a pattern that fits well with people who tend to be anxious, apprehensive or neurotic, Quartz said.
The reaction in both sets of brains was intense. The brains reflexively sought to fulfill desires or avoid humiliation.
Asp, a Swedish researcher who once majored in industrial design, volunteered for the fMRI probe. The scanner revealed a personality quite at odds with her own sense of self.
She searched the scanner's images for the excited neurons in her prefrontal cortex that would reflect her enthusiasm for Prada and other high-fashion goods. Instead, the scanner detected the agitation in brain areas associated with anxiety and pain, suggesting she found it embarrassing to be seen in something insufficiently stylish.
It was fear, not admiration, that motivated her fashion sense."I thought I would be a cool fool," she said. "I was very uncool."
Auditioning successfully for the Good&Happy Well, Duh Files, Judy Illes, a senior research scholar at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, says, "That might have some potentially scary possibilities for misuse."
Still incomplete in its applicability, this is equivalent to nano-biology in its potential impact on the very building blocks of our experience and values. The horse is out of the barn, and picking up speed. To the acknowledged complexities of evaluating public information, add commercial and political propaganda that acts as a tuning fork for the brain. It can't be stopped, so had better be understood.
Meanwhile, we here quietly out of the mainstream learn something every day. Didn't know Barbra Streisand, Justin Timberlake, and
Patrick Swayze were so uncool.
Makes sense to our brains.
Update: Behind the USNews archive wall, Marianne Szegedy-Maszak in Mysteries of the Mind explains that a huge proportion of our decision-making has roots outside our conscious thought.
In the personal coaching enterprise, it is often useful to ask about a past decision, "What were you thinking?!" Often a deep breath and the question yield unconscious beliefs, unsuspected drivers. Even before a decision is made, people benefit from a review of the relevant and roused belief-set. Nice to know who's driving, before setting off on a Tour of the Wild West!
Reference via David Wolfe.
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