Neuroscience is one fascinating subject that I came across and cannot stop awing at. It can be seen and felt in every field of business and in daily life. Biases, fallacies, dilemmas and all those jargon that we read in articles has a Neuro background to it. It all boils down to how humans and their brains act. Each of our brain is unique but these fallacies and biases are not. We tend to stereotype and judge; we can easily be primed to believe a wrong fact. There are so many more practical examples to quote, but here are some that I found interesting to share.
There was this study conducted by many psychologists. Across the road, random people were invited to taste different labels of wine kept along with their price tags. Everyone who tasted it confirmed that the most expensive wine tasted the best. every glass was the same wine, irrespective of the price tag placed on it. That's how much illusion we fall into!
One more fascinating study was done by brands like Pepsi Co. Lays and Starbucks. They used neuroscience to find out the willingness of people to pay for their products and were shocked to find out that the results turned out much higher than their current product price. This method increased their margin considerably in the consecutive quarters.
Apart from using neuroscience to their advantage in marketing, it is genuinely helpful to understand how brain activity plays a role in our work life. There can be several reasons for a sudden change in behavior of a person. Stress, for example, changes the activity of the brain: the conscious and reflective part of the brain tends to turn off under stress. Neuroscience also suggests that we have one part of the brain that is lazy and jumps to conclusions based on the available data. The second type does the conscious thinking. Daniel Kahneman[1], the famous behavioral economist, calls it the “System 1” thinking or the “Lazy controller”. Halo effect, one of the biases we often fall for, is the effect when I like all the actions of a person, irrespective of whether they are justified, just because I like the person. This could be well related with why we choose to vote for the same politician time and again. The same argument is supported by “The Libet-experiments” [2], which have shown that our choices and decisions are made by our brains before we become conscious of them. This readily available information is hardwired to my memory, that it is very difficult to suddenly change this opinion and probably persuades me to give them chances, more than just once.
Both positive and negative emotions at work are “contagious” and influence the brain activity of everyone exposed to them. This could mean that when a team member is demotivated, he spreads the negative emotion around the team and as a result, the whole team motivation is also seen to be going down significantly.
· So, what can we do to make it better?
· Be aware of the system 1, system 2 and the biases that exist.
· Practice diplomacy. Don’t judge or let someone judge you
· Treat others the way you would like to be treated
· Be open, embrace other cultures, working styles and accept people for what they are
· Look beyond and focus on the big picture!
· If you haven’t read Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow, go grab a copy and read it!
· Try to spread positivity. How? Wait for the Midweek tit-bits that start next week!
[1]Daniel Kahneman, behavioral economist: Thinking Fast and Slow
[2] Libet experiment - https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libet-Experiment
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