You make decisions freely? Neuromarketing says think again | Billy Sung | TEDxKingsParkSalon

[Music] foreign [Applause] in fact you lie to yourself and you don't even know about it we often overestimate our ability to control our thoughts feelings and behavior that is why you don't know yourself as well as you think you do and today I'm going to tell you why and how we can know ourselves better and maybe this may help us make better decisions in a world filled with misinformation and ever growing choices of products let me give you an example and ask you this on a scale of one to ten ten being I really care

about it how much do you care about buying sustainable products now statistically speaking most of you will say seven or above however when we show people different products that a consumer research lab at cutting University here in Perth eye tracking data shows that more than 40 percent of people pay little to no attention at all towards sustainability information on product Packaging facial expression analysis shows that people tend to exhibit zero increase in liking towards sustainable product in comparison to non-sustainable one in fact when we track the size of the pupil we know they dedicated significantly

lower processing power towards sustainability claim meaning that people pay little attention to sustainability even though they claim they care about it that is why my colleague Dr Sean Lee and I Cordis the BS project but of course when our Dean answers why that is the case we just say well that's just Billy's initial bsang but why don't our Behavior match our word why do we lie and we don't know about it this is because your subconscious processes in your brain place a significant role in your everyday decision from what you buy to whether you recycle

or even to whether you will comply with that health and safety messages that you walk past every single day now this is not only surprising but problematic social science research relies heavily on research method that simply asks you to report your thoughts feelings and behavior but Recent research shows that you go from more than 6 000 thoughts a day now do you really expect me to tell you about my thoughts and feeling even though every morning my wife asked me do I look pretty in this dress it's a very loaded question and I really can't

answer her but of course we cannot just throw out self-reported measure and conventional research method because they can tell us about your conscious thoughts and feelings however we'll never be able to paint a full picture if you or I cannot report our conscious or subconscious feeling and thoughts accurately and in addition to this we know from research that your brain makes decision based on information that they process more often than not subconsciously for instance if I showed you a television commercial would you be able to tell me what you pay attention to the 23rd second

of the commercial what about if I ask you to walk down a supermarket aisle or go into a website can you tell me your fluctuation of your immersion second by second probably not right here is where consumer Biometrics and Neuroscience comes in consumer Biometrics and Neuroscience that bring hard science techniques to social science for us to better understand the unconscious and implicit way in which you make decisions by measuring your biometric measures such as your heart rate your facial expression your brain wave we can Now understand the subconscious psychological processes that goes underneath these biometric

responses this psychological process can include your attention level your engagement level and even your emotional states second by second to give you an example you know that our hand actually starts to sweat in emotionally intense situation situation like this you know oh when you are riding a roller coaster or when you're driving back home and you suddenly realize you forgot your wife's birthday trust me you really do start to swear in those situations but because these biometric measures can be tracked second by second we now have a way to better understand the psychological processes that

is underneath these biometric responses specifically we can use eye tracking analysis to show where you're looking at and therefore examines your visual attention pupnometry or the size of your pupil allows us to tell you how much processing power you're dedicating to the task at hand skin conductance response allows us to measure the intensity of your emotion or stress level while your heart rate allows us to measure engagement level your facial expression allows us to measure your emotional states second by second ranging from happiness to sadness to even emotion like disgust anger surprise and much more

brainwave headset and new Imaging techniques allowing us to pinpoint exactly the brain activity that governs some of your thoughts feelings and behavior in fact I can also be quite freakish and actually attach Wireless sensors on your face and your body to detect the electrical signal that being sent by your brain or your muscles that activate these biometric responses so biometric Technologies is allowing us to measure your thoughts and feelings while you are scoring through your social media walking down your local supermarket or even when you are sitting back at home enjoying your Netflix movie and

this is the power of the consumer Biometrics and Neuroscience toolkit by pairing this with conventional research method we can Now understand how you make decision both consciously and unconsciously but of course this is still a very emerging field of research and science so we have to reframe from over exaggerating some of our biometric findings and like unscientific and over simplistic application of consumer biometrics you do not have a buy button in your brain that I can press or track to make you pay more or spend more money if there is I would not have told

you and I would not be on an academic salary right now so what can consumer Biometrics and Neuroscience tells us if it's applied scientifically well firstly your decisions are very easily influenced by my new changes in our environment for instance if I ask you to walk down a supermarket and show you these product shelves you will probably think don't be silly Billy they're quite similar I'll respond quite similarly but our research is showing us that you will pay significantly more attention to the product shelf on the right because of the lower stock level in fact

you will like it more and you'll be more willing to buy that product and this is your innate desire for scarcity as Evolution have devoted our brain to pay more attention to and therefore are more likely to Value scarce resources so the next time you walk through a supermarket and actually see a limited edition product or limited time offer maybe it's time to think twice we could even look at other application of consumer Biometrics by knowing these effects and other similar effect we can now start to prompt more sustainable decisions more healthier decision or perhaps

better decisions but secondly consumer Biometrics and Neuroscience are showing us that your decisions are based on Salient Association that have been triggered both consciously and unconsciously and these Mentor associations can be used as cognitive shortcuts for us to make more efficient and faster decisions but in our lab we can actually change the taste and Aroma of the same food product by simply changing the product packaging and the visual cues that are associated with food naturalness freshness and even food innovativeness we even found a way for you to increase your willingness pay by 30 on the

same bottle of wine the trick is simple by putting it into a Timber box packaging because timberbox is generally associated with premiumness or premium product of course don't tell that to my clients because they probably will not like me telling you all this trigger and tips but again by knowing these phenomena and similar phenomenon we can now start to actually prompt or enhance the consumption of sustainable and ethical products even though they cost more and third and lastly consumer Biometrics and Neuroscience are really busting a lot of myth on how we can actually influence our

decisions for instance many Brands around the world spend millions of dollars making funnier further spin to make you like the product or the brand more however our research is showing that they're not always effective in fact they have no effect at all when you can't draw a link between the humorous message to the product or the brand itself similarly if you walk down the street or a supermarket you probably have seen a billboard or a advertisement or even a you know Banner that actually featured easy to read fonts or easy to read images but our

research is showing us that this is not always ideal in fact sometimes moderately difficult to read fonts and images captures your attention interest and engagement much better and again by bussing these myths and debunking this myth we can actually start to design ways to optimize health and safety messages that you will pay attention to and perhaps comply with by applying consumer Biometrics and Neuroscience with conventional research method we can start to understand our consumer in a more granular way we can provide unprecedented insights to enhance the competitiveness of Australian businesses to design advertisement products and

innovations that you as consumers truly like but with better understanding of how our brain make decision we can do much more than that we can start to use this evidence-based approach to help consumer make better decisions to understand why people believe in misinformation and scams to prevent them in taking primitive loans to increase the consumption of sustainable products and even convince them to take on a healthier lifestyle and maybe just maybe it'll explain why I have a gym membership but I never go to the gym thank you [Applause]