Predictions for 2013? Don't bother

People, even experts in their field, are terrible at making predictions. Social Psychologist Philip Tetlock conducted a monumentally large, twenty-five year long study. It contained over 82,000 forecasts from 300 academics, policymakers, economists and journalists. The forecasts were tracked against the outcomes, but more interestingly, Tetlock also investigated how they made their decisions. 

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

 Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943

Tetlock found that experts barely beat random chance. The charismatic who make for interesting reading, tend to make one prediction and stick with it and were inevitably wrong more often than not. It was a sort of arrogance of those wrapped up in themselves. The more famous the expert, the less accurate his or her predictions were likely to be. 

The best predictors were not necessarily the ones who were the best educated, but those who thought in a specific way. Tetlock suggests that the best predictors were self-critical, eclectic thinkers who were willing to update their beliefs when faced with contrary evidence, were doubtful of grand schemes and were rather modest about their predictive ability. The worst forecasters tended to have one big, beautiful idea that they loved to stretch, sometimes to the breaking point. They tended to be articulate and very persuasive as to why their idea explained everything.

In advertising it is our job to be accurate thinkers, to analyse trends and make predictions for the future. So if you want to be correct, look out for the people who involve words like 'however' in their arguments, and avoid those saying 'furthermore'. 

Could you kill? Milgram and Obedience

If you were ever lucky enough to study psychology, then chances are you've heard of Stanley Milgram. Not only did Milgram shed light on an innate darkness the human race wasn't aware it contained, he did it in a post-Holocaust world which was struggling to understand how 12 million people could just vanish from the face of the earth.

The original ad

Just before Milgram was to begin his investigations; Adolf Eichmann was set to stand trial for his role in the Holocaust. Debate was raging about how the German people should attempt to confront their collective past: was every individual to blame for inaction in the face of murder, were only those who committed atrocities guilty, or were they all victims of a few fascists in Berlin? What was it that made ordinary members of society become cold blooded killers? Milgram sought the answers in his study investigating obedience to authority.

“We Will Pay You $4.00 for One Hour of You Time. Persons Needed for a Study of Memory.” read the ad placed in the local paper, June 1961. Because it was Yale, and because it was a modest sum of money; you turn up with newspaper article in hand. You get paid your $4 and then you’re told you will be part of an experiment that investigates the effect of punishment on learning. You’re indifferent at this point. Another person joins you and you’re introduced. You’re told he will be playing the part of the learner and you; the teacher. You’re then led down a darkened corridor into a room and asked to help strap down your new friend. You oblige and then apply the electrodes to his body.

You return to the previous room and see a generator and some buttons. On these buttons are various voltages – 15, 30, 45, up until 450. On the highest ones it reads “Danger, Extreme Shock, xxx,” The experimenter gives you a little 45 volt blast on the arm, just so you know.

The learner

You start to read out some words in order; your new friend who is strapped into the electric chair has to repeat what you said. He starts off pretty well but then he starts making mistakes, so you give him a gentle shock. Again, he keeps making more mistakes so you increase the power and buzz away. The experiment continues and you keep upping the voltage as the man makes more mistakes. From the next room you hear a scream and through the intercom your new friend asks the experiment to be stopped. The man in the white coat turns to you and says: “The experiment requires that you continue.” You continue because the man says so. You continue past your new friend’s screams. You ignore his warnings about a heart problem. You put the voltage up as high as it will go. You electrocute your new friend. You continue until the experimenter is commanding you to shock a lifeless body. You stop only once, as far as you are aware, the man in the next room is dead.

Stanley Milgram

So this is the crux of the Milgram experiments. See if the subject would be obedient enough to ‘kill’ the collaborator because a person in a position of authority told you to. In fact, 65% of people were prepared to shock until the person feigned death or serious injury. So you’re thinking you’re different. You’re not.

What does this mean to advertising folk? It exposes our consumer, it strips them down to reveal the primal nature we thought we had long since abandoned. It reveals our unconscious and how our consumer loves to do as they’re told. Consumers are inherently trusting of authority and they don’t like to be individuals. They are not in control, we are. If we set up the right conditions then it may be possible to manipulate a large percentage of people to as we wish. This is a responsibility that we cannot take lightly.

At the very least this shows us why people in a perceived position of authority make great brand spokespeople. The Sensodyne ads are very effective for this exact reason. For this brand, vibrant creativity is unnecessary. These figures of authority (dentists in lab coats) do all the hard work and their paid-for-opinions are absorbed like rain on the desert floor.

This is one of the key psychological experiments of the 20^th Century, not only for the relevance of its convictions, but for the body of work it inspired. If you want to know more I’ll happily discuss; I wrote my dissertation about the ‘banality of evil’. It was the most fascinating thing I've studied to date. 

How Visuals Influence the Emotion of Sound

For the last few years John Lewis have have advocated the power of emotional advertising to boost sales around Christmas. Adam and Eve DDB have used powerful covers of well known music to create an emotive poignancy long used by the film industry. I've always thought that really good films are made exceptional by a fantastic soundtrack. Think of the scene in Gladiator where Maximus rides around the Colosseum, commanding the troops to the sound of an epic musical score from Hans Zimmer. It's the combination of sound and visual that really give you goosebumps.

Famous photo of a boy hearing for the first time

Now scientists have teamed up with film composer Peter Kaye, in an interesting study that puts some science behind the art. Their findings give us some interesting things to think about. Volunteers were first played some emotionally neutral music that didn't contain any unusual distortion or sudden changes in pitch. Sound that has a clear mathematical pattern is perceived as friendly. When animals and people are played music with unusual patterns they find it unpleasant. As expected, the latter caused distress when played to volunteers who had no visual cues. However, when people were shown a neutrally stimulating video at the same time as dissonant and normally unpleasant music; subjects were less likely to become disturbed.

So what does this mean to us as marketers? This study is the first to scientifically show that visual cues override audio ones when we make an emotional judgement. A friend of mine who composes music for tv ads recently complained to me that the music always comes last in the creative process. This study seems to suggest that we are correct to do this. When we make an irrational, emotional choice we focus on the visual first and the audio second.

It also means that we could potentially make unpleasant audio situations better by showing pleasant visualisations. Think pretty screensaver visualisations on a baby's forehead when it's screaming, or a noisy factory with tasteful wallpaper. Dragon's Den here I come.

"[Computer Science and Psychology] together really represent the DNA of Facebook… There are a lot of great technology companies and there are people who think about social issues, but there aren't a lot people doing both."

Mark Zuckerberg studied Psychology and Computer Science at Harvard

The Social Intercourse of Twitter

Ever wondered why you bother to use Twitter? Well like everything, there’s great excitement at something new and there could have been many reasons why you decided to sign up in the first place. But why did you stay? Chances are, Psychology has the answers.

The first ever tweet. Was yours as exciting?

After you’ve survived the first month (remember 60% of users quit within this period) and the initial eagerness has worn off, what then? Well you’ll have found your use for Twitter and I’m pretty sure you’ll fall into one of these four categories;

The Lurker

You make up 40% of the Twitterverse and have this unquenchable thirst for gossip. You probably signed up during the Red Carpet era and love to see your favourite celebrities argue.

The Business Mind

You either work in Social Media or you’re promoting your own business. You’ve realised that, if used well, Twitter can make you money. You’re now trapped though; checking Twitter has become part of your daily routine, checking Twitter has become like checking your email or reading your weekly trade mags.

 The Addict 

For reasons unbeknown to yourself you can’t stop checking your Twitter feed. Even on a slow news day you’re spending more and more time in the Twitterverse and it’s becoming a tough habit to break.

 The Social One

You’re trying really hard to be interesting, posting in the hope that it gets you some attention. You’re bored and unfulfilled, and are trying to fill the gap.

In this post I’ll be talking about the latter. It relates to the social gratification we get by using Twitter. At the turn of the century, we have never been so connected, but paradoxically alone. The tight knit community is dead. Can social media fill a void that modern life often leaves unfilled?

Harry Harlow provided unique understanding of human behaviour.

Starting in the late 1950s, a controversial American psychologist, Harry Harlow began social isolation experiments with rhesus monkeys. In his classic study he separated baby monkeys from their mothers and slowly discovered the artificial conditions that best mimicked a mother’s love. Harlow exposed the importance of social relationships in the maintenance of our health and started a ball rolling that still rolls today. We use Twitter in substitute for conventional social relationships. And like Harlow discovered that monkeys could remain psychologically normal by substituting their mother for a wire model covered in terrycloth; we can fulfil our social quota using social media.

The term Social Intercourse, in short, refers to the interactions that we have with other human beings every day. The related concept of stimulus hunger arose from the work that started with Harlow. Physical intimacy is the most valuable form of stimulus, but a tweet is still a much diluted form of stimuli. In large amounts could it make a viable substitute?

So every person has a quota of social interaction that they need to fill each day. Too little too often will inflict damage upon us, whilst at the same time, too much can also be damaging. In adults sensory deprivation brings forth mental disturbances which will lead to physical illness. The amount of social intercourse needed varies from person to person; each interaction is referred to as a ‘stroke’. A movie actor may require hundreds of strokes each week from anonymous admirers to fill their quota, while a scientist may keep physically and mentally healthy on just one stroke per year from a respected master.

Solitary confinement is dreaded by prisoners, even those hardened to physical brutality. 

It’s all about the value we put on each stroke, the number we need each day, and the deficit that the person has. Bringing this back to social media once more, Twitter provides users with a chance to make up any stimulus deficit. So I put this to you, when you feel the most deprived of social intercourse, that’s when you find yourself most active in social media.

Each interaction with twitter is a stroke to your social being. They vary in magnitude, but even just reading a tweet has some value. Studies have even shown that people do not really care if people do not respond when you tweet something. People perceive that they are still being listened to, despite the lack of direct interaction. If someone perceives they are being heard, then they are being stroked. And remember; the smaller the strokes, the more you probably need. This goes a little way into explaining how an addiction can form and behaviour can be conditioned. But that’s a topic for another day.

So in summary, if you really want to bring down Twitter, make it concrete that no one is reading your tweets. If you find yourself on Twitter more than you want to be, go and get a hug, it might just be all the social intercourse you needed.