and words are not the only factors that can subconsciously affect our decision-making.
A whole host of environmental cues can affect the decisions that we make, often without us having any idea of them.
Imagine you are at the doctor’s surgery for a routine visit. The nurse hands you a pamphlet promoting a new vaccine that could have a major impact on your future health.
What will your decision be guided by? Thoughtful analysis of the information? A considered weighing up of its pros and cons?
To some extent, of course, yes. But you may also be influenced by something you probably wouldn’t have expected to play a major role in such an important choice: the colour of the pamphlet.
Countless studies reveal that colour plays a significant role in our evaluation process. Speakers presenting with colour slides are viewed as having higher-quality data than those with black-and-white ones.18 Men rate women as more physically attractive and sexually desirable when their pictures are superimposed on a red background rather than a white, grey, blue or green one.19 Football referees are more likely to give penalties to teams wearing black strips than to those in other colours.20 When researchers sent multiple French waitresses to work wearing different-coloured T-shirts, they found that men tipped them more if they were wearing red rather than black, white, blue, green or yellow.21
Even when it comes to our investment decisions, colour has a marked impact.
Doron Kliger is a behavioural economist at the University of Haifa, with an interest in how colour affects judgement in the financial sector. By carrying out experiments on investors, Kliger has discovered that when we are given information about a stock set against a red background, we focus on its potential to fall in value, making us less likely to want to buy it. Whereas if we read the same information on a green background, we focus on the stock’s potential for gain, and therefore consider it a more appealing buy.22
It may seem extraordinary that decisions as important as the evaluations of people we meet, whether or not to be vaccinated, or what portfolio of shares to invest in, can be affected by the colour associated with the information we are given – but there is a large body of evidence to prove that this is the case.
And it’s not just colours that mess with our decision-making.
Studies have shown that wine merchants sell more French wine when they play French music, and more German wine when they play German music.23 That in restaurants, people spend more when slower-tempo music is being played, or classical rather than pop.24 That waiters who briefly touch customers receive larger tips than ones who do not.25 And that individuals asked to sign a petition are also more likely to do so if they’ve been briefly touched.26 So, if you’re trying to get a favourable response, you might want to touch someone on the forearm when making a request – patients who are touched on the forearm for one to two seconds by their doctors adhere significantly better to their medication regime than those who are not, with the biggest increase being for males.27
By triggering emotions, reactions and at times memories, touch and sound have proved capable of powerfully steering our choices in one direction or another.
So too has another of our senses.
What happened when identical pairs of Nike trainers were placed in two identical but separate rooms – one room sprayed with a mixed floral scent, the other not? Eighty-four per cent more consumers preferred the shoes displayed in the fragrant room. They also estimated the ‘fragrant’ pair to cost $10.33 more than the identical pair in the unscented room.28
It’s not just in supermarkets, restaurants and shopping malls that our senses can be scarily manipulated, without our being aware of it.
Did you know that you’re more likely to offer a job to a candidate if you’ve been handed their CV on a heavy clipboard, rather than on a light one?29 Or that the way you judge someone’s behaviour may depend on something as simple as what you are holding in your hands?
A group of researchers at Yale gave participants either a soft blanket or a hard block of wood to handle. They then read a passage about an ambiguous interaction between a supervisor and employee. Those who’d touched the wooden block judged the employee to be more harsh and set in their ways than those who’d been stroking the blanket.30
Did you know that you’re more likely to act stingily with your money if the room you’re in has a briefcase in it rather than a rucksack?31 The mere presence of the briefcase unconsciously triggers business-related associations, thereby putting you in the mindset of ‘grab’ and ‘compete’.
Or that you are more likely to make an offer for a house if it smells of freshly baked bread, as that evokes feelings of being cared for and nurtured?32
Even the most trivial aspects of our environment can have a profound effect on how we unconsciously assess things. In a recent study, two groups of participants were asked to judge the stability of celebrity relationships – couples like Barack and Michelle Obama, and David and Victoria Beckham. One group were seated at a table and chair that were regular and steady; the other group’s table and chair were wobbly. Sure enough, the wobbly group were more likely to see the couples as ‘likely to dissolve’. What’s more, when asked which traits they valued most in a relationship, the individuals sitting at wobbly furniture were more likely to value stability. The small change in their environment had given them a greater desire for emotional security, a need to cling on to something to make them feel secure.33
If you are a marketer, whether of ideas, policies, ideological positions, or just shampoo, knowing the impact of the right words, frames, metaphors, colours, sounds, smells and sensory experiences is extremely valuable. But if you are continually on the receiving end of these tricks, triggers and anchors, as most of us are, you need to be primed and ready for this continual barrage of deceptions.
If you are not, how can you be confident that the decision you have made is the right one?
So how do we make sure that we’re not this easily manipulated? That we’re not held hostage to our environments? It’s not easy. We can’t make real-world decisions in a vacuum. And sometimes the sophistication of the message, or the sheer volume and force of the barrage, can overwhelm us. But there are things we can do.
Reclaim the Truth
The bad news is that it’s not enough to give yourself a general note to avoid basing your decisions on anchors, sensory cues and rhetoric.34 This tends not to make any difference at all.
The good news is that there are ways to regain control of your unconscious, at least to some degree. There are active thinking
