Monthly Archives: December 2013

Managing Conscious and Subconscious Deceit When Gathering Marketing Intelligence

Posted by Nathan on

photoRoddyLie2

Originally Published April 2013

Our customers lie. Maybe not on purpose. And maybe not to be harmful. But they lie. And if we want to manage these lies effectively we have to understand better how they are produced by the conflict between the cognitive brain and the emotional brain.

Deception in Consumer Research

When we as marketers ask consumers to respond to surveys or participate in focus groups we know there is a chance of getting less-than-truthful responses. This deception can be intentional and malevolent or it can occur without conscious control. And in the increasingly popular social media channels where there is more anonymity and less personal engagement, deception is even more likely.

Consumers can lie because they don’t like the product but don’t want to be rude. Or they may succumb to social pressures in a group setting and lie about their likes or dislikes of a product in order to gain acceptance to that group. And sometimes, due to an array of individual factors including memory transference, consumers may report false impressions of products that they genuinely believe to be true. For these and a variety of other reasons these deceptions show up in consumer insights testing.

This known possibility of deception in the feedback loop creates a bias that has traditionally been mitigated through large and costly sample sizes. But recent work in the fields of neuromarketing, psychology and physiology is suggesting that there are better methods for gathering consumer insights with more accurate data and with much smaller sample sizes.

Several years ago, in an effort to design a more effective method for measuring advertising impact, I launched an independent research program to study the physiological connection between emotions and consumer reactions. In the process I learned a great deal about how the physiology of our ancestors has shaped the way we make buying decisions today.

The Ancient History of Emotional Behavior

As humans, we have evolved over millions of years with all of the innate behaviors and complex reward systems necessary for our two most important personal goals: our survival and the survival of our offspring. That is, we are pre-wired to survive and make babies. Almost everything we do in life that genuinely makes us feel good is related in some way to one of these very important goals. And that feeling is tied directly to emotional responses.

Emotions are thought to have evolved as a way for our brains to manage our behavior toward those personal goals. Based in a primitive part of the brain called the limbic system, our emotions are integrated with the body through the endocrine system and the autonomic nervous system to provide a complex psychophysiological response process that makes us feel good or feel bad based on our success or failure at satisfying our personal goals. Involuntarily, we smile and feel exhilarated when things go well and we frown or cry when they go badly.

Our emotions also can influence key bodily functions—heart rate, respiration, perspiration, etc.—to prepare us for actions related to those goals (i.e., the fight or flight response). But our emotions can also manifest themselves through changes in other parts of the body, most notably through our facial expressions. The face is innervated by both the somatic and autonomic nervous systems which puts it under the influence of both conscious and unconscious control. So, the face can respond to subconscious emotional stimuli much like other physiological functions.

The Cognitive Brain (Almost) Takes Over

This system of emotions and physiology helped manage human behavior for millions of years. Then, around 10,000 years ago when humans began settling into larger clans, villages and cities, the behaviors that satisfied our personal needs quickly came into conflict with the needs of the other humans in those larger communities. Too many people in one place, each satisfying his or her own personal needs, will certainly lead to discord. In order for us to live together in these large groups, we needed to learn to “play nice in the sandbox.” We needed behaviors that satisfied our personal goals, but stopped short of interfering with the ability of others to enjoy the same.

To live harmoniously in large groups, humans had to develop the concept of reciprocal altruism which is basically the you be nice to me and I’ll be nice to you philosophy. It has been theorized that laws and religions were cultivated in an effort to provide the internal (religious) and external (legal) behavioral modifications necessary for people to act in a more civil manner. As this behavior modification was a conscious effort, it came under control of the cognitive part of the brain.

However, as we developed this outer layer of cognitive civility our emotions stayed tuned to our inner layer of personal goal satisfaction, still dominated by the limbic system. And it is this emotional part of the brain, being well integrated with our physiology, that has the ability to exert greater power over our behavior by manipulating the way we physically feel. In short, emotional motivators are far more powerful than cognitive ones.

Listening to the Emotional Brain

What does this mean to researchers interested in eliciting accurate data from consumers? It means we should pay more attention to the consumer’s physical response to our messaging. A consumer may be feeling a positive emotional response to a product but, due to a variety of reasons originating from cognitive processes, the response is withheld from surveys or focus group participation. This is a bias that could lead to false negatives in consumer insights research.

But a consumer experiencing a positive response likely would be unable to withhold the changes in physiology—heart rate, respiration, skin conductivity, subtle facial expressions, etc.—that are indicative of emotional responses. Likewise, false positive responses could also be detected in the same manner. And this is the finding most valuable to consumer insights researchers: a situation where a subject professes a cognitively-driven positive response but lacks the behavioral influence of a positive emotional response.

By measuring physiological responses (including facial expressions) we should be able to offer a much better analysis of consumer experience testing than was previously available through traditional focus groups, surveys or audience testing methods. And by reducing the bias associated with deception, we will do so with smaller sample sizes and reduced long term costs.

For further reading:

Understanding Emotions, by Keith Oatley, Dacher Keltner and Jennifer M. Jenkins (2006). Blackwell Publishing. Maiden, MA USA.

A Prehistoric Sales Tool That Still Works

Posted by Nathan on

facial expressions

Originally Published February 2013

One of our most valuable sales tools allows us to establish interpersonal relationships, manage conversations and broadcast our feelings to an attentive world. It was millions of years in the making and we scarcely give it a second thought. It’s our face.

What the Face Can Say

Many successful sales professionals seem to agree that the key to a solid business relationship begins with the establishment of a good personal relationship between the sales person and the decision maker. Trust must be established before product information can be shared and believed.

But how do we know we are building and managing those relationships effectively? What is the feedback mechanism that tells us we’re doing the right things? Good sales people will say they have good instincts or that they are good at reading people. Somehow they just know what their customers are thinking.

What they are likely referring to is an innate ability to observe and understand facial expressions. A skill that was buried deep in our subconscious brain for millions of years and that has been all but adapted out by generations of reliance on spoken language, written language and, as of recently, email and social media.

Prehistoric Origins

Well before the appearance of spoken language, our biological ancestors communicated with each other through body posture and facial expressions. Critical emotional states such as fear, anger, happiness and sadness were transmitted to specific muscles groups in the face where they were converted into expressions. Understanding the meaning of these expressions was very important to assessing the level of harmony—or threat—in the surrounding environment. It was a crucial skill that was passed down through generations and, according to leading researchers, is still with us today.

Dr. Paul Ekman is regarded as the world’s leading authority on facial expressions and their associated emotions. He has spent his entire career traveling the continents and comparing the way different cultures display and decode facial expressions. What he has found is that facial expressions are almost universal in nature and meaning. An expression of disgust on a face in London is readily recognizable to an observer from New Guinea (researchers and ethologists have theorized that this supports the evolutionary origin of expressions as a primal means of communicating within the species).

The Physiology of the Face

Our faces are able to display so much information about what’s going on inside us because of the way they are structured. Unlike most areas of the body, the face is innervated by both the somatic and autonomic nervous systems. Remembering our high school biology, the somatic system primarily controls motor functions under conscious control, while the autonomic system manages bodily systems without conscious input. This is why we are able to make some deliberate, exaggerated facial expressions in addition to the spontaneous ones that we don’t or, in some cases, can’t control.

The limbic system, an older part of the brain that mediates emotions, affects the autonomic nervous system in response to emotional activity. When we experience strong emotions it is this system that transduces them for display on the face.

Evolution’s Gift to the Sales Team

After millions of years of evolution we have slowly adapted to other forms of communication including speech, writing and email. But still, deep in the recesses of our primal brain, we have maintained the ability to recognize, and be sensitive to, the facial expressions of others.

When we say someone’s face just lit up, we are likely reacting to an expansion of the orbicularis oculi which tightens the skin around the eyes and allows more light to enter the eye sockets, a sign we correctly interpret as an awakening or sudden understanding. We respond to lowering brows and wrinkled corrugators as a sign of anger, and to a tightening of the lip corners as a signal of restraint. We may not be able to note these observations without training, but we are programmed to observe them and react to them.

Ekman and his team have used this research to develop highly specialized facial recognition programs that are used by government agencies and security firms around the world. But we don’t need to be a highly trained expert to make effective use of this information in the sales and marketing world. By studying the faces of those with whom we communicate, and by learning the basics of expression recognition, we can become more aware of how our words are affecting the conversation. Also, like actors, if we can learn to produce subtle, realistic expressions on demand, we might be able to make better conscious management of the conversation by offering our partners important subconscious clues to assure them of the direction the conversation is taking.

Continued research in the field of facial expression recognition may soon give us even better techniques for the industries of sales, security and any capacity where a heightened awareness of emotional disposition would be a benefit. But for now, sales teams have the opportunity to enhance their effectiveness at building relationships by using a tool that has been with us for eons.

If the eyes are the window on the soul, the face is the door.

For further reading:

Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics and Marriage by Paul Ekman (2001). New York, NY: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc.

Ethics, Liars and Polygraph Countermeasures

Posted by Nathan on

polygraph countermeasures

Originally Published February 2013

For better or worse, deception is a part of human nature. Sometimes it’s well intentioned and sometimes it’s for personal gain at the expense of others. It also can be done consciously or subconsciously. And while most deception is frowned upon in general, there are some situations where it would be acceptable to most people.

But whatever the origin, intent or nature, deception in humans usually involves a discrete but detectable conflict between the higher cognitive brain and the primal emotional brain. And it’s this conflict, this struggle between the higher thinking brain and the primitive feeling brain, that initiates the physiological processes that can bring our deceptions to the attention of the outside world.

The Polygraph Connection

As a part of my research on using physiological measurement to track consumer insights, I spent a great deal of time studying facial expression analysis and learning the polygraph examination process. While both of these techniques are used in psychophysiological marketing research, they are also widely used by security professionals in their efforts to detect deception in human subjects. And it is this aspect of my work that consistently draws the most interest from friends and colleagues alike. People, it seems, are fascinated by scientific processes that detect—or seek to detect—deception.

Does It Work?

In discussions about biometric analysis in consumer insights testing, as soon as any reference is made to similarities with polygraph examinations, the question invariably heard next is does the polygraph really work? And the answer, as all philosophers are likely to say, depends on what you mean by work. As a lie catcher, the polygraph has demonstrated that it can perform slightly better than chance in detecting deception. While it has strong advocates and detractors alike in the scientific community, a comprehensive 2002 study by the National Academy of Sciences seemed largely unimpressed.

I certainly do see the merits of using physiological measurement to accurately assess emotional affect (there is, after all, considerable scientific evidence in support of a positive connection between discrete emotional states and physiological response). But I’m skeptical of the polygraph’s ability, as a lie catcher, to use it to detect deception. And this is not because I doubt its technical capabilities, but because of the opportunity for bias in its methods of analysis.

How Does It Work?

The two primary tests used in polygraph examinations are the control question test (CQT) and the guilty knowledge test (GKT). The CQT is by far the most common and is likely to be the type of test most people will encounter if asked to take a polygraph exam. It compares and contrasts a subject’s physiological responses to various control and relevant questions and, using algorithmic software, returns a probability of deception. The GKT is similar in that it is based on changes in physiological states, but it tests a subject’s response to information likely to be known only to guilty individuals.

In both of these tests the final decision on whether the subject is judged as deceptive comes down to a combination of algorithmic analysis of the responses by the software and the opinions of the examiners. Although scoring of results by most polygraph software systems is now almost fully automatic, there is still a considerable spectrum of input by the examiner administering the test. So there is ample opportunity to introduce affective bias through physiological input as well as subject behavior.

The Ethics of Polygraph Countermeasures

Ethics is the philosophical study of what is considered to be right and wrong—not to be confused with the legal definitions of lawful and unlawful—within a specified population. While much has been written about the ethics of deception, i.e., when it is acceptable to lie, far less time has been devoted to the topic of the ethics of deception detection. What are the ethical limitations of those who try to detect deception? And what are the ethical responsibilities of those who work to resist that detection?

Recently, a colleague in the legal profession asked me about my opinion on the effectiveness of polygraph countermeasures. I replied that there were a number of methods that could be employed to introduce bias into a polygraph exam, essentially rendering the results inconclusive. Being a lawyer, he restated my statement in terms to his benefit: So you’re saying it is possible to actually beat a polygraph, right? Yes, I said, I certainly believe so. He then asked the inevitable. Is it possible to effectively coach prospective polygraph examinees?

This of course raised an interesting ethical question I had not considered before. As an uninitiated observer, I would have no way of knowing whether the potential subject had any guilt they might be trying to keep hidden from the examination. And I would not think it ethically acceptable to assist a child molester who is seeking to keep his actions hidden. On the other hand I would certainly want to help a falsely accused employee remain calm during a polygraph exam that might be given as part of an investigation into company theft. So, what to do?

I guess the answer, like all philosophers might say, depends.