Extreme Makeover: Neural Edition
A few days ago I was having a conversation about the process of selling a house. I'm not a homeowner, but I was curious: if you're going to make cosmetic improvements before putting it on the market, in the hopes you can get a higher selling price, where does it make the most sense to invest? (While it depends on the property, the general answer is kitchen and bathrooms.)
The discussion came around to those little things you can do. Before a prospective buyer shows up to walk through the house, bake cookies and get the smell of sugary goodness wafting through the air. Set the kitchen table as though you were about to sit down to eat. Clean up any messes or clutter you have lying around. These kinds of things make a home seem more inviting. No two houses are the same, but to the extent you could test this kind of thing, use of these types of tactics appear to be correlated with a higher closing price.
Isn't this manipulative? Of course it is, but it's not dishonest. It would be wrong to lie about, or to conceal, some problem with a house you're selling, but putting out some fresh-baked cookies is a pretty transparent way of influencing a prospective buyer. If they feel slighted because they're being manipulated, they have the option of turning around and walking out without buying your house.
I'm not interested in the ethics of cookie baking to sell a house for more money. What interests me is that some people have an awareness of these tactics when they encounter them, and others do not. Some people would come in, smell the cookie smell, and not give a second thought to it. It wouldn't even cross their minds that the cookies had been baked with the intent of making them want the house more. This is probably most people; if you're shopping around for a house, I would think you'd have a lot more on your mind to focus on than the reason the owner is baking some confections to coincide with your visit.
So who's more susceptible to these tactics? Someone who knows about them and consciously takes notice when they encounter them, or someone who doesn't know about them and remains happily oblivious? Are most people who I call "oblivious" actually oblivious, or are they merely processing the knowledge on a different, sensory level that's below conscious awareness?
I read recently about a study that psychologists did in this area, as it pertains to advertising. If you're aware of the tactics being used, and you're aware that you're susceptible to them, are you more or less likely to succumb to them? Counterintuitively, the result of the study showed that people who were aware were more likely to succumb than those who were not. Why is this? Does this awareness make us let our guard down? Does it cause the thing to which we're being exposed to get embedded deeper in our brains? Why am I asking myself all these questions?
I can't remember how this study was constructed, and unfortunately, I don't remember where I read about it, so I can't offer a link with more details. I also can't be sure if this translates to the home selling example I mentioned before. But I thought the idea was interesting enough. In some contexts, knowledge of our weaknesses and how they might be used to influence us makes us more susceptible to being influenced instead of less. Knowledge doesn't always inoculate us. Maybe, then, we shouldn't study advertising tactics as a means of self-defense.
The discussion came around to those little things you can do. Before a prospective buyer shows up to walk through the house, bake cookies and get the smell of sugary goodness wafting through the air. Set the kitchen table as though you were about to sit down to eat. Clean up any messes or clutter you have lying around. These kinds of things make a home seem more inviting. No two houses are the same, but to the extent you could test this kind of thing, use of these types of tactics appear to be correlated with a higher closing price.
Isn't this manipulative? Of course it is, but it's not dishonest. It would be wrong to lie about, or to conceal, some problem with a house you're selling, but putting out some fresh-baked cookies is a pretty transparent way of influencing a prospective buyer. If they feel slighted because they're being manipulated, they have the option of turning around and walking out without buying your house.
I'm not interested in the ethics of cookie baking to sell a house for more money. What interests me is that some people have an awareness of these tactics when they encounter them, and others do not. Some people would come in, smell the cookie smell, and not give a second thought to it. It wouldn't even cross their minds that the cookies had been baked with the intent of making them want the house more. This is probably most people; if you're shopping around for a house, I would think you'd have a lot more on your mind to focus on than the reason the owner is baking some confections to coincide with your visit.
So who's more susceptible to these tactics? Someone who knows about them and consciously takes notice when they encounter them, or someone who doesn't know about them and remains happily oblivious? Are most people who I call "oblivious" actually oblivious, or are they merely processing the knowledge on a different, sensory level that's below conscious awareness?
I read recently about a study that psychologists did in this area, as it pertains to advertising. If you're aware of the tactics being used, and you're aware that you're susceptible to them, are you more or less likely to succumb to them? Counterintuitively, the result of the study showed that people who were aware were more likely to succumb than those who were not. Why is this? Does this awareness make us let our guard down? Does it cause the thing to which we're being exposed to get embedded deeper in our brains? Why am I asking myself all these questions?
I can't remember how this study was constructed, and unfortunately, I don't remember where I read about it, so I can't offer a link with more details. I also can't be sure if this translates to the home selling example I mentioned before. But I thought the idea was interesting enough. In some contexts, knowledge of our weaknesses and how they might be used to influence us makes us more susceptible to being influenced instead of less. Knowledge doesn't always inoculate us. Maybe, then, we shouldn't study advertising tactics as a means of self-defense.