Excuse me, do you prefer Pepsi or Cola?
You know less about yourself than you think
Hi fellow writer,
As you read this, you might be headed to work.
While I don’t know your occupation, my analytics suggest that you are quite likely to work with influencing other human’s decisions.
You might be a:
Writer
Leader
Marketer
Salesperson
This gives me a reason to think that you benefit from understanding how humans make decisions.
Now, as you read this, you will likely think:
”Thank you for your concern, Nils, but I’ve read Robert Cialdini’s books, I subscribe to Alex Hormozi’s YouTube channel, and I watched The Psychology of Human Misjudgement by Charlie Munger. I’m quite familiar with human behaviour.”
I know, I know.
These books are great - but we’ve all read them.
And while the great sales psychology books give us actionable insights on human decision-making, they tend to overemphasise the conscious mind’s importance.
The unconscious is forgotten.
So, when I started to read Subliminal last week…
…I was fascinated by how the unconscious affects our decisions.
Today’s newsletter will be about enriching your knowledge on how the unconscious affects our decisions more than we think.
I’ll tell about that you in a second - but first:
The regular introduction.
I’m writing this edition while listening to Deep Techno from Spånga Konditori, my local coffee shop.
I’ve now reached the familiarity level 5.
I can order a coffee saying: “I’d like the usual, please”
Nice.
Now, let’s dive in:
What is the unconscious?
A common misconception is that our unconscious consists of thoughts we repress from our conscious mind because it shows our “deepest desires” (which we don’t want to admit to ourselves).
It originates from Freud who, as my psychologist mom often jokes about, explained everything with a penis.
But the last 20 years’ research paint a different image:
The unconscious is unaccessible due to the brain’s structure, not because we actively repress it.
“…many unconscious processes can never be directly revealed through the kind of self-reflection encouraged by therapy, because they transpire in ares of the brain not open to the conscious mind”
This implies:
Regardless of how much we reflect, we can not uncover many of our motivations for an action.
Do you feel sceptic towards the statement I just made?
That’s normal.
The participants of unconscious studies keep on denying that any unconscious factors influenced them, even when these factors were pointed out.
This fascinates me.
As the rational beings we think we are, shouldn’t we accept this as a fact?
Apparently not.
Humans are averse to the idea that unconscious forces rule their judgement and behaviour.
You don’t know yourself as well as you think
Another idea you’re inclined to be sceptical of is that you don’t know yourself as well as you think.
Most of us are strongly confident in our mental theories about ourselves.
However, how often have we tested them, like on a scientific level?
Zero.
You have conscious explanations for everything you do, even if it’s unconsciously motivated.
This doesn’t mean all explanations are wrong.
But it means that we have a reason to be sceptical.
Yet, if I ask you:
Why do you prefer Cola over Pepsi?
You’d say: ”It tastes better”
But in reality, Pepsi tastes better (!?).
The Pepsi Paradox
Since the age of the dinosaurs, Cola and Pepsi are battling over who’s the best at making coke.
Pepsi often brags with having won the taste test, which it consistently does.
However, most people still prefer Cola:
The Pepsi paradox is that Pepsi beats Cola in blind taste tests, but Cola beats Pepsi when the participants know what they are drinking.
Brand affection changes our experience.
What wine do you prefer, fellow writer?
The unconscious shapes our experiences in more ways:
For a study, researchers served prospects two glasses of wine and asked them to rate the quality of each.
One was filled with a $10 wine
The other was filled with a $90 wine.
As you might expect, they rated the glass with the $90 wine better than the $10 one.
But here comes the twist:
Both glasses were filled with the same wine.
The higher price tag made the same wine taste better.
Both subjectively, but also scientifically speaking:
The measured brain activity in the orbifrontal cortex, the “pleasure center”, was higher with the $90 wine.
What does this mean?
How your unconscious changes your experience
We think that our experience of a product is based solely on its quality.
When in reality, our experience of product is created in our mind from an array of factors such as:
Marketing
Branding
Price
I can’t say it better than the author:
“Both direct, explicit aspects of life (the drink, in this case), and indirect, implicit aspects (the price or brand) conspire to create our mental experience (the taste). The key word here is “create”. Our brains are not simply recording a taste or other experience, they are creating it.” - Leonard Mlodinow
Wind-down
As you might be able to tell, I’m still early in discovering this field - this edition might come off a bit chaotic, like a carpenter apprentice who hammers their first nail.
But my main takeaways so far are:
I underestimated the unconscious importance
We create conscious explanations to unconscious decisions
Self-reflection helps me become more self-aware, but some parts of the unconscious are inaccessible due to the brain's structure
People who want to influence should learn more about the unconscious
Fellow writer,
Thank you for reading this.
Have a great Monday.
Best,
Nils
