Part 2.
Luxury Goods and Red Bull
In the last blog I looked at how we trigger our minds by oblique and indirect methods to influence and invest in our body’s immune system.
In the film Pinocchio (also one of my favourites) when the fox tells Pinocchio that he has “allergy” and simulates his beating heart, the wooden boy believes and feels that he is physically ill. Of course, he’s not a real boy (yet). But the principle is the same; we use indirect suggestion to change and manipulate our feelings (and those of others).
That same principle is used to manipulate and manage how we feel. This “tricking” of our system is something we see in our everyday lives.
Whilst crossing a busy road on my way to my local café for a morning read, I pressed the button on the crossing and it told me to “wait”. It occurred to me that someone (who knows who) was managing my expectations. The “wait” signal had no effect on the traffic lights, its only purpose is to manage my impatience. Most traffic lights (but not all) are set to a time sequence over which I have absolutely no control. So, we are given the illusion of control by pressing the button.
Sometimes we also get a countdown to the time when the lights will change. This is done to reduce the anxiety of not know how long it will take till the light change and you can cross the road and thus saving us from impetuously running across busy traffic because we don’t want to wait.
In so doing we reduce uncertainty and anxiety. The same effect happens when you see a train time countdown at the station. When we know how long we have to wait we reduce anxiety and manage our expectations. Most door-closing lift buttons and tube-opening doors buttons have no actual effect on the closing or opening of the doors, yet we are pleased to have the illusion of agency.
We use oblique signals like this all the time to trick ourselves, and others, to change behavior. A Self-administered placebo. Small “hacks” like these trick us into a different state of mind. It boosts our self-confidence and boosts our status.
Another piece of research has shown that if you force your face to smile, you will trick your mind into thinking you are happier. You may look a little strange whilst you try it, but it does work. Fake-it till you Make-it. So, it appears that if you induce the physical or environmental conditions, you mind is “tricked” into believing that it is in that state. Once you know this it’s easy to see how this can be used to manipulate how we feel.
In my field of Design, if you create an environment that reproduces or simulates a state that a body is in, the mental state will follow. Create a calm environment and there’s a fair chance that the person in that place will feel calm. Wear a well-cut suit and you feel your posture change and confidence follows. Perhaps this is why we value physical spa treatments so highly. The physical state “tricks” the mind into thinking that it feels that way. However, it’s not just a trick, because you will soon feel that way (if the designer has done their job well). The understanding of this has far reaching consequences in almost everything we do.
Luxury Goods and Red Bull.
There’s no (logical) reason to buy a £50,000 watch to tell the time, but surely that’s not why you buy it. It’s the messages it sends say something about your status, (to yourself and to the outside world) and how you want to be perceived. The whole package is indirectly influencing how you feel (assuming that you like that sort of thing, personally it would have the opposite effect on me) and how you think you want others to feel. Oblique actions (in this case a little extravagant) influence behaviour.
If only you could decide to be in love at 4:30 this afternoon; If only you could just choose to be angry; if only you could “decide” not to be afraid of snakes. Perhaps you can, if you give yourself some sort of indirect trigger, catalyst and then reason to change how you feel. Don’t forget though, that reason comes after action.
Red Bull, tastes weird, is expensive and is sold in small cans. It’s obviously too potent to be the same size as a coke can, you only need a little to get the full “hit”. It tastes a bit like medicine so it must be doing me good. It’s expensive (a bit like a good wine, but not so tasty) so must be exclusive (by the way, most people judge wine quality by price). All these signals reinforce our perception of its potency and power. Positioning itself as the champion of extreme sport and crazy stunts also helps. How could something so “potent” not deliver. In fact, it’s so potent that if you drank too much of it you may even fly. Afterall, Red Bull gives you Wings!
In a test by INSEAD and the University of Michigan, 154 young Parisians were asked whether they believed that energy drinks intensified the effects of alcohol. Each drank the same cocktail of vodka, fruit juice and Red Bull, but they were labelled as either, “Vodka Cocktail”, “Fruit juice cocktail” or Vodka Red Bull cocktail. They all completed surveys after drinking, describing their attitude to risk, attractiveness, how drunk they felt and how long they would wait before driving. Although everyone was given exactly the same drink, the Vodka Red Bull cocktail group reported feeling much drunker.
I can confirm this with my wife, who drinks very little. I once told her that a fruit drink was laced with alcohol (it wasn’t). Within minutes she was swaying and feeling “tipsy”, to the great amusement of my children and myself.
This suggests that it’s our perception of what something can do for us becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy and we can, and do, trick our subconscious selves to produce desired behaviors. But we do it obliquely and indirectly.
What I understand from all this is that the placebo effect, although not logical and slightly mysterious really does happen and this behavior is an important part of how we behave in the world. The illogical and the mysterious, as every designer knows shouldn’t be discounted because we can’t explain it logically.
We place far too much emphasis on so-called “logical” thinking, when really, we behave in much less than logical ways. Human behavior doesn’t really fit into the economist’s standard model because we aren’t average and standard.
I know that placebos cannot solve major medical problems, but they do give us an insight into the workings of our illogical and emotional minds.
As Einstein said….
“not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted”
