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  • Posted by Jason Hensel at
    12:00AM 12/20/2012 • 2 Comments

    Timing Matters When Marketing Meetings

    Here's something to consider when you're marketing your meeting or event. Consumers are more likely to make emotional instead of objective assessments when the outcomes are closer to the present time than when they are further away in the future, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.

    “The proximity of a decision’s outcome increases consumer reliance on feelings when making decisions," wrote authors Hannah H. Chang (Singapore Management University) and Michel Tuan Pham (Columbia University). "Feelings are relied upon more when the outcome is closer in time because these feelings appear to be more informative in such situations."

    From small to big choices, we base many of our decisions on either feelings or objective assessment. The option that appeals more to our feelings is often not the one that “makes more sense.” When do consumers rely more on their feelings than objective assessments? And how does the proximity of the decision outcome influence consumer decision-making? 

    In one study, college students were asked to imagine that they were about to graduate, had found a well-paying job, and were looking for an apartment to rent after graduation. They were then given a choice between an apartment that appeals more to their feelings (a smaller, prettier apartment with better views) and an option that is objectively better (a bigger, more conveniently located apartment). Compared to college juniors and those who imagined graduating a year later, college seniors and those who imagined graduating and moving into an apartment next month were more likely to choose the former option.

    And this is the key quote that you should remember when marketing your meeting or event:

    “Companies should consider the time between consumer decision-making and consumption," the authors wrote. "When consumers will be deciding immediately prior to consumption, companies should focus on messages that appeal to consumers’ feelings. When they will be deciding well in advance, companies should focus less on emotional appeals and instead emphasize messages that appeal to objective assessments."

    For example, if your event is many months out, market it objectively. However, if you're in that last month and trying to raise registration numbers, appeal to attendees' emotions.

    How do you market your meetings and events? Have you ever considered time frames and how that affects your marketing plans? Please let us know your thoughts in the comments. 



  • Posted by Jason Hensel at
    12:00AM 08/28/2012 • 0 Comments

    When We Let Our Hearts Choose For Us

    We make choices every day based on recommendations from friends and family. What about recommendations from strangers?  

    In his Ph.D. study at BI Norwegian Business School, Ali Faraji-Rad conducted seven experiments to see whether we are more easily persuaded by people who are similar to us than by people who are dissimilar to us. He looked at what circumstance might make the differences greater.

    In all the experiments, participants were asked to imagine that they were going to book a hotel room online and that they were reading a review of the hotel they were considering. Participants were then given a negative review of this hotel, along with a profile of the reviewer. The profiles were designed to create a feeling of similarity or dissimilarity with the participant in the experiment.

    “Participants were more influenced by reviewers who were similar to themselves than by reviewers who were dissimilar," Faraji-Rad said. "This difference was greatest when the choice of hotels was based on emotions and not logic."

    Half of the participants in the first experiment were asked to use logic in evaluating the hotel, while the others were was asked to base their evaluation on feelings. Those participants who based their evaluation on feelingswere influenced by reviewers similar to themselves.

    Similar reviewers had no influence on participants who chose their hotel room on the basis of common sense and logic.

    In the second experiment, half the participants were asked to write down some thoughts on why it is good to use logic when making decisions, while the other half was asked to write about why it is good to use our emotions when making decisions.

    In this way, participants were primed to base their choice on logic or emotions.

    The second experiment showed the same results as the first one. Participants who used their emotions were influenced, while those who followed their sense of logic were unaffected by reviewers who resembled themselves.

    In experiments three and four, Faraji-Rad instructed half of the participants to imagine that they were going away for fun, while the other half thought they would be travelling for work.

    Previous studies have shown that we are more likely to use our emotions when we travel for fun than if we have more functional motives (such as a business trip).

    Those participants who were thinking of a trip for fun were, as expected, more affected by the similar reviewer than those who were told to imagine a business trip.

    One half of the participants in the fifth experiment were asked to evaluate the hotel and imagine that they would be travelling next week, while the others were told they would be going in a year’s time.

    Participants who thought they were going next week were more influenced by similar reviewers than those who were to travel in a year’s time. 

    “Our choices are more based on emotions when they concern the near future,” Faraji-Rad said.

    In the sixth experiment, half the participants were told to imagine they were in a lottery where the chance of winning the hotel package was one to five, while the other half received much longer odds, one to 5,000.

    Participants with the best chance of winning were more influenced by the similar reviewer than participants with longer odds.

    “With a good chance of winning, we feel that the trip is within reach, and we base our choice more on feelings,” Faraji-Rad said.

    In the seventh and final experiment of the Ph.D. study, half the participants had to remember a seven-digit figure while assessing the hotel. The other half only had to remember a two-digit figure.

    Earlier research has shown that we are more likely to use our emotions when we have to retain too much information in our memory.

    Those participants who had to remember the seven-digit figure were more influenced by the similar reviewer (than by the dissimilar reviewer), even when they envisioned going on a business trip.

    When you book something for yourself, do you rely on your emotions or reason?

    (Story materials from BI Norwegian Business School.)



  • Posted by Jason Hensel at
    12:00AM 08/16/2012 • 2 Comments

    Feedback Can Be Futile

    People who give positive encouragement and constructive criticism could be wasting their breath according to the latest research from a psychology expert at Queen Mary, University of London.

    The study, published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience, found that when people received either positive or negative feedback about their performance on complex decision-making tasks, it made their decision making worse.

    “The kind of task people had to perform was difficult and demanding," said Dr. Magda Osman, the study's author. "So, when people received positive or negative feedback, it overloaded them with too much information and distracted them from making a good decision.

    “We found that people’s performance got worse when they had to make sense of the feedback they were given while also performing the main task," Osman continued. “The role of feedback is over emphasized. People typically think that any form of feedback should improve performance in many tasks, and the more frequently it is given, the better performance will be. However, what needs to be considered is how complex the task is in the first place, because this will determine how much feedback will actually interfere with rather than facilitate performance.”

    The study involved approximately100 people who were given the task of choosing how best to either predict or control the state of health of a baby, revealing that feedback can play a negative role in a particularly complex decision-making scenario.

    However, Osman says this type of finding can be generalized and applied to a variety of other complex situations.

    “The introduction of smart energy meters into the home to monitor the amount of energy you’re consuming seems like a nice ‘green’ idea to help you consume less energy, but the complexity of the feedback people receive may not necessarily help them to reduce their energy consumption,” Osman said. “If the energy meter keeps changing and people are unable to track what appliances are on, how could they possibly learn how to lower their energy consumption?

    “People are already being bombarded with high levels of complex information with the influx of new technology into our lives and the increasing reliance on information from the smorgasbord of apps we have at our fingertips," Osman continued. "It is bound to take its toll on our ability to make good choices in difficult decision-making situations.”

    Osman warns that people in management positions need to be aware of the type of feedback they are providing to their staff.

    “We have shown that feedback really doesn’t help people who are making complex decisions," Osman said. "People in management positions need to give their staff more time to analyse and evaluate things in detail when dealing with difficult situations so they can come up with solutions without any distractions in order to get the best out of them.”

    Osman added that her findings disagree with Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman, who writes in his popular book Thinking, Fast and Slow that feedback is good, and is also at odds with the authors Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein whose book Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness was named "Best Book of the Year" by The Economist.

    “My work shows that feedback alone is not enough to ensure success in decision making," Osman said. "I may not be popular for my research into the role of feedback in complex decision-making tasks, but I hope it will make some people think twice about whether they could potentially hinder people’s performance with the feedback they provide."

    (Story materials from Queen Mary, University of London.)



  • Posted by Jason Hensel at
    12:00AM 06/08/2012 • 3 Comments

    Positive Fantasies Lead People to Acquire Biased Info

    A new study has found that when we fantasize about dream vacations before they are possible, we tend to overlook the negatives—thus influencing our decision-making down the line.

    "We were interested in the effects of positive fantasies—what happens when people imagine an idealized, best-case-scenario version of the future, compared to when they imagine a less idealized version,” said Heather Barry Kappes of New York University, co-author of the study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. "This is one of the first papers to examine selective information acquisition at this early stage, before people are seriously considering a possibility.”

    For example, imagine that you would like to take a trip to Australia this year but think you are very unlikely to do so—you have no more vacation time left, cannot afford it or would rather save up for a new car. But you still daydream about how nice it would be to see the Australian Outback and relax on the beaches, perhaps without thinking about the long plane ride there or the poisonous animals. Those daydreams, Kappes says, have powerful effects.

    To test those effects, Kappes and co-author Gabriele Oettingen asked people to imagine a particular future about one of three topics: wearing glamorous high-heeled shoes, making money in the stock market or taking a vacation. To induce positive fantasies for each topic, the study participants were prompted to think about how great it would be to do each activity. In the control condition, participants also imagined experiencing the future, but were prompted to think about the negatives as well, with questions like "Would it really be so great?” In both conditions, participants wrote down what they were thinking for the researchers to ensure they were engaged in the imagery.

    After that exercise, the researchers offered the participants a choice of different types of information. For example, participants could browse a website describing the positive and negative health consequences of wearing high heels, and researchers noted how much more time they spent reading about positive versus negative consequences. Or, they could choose which of five (fictitious) Tripadvisor.com reviews they wanted to read, and researchers recorded whether they chose one that was more pro-trip (i.e., five stars) or con-trip (i.e., one star).

    Kappes' team found that for each topic, imagining the idealized version made people prefer to learn about the pros rather than the cons of the future event. 

    "These effects are pronounced when people are not seriously considering pursuing a given future,” Kappes said.

    The work has important implications for even the most deliberate of decision-makers. 

    "When people are seriously considering implementing a decision like taking a trip, they often engage in careful deliberations about the pros versus cons,” Kappes said. "Our work suggests that before getting to this point, positive fantasies might lead people to acquire biased information—to learn more about the pros rather than the cons. Thus, even if people deliberate very carefully on the information they've acquired, they could still make poor decisions.”

    People need to be aware of these effects to ensure that they acquire balanced information before it is time to make a decision, she says. The study also contributes to a larger body of research about the powerful consequences of mental imagery—and shows that positive thinking may not always be best. 

    "Although there are benefits to imagining a positive future, there are also drawbacks, and it's important to recognize them in order to most effectively pursue our goals,” she said.

    (Story materials provided by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology)



  • Posted by Jason Hensel at
    12:00AM 03/16/2012 • 2 Comments

    Collaboration Leads to an Increase in Overconfidence

    From the corporate boardroom to the kitchen table, important decisions are often made in collaboration. But are two—or three or five—heads better than one? Not always, according to new research from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. 

    “People who make judgments by working with someone else are more confident in those judgments. As a result they take less input from other people”—and this myopia wipes out any advantage a pair may have over an individual, says psychologist Julia A. Minson, who conducted the study with Jennifer S. Mueller. “The collaborative process itself is the problem.” 

    The findings appear in the journal Psychological Science, published by the Association for Psychological Science.

    To test the hypothesis that confidence born of collaboration takes a toll on the quality of judgment, Minson and Mueller asked 252 people to estimate nine quantities related to U.S. geography, demographics and commerce, either individually or in pairs after discussion. They were then offered the estimates of other individuals and pairs and allowed to revise their own; the final estimates therefore could come from the efforts of two to four people. To sweeten the pot, participants earned a US$30 bonus for each of two estimation rounds, but lost $1 for each percentage point their answer deviated from correct. Individuals also rated their confidence in their judgments.

    The results: People working with a partner were more confident in their estimates and significantly less willing to take outside advice. The pairs’ guesses were marginally more accurate than those of the individuals at first. But after revision (or lack thereof), that difference was gone. Even the combined judgments of four people yielded no better results than those of two or three. Finally, the researchers found that had the pairs yielded to outside input, their estimates would have been significantly more accurate. Their confidence was costly.

    So should we toss out teamwork? No, says Minson, but since collaboration is expensive and time consuming, managers should use it efficiently. For one thing, a group of 10 is not 10 times better. 

    “Mathematically, you get the biggest bang from the buck going from one decision-maker to two," Minson said. "For each additional person, that benefit drops off in a downward sloping curve.” 

    Most important is awareness of the costs of teamwork. 

    “If people become aware that collaboration leads to an increase in overconfidence, you can set up ways to mitigate it," Minson said. "Teams could be urged to consider and process each others’ inputs more thoroughly.”

    The same goes for a couple choosing a mortgage or a car, Minson says. 

    “Just because you make a decision with someone else and you feel good about it, don’t be so sure that you’ve solved the problem and you don’t need help from anybody else.”

    (Story materials provided by the Association for Psychological Science.)



  • Posted by Jason Hensel at
    12:00AM 06/15/2011 • 0 Comments

    Top 10 Lists Are Getting Out of Hand

    I'm not a fan of the numbered article—the type of stories that tell me six ways to do this, eight ways to do that, 10 ways to wear a hat. 

    This is not to say I don't understand why they're around or that I don't take reading advantage of their format when I come across them. It's just that, as a writer, I think it's important that ideas be expressed in fully thought-out paragraphs. When I come across an article that lists 10 items—and those items are more prominent than the rest of the text—I'm just going to read those 10 things. Forget that little paragraph under the bold sentence. It's not important, because it wasn't in bold!

    You see these types of stories all over the Internet, and Malcolm MacIver of Discover magazine thinks he knows why. 

    First in his list of "Ten Reasons We Are Seeing An Excess of Lists of Ten Things We Should Know" is that we don't have time to read anymore. I disagree. We do have time; it's just that we choose not to focus on reading as much as we used to. Books, magazines, papers, the Internet—they're on the same field as movies, TV, games, sewing, cards, etc. Daily life is like watching a football match featuring all your favorite players running around at the same time. You can only watch one at any moment. And when you're done watching that player, you move on to the next. Or you don't. It's a choice. 

    Justifying laziness by saying there's not enough time is one of my pet peeves. Everyone alive has 24 hours in a day. How you use those hours is up to you, so don't tell me you don't have time. That's B.S. 

    Nevertheless, MacIver's clever piece makes some good points, most of which I agree with. It's true, these top 10 lists are ways "for pentadactyl animals to feel superior to didactyl animals." 

    Take that, you two-toed sloths! 



  • Posted by Jason Hensel at
    12:00AM 03/10/2011 • 0 Comments

    Better Decisions via the Bladder

    Controlling your bladder makes you better at controlling yourself when making decisions about your future, according to a study to be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

    Sexual excitement, hunger, thirst—psychological scientists have found that activation of just one of these bodily desires can actually make people want other, seemingly unrelated, rewards more. For example, a man who finds himself searching for a bag of potato chips after looking at sexy photos of women. If this man were able to suppress his sexual desire in this situation, would his hunger also subside? This is the sort of question Mirjam Tuk at the University of Twente in the Netherlands sought to answer in the laboratory.

    Tuk came up with the idea for the study while attending a long lecture. In an effort to stay alert, she drank several cups of coffee. By the end of the talk, she said, “All the coffee had reached my bladder. And that raised the question: What happens when people experience higher levels of bladder control?” With her colleagues, Debra Trampe of the University of Groningen and Luk Warlop of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Tuk designed experiments to test whether self-control over one bodily desire can generalize to other domains as well.

    In one experiment, participants either drank five cups of water (about 750 milliliters), or took small sips of water from five separate cups. Then, after about 40 minutes—the amount of time it takes for water to reach the bladder—the researchers assessed participants’ self-control. Participants were asked to make eight choices; each was between receiving a small, but immediate, reward and a larger, but delayed, reward. For example, they could choose to receive either US$16 tomorrow or $30 in 35 days.

    The researchers found that the people with full bladders were better at holding out for the larger reward later. Other experiments reinforced this link; for example, in one, just thinking about words related to urination triggered the same effect.

    “You seem to make better decisions when you have a full bladder,” Tuk said. 

    Maybe then you should drink a bottle of water before making a decision about your stock portfolio, for example. Or perhaps stores that count on impulse buys should keep a bathroom available to customers, since they might be more willing to go for the television with a bigger screen when they have an empty bladder.

    The results were a little surprising from a theoretical point of view; a lot of research in psychology has supported the concept of “ego depletion”—that having to restrain yourself wears out your brain and makes it harder to exert self-control over something else. But Tuk says this seems to work in a different way, maybe because bladder control is largely an automatic, unconscious process.

    (Story materials from the Association for Psychological Science.)



  • Posted by Jason Hensel at
    12:00AM 03/01/2011 • 0 Comments

    More Creative at Helping Strangers

    Solving problems for others will help you if you're tied up in a creativity knot. According to research by Evan Polman (New York University) and Kyle Emich (Cornell University), we're more creative when helping strangers more than ourselves. 

    "It's been shown, for example, that greater physical and temporal distance lead us to think more abstractly, such that you're more likely to solve a problem if you imagine being confronted by it in a far-off place and/or at a future time," wrote Christian Jarrett on the BPS Research Digest. "Now Polman and Emich have shown that social distance can have the same psychological benefit."

    In the first study, participants carried out a structured imagination task by drawing an alien for a story that they would write, or alternatively for a story that someone else would write. 

    "As expected, drawing an alien for someone else produced a more creative alien," the researchers wrote in the study's abstract. "In Studies 2a and 2b, construal level (i.e., psychological distance) was independently manipulated. Participants generated more creative ideas on behalf of distant others than on behalf of either close others or themselves."

    In the third study, a classic insight problem was investigated. 

    "Participants deciding for others were more likely to solve the problem; furthermore, this result was mediated by psychological distance," the researchers wrote. "These findings demonstrate that people are more creative for others than for themselves and shed light on differences in self–other decision making."

    Polman and Emich say there are practical implications of their findings. 

    "That decisions for others are more creative than decisions for the self is not only valuable information for researchers in social psychology, decision making, marketing and management but also should prove of considerable interest to negotiators, managers, product designers, marketers and advertisers, among many others," they said.

    This information is extremely valuable and advantageous for meeting and event professionals, because you're consistently called on to solve problems for strangers.  



  • Posted by Jason Hensel at
    12:00AM 01/24/2011 • 0 Comments

    Decision Making Game

    A prototype computer game has been developed to help improve decision making skills in all aspects of life.

    Supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, a team at Queen's University Belfast has developed a prototype that could be built on by commercial games manufacturers and turned into an e-learning or training tool for professionals in all walks of life and for the general public, too.

    Alternatively, some of its features could be incorporated into existing computer games that have a strategy element.

    The team has explored whether people can be trained to make better decisions by improving their ability to recognize and make allowances for their subjective opinions and biases, and to factor in accurately their uncertainty over a decision's likely outcome.

    The prototype game (available for anyone to try out at the World Of Uncertainty quiz website) teaches people to take their uncertainty into account and learn from experience when faced with simple choices.

    "It's the first ever online quiz designed to let people estimate how sure they are of their answers and score more highly if they don't ignore their uncertainty but realistically assess it," says Dr. David Newman, the project's leader. "Whether the choices facing us are simple or complex, a greater awareness of uncertainty and of our own biases can improve the quality of our decision-making. We believe there's real potential for people to acquire that awareness through computer games."

    In the future, games of this type could be used for both educational and entertainment purposes by public and private sector decision-makers and by private individuals in order to enhance their decision-making abilities.

    More than 500 members of the general public, as well as many students from Queen's and Dundalk Institute of Technology, have already tried out the prototype. The results are currently being assessed to establish the extent to which it has taught them to make better decisions.

    (Story materials provided by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.) 

    UPDATE: If you're interested in how games can help you create engagement for meetings and events, check out MPI's latest webinar, Gameify Your Meeting Portfolio.