Psychological Primitives and the Reality of Neuromarketing Insight
By Paul Weiland PhD
February 21, 2011
The Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) held its 12th annual meeting on January 27-29, 2011 in San Antonio, TX. The meeting highlighted the cutting-edge of social psychological research as well as charted a course for future research in the field. The conference included many symposia across a wide range of topic areas. One particularly informative talk on the subconscious and emotion was by Lisa Feldman Barrett of Northeastern University on the psychological construction of emotion.
One of the most important functions of the human mind is the categorization of the myriad stimuli in the environment. The stimuli we categorize as important becomes information we use, be it consciously or subconsciously; the stimuli we categorize as unimportant are disregarded in the interest of keeping us focused on the important things. This process of categorization, however, is not a dispassionate process. We create categories like “emotion,” “cognition,” “perception,” etc. and use these to categorize the phenomena in our environment.
The problem lies in assuming these derived categories represent basic building blocks of the mind. That is, the category becomes as real as physical categorization. For example, “anger” exists only as an observed category. Without an observer, “anger” does not exist. The physical sensations don’t wildly differ from other categorized states, but they are called “anger” by the self or an observer.
Recent advances in neuroimaging technology give us the ability to look at how the brain is processing its environment in real time. We can look at heat maps of brain activity and have data that is not biased by self-report. The common approach to exploring the brain is to look for the mechanisms that trigger the categorized states (i.e., we look for “fear” or “anger” or other categories to manifest as activity in the brain). That is, we have established categories in a commonsense fashion and then attempt to find these categories in the brain.
Findings from neuroimaging, however, show that the looking for one-to-one relationships with brain activity (observer-independent) and commonsense categories (observer-dependent) may not be fruitful. In biological terms, the brain does not respect the categories that are placed upon it. States we have assumed to be “localized” actually occur across the brain.
Instead of taking an approach of looking for these categories, future research may be better served to look at these categories as the outcomes of more basic processes. A compelling analogy can be found the process of baking. The pantry is made up of basic ingredients, a.k.a. “psychological primitives.” These primitives are combined in particular ways, like a recipe. Recipes are usually not a process of throwing all ingredients in at once; they are mixed in varying degrees at varying times under varying conditions. This is where the associative networks in our brain come into play. The combination of primitives and associative networks bring about the complex instances we think of as categories, “emotion,” “the self,” “goals,” etc.
From this insight, it follows that the next practices of cutting-edge of psychological research into brain activity should look into what the psychological primitives are that form the events we then categorize after the fact. This is an important consideration as we try to use neurological data to make recommendations in marketing. It is important to keep in mind that “excitement” is a category we have placed upon the brain, not something derived from the brain. As such, the brain does not have to “respect” these categories being placed upon it. Neuromarketing is a new and exciting area of inquiry. By using the most advanced tools available to us, we can explore the working at the level of brain activity. It allows us to overcome the limitations of self-report data in how people feel about brands or products. However, as we explore this area, it is important to keep in mind that brain activity came before the commonsense categories we attempt to place upon it.
One of the most important functions of the human mind is the categorization of the myriad stimuli in the environment. The stimuli we categorize as important becomes information we use, be it consciously or subconsciously; the stimuli we categorize as unimportant are disregarded in the interest of keeping us focused on the important things. This process of categorization, however, is not a dispassionate process. We create categories like “emotion,” “cognition,” “perception,” etc. and use these to categorize the phenomena in our environment.
The problem lies in assuming these derived categories represent basic building blocks of the mind. That is, the category becomes as real as physical categorization. For example, “anger” exists only as an observed category. Without an observer, “anger” does not exist. The physical sensations don’t wildly differ from other categorized states, but they are called “anger” by the self or an observer.
Recent advances in neuroimaging technology give us the ability to look at how the brain is processing its environment in real time. We can look at heat maps of brain activity and have data that is not biased by self-report. The common approach to exploring the brain is to look for the mechanisms that trigger the categorized states (i.e., we look for “fear” or “anger” or other categories to manifest as activity in the brain). That is, we have established categories in a commonsense fashion and then attempt to find these categories in the brain.
Findings from neuroimaging, however, show that the looking for one-to-one relationships with brain activity (observer-independent) and commonsense categories (observer-dependent) may not be fruitful. In biological terms, the brain does not respect the categories that are placed upon it. States we have assumed to be “localized” actually occur across the brain.
Instead of taking an approach of looking for these categories, future research may be better served to look at these categories as the outcomes of more basic processes. A compelling analogy can be found the process of baking. The pantry is made up of basic ingredients, a.k.a. “psychological primitives.” These primitives are combined in particular ways, like a recipe. Recipes are usually not a process of throwing all ingredients in at once; they are mixed in varying degrees at varying times under varying conditions. This is where the associative networks in our brain come into play. The combination of primitives and associative networks bring about the complex instances we think of as categories, “emotion,” “the self,” “goals,” etc.
From this insight, it follows that the next practices of cutting-edge of psychological research into brain activity should look into what the psychological primitives are that form the events we then categorize after the fact. This is an important consideration as we try to use neurological data to make recommendations in marketing. It is important to keep in mind that “excitement” is a category we have placed upon the brain, not something derived from the brain. As such, the brain does not have to “respect” these categories being placed upon it. Neuromarketing is a new and exciting area of inquiry. By using the most advanced tools available to us, we can explore the working at the level of brain activity. It allows us to overcome the limitations of self-report data in how people feel about brands or products. However, as we explore this area, it is important to keep in mind that brain activity came before the commonsense categories we attempt to place upon it.
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