Think you're always in full control of your thoughts and behaviors? Think again. Companies use psychological insights to influence your behavior more than you think.

1. The
psychology
behind

2. Are companies and
systems influencing
your behaviour without
your awareness?

3. Probably.
Here’s how.

4. The Ice Bucket
challenge
The psychology behind…

5. Why it was so successful
○ Avoids diffusion of responsibility
● Nominating specific people avoids them not partaking
in the challenge
○ Social validation
○ Descriptive norms – telling everyone what
other people are already doing
● Everyone from superstars to your next door neighbors
are doing it
● We’re molded by what others are doing
● We follow rules because other people follow the rules

6. Company
logos
The psychology behind…

7. Principles of perceptual organization
○ Gestalt Psychology states that the whole is
different than the sum of its parts
○ 8 Principles that explain perceptual
organization or how we organize visual
elements into groups or unified wholes

8. Law of Closure
Our tendency to complete unfinished objects
• We tend to ignore gaps and complete contour lines

9. Law of Proximity
Objects near each other tend to be grouped together

10. Principle: Figure-foreground
Tendency to separate whole figures from their
backgrounds

11. Over tipping
The psychology behind…

12. o Three automatic tipping percentages and sometimes an
option to manually enter a tip
o Manually entering a tip is too much effort so we choose the
defaults
o We typically choose the middle option even if it is set to over
tip

13. How it works
○ Power of defaults
○ Anchoring effect
● Human tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece
of information offered (the "anchor") when making
decisions (First option)
● Once an anchor is set, other judgments are made by
adjusting away from that anchor
○ Pain of paying
● Agony of parting with our money has to do with the
saliency of seeing the money going away
● The less real the money feels, the less painful it is to
spend more of it

14. Candy Crush
The psychology behind…

16. Why we can’t stop playing
○ Compulsion loop
● You perform an action
● You are rewarded
● Another possibility opens
○ Pattern recognition
● Primary method of reading our environment
○ Reinforcement from rewards
○ Disproportionate feedback – huge rewards for
achieving simple tasks
● Flashing colours, affirming words like “delicious”
○ Natural desire to restore order

17. Die hard
sports fans
The psychology behind…

19. Why they’re so obsessed
○ Pursuit of hope
○ Variable rewards
● Driven by the prospect of another chance to find a reward, a win, a prize
○ Escalation of commitment bias
● More effort people spent doing a behavior or acquiring a set of beliefs =
more likely to continue doing the behavior
○ Cognitive dissonance
● If fans perceive that they are paying more to watch than the enjoyment
they received, it leads to mental conflict
● Resolve discrepancy by loving team enough to overcome discrepancy
○ Self identity
● The way we want to see ourselves influences how we behave
● When we change how we define ourselves, we begin to behave
consistent with that belief

20. Ikea’s food
court
The psychology behind…

22. How it leads us to spend more
○ Ikea uses their food service dept. to reinforce
low price profile on items in the rest of the
store, even if food is sold at a loss
● Customer wonders if $599 a good price for a couch
● “If you can eat a full meal for $3.99 (which is cheaper
than anywhere else), and hot dogs cost 50 cents (also
cheaper than anywhere), then furniture deal must be
good too”
● Great food deal = great furniture deal
● Food items are American because we can relate to
them and identify price as lower than anywhere else

23. Buying plane
tickets online
The psychology behind…

24. ○ Scarcity
● Subtle messaging that leads us to believe there are fewer flights
at the same price
○ Anchoring
● Expensive flights positioned next to better value ones so we
anchor our price expectations

25. Some online
platforms
The psychology behind…

26. ○ No more late fees from movie rental
platforms
○ We’re bad at predicting our future states and
preferences
● Streaming allows us to feel like we’re paying for what
we want to watch in the moment
● We’re not stuck with movies we only want to watch in
theory

27. ○ Urgency
● Cant go back and get it later
● Not buying is a choice to never be able to buy it in the
future
● Idea of regret leads to purchase
○ Remove stigma of couponing
● We like discounts
● Other people are buying so less stigma to couponing

28. ○ Power of defaults
● Tendency to take the path of least resistance
● They already have our credit card info and address on
file
○ Amazon Prime and Super Saver Shipping
● Shipping fee acts as psychological barrier
● If shipping is already paid
• You’re less likely to buy elsewhere
• Shipping is no longer a barrier so more impulse buys
• We make more purchases to amortize our investment

29. Whether you know it or not…
Whether you like it or not…
…companies and systems are using
psychology to influence your
behaviour.