1) The document discusses how emotions strongly influence our memory and decision-making. We are more likely to remember emotional events and patients with impaired emotional functions struggle to make simple decisions. 2) Neuroscientists have found that our brains associate emotional valences like good, bad, or neutral to every stimulus we experience. Both the factual and emotional aspects of information are processed. 3) Neuromarketing examines both the emotional and cognitive processes involved in consumer behavior, consciously and unconsciously. Traditional market research relies on rational cognition while neuromarketing aims to understand deeper affective responses.

1. D
uring my consumer behavior class I often ask the
following question to my students “Do you remem-
ber brushing your teeth three or four weeks ago?”
Students generally look at me interrogatively. Most students,
just like most of us, have simply no memory of the simple tasks
we carry out every day. The next question I like to ask is “what
events do you remember about the past month or more gener-
ally about your life”. Now answering this question is a lot easier.
We remember failing or passing an exam, we remember our
first kiss or falling from our bicycle and getting hurt. Events we
tend to pay attention to and therefore are more likely to remem-
ber are emotional events.
Lately neuro-scientists discovered strong correlations be-
tween emotion and cognitive function, such as perception,
attention, memory, or decision-making. Antonio Damasio,
a Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Southern
California, has shown that patients with impaired emotional
function were simply unable to make the simplest decision.
Given the choice between two options (choosing a restaurant
for example) they could perfectly analyze all the similarities and
differences between the two options, yet they could never truly
choose between one and the other.
Damasio and other neuro-scientists have proved that for
every stimulus we experience, our brain—more precisely the
limbic system—associates it to an emotional valence: good, bad
or neutral. So our brain does not only respond to the factual as-
pect of the information, but the emotional aspect of this stimu-
lus. Such emotion is sourced in past experiences, resulting from
recollection of the outcome of a similar event, but also based on
how the outcome of this event felt.
Neuro-marketing is the understanding of consumer behav-
ior based on the measurement of sensorimotor, cognitive and
affective/emotional response to marketing stimuli. Traditional
market research relies mostly on questionnaires. However sur-
vey or questionnaires test the customer’s rational brain, i.e. its
cognitive function, rather than its emotional function.
Lately Prof Luiz Pessoa in Nature Neuroscience Reviews
has shown that cognition and emotion are strongly correlated:
“Parceling the brain into cognitive and affective regions is in-
herently problematic, and ultimately untenable for at least three
reasons: first, brain regions viewed as ‘affective’ are also in-
volved in cognition; second, brain regions viewed as ‘cognitive’
are also involved in emotion; and critically, third, cognition and
emotion are integrated in the brain”.
Neuro-marketing deals with the examination of emotional
and cognitive processes, conscious or unconscious. According
to Harvard Business School professor, Gerald Zaltman, 95% of
all cognitive processes occur in the subconscious mind. Neuro-
marketing has been increasingly used by leading market re-
search corporations such as Nielsen and Sands research.
By measuring the body’s reaction to a stimulus neuro-
scientists are able to delve into the unconscious. For example
an altered emotional state increases the heartbeat and causes
changes to the skin’s conductance.
As the way people make decisions relies heavily on emotion,
understanding your audience’s affective response is fundamen-
tal. One would argue that there is nothing new under the sun.
Salesmen are no strangers to using emotion to connect to their
customers and convince them to purchase their goods. Bazars
and souks, or second hand car dealerships are full of “your best
friend” offering you a cup of tea in their home or boutique to
try to convince you to buy their carpets or their cars.
Neuro-marketing provides scientific tools to the marketer
to pre-determine the emotional impact and therefore the effec-
tiveness of a commercial, the design of a package, webpage or
a product. An important question needs to be asked however:
how ethical are such techniques? In many ways neuro market-
ing provides scientific tools for the manipulation of the human
mind. This is very much the case, but to marketers and politi-
cians it is nothing new. American psychologist Ernest Dichter
was one of the first to use focus groups and psychoanalysis
techniques toward the “mobilization and manipulation of hu-
man needs as they exist in the consumer”. I conclude the lesson
by telling my students: “Neuro-marketing or psychoanalysis
will certainly help you sale a car, a carpet or a political agenda,
but it won’t help you find out how sincere and honest you are”.
FORBES MIDDLE EAST // S P JAIN SCHOOL OF GLOBAL MANAGEMENT
The Power Of
Emotion Over
Behavior
Dr Nicolas Hamelin, Associate Prof. of
Marketing & Head of the Neuromarketing
Center at S P Jain, explains how and why
marketers use consumers’ unconscious biases
to sell their products.