Buyology - Martin Lindstrom [26]
WHAT STEVE JOBS observed on that New York City day was a good example of mirror neurons in our everyday lives—and the role they play in why we buy. Just as mirror neurons caused those monkeys’ brains to mentally imitate the grad student’s motion, so do they make us humans mimic each other’s buying behavior. So when we see a pair of unusual earphones sticking out of someone else’s ears, our mirror neurons trigger a desire in us to have those same cool-looking accessories, too. But it goes deeper than simple desire.
To see this in action, let’s pay a quick visit to the mall. Imagine that you’re a woman passing the front window of the Gap. A shapely mannequin wearing hip-hugging, perfectly worn-in jeans, a simple summery white blouse, and a red bandanna stops you in your tracks. She looks great—slim, sexy, confident, relaxed, and appealing. Subconsciously, even though you’ve put on a few pounds, you think, I could look like that, too, if I just bought that outfit. I could be her. In those clothes, I, too, could have her freshness, her youthful nonchalance. At least that’s what your brain is telling you, whether you’re aware of it or not. Next thing you know, you march into the Gap, whip out your Visa, and stroll out fifteen minutes later with the jeans, blouse, and bandanna under your arm. It’s as though you’ve just bought an image, an attitude, or both. Or, let’s imagine you’re a bachelor hitting up Best Buy. After browsing the 52-inch HDTV section, you try out a popular new game for the Nintendo Wii called Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock, which allows players to strap the plastic guitar around their neck and play along to songs like Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love,” Pearl Jam’s “Even Flow,” and the Stones’ “Paint It Black.” You’ve always wanted to be a rock star—your thirty-year-old Fender is at home collecting dust—and this is a quick and dirty way to achieve your fantasy. Though it’s only a game, you feel what it must be like to be Jagger, or Clapton, or Eddie Vedder, and, not surprisingly, you end up buying one.
Just as that woman’s brain let her experience what it feels like to look like that Gap mannequin, this man’s brain told him what it would feel like to live out his rock ’n’ roll dreams. In both cases, their mirror neurons overrode their rational thinking and caused them to unconsciously imitate—and purchase—what was in front of them.
And that’s just how our mirror neurons work on us as consumers. Think about how other people’s behavior affects our shopping experience, and ultimately influences our purchasing decisions. Take smiling, for example. Two researchers recently created what they called the Smiling Study—a look at how joy, or happiness, affects shoppers. They asked fifty-five volunteers to imagine that they’d just entered an imaginary travel agency. Once there, they had to interact with one of three people: a smiling woman, a woman who looked despondent, and a woman who seemed completely fed up. Which of the volunteers do you think reported the more positive (imaginary) experience? You guessed it, those who interacted with the smiling agent. The study revealed that a smiling face “evokes more joy in the target person than a non-smiling face,” and that it also produces a far more positive overall attitude toward the business in question. Not only that, the volunteers who imagined interacting with the smiling person reported that they would be more likely to keep on patronizing the company in question.6
According to Duke University researchers, we’re not only attracted to people who smile but we also tend to remember their names. In a 2008 fMRI study, Professors Takashi Tsukiura and Roberto Cabeza showed subjects pictures of smiling and unsmiling