Why not take a closer look at our brain to improve your strategies?

Let’s start with the primitive brain;

It is 500 million years old. The process of evaluating information is fast but limited. There is no cognitive thinking, reading or writing. There is very simple math, alertness, intuition, acting on emotions and managing short-acting movements. It can only manage the present time. The level of consciousness is low. Control capacity is low.

As for the New Brain;

It is 5 million years old. It evaluates information slowly but intelligently. There is reading, thinking and writing. It has complex math, prediction, risk assessment, approval of actions. It is cognitive. Time perception is past, present and future. The level of consciousness is high. Control capacity is medium-high.

SO WHAT DOES OUR BRAIN LIKE?

While each area of our brain has different characteristics, the reflections of these areas on people’s emotions and behaviors also differ. Did you know that the left brain likes laws, the right brain likes authority and the forebrain likes people?

It is a myth that you only use 10 percent of your brain. (Yes, even when you sleep.) Neuroscience studies confirm that your brain is always active.

The human brain can generate about 23 watts (enough to power a light bulb). All this power requires a much-needed rest. Adequate sleep helps maintain the pathways in your brain. In addition, sleep deprivation can increase the buildup of a protein in your brain linked to Alzheimer’s disease.

Learning new things increases gray matter in the brain. The new information we learn makes new connections between neurons in our brain, which then increases the visible gray matter in our brain.

Emotions can change our brain chemistry. The chemical reactions triggered by emotions can be physically seen in fMRI scans and gray matter studies.

On average, we produce 50,000-70,000 thoughts a day. Sadly, the majority of thoughts (estimated 60-70 percent) are negative. We can learn to manage our mind. How to meditate? Advanced meditation techniques can lead to permanent changes in our mindset. It is possible to learn to think positively.

The human brain always tries to return a favor. This is not just etiquette – the “reciprocity rule” shows that we are programmed to help someone who helps us. This feature of our brains has probably evolved over time, because people need to help each other to keep society running smoothly.

About 95% of the decisions are unconscious made. That is, we make decisions without knowing what we are doing, why we are doing it, relying on our past experiences, without analyzing them in detail. This means that the vast majority of our actions and behaviors happen because of our brain activity, beyond our conscious awareness.

Our favorite topic is talking about ourselves. Don’t blame anyone for talking about themselves. Talking about oneself is the way one’s brain is wired. According to a Harvard study, our brain’s reward centers light up more when we talk about ourselves than when we talk about others.

Our brain loves simplicity. If you want people to understand and believe you, use simple language and repeat it. Remember that familiarity increases liking.

Narrativize your statements. The brain likes storytelling and initiates empathy.

REMEMBER:

“We are not thinking machines that feel, we are feeling machines that think” Antonio Demassio

Source: Dr. Bora Küçükyazıcı

Brain Center

Simin Demiriş

Marketing and Society: Ethics

The last 10 years have seen an explosion of interest in the impact of various marketing activities on society, with a particular focus on ethical issues within marketing. This interest has not been limited to marketing research, but has also involved disciplines such as communication, sociology, politics, psychology and neuroscience.

Today, Brands are turning to long-term research and policy to build long-term relationships with their consumers and ensure their loyalty. Since the brand-consumer relationship is seen as a long-term communication, the focus is on issues such as Brand Awareness and Trust, Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty. When it comes to these concepts and objectives, ‘ethical behavior’ comes to the fore. Brands are expected to act ethically in the following 3 areas of marketing.

Ethical rules related to the product

Price-related ethical rules

Ethical rules regarding promotional activities

The concept of ethics is directly related to Neuroscience, which has become increasingly influential in recent years and has emerged as a result of the coordinated work of the fields of psychology, psychiatry, neurology, biology and engineering. Neuroscience is at the forefront of research examining the decision-making processes, social interaction and emotions of the human brain. Neuromarketing, which is under the title of Social Neuroscience, is the utilization of techniques in neuroscience to understand the response of human brain to marketing stimuli. Its main purpose is to better understand  and predict the unconscious behavior of consumers.

 Important factors that constitute the ethics of neuromarketing;

The right tools, techniques and methods used in neuromarketing imaging,

Accurate measurement,

Correct sample size,

Correct analysis,

Precise and reliable statistical information.

Neuromarketing is an ethical method that uses technology to analyze consumer buying behaviors and provide brands with highly reliable statistical data based on these analyses.

When neuromarketing practices are carried out by the right people, i.e. neuroscience experts, and for the right purposes, it is clear that neuromarketing practices are scientifically important for the marketing world in accordance with ethical rules. As a result, it offers the opportunity to look at the consumer world from a broad perspective by shedding light on the parts that remain in the dark in consumer attitudes and behaviors.  Neuromarketing research completes the missing part of the puzzle and enables strategic marketing decisions to be made clearly and precisely on a scientific and ethical basis!

Reference

What is ‘neuromarketing’? A discussion and agenda for future research

Nick Lee ⁎, Amanda J. Broderick, Laura Chamberlain

Marketing Group, Aston Business School, Aston University, UK

Received 1 February 2006; received in revised form 1 March 2006; accepted 30 March 2006

You, Me and Our Hormones

Our ‘hormones’, which we think play a major role in the positive and negative events that happen to us throughout our lives, are our body’s internal stabilizers. Neural control centers in the brain influence the body glands to produce and secrete hormones necessary for maintaining vital balance. The body glands respond to imbalances in the body by increasing or decreasing hormone production.

Body glands, in other words hormones, are of particular interest to neurologists and neuromarketers in two aspects.

Since emotions and behaviours are influenced by hormones, people’s moods are constantly in a state of great flux. In light of this reality, neurological studies should be conducted with people if real human behaviour is to be seen in neuromarketing studies. Because even if we only consider hormones, the human sample is very valuable in neurological measurements.

In neuromarketing studies, it is thought that certain hormones are particularly effective in the emotions that occur against verbal or visual stimuli that people encounter. These hormones are Dopamine, Serotonin, Endorphin and Oxytocin. This is because these hormones are responsible for our emotions as well as critical bodily functions. Emotions and hormones are intricately linked.

Dopamine: This hormone plays a role in controlling our mood. Experts state that fifty percent of dopamine is produced in the intestines.

Serotonin: This hormone plays an important role in regulating our mood and is responsible for our feeling of happiness.

Endorphin: The function of this hormone is to relieve pain, reduce the impact of suffering, and provide a sense of well-being when we engage in behaviours that the brain perceives as appropriate. This hormone is linked to the natural reward circuit.

Oxytocin: We associate this hormone with love, passion, sexuality, the need to be valued, the feeling of motherhood. This hormone is associated with a sense of trust and enables people to make positive decisions. The appearance of this hormone makes people more empathetic, generous, benevolent and helpful. According to experiments, when the level of this hormone is increased, people make higher financial donations and become more sharing.

” Hormones were as potent as whiskey and twice as sneaky. – Linda Howard

“I can be a little cranky. I’m full of anxiety and hormones.” – Nicholas Hoult

“Hormones are very powerful things. We are helpless in their wake. – Meg Cabot

“A pure heart and mind can only take you so far, and sooner or later hormones have their say. – Jim Butcher

Reference

Rita Carter, Paul J. Zak, Intranasal Oxytocin: Myths and Delusions, In Biological Psychiatry, Dr. Kıvılcım Kayabalı

Steve Jobs and Tactics to Win Customers

A story on the Inbound Sales Network highlights what Steve Jobs, the genius of marketing, was paying attention to during Apple’s branding process. Steve Jobs’ experiences shed light on B2B marketing experts.

Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, a technology brand famous for its unique designs, succumbed to pancreatic cancer and passed away. But he left behind important tips for marketing experts who want their brand to shine with sparkle like himself. How to reach new customers? How to give the right message to customers? How and in what way is it possible to reach them? How to create a good image of the brand in the consumer’s mind? The answers to these questions are hidden in Steve Jobs’ tactics.

Steve Jobs’ philosophy at Apple has always been to achieve success by developing simpler and easier-to-use products and using new technologies and marketing channels.

Apple is among the companies that use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) effectively because of the importance it places on finding potential customers. Many marketing experts think that these methods are unimportant for their products and customers. But they are sorely mistaken.

For marketing professionals who want to take advantage of Steve Jobs’ legacy, we have outlined the key points and tactics to attract customers to the brand.

Customers’ expectations come first!

Known as a marketing genius, Steve Jobs marketed not only products to the consumer, but also the dreams they would embrace. Customers generally prefer products that make life easier and add value. For this reason, Steve Jobs focused not only on the functional features of the products, but also on the benefits they provided to the consumer. Dedicated to Apple, Steve Jobs believed that his products would make the world a better place. Steve Jobs, who eliminated the problems he encountered at Apple with his ability to produce solutions, knew his customers well. Because he knew that understanding the customer was the beginning of everything.

Messages must be clear and simple

When Steve Jobs introduced the MacBook Air in 2008, he prepared a simple and easy-to-remember presentation. The presentation was characterized by memorable visuals rather than text. After the presentation, attendees remembered the MacBook Air for being the world’s thinnest computer. In their book “Conversations That Win the Complex Sale”, Tim Riesterer and Erik Peterson of Corparate Visions, Apple’s corporate communications company, explain that using large visuals to make a complex message more understandable can be very useful. When using these visuals, three steps should be considered;

1)      Images should be relevant to customers’ problems,

2)      With the visual you show, you should create clarity in the customer’s mind and eliminate question marks.

3)      To increase the impact of the image, you should use metaphor to emphasize the message more strongly.

Customers should intuitively buy the product.

Steve Jobs worked with the best engineers for the iPhone. The features of the iPhone were thought out to the finest detail, which is why it appealed to the consumer and won them over. The product was high quality and the design was simple. Apple’s team of designers and engineers took into account every suggestion from consumers.  They also used them to strategize for potential customers.

The human mind is much more complex than meets the eye. We perceive more than we comprehend and forget more than we remember. But what we think is lost is stored deep in our minds. Intuition is the ability to make connections with data that does not rise to the level of consciousness. Intuition is being able to follow the emotional traces of past experiences. The brands that discover these traces and ensure that their products are purchased are the ones that have the ability to exist, grow and develop for many years.

“Intuitive reason is a sacred gift and rational reason is a faithful slave. We have created a society that forgets the gift and honors the slave.” – Einstein

Emotions and Neuromarketing

The human brain is unique, unlike anything else, even its attractiveness compared to other organs can be questioned. But the greatest structure in the universe is neither black holes nor celestial dynamics… it is the “human brain”. The operating system performance of this 1400 mg average hardware has not yet been achieved, let alone approached.

Experiences

Our brain keeps us ready to respond to what we see and hear – the world around us. The brain is at the center of vast and complex communication networks that constantly gather information from both the outside world and our bodies. As it interprets this information, it creates experiences. It is not known exactly how the electrical activity in our brain translates into experience, but the role of our sensory organs in this process is clear. Each sense organ is specialized to deal with a different type of stimulus. For example, the eyes are sensitive to light and the ears to sound waves. The signals from the sensory organs are processed by the brain which determines what kind of experience they will produce. Our experiences are the cornerstone of our behavior. Our behavioral responses to the stimuli we feel with our five senses are the combined response of our central and autonomic nervous system.  

Today, neuroscience is used to scientifically uncover certain basic emotions by physiologically and neurologically measuring our brain’s behavioral responses. Neuroscience today is at the forefront of research into the human brain’s decision-making processes, social interaction and emotions. In this context, neuromarketing, a sub-branch of social neuroscience, offers a new window into the world of marketing. The most striking feature of neuromarketing research is its ability to measure the emotional response of consumers to brands and products within the boundaries of science. While the emotional dimension that drives the behavioral dimension comes to the forefront in the communication that brands establish with their customers, traditional research methods are insufficient to accurately measure the emotional dimension scientifically.

Why Neuromarketing?

The importance of expressing emotions is that people are interdependent on each other and what one person does necessarily affects the others. Therefore, it is very important and necessary to understand each other’s emotions within society.  In the world of marketing, it is certain that brands need to understand and recognize the emotions of their current or potential consumers. For the objective measurement of an emotion, it is clear that there is a need to turn to neuromarketing beyond conventional techniques.

Truths About Neuromarketing

Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuromarketing

Neuroscience has been developing at an ever-increasing pace in recent years, illuminating the complex mental and emotional processes of the brain. In this context, Electroencephalogram (EEG, brain electrical activity) and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI, brain blood circulation) methods, which allow the measurement of brain activity without causing any pain or damage to the subject, are important scientific tools. Over the last 20 years, thousands of studies conducted with both methods in normal healthy individuals have generated a significant body of knowledge on the biological mechanisms underlying the brain’s processes of attention, perception, learning, emotional arousal and decision-making (cognition). The fields of neuro-economics and neuromarketing are emerging applications of this knowledge.

Both methods have significant advantages over implicit discourse and indirect measurement methods based on eye movements or facial gestures. While implicit discourse and indirect measures often do not yield reliable results due to differences in the capacity of individuals to express their mental processes and are significantly influenced by the interviewer or the interview setting, the underlying neuroscientific measures, which reflect the various stages of the perception process, are independent of such external influences. As such, they offer a new scientific window into understanding consumer behavior and its underlying causes.

However, the main point to be considered when applying the data provided by neuroscience to applied fields such as neuromarketing is that the measurements should be carried out with the seriousness and precision of scientific research.

EEG Measurement Technology

Today, the introduction of devices that measure EEG signals with cheap circuits and that can be easily used by any user, mostly for purposes such as managing game consoles with brain waves, has paved the way for groups without expertise in EEG to operate in the field of neuromarketing with such devices with very low measurement accuracy. However, there are many studies and scientific publications showing that these devices do not provide reliable measurements of EEG signals. Our experience is that the signal-to-noise ratio of these devices does not allow us to obtain findings that we can easily obtain with research/medical grade devices. More importantly, the scores such as engagement, excitement, frustration, etc. that these devices produce from the EEG signal for gaming purposes have no scientific validity. Nevertheless, these scores are used for neuro-marketing purposes.

Furthermore, the EEG signal is easily contaminated by much larger electrical activity from sources such as head muscles, eye movements, etc. Since no algorithm has yet been developed to reliably eliminate such noise automatically, the measurements must be reviewed by a Cognitive Neuroscience expert to remove these artifacts before analysis.

Event-related Brain potentials (ERP)

An important shortcoming/error in the widespread neuromarketing practices is that a scientific measurement requires an experimental design based on a hypothesis. Without any hypothesis/experiment design to obtain reliable information about the brain, the results that can be obtained by measuring on-going brain activity (on-going EEG) while a person is making observations similar to those during daily life (e.g. watching an advertising video) have very limited power. Such measurements can only provide a rough indication of a person’s level of alertness, emotional arousal and stress.

On the other hand, by repeating static visual or auditory stimuli derived from EEG and presented within the framework of an experimental design many times and analyzing the EEG signals obtained in temporal relation to them, it is possible to measure the brain’s responses to these stimuli specifically. These measurement techniques are called event-related potentials (ERPs) and event-related oscillations (EROs). These methods enable highly accurate measurements of the brain’s mental processes such as attention, memory storage, retrieval, semantic processing and decision-making in response to specific stimuli. The great success of Cognitive Neuroscience in the last 20 years is based on this measurement methodology.

In order to effectively apply ERP and ERO methods to market research, the marketing question must first be defined in the best possible way, an appropriate experimental design must be developed, measurements must be taken by expert researchers with reliable instruments, noise must be removed, and the results must be interpreted by sophisticated analysis methods. In this context, market researchers and neuroscientists need to work together in close contact.

The most important gains of this method, which is much more comprehensive and laborious than the common approach in practice, can be summarized in the following two points:

The findings are not open to speculation and interpretation, but are presented within the limits of scientific prescription and statistical significance. When it comes to major conceptual steps, such as the development of a new marketing strategy, it enables the reliance on data whose reliability has been rigorously tested.

The range of questions that can be addressed within the framework of in-depth preliminary work with the marketing team is vast. In this context, instead of simply answering a simple question, such as the extent to which an advertising video or package design stimulates a person, which is often open to interpretation, it is possible to answer much more specific conceptual questions, such as what associations the product makes in the consumer’s mind, what is the appropriate brand slogan on which to base a marketing strategy, in what ways the product is perceived to be different from alternative products, and in what way this difference exists.

Kaynak: Prof. Dr. Tamer Demiralp, İstanbul Üniversitesi, İstanbul Tıp Fakültesi, Fizyoloji Anabilim Dalı

Subconscious or Unconscious? S. Freud’s Views of Concepts

Sigmund Freud, known as the founder of psychoanalysis, talks about both structural and topological concepts when explaining the psychic structure of human beings.

According to the topological perspective, the human psychic world consists of consciousness, preconsciousness and unconsciousness. According to Freud, there are primary and secondary processes in the psychic structure. Primary processes represent the unconscious and secondary processes represent the conscious and preconscious. Freud likens this structure of the psychic world to an iceberg. While consciousness represents the part of the iceberg above the water, the unconscious represents the part below the water. Regarding the existence of the unconscious, Freud speaks of the unconscious as necessary and legitimate. The unconscious is necessary because there is a gap between each information in the consciousness and the consciousness is insufficient to fully explain the behavior of both healthy and unhealthy people.

Many of Freud’s books contain his concept of the unconscious and his theory of personality. However, despite such widespread coverage, an ambiguity about Freud is noteworthy. While discussing his views in the Turkish psychology literature, it is possible to come across the concept of “unconscious” in some sources, the concept of “subconscious” instead, and both in others. These differences in usage bring along various questions. Which concept did Freud use originally, the unconscious or the subconscious? When we look at Freud’s works in general, it is clear that the concept is used as unconscious. When we examine the numerous case studies written by Freud between 1905 and 1920, we come across the concept of unconscious in them. However, there is no such unity in Turkish translations. In some works, although the concept is originally translated as “unconscious” in English, it is translated as “subconscious” (bilinçaltı) in Turkish, while in others the concept is translated as “without conscious” (bilinçsiz) and so on. This gives us an idea that there is a problem in Turkish usage that is generally caused by translation.

When one does in-depth research on Freud, it is possible to come across his earlier works, which are little known. For example, Freud has a work titled Quelques Considérations Pour Une Étude Comparative des Paralysies Motrices Organiques et Hystériques (Some Points for a Comparative Study of Organic and Motor Paralysis) published in French in 1893. When we look at this work, we can see that Freud also uses the concept of the subconscious. Freud states the following: “When the impression remains in the unconscious (le subconscient), it becomes impossible to destroy it.” In fact, this is probably the first concept Freud used to refer to non-conscious mental processes. As can be seen, although the concept of the unconscious is found in almost all of his works, it is possible to encounter the concept of subconscious in his early works. In order to clarify the issue, it would be useful to examine, research and read the historical development of the concepts of subconscious and unconscious and Freudian psychology.

As a result, it was seen that Freud used these two concepts in different meanings. We can easily say that Freud was not the first to use and formulate the concept of the unconscious. Freud benefited from the accumulation of thought before him and adapted this concept to his system with a psychological content. It is known that Freud benefited from Janet and his concept of the subconscious during the development of his theory. For this reason, Freud used the concept of subconscious in the early periods. However, our analysis has shown that when it comes to Freudian psychology, the concept that should be used is “unconscious”. It is accepted by many psychologists that it would be wrong to use the concepts of the subconscious and the unconscious interchangeably. In fact, this distinction has been made by Janet and Freud, who are important representatives of both concepts. The concept of the subconscious was seen as a more clinical concept in terms of its compatibility with topographical theory and the fact that it refers to a place below consciousness, and this usage was preferred among neurologists. However, Freud did not approve of this usage because of the risk of confusing consciousness with the psyche and preferred the concept of the unconscious. In works translated into Turkish or written in Turkish, when Freud’s theory is in question, the concept is sometimes used as subconscious. It is seen that this usage is erroneous and that there is a translation error in the translations. However, we can claim that this error is due to a reason. Since the concept of “repression”, one of the most important concepts of psychoanalysis, expresses a downward direction in Turkish, and since repression is from the consciousness to the unconscious, it is quite practical to depict the unconscious in a spatial manner as a space below the consciousness. The concept of the subconscious seems more appropriate to topographical theory. The expression “suppressing the subconscious” is more useful than “suppressing the unconscious”. Although some of the Turkish works use the term “unconscious”, it was observed that the term “subconscious” was preferred when talking about topographic theory or when discussing the concept of repression. When we look at Freud’s older Turkish translations, some of them use ” pushing” instead of “repression”. It is easier to say that some thoughts are pushed from the conscious to the unconscious instead of repressed. Some translations even use the term “stuffing”. If the concept of “pushing” is used instead of the concept of ” repression”, it is likely that the expression “pushing out of consciousness” will be more accepted.

Kaynaklar: Uçar, S., 2019. Psikanalizde Bilinçdışı,  Sevinç, K., 2019.  Freudyen Psikolojide Bilinçaltı ve Bilinçdışı Kavramları Arasındaki Benzerlikler ve Farklılıklar 

Love – Always There & Always with Us

Love is sometimes a phenomenon that we are exposed to, sometimes a complex idea that we find difficult to comprehend, and sometimes an existence that radically changes our lives, a rebirth. In short, love has touched all of our lives in some practical or theoretical way, at least at some point in time. Sometimes we experience love in person, sometimes through the experiences of an unforgettable novel character, or through the bitter verses of poets who have surrendered to love. Indisputably, all of these practical and theoretical experiences of love are extremely valuable and special in their own right. Love is a sublime emotion that every human being experiences and keeps alive in a unique way. While some of us navigate between the thin line of abandonment and being abandoned on the mysterious paths that love takes us on, some of us maintain a lifelong union.

Definitions of Love

The phenomenon of love is based on an extremely complex pattern in which psychological, neurological, social and cultural factors come together and manifest in the individual. One of the main reasons for this complexity is that the definition of love and the way it is experienced varies from individual to individual, and therefore the characteristics that the subject attributes to the object are based on an absolute subjectivity. The main reason for this is the existence of various principles and mechanisms that are constructed in the unconscious at the very basis of the subject’s relations with its objects. The unconscious reality of each individual is unique and completely subjective. On the other hand, love can be basically defined as an individual’s overthinking of another individual and forming a passionate and excessive bond of love towards him/her.

Nevertheless, it should be noted that love has a dual nature. While love is sometimes based on empathy, altruism and compassion, it can also be the direct or indirect cause of phenomena such as murder and suicide by revealing destructive motives in people. For this reason, love is not a simple emotion that can be taken lightly; it is a phenomenon with very serious effects and consequences in individual, social and cultural contexts. Love is at a very special point as it is both a cause and a consequence of human existence. For centuries, many literary figures, philosophers and scientists have devoted themselves to finding the formula, definition and mechanism of love. However, from centuries ago to the present day, no one has been able to agree on an absolute definition of love.

Although love seems to manifest physiologically on a hormonal and neuronal level, it is also a complex phenomenon, especially involving unconscious structuring and internal processes: For this reason, there are as many types of love as there are people in the world. Thus, the phenomenon called love cannot fully include the concepts of absoluteness, objectivity, universality and general validity. Nevertheless, modern branches of science such as neuroanatomy, neurophysiology and neuropharmacology emphasize that the effects and mechanisms of love on the brain and nervous system structure of Homo sapiens can be explained on the basis of physiological elements such as neurotransmitters, synaptic structures, hormones, etc.

In conclusion, the origin of love is based on the attempt to replace the absence and coldness of existence with the other. Love is the art of constructing meaning in a meaningless world. For this reason, the scenarios created by human beings, who are fictional beings, and the figures who play a role in these scenarios vary on the basis of personal history, time, space, etc. Therefore, there is no absolute definition of what is called “love”. Love is a reality that each individual has constructed in their own inner and subjective world. Love is actually something that does not fit into any definition, model or theory, that overflows from one’s self to the other, that cannot be expressed and marked in language, but that will inevitably be expressed in order to reach “that person” somehow, somewhere and at some time. It is outside of logic and description, far away from everyone and everything, it is only that which is in it and remains in it.

CONCLUSION: ‘Love is what is missing and what remains missing’.

Special Note: We would like to thank dear Murathan Demiriş for his permission to publish parts of his Master’s Thesis in this article. Click on the relevant link to access the full thesis.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349732112_Eksik_Olan_Ask_Uzerine_Psikanalitik_ve_Felsefi_Bir_Inceleme_-_Murathan_DEMIRIS