A recent neuroscience study by researchers at the University of Haifa found that our brain processes social situations differently based on the emotions felt at the time.
The researchers did 3 separate experiments where they differentiated the type of social interaction and the emotion felt. The studies were done on rats but this does not cancel the profoundness of their findings.
1. Positive Emotion in First Impression
In the first stage of the study, rats were introduced to a new ‘person’ (rat). The researchers noticed a ‘strong rhythmical activity’ in the rats’ brain which was a sign of excitement.
This activity happened in the areas of the brain responsible for social memory and decreased when the ‘meeting’ was finished and with the repeated encounters between the rats; basically when the relationship wasn’t new anymore.
However, what was interesting is that this decline did not happen instantly but rather continued for a bit following a new social encounter. So the rats seemed to be in a kind of a social arousal after meeting a new ‘person’.
There was also a level of anticipation recorded in the brain activity which risen gradually in the period of 15s before meeting a new ‘person’.
2. Inanimate Object
In this part of the study researchers presented a ‘not social’ inanimate object to the rats. As expected, rats seemed excited in their behaviour but their brains weren’t so aroused.
Clearly the social interactions seem to be more entertaining to the brain.
This just shows us that online shopping will never replace the physical experience as online doesn’t fire the brain as much!
3. Negative Emotion – Fear
In this part, on the first day rats were conditioned with electrical shocks following specific sounds. On the second day rats were put into the same area in either a ‘fear recall’ situation or a social situation of meeting a new ‘person’ (rat).
What researchers found is that in both of these situations rats experienced arousal represented in heightened activity in the same limbic areas of the brain. However, the ranges of brain waves were much different.
Therefore, depending on what emotion we experience, our brain seems to adopt a different protocol of mental processing (different waves but he same areas of the brain).
Until now researchers mostly focused on which parts of the brain fire up during which actions rather than on how they fire up.
We still need more experiments, especially on humans, to understand this effect. However, appreciating that evoking different emotions can affect how your brand is encoded in consumers’ social memory can help us influence first impressions and influence how your brand is remembered.
We are here to provide you with the understanding of how consumer’s mind works so you can achieve positive, emotional, behavioural and commercial results.
