Dan Ariely, author of a great book and blog called Predictably Irrational, has written an article in Wired this month that caught my eye. In it he talks about the way our emotions can effect the decisions we make, not just in the short term, but in the long term too. In short, he asks the question 'could reckless and irrational decisions at the heat of the moment affect decisions later down the line?' The answer is yes.
In a test they subjected one group to a 5 minute positive video (they watched Friends), and another to a negative video (they watched an arrogant boss firing people). They then proceeded to initiate a classic economics game known as the 'ultimatum game', in which a sender has £20 and he offers a portion of this to a receiver (the people who viewed the videos). Some offers are fair (an even split), while others are not, and the receiver can decide to accept or reject the offer. If they reject neither party gets any money. Traditional economics would say that rational beings should accept any amount of money. However, we are not rational. Instead, behavioural economics shows that people often choose to lose money in order to punish someone else for an unfair offer.
True to form, in their study, the people that had been subjected to the negative video were much more likely to reject offers. Worse still, a period later when the video was a distant memory, those subjected to the negative video originally maintained a higher propensity to turn down offers. in effect the emotional state they were in the first time had left an effect on their future decisions too.
So why is this interesting? Well for one, the next time you get upset at work remember that your decision at that point is likely to shape future ones too. Secondly, you need to think of the mindset people are in when they consume the message you put in front of them. If your message jars against their mindset at the time, it is likely that the way they react to your ad will stay with them going forward.
-Sam
