Cognitive Design

Hunger is a powerful biological and psychological state.  And we can “hunger” for things other than food. As the saying goes,  some people  hunger for power and possessions.

Recent research at  Northwestern University tested what we can hunger for in the broader sense by measuring salivation.  The idea is when we are really hungry for food we salivate so we might also drool when we hunger for other things. And we do!

“Results of an experiment show that individuals salivate to money when induced to feel a low power state but not when induced to feel a high power states.  A second experiment showed that men salivate to sports cars when primed with a mating goal but not a control condition.”

Designers interested in creating “objects of desire” should pay special attention to the role of  priming in the experiments. Priming means stimulating subjects to create a specific frame of mind before presenting the test stimulus.  Money by itself won’t cause me to salivate but if I am primed to perceive it as a way to increase power it might. Likewise a sports car by itself will not cause me to salivate unless I am primed to see it as a means to mate.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 24th, 2011 at 6:06 pm and is filed under Psychographics, Technique. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.