One question, two ways of research, two different results

People can be very illogical. They can say one thing and then do something completely opposite. In order to understand why they do it, we need to refer to the subconscious layers of our mind. In any case, this spontaneity is what makes the life of companies more interesting and encourage brands to be creative. If consumers simply told them what they wanted, companies would earn hundreds of millions of dollars just within several months. Let’s see why it doesn’t work this way and how you can benefit from it.

Trust but check

According to Daniel Kahneman, a talented psychologist and a Nobel-prize winner, we have two systems of thinking — intuitive (System 1) and analytical (System 2). System 1 is responsible for subconscious thinking and helps us manage routine tasks and take simple decisions without even thinking of them. System 2 deals with conscious thinking and is more complicated, requires a lot of mental effort and time to process information.

The majority of decisions are taken by System 1, even though it’s very hard to grasp them due to its unconscious nature. That’s the main reason why we think one thing and act otherwise. And that’s why the traditional survey is not enough to get really reliable and actionable consumer insights. The implicit research methods are far more effective in the identification of reactions which can’t be registered by our consciousness. How do neuromarketing approaches solve this issue?

You can’t hide, you can’t run

Implicit tests are built around the ability of our unconscious brain to take automatic decisions which are based on very simple associations. You will always take your hand away from the fire before you will actually understand it, even if a couple of minutes before you were boasting that you aren’t afraid of fire. Why? Because your unconscious part of the brain doesn’t have time “to explain” something to its conscious part as it needs to act right here and right now. Implicit tests in their turn help you grasp this first unconscious reaction, which reveals your real attitude to an object or event, regardless of what you are saying. You unconsciousness doesn’t really care what your conscious brain says.

It’s worth mentioning, that the implicit reaction time is very short — somewhere between ~200ms and ~600–700ms. It means that unconscious System 1 needs less than 1 second to react to the stimuli, while System 2 won’t even “understand” what is going on within such a short period of time. As the result, the reaction to the tested object within the implicit test is more trustworthy as it reflects true, unprocessed by consciousness, associations with the object.

Implicit tests and surveys — are they friends or enemies?

I think you all remember the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, which certainly caused a negative impact on Zuckerberg’s company, and altered the perception of the network. That’s what media told us. But is it actually true?

Taking into the account the public outbreak the scandal caused, people started to trust less not only Facebook but to other social media as well. At least that was what they said or wrote (on the social media). As we already know, we should always check whether what people say is consistent with what they think. So, we conducted our own research. Conclusions may really surprise you….



What we did:

1) Conducted a traditional survey.

2) Launched the implicit test.

3) Compared the results of the survey and test.



In our survey, we asked:

1. Which of the following social networks do you use?

2. How much do you care about personal data privacy in social networks?

3. How would you rate the security of the following social networks?

The survey demonstrated that:

1) 94% of respondents continue to use Facebook. It remains the most popular social network.

2) At the same time, the majority of respondents indicated that the security of social networks remains an ultimate priority to them.

3) LinkedIn turned out to be the most credible, while Instagram and Facebook took the 2nd and 3rd place respectively.

The results are pretty controversial. On the one hand, Facebook is the most popular, but on the other, is not as secure as its less popular peers Instagram and LinkedIn. In order to clarify the situation, we conducted an implicit test in order to see whether what people say in the survey really correlates with what they think. Results were more than interesting.

According to the chart below respondents don’t consider any of the social networks, including Facebook, to be unsafe.

Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Snapchat — all of them are considered relatively safe.

That’s a very vivid example of the fact that people don’t really think what they say and don’t walk their talk. Regardless of the responses provided in the survey, they still consider Facebook as a safe network for their personal data, even though the scandal showed that it’s not very safe.

Probably that’s one of the best demonstrations of why you should always cross-check the data provided in course of surveys with the help of implicit tests.

The reality is often different from what people claim it to be. That’s why building marketing-based only on the respondents’ answers, without conducting implicit testing of their attitudes to particular issues, might be not always relevant. Of course, there are situations when traditional surveys are 100% effective and will provide you with reliable and quick insights. However, as a rule, things are not that simple. If the brand’s image, its “in-depth” perception by the audience is in question, it’s worth using more than one traditional tool in order to obtain truly reliable insights.

You can (and should) listen to people and observe their behavior, but at the same time don’t forget that a lot of things, especially their hidden thoughts, feelings and prejudices influence their decision making and purchase intent.

Author: Dmitry Gaiduk

dm@cooltool.com