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The Dopamine - Impulse Buy link
cogno64 writes "Certain stimuli in the brain, such as the smell of freshly based cookies, lead to higher levels of dopamine that remain after the stimulus is removed, leading to altered behavior through interaction with learning, memory, and executive function. The experiencer is more likely to make a purchase decision based on their heightened dopamine levels, with significant impact for internet marketers.
According to research presented at the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting today, the neurotransmitter dopamine continues to be released for nearly an hour after neurons are stimulated, suggesting the existence of secondary mechanisms that allow for sustained availability of dopamine in different regions of the brain including areas critical for memory consolidation, drug induced plasticity and maintaining active networks during working memory.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter associated with learning and memory, motor control, reward perception and executive functions such as working memory, behavioral flexibility and decision making. When a novel or salient stimulus occurs, the dopamine neurons in the brain increase their firing rate, boosting the release of dopamine. The dopamine is diffused into the extracellular space of the brain until it can be transported or metabolized."
But I always eat cookies when browsing Slashdot... hey, that explains the huge pile of overhyped LED keyboards, novelty mice, Futurama DVDs, Phantom lapboards, and iPod accesories in my office!
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
This is actually key - and not just subversive marketing but marketing in general. My own mental habit when watching television - and this is automatic; I couldn't *stop* thinking this way - is to sort of "remote view" the conversations in the advertising agency, and then reduce the commercial down to its essential elements:
"Lifestyle. If I don't own this, I'm not cool."
"Buy this and it will get me laid." (I salute the various body spray ads using this technique so nakedly, it was probably considered risky when first proposed - it's one thing to subtly add sexual imagery to commercials - it's another to just make a naked claim that a product will get you laid. And it's worked. Which says very little for the modern 18-24 year old male, frankly.)
Then I picture the imagery the agency decides on, the song choice, and how it was conceived, laboratory style, to try to manipulate me.
I apply the same mental circuits to religion, ideology, and so on.
When this mental process becomes automatic, the desire to consume drops significantly because it generally makes me feel somewhat insulted - the usually cheap, manipulative nature of advertising and so on. Even great advertising is pretty bad if you break it down to its calculated, constituent parts.
As Rosco P. Coltrane (how's Flash doing btw?) mentions, it's increasingly necessary to be aware of these things whenever you expose yourself to any kind of retail environment, for the reasons he lists.
Lastly, avoid retail environments altogether unless you specifically want to buy a certain product.
It's hard for me to get wound up about consumer culture because it really requires only a few easily-learned habits to innoculate yourself against it. Like anyone else, I buy products, but I research, especially higher-end items, to the point of analysis paralysis, before putting my money down. I take a shopping list with me to the supermarket.
Sheriff Little of Chickasaw county agrees, btw.
The smell of bread or cookies or whatever, will probably initially cause this thought: "mmmm cookies."
The immediate second thought should be, "How cheap and insulting."