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Author: Sumona Datta

Brain and Buying: Consumer Behavior Explained by Psychology and Consumer Neuroscience

Imagine walking into a three-storied shopping mall with hundreds of shops and big screens displaying advertisements. What would you look for the most and what would you buy? Well, psychology has been playing an imminent role in designing advertisements and influencing our choice of products for a very long time now. Human attentional process is largely involved in determining which product or advertisement we are going to attend to the most. There is a reason why shops put up huge neon signs with flickering lights and bright colours. Or, advertisements of deodorant, cars and bikes project how beautiful women find such men using that particular product to be extremely attractive. In 1957, James Vicary, a market researcher, inserted the words “Eat Popcorn” and “Drink Coca-Cola” on the screen during an ongoing movie show.

The words were displayed for an extremely short period of time such that the audience could not consciously process the information, but long enough for their brain processes to perceive the information. It was found that during the intermission, sales of coca-cola increased by 18.1% and that of popcorn increased by 57.8%. What happened was that although the advertisement was not consciously attended by the audience, it was perceived subliminally and therefore influenced their choice. Subliminal messages have been later on used in hundreds of advertisements, targeted towards sex stereotypes and power perceptions. Take for example, Fig. 1 shows the advertisement of McDonald’s burger where a dollar sign appears at a particular point of time.

Fig. 1: McDonald’s advertisement showing a dollar bill

Fig 2. Intel advertisement

Or consider the advertisement of Intel (Fig. 2) where power is represented by the white man having authority over a number of black men. Both these messages in the advertisements are meant to trigger the need for power as in, the power that white men exerted on black men for centuries. Every day, we see hundreds of advertisements on television, social media and YouTube. So, how does such advertisement influence our choice of products? Which are the properties of a particular advertisement that contributes the most to influence our decision? It took psychologists, neuroscientists and marketing researchers several decades to realise how our brain processes advertisements and influence our choices. It was only during the last decade that Consumer Neuroscience as a field of academics and Neuromarketing as a commercial field of research emerged and gained lots of attention. Consumer Neuroscience lies at the centre of the overlapping boundaries of Psychology, Neuroscience and Marketing and intends to explain the science behind our decision to buy a product.

How does Consumer Neuroscience work?

Human brain has separate areas for decision making and experiencing emotions. It is primarily the function of the dorsal prefrontal cortex and orbito-frontal cortex of the frontal lobe to execute visual search, reason, judge and decide. While the amygdala, hypothalamus and nucleus accumbens located deep inside the brain gives the emotional colouring to an incoming stimulus. Deep inside the nucleus accumbens lies a “the pleasure centre” which determines “what” we like. Neuroscience facilitates recognizing the “why” behind such a choice. In 2011, Volkswagen produced an advertisement where a child was shown to attempt “The Force” on his parents’ washing machine, bikes and even on the family dog but nothing worked (Fig. 3).

As his father arrived in Volkswagen Pissat, the boy went outside and tried to use “The Force” on the car for the last time. As the father realised what the boy was trying to do, he started the car’s ignition using the remote control and the boy was astonished, thinking that “The Force” actually worked. This advertisement scored the highest “neuro-engagement score” and won all the awards for that year including two Gold Lions at Cannes. When further investigated, research indicated that the advertisement engaged our attention and emotion to a large extent and therefore predicted end-market performance powerfully. Neuroscientists and psychologists working in this area, specifically work to predict which underlying attributes leads to higher attentional and emotional engagement. For instance, in a popular Indian advertisement, Katrina Kaif was seen biting and licking an Alphanso mango with the juice running down her chin. Sexual hints undoubtedly excite the “pleasure centre” of our brain and produce an overall positive impression of the product. Thus the Maaza advertisement sold the product after successfully manipulating our mindset.

Scientific evidence suggesting the role of brain areas in consumer decision-making is huge. For instance, brand preference over other brands is predicted by the activities of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), visual

cortex, anterior cingulated cortex (ACC) and hippocampus (Deppe, Schwindt, Kugel, Plassmann, and Kenning, 2005; Deppe et al., 2005; McClure et al., 2004). As a matter of fact, all these brain areas are highly involved in recalling memories, emotional processing and decision making (Fig 4). For instance, in the infamous experiment on brand preference of Pepsi and Coca Cola, subjects were given a two tasting sessions one of which was blind. Researchers found that when they tasted Pepsi without knowing its’ brand, the “reward centre” of brain was activated more, indicating their preference. But when they were exposed to the brands, tasting Coca Cola stimulated hippocampus, mid brain and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (areas for memory and emotion), an event that can be attributed to the nostalgia regarding its’ brand value. Undoubtedly, people like the brand of Coca Cola more than how it tastes.

 

Tricks of Consumer Neuroscience:

Consumer neuroscientists make use of different neuro-imaging techniques like Electroencephalograph (EEG), Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and Eye Tracking devices. fMRI techniques are more popular among these since it provides real-time information based on the oxygen level scanned at a particular brain area. Needless to say, research in Consumer Neuroscience is hugely expensive owing to the highly sophisticated techniques involved. Nonetheless, provided the benefits of predicting consumer choice based on neuroscience data, advertisement giants rarely hesitate to hire neuroscientists and psychologists to do the job. But that’s a commercial application of these techniques which are popular by the name of Neuromarketing.

Fig 5. Shopper fitted with EEG equipment and Eye-tracker glasses (adapted from Ramsǿy, 2014)

For the sake of understanding and predicting consumer choice, neuroscientists rely more on EEG data and Eye-Tracking devices. In a typical experiment of Consumer Decision making, the volunteering customer is fitted with the EEG equipment and an eye-tracking device that is capable to track eye movements (Fig. 5). According to Steve Sands, a researcher at the Max Planc Institute of Lepzig, Germany, a single eye movement takes only 200 milliseconds and it is this 200 milliseconds within which a product can persuade us to buy it. In their study, Sands and others analysed 80,000 movements and found that 76% shoppers make in-store decisions for a purchase. Additionally, shoppers using cards have greater probability to make an impulsive decision (Ramsǿy, 2014).

Another paradigm of studying consumer behavior is by analysing images and videos in NeuroVision which is a Artificial Intelligence (AI) based computing software that predicts what our brain are most likely to see and miss. Instead of conclusions based on tracking eye movements, NeuroVision enables the researcher to predict which aspect of an image or product will be attended to automatically by the brain. Such prediction model is mostly based on image analysis and heat maps generated after analysis (Fig 6). Thus, visual attention these days can also be predicted using AI before even the shopper takes a look at the product!

Fig 6. Heat map generated in NeuroVision

Miles to go:

Thanks to all the sophisticated brain imaging techniques, we now know that our brain makes a decision of making a purchase several seconds before we are making a conscious choice. However, even with the utilization of highly sophisticated techniques, predicting consumer behavior based on brain mapping, is still at its’ nascent phase. Most recent research in this area is focusing on predicting election polls and success of blockbusters based on brain mapping. However, the Neuromarketing industry is growing really fast and those days are not too far away when every aspect of advertising will be incorporating prediction models based on brain mapping and AI. Irrespective of the sales and profits facilitated by such prediction, it is indeed a fascinating feat for research in Psychology and Consumer Neuroscience that is contributing immensely to understand why we do what we do.

References:

The “New Normal” of Studying Psychology in Post COVID era

The great philosopher Socrates had once stated, “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new”. Perhaps there is nothing truer than this statement in today’s world. It is absolutely needless to mention the impact that COVID 19 imparted on our lives, be it the social, occupational or personal aspect of it. Practically we are living in an uncertain state with a constant fear of getting infected, and all our future plans on hold, our finances recessed and our social lives withdrawn.

But as the saying goes, “Every cloud has a silver lining”. Despite the immense detrimental and fatal blow to our lives, life during COVID 19 has seen lots of favourable changes as well. For instance, we are getting lot more time to spend with our families and pursue our passions. But life during lockdown also taught us a lot about understanding our mental health and to take care of it. As suggested by epidemiologists, psychological breakdown is the next wave of pandemic we’ll be fighting against after COVID-19. This automatically necessitates focusing on the study of human behavior elaborately.

     Psychology, as the science of human behavior, has come a long way in the past century. Understanding and measuring human behavior generally involves administering tests and questionnaires in addition to studying behavior qualitatively. These constitute the traditional methods of studying human psychology. However, the last couple of months have witnessed a paradigm shift in the study of psychology. This transition can be noticed not only in classroom learning, but also in experiential learning. The “new normal” of studying psychology has ample implications in the area of studying human behavior.

Traditional methods of studying Psychology:

For decades together, scientists and academicians have relied on studying human behavior through several different techniques. Following are some of the traditional methods of studying psychology:

  • Classroom learning of psychological principles
  • Lab-based experiments
  • Paper-pencil tests
  • Computer-assisted testing
  • Clinical Internships
  • Research Internships

Studying psychology mandates practical applications of psychological principles. For instance, studying clinical psychotherapy is incomplete without the application of it on patients. Again, learning the methods of measuring behavior requires administering tests and questionnaires to a large sample. Being an applied field of science, psychologists chiefly work with primary data that are collected either in lab-based setup or through large scale survey. Even computer-assisted testing requires manual supervision. Specifically in our country, studying human behavior is a lot difficult than that in developed countries. Probably the most imperative rationale in this case is the lack of awareness about mental health and the stigma attached to it.

       Not that these traditional methods are insufficient to study human behavior. But at the elementary level of studying psychology, these traditional methods often limit the learning due to lack of exposure to practical knowledge. For instance, undergraduate students are often barred from attending worldwide conventions. Again, finding solution to a research problem can also pose a challenge to students of elementary level, chiefly due to lack of expertise to collect primary data. But learning knows no limit. Specially in an applied field of science, learning is chiefly based on practical knowledge acquisition. Unfortunately, traditional methods of studying psychology hardly provides with this opportunities.

The “New Normal” of studying Psychology:

The last few months under lockdown has presented us with a plethora of new methods and opportunities of studying human behavior. Today our classroom learning has transformed to virtual learning. This has not only facilitated the metamorphosis of our everyday classroom learning to global level, but also brought about a paradigm shift in studying human psychology. For instance, the conventional lecture method has been replaced with demonstrations through videos and clippings. More importantly, virtual learning is being made possible through pre-recorded videos. This rather allows students to learn by watching the video over and over again for doubt clearance as per their convenience. Following are some of the new paradigms that are facilitating the study of human behavior.

  • Virtual interactive classes
  • Webinars/Online Workshops
  • Online Internships
  • Online Courses
  • Online Testing and Data Collection

Apart from taking virtual classes as per one’s own convenience, digital learning has facilitated exploring a lot many opportunities in the area of psychology. For instance, several online psychological workshops/seminars/conferences/courses are now being offered by national and international institutes/universities. Hence, it is now possible to attend international events and get exposed to different perspectives while sitting in the comfort of our homes. Again, enrolling in internship programmes has now become much easier since everything is in a virtual platform. Most importantly, conducting research has also got smoother as manually collecting data is no more possible. One can collect data using any virtual mode and that saves a lot of time, money and effort. Needless to say, virtual learning has introduced an absolutely new way of studying human behavior.

What Next?

Across the last few decades, studying human behavior was already undergoing transitions. This involved an integration of several fields of interdisciplinary research. For instance, techniques of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence are now being implicated for pattern recognitions in human behavior, as expressed in social networking sites. Consumer Psychology is another new area that integrates the understanding of human behavior in Marketing and Consumerism. Psychology, in today’s world, is not just a field of social science, but an interdisciplinary science of studying human behavior.

This further transition to virtual learning has simply aggravated the metamorphosis of this subject area. Post COVID era is going to witness a conglomeration of both physical as well as virtual studying of behavior. The “New Normal” paradigm of studying behavior will help overcoming the drawbacks of the traditional methods while at the same time will provide with more enriching exposures and ways to study human behavior.

Concluding Remarks:

Change doesn’t come on its’ own, but by building the new based on the old. Post COVID days have presented us with this opportunity to bring about this change. It is therefore, important that we embrace such changes in the paradigm of studying behavior. Only then can we adapt to the “New Normal” of studying Psychology and utilize this knowledge to its’ full potential.

The Psychology of “Going Green”: Pro-Environmental Attitude and underlying Behavior

The Scottish-American naturalist and environmental-philosopher, John Muir had once said, “In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks”. Throughout centuries, humans have sought and acquired much more than what was required to fulfil their need and greed. The pattern of human interaction with his environment is indeed a multilayered one, with each layer representing a different aspect of this interaction. In an attempt to understand this complex interdependency, several scientists and philosophers have studied human behavior in connection to his environment. In the past few decades, studying the principles of human interaction with environment has emerged as a new field named Environmental Psychology.

Come to think of it. What makes some people use private vehicles while others prefer public conveyance? Why do some people have a constant requirement of insulated environment while others do not need it at all? We live in an era of global climatic change that is already causing immense detrimental effects on our natural resources and environment. In the past few months, our world has seen several such instances, be it the pandemic COVID 19 that has already claimed millions of lives, or the recent super cyclone Aampun that caused immense destruction in the eastern part of our country or the wild fire that broke out in the forests of Uttarakhand. With more disasters we are facing, mitigating climate change is becoming more of a challenge. This environmental crisis is often viewed as an objective consequence of human indifference to nature’s wellbeing. In the last couple of decades, individual responsibility in mitigating these crises has been recurrently emphasized and pro-environmental attitude has received a lot of attention.

Defining Pro-Environmental Attitude

Pro-Environmental attitude often results into behavior that causes least damage to the environment while being more favourable to it. Such attitude often directly or indirectly influences action at individual level that facilitates mitigating climate change and global environmental damage. Proponents of social psychology opine that attitude and behavior are intricately intermingled. Attitude generally refers to the set of beliefs and emotion that can influence the behavior towards an idea, object or person. For instance, if a person fosters a negative attitude towards a psychiatric illness, the person is more likely to avoid or reject persons suffering from a psychiatric illness. Pro-environmental attitude therefore, constitutes some positive set of beliefs about the environment that can actually shape one’s behavior towards the environment. For instance, a person who believes in a “green” environment, will probably switch to organic food and reduce the use of plastic to the minimal.

In our everyday life, we are faced with innumerable such instances where a pro-environmental decision can be made. Be it the usage of plastic bags or throwing off excess food, we always have a choice. But how many among us think otherwise and make a pro-environmental choice? Regrettably, the count is quite low and that too limited to a narrow section of the society. Therefore the question arises, does knowledge play an important role in promoting pro-environmental behavior? Earlier studies on environmental knowledge advocated its’ potentiality to influence pro-environmental behavior.

Of course an individual will act proactively only if he/she is made aware of the problem. But more recent studies speak otherwise (Wiek, Withycombe, & Redman, 2011). Although environmental knowledge is instrumental in shaping behavior, it is found to be inadequate in promoting pro-environmental behavior.

Evidences suggest that knowledge can foster pro-environmental behavior only if it is assimilated with beliefs and emotions (Miranda et al., 2016). This belief and emotion related to the environment constitutes the pro-environmental attitude. It is the component of human mind that rather mediates the relationship between environmental knowledge and environment-friendly behavior.

What explains a Pro-environmental Behavior?

People display pro-environmental behavior when they hold a positive attitude towards the environment, if they get support from people around them and believe in their own abilities to implement their action (Ajzen, 1991). For instance, suppose one wants to reduce the plastic pollution and the government has also banned it. Moreover, the person genuinely feels that by doing so, he/she will be able to bring down the plastic pollution to a larger extent. Considering these factors, the person will make sincere efforts to reduce plastic use at an individual level as well. Another explanation can be that people are more prone to display a pro-environmental behavior when they feel morally obliged to do so. For instance, if a person becomes aware of the severe water crisis in some parts of our country and feels that it is also his/her responsibility to do something about it, a pro-environmental behavior (that is, judicious use of water) will result. A third explanation emphasizes on value orientation and ecological worldview. The ecological worldview is defined as “the propensity to take actions with pro-environmental intent” (Stern, 2000, p.411). Value orientation, on the other hand, includes three different values: Biospheric value that is linked to the nature and biosphere, Altruistic value that is associated with the wellbeing of others and Egoistic value that focuses on individuals’ wellbeing (Klockner, 2013). Thus, a person high on egoistic value will look for personal benefits only while a person high on biospheric value will be most conscious about global warming, climate change pollution and other environmental hazards.

“Going Green”: A Real Concern or a Popular Concern?

In the past few years, there has been growing evidences of increasing proneness to “green” and “sustainable” living. People are opting for organic food, green lodging and sustainable development. Contradictorily, people are also making choices that involve egoistic values. For instance, living in an insulated environment, cutting trees indiscriminately, wasting

enormous amount of food on a daily basis and the list goes on. What explains this dyadic behavior? Is opting for a sustainable development a real concern or simply because it is a popular idea? People do opt for organic food but waste it on a daily basis. Perhaps larger instances of such duality in behavior are the result of only following the popular trend and not an innate pro-environmental attitude. Such inclination has become more frequent owing to the sharp increase in digitization of information. Interestingly, this also explains why people fail to continue displaying a pro-environmental behavior for a long period of time.

      Most people do not perceive it to be a personal responsibility to act in a manner that benefits the environment. Such behavior can be explained through the phenomena of diffusion of responsibility, wherein people refrain from taking actions in situations where large group of people are involved. For example, a person can believe that “Everyday there are thousands of vehicles commuting on the roads. What difference in air pollution will occur if I stop driving my own car?” Or, “Everyday thousands of gallons of water are being wasted. How does it matter if I only, stop wasting water?” Personal norm, in the form of feeling obliged, is therefore a key component in shaping one’s behavior.

Concluding remarks

There is still a lot of exploration that needs to be done to understand pro-environmental attitude and behavior. Until and unless human behavior underlying the destruction of environment is fully understood, “Going Green” will get reduced to mere words and popular trends. Earnestly, the future generation deserves a lot more than that.

 

References:

  • Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50, 179–211.
  • de Miranda Coelho, J. A. P., Gouveia, V. V., de Souza, G. H. S., Milfont, T. L., & Barros, B. N. R. (2016). Emotions toward water consumption: Conservation and wastage. Revista Latinoamericana de Psicología, 48(2), 117-126.
  • Klöckner, C. A. (2013). How Powerful are Moral Motivations in Environmental Protection?: An Integrated Model Framework. In Handbook of moral motivation(pp. 447-472). Brill Sense.
  • Stern, P. C. (2000). Toward a coherent theory of environmentally significant behavior. Journal of social issues, 56(3), 407-424.
  • Wiek, A., Withycombe, L., Redman, C., & Mills, S. B. (2011). Moving forward on competence in sustainability research and problem solving. Environment, 53(2), 3-13.
  • Image 1: https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/motivating-eco-friendly-behaviors-depends-on-cultural-values.html

Image 2: https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/environment/world-earth-day-nine-ways-to-keep-the-planet-safe-64097

Measuring Behavior: Scope of Statistics in Psychological Research

Imagine looking at an abstract painting hanging on the wall of your office. What do you see? What does the other person standing next to you see? What will all other people coming to your office see? The answer to this question is a multifaceted one. People react differently to the same physical stimulus all the time. And this is because our psychological world coexists with our physical world. So whatever we perceive at any instant is integration of the physical stimulus and our own emotional colours and past experiences intermixed together. So now the question is “why measure behavior?” Indeed the reasons are lot many. Behavior is anything and everything that an individual does in response to a stimulus. It is the overt expression of our covert mental processes. Measuring behavior is not only important to understand human nature but also facilitates predicting behavior in a specific situation. For instance, how many people are going to buy a new product just launched in the market? Or considering a road side accident, how many people will actually come ahead to help the victim? Or who among the managers of an organization can make a better leader?

How to measure Behavior? Quantitative or Qualitative measurement:
In the early decades of nineteenth century, studying human experience and interpretation was a popular way of understanding behavior. Earlier attempts to understand behavior and measure it includes the works of William James (1842-1910) and Franz Brentano (1838-1917) who studied human immediate experience and the self, involving systematic and objective techniques. Although, this approach to understand human behavior was later rejected with the emergence of Behaviorism and Cognitivism in the field of Psychology, qualitative approaches to human experience is still being considered to be a very effective method of accessing rich experiential information.

Quantification of human experience, on the other hand, emerged with the groundbreaking work of Gustav Fechner (1801 – 1887), who intended to discover the laws regulating the interconnection of external physical nature of stimulus with internal perceptual experiences. Popularly known as “Fechner’s Law”, the mathematical expression of this connection laid the bed stone for Psychophysics, a subfield of experimental psychology which still has enormous applications in understanding human sensory modalities and brain processes. Towards the beginning of twentieth century, the focus of attention got shifted from psychophysics to psychometric approaches to study behavior. In the earlier attempts to measure human behavior, psychologists, physicians and mathematicians joined hands to develop different kinds of behavioural measures. For instance, behavior during that time was largely understood in terms of intellectual processes. The first standard test of intelligence was developed by Charles Spearman, who proposed a Two-factor theory of Intelligence with a general and a specific factor of intelligence. This was followed by the development of other standardized tests of intelligence through factor analysis, primarily a statistical technique. Apart from Intelligence, attempts were also made to study human personality and accordingly tests based upon factor analytic approach were developed, for example, 16 PF test of personality developed by Raymond Cattell (Fig 1). Needless to mention, quantification of human behavior through statistical approach led to the development of this field to an unfathomable extent.

Fig 1. Cattell’s 16 Personality Factors; Image source: See References

Applications of Statistics in Psychyolog

Statistics is the discipline that is concerned with collection, organization, analysis and interpretation of data. Although theoretical to it’s’ core, statistics has huge applications in all possible fields of scientific research, and understanding human behavior is no exception. In the past few decades, statistics has largely shaped the paradigm of measuring human behavior. In today’s context, statistical techniques form the core of any quantitative psychological research which intends generalization and predictive implications. Be it any sub field of psychology, statistical methods finds its’ applications in every nooks and corner of psychological research, starting from sampling individuals, collecting data, analysis and interpretation of behavior. Apart from the general applications in quantitative analysis as required in experimental research as well as survey studies, application of statistical techniques in the field of psychology also pertains to psychometry involving behavioural measurement through psychological testing. As a matter of fact, some of the statistical techniques that are in existence today were primarily developed to fulfil the needs to construct and validate psychological tests. For instance, to estimate the temporal consistency of a test, the test-retest method of estimating reliability is widely used which is not primarily a mainstream statistical technique. Again, to estimate the construct validity of a test, Confirmatory Factor Analysis is a popular method in use which chiefly attempts to predict latent behavioural variables (e.g. stress) based on observed attributes (for example, loss of sleep, loss of appetite etc.). Such techniques not only enables researcher to obtain an objective measure of behavior, but also produces results that are highly reliable and can be generalized to the maximum.

Recent advances of Statistical Applications in Psychological Research

The last few decades have witnessed the epitome of statistical applications in the field of psychology. With the emergence of different menu driven computer applications like SPSS and STATA, doing statistical analysis of psychological data has become much more sophisticated and precise. Most recent advances in psychological data analysis make use of R-Programming, Python and MATLAB which are rather data-driven applications that are largely in use for psychological data analysis and designing psychological experiments. For instance, the PSYCH package within R-Programming software contains almost all applications that are customized for psychological data analysis. Similarly, PSYCH TOOLBOX application in MATLAB enables cognitive psychologists to design cognitive experiments.

Fig 2: Structural Equation Modeling; Image adapted from  Ye et al., 2018

Statistical applications in Psychological test development also witnessed a drastic change. With the advancement of modern Item Response Theory for test development, test items are now being validated based on logistic models. Prediction based models that are investigated through experimental or survey based methods are now being done through Structural Equation Modeling (Fig 2), which combines mathematical models, computer algorithms and statistical techniques. This includes Measurement Models chiefly required for Confirmatory Factor Analysis, Path Analysis and Latent Growth Models. Newly developed statistical techniques are facilitating researchers to study the change in a psychological attribute over a period of time through Trajectory Analysis. Most of these techniques have in their core the concepts of statistical regression, but applied to different settings.

In the past few years, psychologists and researcher are witnessing a major boom of rich psychological data from people on a daily basis, thanks to the social networking sites and countless online surveys used by different organizations. With the accumulation of this rich source of data, psychological data analysis has reached a new level of sophistication. As a joint effort of Data Scientists and Psychologists, Psychoinformatics as a new discipline of psychology has emerged. This is an interdisciplinary field where Psychology meets Statistics and Machine Intelligence and where data mining techniques are used to predict human behavior long before people themselves can predict their own behavior (Fig 3). Albeit in a nascent phase, such a discipline bears evidence to the fact that the definition of measuring behavior has changed drastically with the increasing conglomeration of Psychological principles with Statistical techniques.

Fig 3: Psychoinformatics; Image Adapted from Markowetze et al., 2014

Conclusive Remarks:
Psychology, while primarily considered to be a Social Science, have come a long way in the past century and has emerged as a fore runner in the field of applied interdisciplinary scientific research. Applications of statistical methods in psychological research have enabled the discipline to overcome the limitations of subjectivity in measurement to a large extent and produce much more objective and statistically sound inferences about human behavior. In a nut shell, Statistics as a discipline, has become one of the cornerstones of Psychology and has equipped it with all the gears to operate most effectively as a field of scientific research.

References:
• Markowetz, A., Blaszkiewicz, K., Montag, C., Switala, C., & Schlaepfer, T.E. (2014). Psycho-informatics: Big Data shaping modern psychometrics. Medical hypotheses, 82 4, 405-11.
• Ye, Jiao & Chen, Jun & Bai, Hua & Yue, Yifan. (2018). Analyzing Transfer Commuting Attitudes Using a Market Segmentation Approach. Sustainability. 10. 2194. 10.3390/su10072194.
• Business Concept Team (2019). 16 PF Personality Test Definition, Importance, Advantages, Disadvantages, Example & Overview. https://www.mbaskool.com/business-concepts/human-resources-hr-terms/17829-16-pf-personality-test.html

What does it take to succeed in the Professional World? A Note on Emotional Intelligence

What does it to take to get through a job interview? How much skill does one need to become successful in his/her professional field? What makes a leader in today’s organizations? There is no one-dimensional answer to any of these questions. In today’s world, it is quite difficult to get a job, let alone sustaining it and becoming successful. Needless to say, it is just not academic and technical skills that can guarantee success in any professional field. Rather, a more significant role is played by a set of psychological attributes that can equip an individual with more sophisticated ways of dealing in a professional setup, better interpersonal skills, better coping strategies in the face of a crisis and even superior leadership qualities. Emotional Intelligence is just one such quality. 

What is Emotional Intelligence?

The concept of Emotional Intelligence has been in existence for almost a century, although not understood in the same way we conceptualize it today. In 1990s, this concept emerged as a separate attribute with the highly acclaimed works of Peter Salovey and John Mayer (Click here). They defined Emotional Intelligence as “the ability to monitor one’s own and other’s feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.” (Salovey and Meyer,1990). According to them, the concept of Emotional Intelligence includes four different components:  (i) Emotional perception, (ii) Ability to reason using emotions, (iii) Ability to understand emotion, and (iv) Ability to manage emotions (Fig 1).

Fig 1. Components of Emotional Intelligence

Perceiving emotion includes observing, understanding and acquiring information from non-verbal gestures including body language and facial expressions. Imagine talking to your supervisor. Non-verbal gestures like eye-blinking, gaze, mouth expressions, common gestures like fidgeting or clenched fist and movements of arms and legs give out a lot of information about the emotion of the other person. For example, maintaining eye contact means that the person is paying attention while prolonged eye-contact can be expressing a threat and not maintaining eye contact can be imply that the other person is distressed or somehow uncomfortable. Again, constant fidgeting implies distress, nervousness or even boredom. The second step, that is, Reasoning with emotions can help us decide and prioritize what to attend and react to at a certain moment. This is a crucial step for regulating our own emotions. For instance, imagine facing an interview. Individuals paying more attention to their own anxious feelings will fail to attend to the interviewer’s questions altogether. It is therefore, essential to decide which particular emotion we should focus on at a specific point of time. The third step involves the ability to understand emotions. Our emotional expressions often carry differential meanings. For example, an angry behavior of the supervisor can be due to dissatisfaction with other’s work, or it can also be because of some other personal conflict. Reaction to such emotional expressions of others takes you to the fourth step, which is, ability to manage emotions. This includes regulating one’s own emotions and responding optimally to others’ emotions. For instance, in the face of a crisis, a person high on emotional intelligence will be able to react appropriately to others so as to deal with the situation effectively.

Emotional Intelligence and Professional Success

How does Emotional Intelligence guarantee professional success? There is no dearth of studies suggesting that employees with higher emotional competence are far more successful than others with only cognitive competence. In explaining the specific role of emotional intelligence in prediction professional success, personal competence (managing oneself) and social competence (managing others) needs to be acquired (Cherniss & Goleman, 2001; Click here for more information). This process involves developing four important skills (Fig 2):

  • Being self-aware: This involves being aware of one’s own strengths and weaknesses. This ensures taking control of one’s own actions and decision making process.

Fig 2. Process of enhancing Emotional Intelligence

  • Self-regulation: Individuals who are high on self-regulation have higher emotional maturity, manifest higher emotional control, are generally proactive, highly flexible in any situation and are focused on achieving success.
  • Social self-awareness: This requires an individual to be aware of other’s needs in order to manage those adequately. Individuals having higher social self-awareness tend to be more empathetic and understanding towards others.
  • Relationship Management: To be able to manage relationships in a professional field involves having good communication skills, ability to convince others, inspiring others and providing good guidance to others.

Can Emotional Intelligence be developed through training?

Indeed one can increase his/her Emotional Intelligence through training. There exists a whole range of research dedicated to the development of such training modules for enhancing one’s emotional intelligence. These training modules include differential tasks designed to help individuals become self-aware, learn to regulate their emotions, respond appropriately to other’s emotions and manage relationships successfully. Some of these techniques involve making individuals recognize their strengths and weaknesses through one-to-one coaching and providing feedback, arranging discussions and motivating them to share their experiences, short lectures, group discussions as well as role playing.

What are the benefits of enhancing Emotional Intelligence?

Having higher level of Emotional Intelligence have been linked to the following benefits in a professional world:

  • Higher social competence and great communication skills
  • Greater likelihood to get through an interview
  • More successful leadership skills
  • Better stress management in a crisis
  • Great interpersonal skills and relationship with co-workers and supervisors
  • More likely to get promoted in comparison to others with low emotional competence
  • More successful decision making in any situation 

Concluding Remarks:

The concept of Emotional Intelligence, although is a relatively new construct in the domain of Psychology, has a very wide implication in different areas of research and applications. The reason being that, emotion constitutes a very significant portion of human psychology and defines all our thoughts, processes and behavior. The professional world places lot many demands on an individual, both in terms of cognitive competence and social competence. Being emotionally intelligent defines our unique identity and therefore, sets us apart from robots and humanoids.

References:

Cherniss, C., & Goleman, D. (2001). The emotionally intelligence workplace. How to select for measure and improve emotional intelligence in individuals, groups and organizations san Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. D. (1990). Emotional Intelligence. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 9(3), 185–211. https://doi.org/10.2190/DUGG-P24E-52WK-6CDG

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