February 2011

Review: Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five Want to make your baby a genius? There's good news and bad news. The bad news: virtually all of the commercial products that claim to boost your…

If the workers who built the Pyramids were paid wages, undoubtedly nearby vendors knew when to exert maximum effort: payday. A person with a fresh supply of money is far more likely to spend liberally than one who's nearly tapped out.…

When we lived in Indiana, our first house was quite ordinary but had one feature some found a little odd: one edge of our little lot was the Michigan state line. An errant frisbee throw required one to retrieve the disc from another…

We know that viewing information on paper causes more emotional processing in the brain than the same information viewed on a screen (see Paper Beats Digital for Emotion), and there's another way paper might be better: its weight. The…

Volkswagen's "The Force" ad featuring a pint-sized Darth Vader was the highest-scoring ad as ranked by neuromarketing firm Sands Research. Ranked by Sands' metrics for engagement, the top ads were:

If the last time you bought a car the salesperson offered you a soft, comfortable chair, there are two possible explanations: 1) The salesperson was genuinely concerned about your comfort during a stressful negotiation. 2) The…

Your brain gets tired, and one fatiguing activity is making choices. Various studies show that as people make more decisions, their subsequent decisions are rushed or they don't decide at all. One study, by Ned Augenblick and Scott…

WARNING: If your last name starts with a letter from R to Z, you may be more susceptible to urgent-sounding sales pitches. As a direct marketer, I tried all manners of segmenting my mailing lists. Some of the best ways to slice…

Somehow, one might expect the most prominent neuromarketing firm to have more ostentatious offices than a modest two-story building nestled in a mixed-use Berkeley, CA neighborhood. A skateboard park is across the street, and neighboring…

Lots of people look forward to the Super Bowl. While most eagerly anticipate the on-field action, a significant portion of the game's TV viewers pay more attention to the ads. (If you are reading this, you are likely one of the…