🧠 Your tasty behavioural science nuggets are waiting
Every so often we share useful nuggets on behavioural science.
Here's three mind-blowing psychology studies we've come across in the course of working for our clients. We thought you'd like these!
And remember, we're here to help you...
👨🔬 Get into behavioural science
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🍎 How do you get people to pick the ugly fruit in the supermarket?
Usually, we don’t pick misshapen goods because we feel that what we buy is a reflection of the self. We don't want to feel ugly ourselves.
So, this study found that adding a self-esteem nudge "(You're fantastic!") could mitigate the effect. It increased choice share for an ugly apple from 26% to 50%.
I wish I had known this when I was single.
❤️ How do you use emotions to induce charitable giving?
According to this study, use more unpleasant images in your charitable appeals – they get stronger emotional responses and drive bigger donations. Specifically, sick dogs got more money than healthy dogs, and homeless dogs more than domestic dogs.
This is another proof point in the power of emotion when it comes to persuasive comms.
However, a word of warning - this study did use pictures of dogs, not people, and if stimuli is too unpleasant, it can cause people to switch off (the ‘ostrich effect’) or rebel (‘reactance’).
👄 You’ll never feel the same about social content after hearing this tantalising new research.
Sensory language gets more engagement – words like “soft”, “illuminating”, or “crunch”.
This study worked with an influencer marketing agency and found that Instagram posts got a 3.2% boost in engagement from sensory language, meaning an additional sensory word was associated with 49 additional likes or comments.
On TikTok, the effect was even bigger (an 18% increase engagement; an additional 11k likes or comments).
If you'd like to apply this kind of behavioural science to your work... talk us.
James, Patrick and Dan
We practically apply the science of the human mind for hard, commercial results
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