Wow !! Power of Conformity

Found through Guy's twitter http://is.gd/1pYi

Maslow's hierarchy

Today I was discussing the mobile market in India with some of my colleagues, and during the discussion I told them that I really don't need a mobile phone, right now I have a I-mate JAMA and am thinking of moving to Iphone 3G the very moment it's here in India.

"Logically" speaking, I don't need a PDA and I don't need any of the features of 3G, yet I am thinking about buying Iphone,This is what makes me think and get amused of the Maslow's Hierarchy of needs and how people make wonders by making their products climb up the hierarchy.



Image: http://businessballs.com

Making social proof work for your business

I had to go to this place called munchin in Sahara Mall,gurgaon, just coz my friends were hanging out there and otherwise I'd never feel like going into places like this,it's a small food place with things on their menu ranging from sandwiches to maggie, it was freakishly small , it had only two tables and some chairs placed un-evenly.

Now I went there I didn't order anything, but I saw something on one of their walls, a collage,they've made a collection of scribbled napkin paper's, appreciating their sandwich.


Now they've done an excellent thing,I ate their sandwich and it tasted pretty good, may be it's because of the anticipation of the emotion's that the knowledge the collage provided me,I don't know.

Social proof can work miracles for your business.

Random Information

People are quite uncomfortable with randomness,so much that they try to rationalize things that are inherently random,brain always tries to form links between the stored cognitive information and the random stuff,this actually gives rise to emotional roller coaster.Since the stored cognitive information in the brain is the information passed through the perception,attitude and prejudice filters,most of the time the resulting emotional up and downs are quite useless and the information resulting from the rationalizing too (I think..)

This weekend I was through one of these and I should tell you(I'm sure you already know) it's quite freaky out there,I wasted a whole weekend!

n Hi, to all my blog readers,this post comes after a long break,actually I'm quite busy with my work,but may be now I'll write a post every now and then.

You don't know stuff?

There's nothing wrong in not knowing stuff,I see some people trying to intimidate other's because they know,I think they are just being fatuous becuase I beleive there's nothing wrong in not knowing stuff,but it's wrong when you don't try to know stuff,I tell this to people all the time.If you think you are intimidated with that "smart aleck" in your office? Let me help you out.

Now you have to promise me that you are not going to use it in a wrong way,Ok?

It's called Fundamental attribution error,

From the very moment you start interacting ,people kind of start building a character around you,they see you from their own perception,Wikipedia says

In attribution theory, the fundamental attribution error (also known as correspondence bias or overattribution effect) is the tendency for people to over-emphasize dispositional, or personality-based, explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing situational explanations. In other words, people have an unjustified tendency to assume that a person's actions depend on what "kind" of person that person is rather than on the social and environmental forces influencing the person.

So what has that gotta do with this?
Ask questions!Yes,Fundamental attribution error,People asking questions are perceived as being "smart",now the next time someone tries to intimidate you, you just ask questions and also I sincerely advice you to learn things,because learning things will make you smart for real.

photo:freefoto.com

False Uniqueness

People fool themselves with false uniqueness and everybody does that,I do it too, Most of the times it is for good, but sometimes it proves to be detrimental.

I'm talking about people's feeling that they are unique,nothing wrong will ever happen to them,that bomb blasts,road accidents,mishaps, they all belong to another alien world and they don't live in that world.People don't wear helmet's , they take for granted that person in another vehicle is gonna drive careful enought not to hit you,and you know what this is the root cause for all the mishaps,I guess.

Now sometimes mishap's happen and you are not in control of that,something like that happened in Hyderabad,two serial bomb blasts,one in Lumbini park and another one at Gokul chat,41 people died and still we( rest of us Indians) feel that nothing is gonna happen to us,we do all things normally,we feel "False Uniqueness", Yes,we do need False uniqueness and it's difficult to live without it,Coz one can't live normally with all the fear and fret, but I think one should always keep an eye on things,drive carefully and be responsible.

Hangout with people you want to be like

Yes,coz you eventually liken the friend you hangout with,If you hangout with a lousy guy you'll become lousy,you hangout with fat you'll grow fat,now this psychologically makes a lot of sense,when you hangout with somebody a lot, you'll get to know their perspective of the world and you'll adopt their perspective if you hangout enough and you already know that you are,what you think you are .

If you want to be really successful,I seriously suggest you to hangout with successful people and If you are depressed,hangout with those peppy and high spirited people, If you wanna be thin , hangout with all the thin guys/girls.

Liking

Liking is one thing that salesmen like Joe Girard used succesfully to make pots and pots of money,you know Liking can also be triggered by familiarity,we like things we are familiar with,and we start liking things we get familiar with,that is why you hear all the new songs played repeatedly on TV channels and Discotheques.

I never liked this sound track "khaike paan banaraswaala" from the newer version of the hindi movie DON,today morning I was watching this song and was humming it , I realised that I started liking it,this is coz MTV and Channel[V]play the track everyday in the morning and I might have heard it like 50 times, this re-demonstrated me the power of familiarity.

Fear of rejection

Fear of rejection is an awesome tool for marketers,atleast for the marketers of beauty products,it can do wonders for the sales if one can use the emotion correctly,the idea is simple "you dont look good, you are no good",marketers try to induce this fear into a prospect, if not already present by making the prospect realise how she/he has been a looser for not being attractive and hey marketer always gotta solution,use his product,some Imakeyouattractive cream (or whatever) and you're gonna look like Christina augilera or some other diva.


I was reading this post on ad campaign of Fair and Handsome of Emami ,Fair and Handsome made a lousy TVC and failed to use the emotion correctly,the interesting thing here is despite having a losy ad campaign,the product is worth Rs 45 crore now,this shows how powerful the "Fear of rejection" is,If you are not an Indian (South Asian) lemme tell you that people in here associate fair skin with beauty.See the chart Emami made explaining why you are a looser if you are not Fair.


P.S: Being fair here implies having a fair skin

Why clothes matter?

Clothes, do matter, the way you dress kindof convey's what you are and not just this, when I read this post on trizle,I thought " Oh, yes, this is true,I've noticed the same damn thing,Dressing good actually improves your performance and boosts ya confidence",

According to Harvard Medical’s Alice Domar

Although it may seem counterintuitive to slip into the skirt you save for special occasions, it helps to look in the mirror and see an energizing image — not a deflating one that confirms and reinforces your internal state.

Dressing for success will give you a big mental boost every time you catch sight of your reflection throughout the day.

Trizle's El rule of Thumb says

*If you dress sloppy, you’ll likely do sloppy work.
*If you dress kick-ass, you’ll likely do kick-ass work.

Frustration

I've attended this day long training on Emotional Intelligence, I didn't finish this book Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman ,So I thought I will attend this one, it was quite informative,rhetorically for me,One thing I learnt about was mixed emotions,like frustration,Frustration can be further subdivided into Helplessness and anger, (I beleive the cognition itself could be a way to cure a psychological ailment) and when you know the ingridients of the emotion,you could work on them and eventually cure the emotional ailment.

Gossip helped evolution of human intelligence?

I've learnt a weird thing searching for psychology of rumours on google n it is gossip helped evolution of human intelligence!. The original article describes the difference between rumor and gossip,it reads "Rumors are different from gossips. The former are public communications "infused with private hypotheses about how the world works (Rosnow, 1991), or more specifically, ways of making sense to help us cope with our anxieties and uncertainties (Rosnow, 1988, 2001)." Gossips are more private in nature, and "it has been theorized that gossip played a fundamental role in the evolution of human intelligence and social life (Dunbar, 2004; Davis & McLeod, 2003) and that it continues to play an active role in cultural learning (Baumeister, Zhang, & Vohs, 2004) and as a source of social comparison information (Suls, 1977; Wert & Salovey, 2004a)." , interesting eh?

Dont act like you know !

People often act like they know,they want to disguise their lack of knowledge,by doing this they close the gates for the knowledge they could have acquired easily.In my schooling days,my teachers perception of me being a bright student quite often made me to act savvy,but that inturn resulted in a greater loss,I regret doing that,If I'd have conveyed my ignorance I'd have learnt all that I didn't.In almost every social scenario I've observed people doing this self censorship, often for the fear of coming out dumb than to deceit.

A similar behaviour is observed in board meetings,where silence implies empathy and the main purpose of a social gathering in that meetings is never met.Psychologists suggest a good solution for this problem, A devil's advocate,and my suggestion for the previous problem is "Just chill buddy,how does that matter if others think you are dumb",ask questions convey your ignorance coz people always have this urge to help an inferior one than to a smarter one and at the end even if they perceive you to be dumb,you are the smarter one for real!

Blind Spots

I find blind spots quite intriguing,A physiological blind spot,also known as a scotoma,is an obscuration of the visual fiels,it is the place in the visual field thatcorresponds to the lack of light-detecting photoreceptor cells on the optic disc of the retina where the optic nerve passes through it. Since there are no cells to detect light on the optic disc, a part of the field of vision is not perceived. The brain fills in with surrounding detail and with information from the other eye, so the blind spot is not normally perceived.

People do have psychological blind spots, the defects in ones psychology which are not perceivable by the person per se,and these blind spots quite often hinder ones personal and career growth.As one is not aware of their very existence it becomes quite difficult for him to overcome these limitations ( or defects).The only solution for this would be to keep a careful watch on the feedback you get from people,quite often the negative feedback helps enormously in fostering ones growth,although I'd advice you to be numb to the crap you get from those creepy bozos.

Instant Gratification

Instant Gratification is one thing that is ruining the world,mostly the younger part of it, I'd say.You go to malls with ya friends just to do some window shopping while ya friend wants to buy a pullover or something and bam!! you see from outtside an awesome leather jacket displayed in the showroom,
You say "come on man nobody's gonna charge me for trying that jacket,let's get in"
Oh! It fits you so well, youre looking like a pimp daddy now,ahh.. here it starts, the urge to satisfy the Brad pitt in you,
you hardly have any money left for the month,what you gonna do now? wait,there's one way, you've got a credit card,you can pay that money sometime later but you might not find leather jacket again!!
This happens everytime you go window shopping only one day you wake up to realise your debt piled up and ya credit card stopped working.

If you want to have a good credit built, have many credit cards,use them and payback the debts as soon as possible.But If you cannot control your urge to satisfy Instant gratification, This is my million dollar suggestion to you ,don't keep one and moreover try to pay things with cash,I mean dont even use your debit card.Paying in cash makes you feel you are loosing money and the pain makes you spend less resulting in greater control on instant gratification.

Absolute Truth??

Is there something called absolute truth?? I dont know! People thought the entire universe revolved around earth and the geocentric model was an undisputable truth , until later galileo came and defended heliocentrism.Yesterday's truth is today's controversy and bullshit tomorrow,Why its always been like this?

Truth, more often the social reality is just a perception of an individual.Perception is mind's intercept seen through the lens of paradigm and an Individual's paradigm is always influenced by ones prejudices,Prejudice is just an affirmed thought. Thus it can be inferred that truth is a parameter which varies from an individual to another, may be this is what makes people differ,be enemies or get attracted to each other.some perceive a thing as right and others as wrong,they altercate,they adhere to their own paradigms and at the end they may be even fight.Even in an organisational environment people often misconceive their roles and responsibilities,because they often never change their paradigms and adhere to their own.

People's insecurities are also a product of their misconception , I guess and I think to come out of this people have to just try to change their paradigms,but yes I know It is not as easy as saying it.But I guess people who are committed to change their life and come out of insecurities often end up doing the same,changing their paradigm,changing their Truth.

Albert Einstein: " The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."

The psychological composition of Love

From the very first day I was interested in psychology,I wanted to know the composition of love,What exactly drives people to go ecstatic and also do crazy things or even ruin their lives.One of my friends asked me if I could explain love,I said lemme try.

I disagree when people say Love is different to attraction,but yeah its not just the attraction which makes Love.As far as my thinking goes the formula for Love is
Love = Attraction+Commitment+Consistency;

I also completely agree with Covey when he says Love is not a feeling its a verb, yes, it could be just a verb and it can solely base itself on commitment and consistency.But yeah it is foolish to say that Love is all that simple, it might be a really complex phenomenon,it is!! rather and you should know that this is just a purely rationalionlistic analysis of mine and taking into consideration that I am not sure of the very feeling,but If I want to make it as simple as possible that would be it.

P.S: To know more about commitment and consistency please refer Influence: The psychology of persuasion by Dr.Robert Cialdini.