#science #behavioralscience #manipulation #subconscious #subconscious...

One of the most bizarre studies about how to manipulate people was published in 1999. Scientists placed subjects at the end of a long hall and gave them a piece of paper with a number on it. Some of the numbers only were two digits long, others as many as seven. We're told to memorize the number and then walk to the other end of the hall and write it down on a sheet of paper. Scientists congratulated them on how well they could remember the number and told them that it would take them a little while to tally up the results and while they were waiting to help themselves at the food cart and the food cart had either a fruit plate or cake. Everyone thought it was a memory test but that had nothing to do with it. It was really about whether they chose fruit or cake. You see the people that got two digit numbers, half of them chose fruit and half of them chose cake because let's be honest we all want cake but we know we shouldn't so about half of us are able to think I should really eat the fruit instead. The people that had to remember a seven digit number, almost none of them chose fruit. They all chose cake. What they were experiencing is something called cognitive fatigue. You see your brain is like any other muscle, it gets tired because they had to concentrate so hard on remembering a seven digit number their brain got tired and so it became less resilient to the idea that they should eat healthy and the more primitive part of their brain, the part that wanted that nice fat sugary cake took over. That was a watershed moment in how businesses could manipulate their consumers into making bad choices in purchasing. So now let's take a walk through your supermarket. Most supermarkets are not going to have the door in the middle of the front of the store. Instead the door or the doors will be on either side. That's because people are kind of like rats in a maze. We like to turn to the wall. So when you go in, you're going to turn to whichever side that door is closest to. So it's on the left side of the store, you're going to go to the left wall. It's on the right side of the store, you're going to go to the right wall, and they want you to do that. See either wall is going to have one of two things. It's almost always vegetables or a bakery, sometimes flowers, because that works the same as a bakery. You see, when you smell fresh bread or fresh flowers, you have a pleasant experience. And if you're feeling good, you're more likely to buy stuff. That's why when you go to a resort in Las Vegas, they all pipe in a smell, because they're trying to make you feel good. They want you to start your shopping experience in the vegetable section, because the intellectual part of your brain, the part you got to work at, knows you should eat healthy. And so it wants you to have lots of zucchini. Your meat and your dairy products are almost always at the back of the store. That's where you're going to go next. After you go up that wall full of vegetables, you're going to hit the dairy, and you're going to hit the meat, and you're going to be more likely to buy those products while you're still fresh. Then they're going to make you go up and down aisle after aisle, often looking for stuff. You ever wonder why you can't find something where you think it's supposed to be? Because they don't want you to, they want you to keep looking for it. And you're going to have to look through 1,700 kinds of spaghetti sauce, and it's hard to figure out which one that you're supposed to get. And they want to make it a little hard for you, too. They're trying to wear you out. You ever wondered why there's not an essentials aisle at a supermarket? The place where you can go where 90% of what you want is just right there? I mean, we all want the same stuff. Why don't they have an aisle like that? Because they don't want you to have an aisle like that. They want you to walk up and down aisle after aisle, getting slowly more and more tired, more and more likely to just do an impulse buy and reach over and buy that box of sugary syrup. Also, subconsciously control what you look at as you're going up and down those aisles. They use eye-tracking software to look where people look. And they see that they usually look at eye level. And so those are going to be the items that they want to sell you more. The stuff down on the bottom nobody looks at, that's going to be the stuff they make the least profit on. The stuff in the middle, that's what they want you to buy. So you've just gone down an exhausting aisle of spaghetti sauce. And you get to the end and there's an end gondola there. You know, that end part that has the deal on the cookies or the chips or the beer. That's prime real estate because studies show that after you go down that aisle full of spaghetti sauces that you've had to try and figure out. And without even realizing it, you're a little tired. When you make that turn, you're more likely to reach out and to buy that item. And then you finally get in the line and what's there? All the chocolate, all the candy, all the stuff you would never buy normal. But fatigue brings impulse buying. This is just one of the tricks that companies use in order to sell you stuff you don't want. Have you spend your money on things you don't need. And it's not going to work every time. Sometimes you know you only need a can of peaches and you go and get the can of peaches and leave. But it works enough of the time. It's a numbers game for them. If they can get most of the people most of the time to buy extra stuff that they don't need, well then they won. And you, you never even knew you lost.