Neuromania, the New
Irrationalism and why
we need to
Rehumanise research
March 2012
David Penn, Managing Director, Conquest Research
Prepared for ‘Science of the Mind’ session at Research
2012
© Copyright 2012 Conquest Research & Consultancy Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this work shall be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Managing Director.
Meat the humans
Imagine that an alien explorer returns from an expedition to Earth and is debriefing his commander
about the Humans he has encountered. “They’re made of meat!” he tells him. The alien
commander is incredulous: “Meat! So what does the thinking?” “The meat does the thinking”,
replies the explorer. The commander is now bewildered: “So, no brain?” he asks. Explorer:
“There’s a brain, alright, it’s just that it’s made out of meat!”
Terry Bissons’ SF fable highlights both the challenge and dilemma that face us in understanding
the human brain. How is it that thinking, feeling, consciousness, memory and a sense of self all
emanate from an organ which is made of the pretty much the same stuff as the rest of our bodies?
One writer has remarked that “A brain scan is a fast-acting solvent of our critical faculties”, and in
the age of fMRI and EEG, and it’s easy to get bamboozled by our technological capacity to “look
into the brain”. After all, it’s been compared (not unreasonably) with other human achievements
such as walking on the moon, and grows ever more powerful and sophisticated. So much so that
one might argue that “it’s only a matter of time” before all the riches and mysteries of the brain are
revealed. And, because so much has already been discovered about the role of the unconscious
and emotions in decision making, it is easy to conclude that brain science has made old models of
human behaviour redundant. We’re all now familiar with the argument that while we appear to be
in control of how we feel and think the reality is that our thinking is influenced and framed by
unconscious (emotional) processes which we may not even be aware of.
So if you work in a traditional MR agency I wouldn’t blame you for feeling a bit anxious about the
future, particularly as those twin staples of market researchers – the survey and the focus group have come in for quite a kicking in recent years. The problem with traditional methods is that, by
their very nature, they cannot plug in directly to the emotional and unconscious – the words and
scales (and sometimes the moderator) simply get in the way, often prompting a conscious,
mediated and rationalised response when what we want is an unconscious, unmediated and
emotional one.
Yet it’s wrong to discount traditional methods without also acknowledging their valuable
contribution to understanding the human condition. One of the clichés of conference is “don’t
throw the baby out with the bathwater”, and, like most clichés, it embodies a truth. If we take no
account of the conscious, reflective and rational aspects of man (which traditional methods are
good at measuring) we start to lose sight of what it means to be human. To do our job properly
means understanding the human condition in all of its guises – rational/emotional;
conscious/unconscious; selfish/altruistic; social/individual – because the truth is that we’re all of
these things, at different times and at the same time. “I’m a million different people from one day
to the next…” sang Richard Ashcroft.
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The fact is that “looking in the brain”, via fMRI, EEG or other methods, tells us less about being
human than we might imagine. The “miracle” of how a lump of meat produces consciousness,
memory and a sense of identity remains the “hard problem” that neither philosophers nor
neuroscientists are yet able to solve. An even trickier issue is that of free-will. Almost no one now
argues these days that man is autonomous, completely free or consistently rational, because
neuroscience has shown us that, below the surface of (apparently) conscious rationality, there
exists a massive neural hinterland where judgements and decisions are made automatically,
emotionally and often unconsciously. Yet that doesn’t make us robots or zombies.
Behavioural economists (such as Daniel Kahneman) call the vast universe of non-attentive, nonreflective thinking System 1 - in contrast with the difficult, reflective, attentive kind of thinking they
call System 2. Kahneman describes the two systems as “fictitious characters” (metaphors, if you
like) because they are not physical entities, nor is there any part of the brain either system would
call home. Rather they are characterisations of two types of thinking, and man is capable of both –
the effortless and the effortful – with System 1 accounting for much more of our thinking than
we’d care to admit, because System 1 can’t be turned off – it’s there whether we like it or not.
Enter Neuromarketing
In 2003, some neuroscientists at the Baylor Institute in the U.S. published a study on the neural
correlates of cola preference. Firstly, they established what most of us probably knew already –
that (in conventional MR tests) Pepsi is preferred to Coke blind, but not branded. Secondly, using
fMRI, they noticed that certain areas of the brain (associated with emotion) were active when
respondents knowingly chose Coke yet were not active when they chose Pepsi. They also found
that when respondents selected Pepsi or Coke blind, no such differences emerged – indicating that
preference for Coke was not explicable in terms of product advantage.
When I first saw the results, I like many other people, was astounded. Something which we had
hypothesised for years – the power of a brand to overcome rational (in this case, sensory)
preference - was made flesh; no longer just a cognitive abstraction but a physiological reality of
neurons and synapses. Wow!
Yet is it really soo amazing that brand choice correlates with neural activity? After all, unless we
believe (as dualists do) that the mind floats free of the body, thinking and feeling have to take
place (or at least be represented) somewhere. The reason we were surprised to find that there is
“something going on in the brain” (even during an MR test) is that somehow the brain and the
mind have become disconnected in our explanations of human behaviour. And what philosophers
and psychologists have split asunder, neuroscientists have helped to glue back together.
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Yet there’s a difference between correlation and identity. Just because we can (through the
wonders of fMRI) observe neural activation during brand preference, why assume that brand
preference is essentially the same thing as neural activation? When we feel emotion, it is
accompanied by an observable physiological response in the brain – the physical and the mental
may both be parts of the same thing, but they are not identical: one is physiological and
observable: the other a subjective, mental experience.
Enter Neuromania (and what’s wrong with it)
It’s so, so tempting to jump from correlation to causal explanation and end up believing that all
behaviour can be explained by, or reduced to, brain activity. This is what
neuroscientist/philosopher, Raymond Tallis, in a recent book, calls neuromania. At its extreme,
neuromania is a form of determinism that holds that we can explain, predict and even control
human behaviour via our scientific understanding of the brain.
So is neuromania rampant amongst the MR fraternity? Some of my best friends are
neuromarketers, and most seem to take a balanced and nuanced view of the contribution that
neuromarketing can make. I chaired an ESOMAR conference on neuroscience last summer and few
speakers claimed that neuromarketing is the complete answer, yet I agree with Tallis that there is
a generally exaggerated belief in the importance of brain activity as an explanation of behaviour.
Two recently published books in the MR arena seem to vindicate this judgement: Buy.Ology by
Martin Lindstrom and The Buying Brain by A.K. Pradeep. To be fair, neither concludes that
neuromarketing is the complete answer, but both suggest a degree of certainty (about the ability
of neuromarketing to explain human behaviour) which borders on the hubristic.
There are a number of fallacies that underpin neuromania.
The Evolution Fallacy: We don’t differ fundamentally from higher primates (apart from having a
bigger brain), and the differences are less important than the similarities. Essentially, we are
“intelligent monkeys”
I’m not a creationist; I’m certainly not denying the theory of evolution but, much as I like and
respect my higher primate cousins, I’ve never had a conversation with a chimpanzee nor read a
book by one. The point is that, whilst our brains might be similar to those of great apes, human
consciousness is different not only in extent but also in kind, which is why we can do stuff that
they can’t. Somehow we have taken the raw material of the primate brain and shaped it into
something capable of far more complex thought.
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Writers often apply terms too interchangeably to animals and humans – for example, using
“memory” to describe the process by which a dog finds a buried bone (episodic memory) and the
infinitely more complex process by which humans weave together past experiences to create a
sense of self. It leads to an incorrect and frankly degraded view of humanity. It’s bizarre that we
humanise animals (often by attributing to them feelings they don’t have) yet animalise humans losing sight of the things that actually make us different, one of which is the ability to think
individually, consciously and, yes, rationally. Another is sociality - our unique ability to create large,
complex social structures that transcend kinship groups.
The “We Are Our Brain” Fallacy: If we can’t see something in the brain it doesn’t exist
You may have read Daniel Dennet’s demolition of dualism in Consciousness Explained. OK, there is
no “Cartesian theatre “in the brain where our “self” sits pulling the strings, or pushing the buttons
(choose your metaphor) that control our behaviour. But some argue that because we can’t see or
find the neural correlates of certain human mental states in the brain, they don’t exist - or, that to
admit their existence is a return to dualism. Yet we can’t “see” consciousness, sociality, identity or
memory in the brain, all of which exist; neither philosophy nor neuroscience has yet answered the
“hard question” of how the brain creates the very things that make us human – these being the
faculties that most differentiate us from the rest of the animal kingdom.
The Sameness Fallacy: if the same part of the brain ‘lights up’ when we think about one thing as
when we think about another, the two mental states must be the same.
In Buy.Ology, Martin Lindstrom reports an experiment where religious zealots and brand loyalists’
brains were scanned whilst they each contemplated the objects of their devotion. “Bottom line,
there was no discernible difference between the way subjects’ brains reacted to powerful brands
and the way they reacted to religious icons and figures… Clearly our emotional engagement with
powerful brands shares strong parallels with our feelings about religion.”
So, if the same part of the brain ‘lights up’ when we think about one thing as when we think about
another, are the two mental states the same? There are certainly some similarities between
religion and brands, but I don’t know anyone who worships at the Church of Apple, goes to Apple
Heaven when they die, or believes Steve Jobs is a deity. Perhaps the least interesting thing about
the two phenomena is that they activate the same bits of the brain. Also, which bits, Martin? And,
if this experiment is as ground-breaking as you suggest, how about writing it up properly in a
scientific journal?
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The Freedom Fallacy: Because brain activity may sometimes be observed before we’re aware of
making a decision, our free will is an illusion – our brains are in control
If our brains are in control, how come clever observers seem to be able to step outside our brains,
to tell us? Tom Ewing tweeted that “I sometimes read ‘People don't really understand why they do
things .. and detect a big unspoken ‘EXCEPT ME’ from the writer.”
The curious thing is that the brain is the only organ in the human body that transcends itself, in
that it generates a consciousness that allows its owner to step outside its confines and observe its
processes. We are unique (amongst the animal kingdom) in our ability to transcend our brain and
examine our (supposedly) non rational behaviours.
We are also able to moderate and control our behaviour (see next fallacy). While this could be
subject of an extensive philosophical debate, people can definitely control or limit their instinctive
response to a situation: “free won’t” instead of “free will”, as it were. For example, deciding not to
hit or not to kiss someone (inappropriately).
We humans are fond of deterministic theories, but back in the 20th century, the invisible forces
that shaped our behaviour were generally thought to be social or environmental. Marxists and
sociologists of various ideological hues placed the individual at the centre of a vortex of invisible
forces and influences. Class was the big one, of course, as well as family and institutions such as
state and church. Before that, Freud had traced our development as individuals to the familial
psycho-drama played out in our infant years and, later in the century, post-modernists such as
Foucault and Derrida argued that we are at the mercy of hegemonic influences of culture and
language. Now, in the 21st century, we have THE BRAIN.
Which brings us to…
The Automatic Pilot Fallacy: Our unconscious/emotions compel us to act (irrationally) instead
of working with our rational faculties to facilitate better decision making
The whole point about emotions is that they are involuntary and impossible to turn-off (except
when our brain is damaged – as Damasio has demonstrated). That said, it’s very rare for our
emotions to completely dictate our reaction – the exception being in situations of “fight or flight”,
when we’re faced with extreme danger. We have learned (and have evolved) to live with our
emotions, adopting (cognitive) controls that stop us from obeying their every dictate. Otherwise,
human life would be just about impossible or, as Thomas Hobbes remarked, “Nasty, brutish and
short”. Perhaps closer to the truth is the idea that emotions are ever-present as a framing device
for all the decisions we make - be they good or bad. “Decision making hinges on the simultaneous
functioning of reason and emotion” observes Gerald Zaltman.
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Nor are we irrational – at least not in the accepted sense of the word - but we are very inconsistent
in our reasoning. Behavioural economics is often cited as proving that man is irrational, yet experts
such as Kahneman use the term in a highly specific way: for him, the only test of rationality is not
whether a person’s beliefs and preferences are reasonable, but whether they are internally
consistent. “I often cringe when my work is credited with proving that human choices are
irrational, when in fact our research only showed that Humans are not well served by the rationalagent model.” Indeed.
The Reductionist Fallacy: We can locate reason and emotion in specific parts of the brain.
Actually, at the higher levels of cognition, the brain is not that modular, and neither emotions nor
reasoning reside exclusively in specific locations within it. The areas that control emotions and
reasoning are located side by side in the brain and constantly interact. Whilst there is arguably an
“emotional brain” (the limbic system), there isn’t really a rational brain as such. There is a part of
the brain (the Prefrontal Cortex) that deals with conscious, reflective thinking, but it doesn’t
perform those functions in isolation.
Interestingly, techniques such as EEG barely penetrate the emotional brain at all.
Proponents of EEG for measuring emotion rely on a model that posits the left Prefrontal Cortex
(PFC) as involved in approach behaviour, whereas the right PFC is involved in withdrawal from
aversive stimuli. The evidence is compelling, but not completely conclusive because anger, which is
an approach but a negatively valenced emotion, cannot be separated from happiness. More
worryingly, the sector of the PFC most directly reflected in EEG recordings is the Dorsolateral PFC,
which is most associated with cognitive control. Yet the sector which is most associated with
emotional value - the Orbital PFC - is the one least directly reflected in EEG recordings. In reality,
therefore, EEG measures only a small part of the complex brain circuitry that controls our emotions
Reductionists are fond of phrases like “what it all boils down to ….”, but. As we have seen, much
mental activity cannot easily be “boiled down” to specific neuronal activity, because the neural
activity which accompanies higher level activity is so widely distributed in the brain.
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The All in the Head Fallacy: Thought, feeling and cognition are ‘in the brain’ and not outside it.
What it means to be human is to have relationships with others – to have cognitive and emotional
connections. We are, in essence, part of a cognitive community of minds, and it is through that
community that we create culture and language.
The idea that thought, feeling and cognition are not ‘all in the brain’ - but outside it - is a difficult
one to grasp, yet really it’s quite obvious. Humans have created a shared space in which they
interact and in which they share a collective consciousness or culture. It’s the place where we live
as persons rather than organisms – the cognitive community of minds.
Raymond Tallis puts it thus:
“Our consciousness …cannot be found solely in the stand alone brain; or even just in a brain in a
body….It participates in, and is part of, a community of minds built up by conscious human beings
over hundreds of thousands of years. This cognitive community is an expression of the
collectivisation of our experiences through a trillion acts of joint and shared attention”
Language is the most obvious expression of our shared consciousness, yet it is a late comer in the
evolution of collective consciousness. First our species started with episodic memory, then had
nonverbal language (signs, gesture and mime). Next was non-verbal representation and metaphor
- both key means of communicating emotion. Finally symbols and language came along.
Animals have episodic memory – of specific events that they apply unthinkingly to present
circumstances. Knowledge is not passed on in animal groups except through genetic transmission.
Learning amongst animals occurs only through imitation.
Merlin Donald proposes that man underwent a fundamental cognitive shift that set him apart from
primates – not just because of brain mass, but because of a new cognitive capacity called mimesis.
It allowed man to develop a representational form of communication based on gestures and mime.
Mimetic culture allowed our ancestors to form group structures, display emotions voluntarily, and
pass on knowledge (without genetic transmission). Interestingly, mimetic language (gestures, etc)
is still often better at expressing emotion than language. If you don’t believe me, watch the
reaction of the driver in the next car when you cut him up – you won’t need to lip read!
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Metaphors may seem to be linguistic, but they are representational – linking something we want to
convey with a commonly understood experience. They often have a mimetic base to them – for
example, we understand the metaphor happy is up because it evokes shared images (experiences)
of people jumping off the ground, throwing arms in the air, mouth turned up at corners, etc.
Since metaphors pre-date language, it makes sense that metaphors might enable us to get closer
to our emotions. Conquest’s Metaphorix® uses metaphors that allow people to express their
feelings intuitively, because using words is not the best way to get people to express their
emotions. The Metaphorix® approach draws heavily on Primary Metaphors, which are present in
almost every language and every culture, and are therefore understood internationally. Conquest
has created online visual metaphors for respondents to interact with, creating an engaging,
“gameified” experience. The distribution of responses using these metaphors is completely
different, more intense, than when measuring emotion using a conventional verbal scale in a
survey. www.metaphorixuk.com
Finally
Richard Thorogood, Director of Strategic Insights & Analytics for the Colgate-Palmolive US
Company remarked that “In neuromarketing there is no E = MC squared equation".
Neuromarketing certainly helps us to understand the neural correlates of brands and advertising,
but brands are as much cultural constructs as neuronal ones; they exist in the community of minds
created by the interaction of our brains with the society in which they live. And, because of our
shared (mimetic) cultural evolution, it is perfectly possible to understand the emotional substrates
of this interaction via non-verbal and metaphoric measures – without recourse to neuromarketing
(or to conventional methods). Looking at the brain alone will never give us the complete answer.
Looking for our shared humanity might.
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Contact Details
[email protected]
You can find out more about Metaphorix® at
www.metaphorixuk.com
Follow me on twitter @Davidpenn1
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