Creating Perceptions through Marketing – Part 2 – Neuromarketing

In our last post we were talking about how we are being bombarded by messages from the media and marketers.  And we noted how we keep trying to find ways to tune the marketers out, but then they find a new way in. One relatively new and innovative solution is “neuromarketing.”  Neuromarketing is a quickly emerging field, whereby advertisers market to our subconscious so that we don’t even know we’re being marketed to.  Based on the theory that human behavior is driven by 90% subconscious brain, the neuromarketing industry is focused on figuring out how best to appeal to consumers’ subconscious.

Have you ever walked into a mall when you weren’t at all hungry and found that after walking past the food court and the Cinnabon store you are suddenly holding a 2 ton cinnamon roll in your hand chock-full of enough calories to last you six weeks?  That’s because the franchise pumps their smell out into the air to attract customers’ attention.  This is a form of neuromarketing.

What about in the grocery store?  Have you ever grabbed for that container of Ice Breakers, pack of Trident, or current issue of InTouch magazine featuring the latest celebrity split, at the last minute, while waiting in line at the cash registers?  Or had to manage frequent and persistent requests from your children for the brightly colored, kids’ products strategically placed at just their eye level?   Layout and placement of “impulse” and kids’ products are other examples of neuromarketing.

Now here’s something to think on, if you go out and look at all the books and blogs about neuromarketing, you will find that they are not put out there to help the consumer understand how they are being targeted.  The information is for marketers, telling them how to utilize these techniques to help them with their marketing strategies.

 

 

Creating Perceptions Through Marketing – Part 1

Perhaps you’ve heard this one from David Foster Wallace.  I find it totally amusing.

“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

Really quickly, think about what influences you when you are trying to determine your wants and needs?  Is it your biological needs, your family, your friends, the people at work, you spiritual community?  Perhaps it is your ever-growing social network, or perhaps it’s the government?  As I have mentioned already, and as I am sure you already know, our environment and community can have an enormous impact on our ability to change our behaviors or to grow economically.

Today, we’re going to be taking a look at an aspect of our culture that impacts all of our different communities. Marketing!  Over the next couple of posts we’ll dive more deeply into this topic and how it impacts us.

Before we dive right in, I feel that I must preface this section. The point here is not to place any sort of judgment or blame about the environment in which we live or the players involved in creating it.  Nor is it intended to prescribe measures to be taken to change it.  There are plenty of people out there who are infinitely smarter and more qualified than I, who have much better strategies and ideas about how best to change the environment in which we live.  The point of this discussion is merely to describe, as objectively and neutrally as possible, the “water” in which we all “swim” so that perhaps we may all begin to “swim” with a tab bit more awareness.

You, my friend, are being bombarded.  In 1971, the average American was subjected to approximately 560 advertisements a day.  Today, that number is over 3,000.   That’s over 1 million advertisements a year. In his book, “Buy – ology” Martin Lindstrom asserts that “by the time we reach the age of sixty-six, most of us will have seen approximately two million television commercials.  Time-wise, that’s equivalent to watching eight hours of ads seven days a week for six straight years.”

According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American, including children, watches more than 4 hours of TV each day (or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In a 65-year life, this so-called average person will have spent 9 years staring at a box.

In addition to the good ol’ day stand-bys of television and radio, we now have computers, the Internet, smart phones, cell phones, tablets and gaming devices.  Our televisions now frequently have 6 million channels and the Internet is open 24/7.  The plethora of places accessible to and frequented by marketers, advertisers and consumers alike is incredible.  And it continues to grow – fast.

Hold on, I know what you are thinking.  “But I record/TIVO most of my shows now and I can just skip over the commercials or I can just change the channel or get up and leave the room when commercials come on.”   Yes, we all use these little tricks in an attempt to escape the seemingly relentless grasp of advertisers, but guess what?  They know that we are skipping commercials and TIVO’ing shows.  They know we turn the channel or leave the room when commercials come on.  They know all of our tricks and they have ways around them.  For every new trick we come up with, they come up with another effective solution.

More to come…

Stress Part 4 – Perceptions

If you have a child, you’ve probably had this conversation:

Child – “BUT I NEEEED IT!!”

You – “You don’t need it.  You just want it.”

Child – (While lying on the floor screaming and in tears) III NNNEEEDDD IIITTT!  I need it!  I need it!  I need it!  NOW!

Ah, the joys of parenthood.  If you don’t have children, please feel free to laugh out loud.  And if you’re planning on having them, then your day is coming!

I need a haircut.  I need to get an oil change.  I need to get my nails done.  I need a drink.  I need a vacation.  I need a new car.  The list could go on and on.  Are these really, as we say, needs?  Or are they wants? If I were to tell you there’s a big difference, you would probably be offended.  Of course you know that, but the fact is that people tend to use these two very different economic terms interchangeably as if they have similar, or even identical meanings.  So what is the difference?  When I ask my students this question, they almost always say that a need is something you can’t survive without.  A need can either be physical and objective, like food, water, clothing, and shelter or psychological and subjective, like security, autonomy, and self-esteem.  A want, on the other hand, is something you desire, but could go without if you had to.  A need is survival based.  A want is not.

Take a moment to jot down five things that you need, and five things that you want.  Easy, right?  Seems like it should be, but people frequently have difficulty with this little exercise.  We’ve usually heard a lot throughout our lives about the concept of want versus need, but rarely have we ever taken the time to sit down and really think about it from a personal standpoint.

Want	Need
1.	1.
2.	2.
3.	3.
4.	4.
5.	5.

Now imagine that you make your living as a hair model and have an upcoming audition for a new Clairol commercial.  You haven’t had a job in some time and landing this gig is absolutely necessary if you are going to maintain your current lifestyle while continuing to pay all of your bills on time.  The audition is in two days and on your way to the salon to get your hair cut and colored, your car breaks down. Without your car you can’t get your hair done.  You need to get your hair done if there’s any chance you’re going to land that audition.  You need your car.  So after you call the salon to reschedule your hair appointment for the next day, you call up your insurance company, get the car towed to the nearest mechanic, and pray that whatever it is can be fixed quickly.  After giving the car a once over, the mechanic informs you that it’s going to take three days to fix the car.  You need to be at that audition.  You need your car sooner than three days.

Using the distinction outlined above, is the word need used accurately in this scenario or should we have used want here instead?  Let’s take a look at what’s being threatened.  Security?  Autonomy?  Self-esteem?  All three seem like likely possibilities.  Are security, autonomy, and self-esteem things that we can survive without?  For most of us, the answer is no.  Not for any length of time anyway.  So if security, autonomy, and self-esteem are necessary for survival and are in fact being threatened by the loss of access to your car, then based on the distinction outlined above, the use of the word need in this scenario is correct.  What if, however, you were able to avoid the threat to security, autonomy, and self-esteem by renting a car, taking the bus, or getting help from a family member or friend?  In that case, the loss of access to your car becomes an inconvenience as opposed to a threat to survival, and use of the word want is more accurate.

 

Earlier, we discussed the role of perception in the initiation of the fight or flight response during episodes of acute or chronic stress.  We determined that a threat to survival, whether actual or perceived, was necessary for the initiation of the fight or flight response and concluded that one way to reduce the harmful psychological and physiological effects of stress and the fight or flight response might be to focus on changing our perceptions of situations that are not truly life threatening.  So how is that related to our current discussion on wants versus needs?

 

If needs are things that we can’t survive without, then any time a threat to one’s needs is present, whether physical or psychological, actual or perceived, the result will be acute or chronic stress.  Any time we convince ourselves that we need something, whether we actually need it or not, we place ourselves at greater risk for suffering higher levels of stress in the event that something threatens our ability to meet that need.  When you consider how often people use the terms need and want interchangeably, as if they have similar, or even identical meanings, this initially seemingly small and insignificant human tendency, now has some pretty serious implications.  Might it behoove us all to pay a bit more attention to the stress we may be inadvertently adding to our lives by thoughtlessly mis-classifying our wants as needs?

 

 

 

External Barriers to Change – Stress Part 3

Since the chemicals released in the body during the fight or flight response are the primary culprits in much of the psychological and physiological damage associated with stress, let’s have a closer look at the situations which typically cause this type of response.  The fight or flight response is triggered in circumstances of both acute and chronic stress, in response to a stressor that (1) is a real OR perceived attack, harm, or threat to survival, and (2) is perceived as being beyond the control of the person experiencing the stressor.   Well that’s interesting.  Perception seems to be a key ingredient to whether or not the fight or flight response is triggered.  So then, what is perception?  Well, according to dictionary.com perception is the result or product of becoming aware of, knowing or identifying by means of the senses.  Ok, then my next logical question is, is it possible to change perceptions?  Of course I always ask this question to my students and to this day I haven’t found anyone who does not believe that perceptions can change.  So if perception, specifically perception of threat and lack of control, is necessary for the initiation of the fight or flight response, then doesn’t it make sense that if we practice changing the way we perceive stressful situations that are not truly life threatening and focusing on the areas where we do have control, we can begin to reduce the amount psychological and physiological damage associated with stress?  Change your perceptions and take back some control.  Simple.  Not easy.

Next steps – How do we change perception or take back control…?

External Barriers to Change – Stress Part 2

Let’s start at the beginning.  What is stress?  Defining stress is no easy task.  This little booger of a word is really hard to nail down, mostly because stress is a largely subjective experience that we all interpret differently.  What is stressful for one person may be pleasurable or have little effect on others.  Hans Selye was the first guy to really start using the term “stress” as we use it today.   His definition of stress is “the non-specific response of the body to any demand for change.”  That’s pretty wide open.  The American Psychological Association defines stress as “the pattern of specific and nonspecific responses an organism makes to stimulus events that disturb its equilibrium and tax or exceed its ability to cope.”  Not much more clear-cut.  I could go on, listing off several other definitions from various sources, there’s certainly no shortage, but the point is that all of the definitions of stress are quite vague and all encompassing to accommodate the multifaceted and subjective nature of this human phenomenon.

Let’s dig a little deeper.  What are the different types of stress?  Surely you’ve heard the terms acute stress, chronic stress, perhaps even eustress.  Any short-term episode of stress is typically classified as acute stress.  Acute stress can be unpleasant or thrilling and exciting.  Acute stress that is thrilling and exciting is often referred to as eustress and is typically experienced in response to a relatively brief, moderate level stressor in a setting that overall feels safe.  Roller coaster rides, a fast run down a challenging ski slope, or a passionate first kiss are all examples of eustress.  An auto accident, an imminent deadline, a child’s occasional problems at school, or a root canal on the other hand, while all relatively brief and moderate level stressors, are anything but thrilling and exciting and typically occur in a setting that feels much more dangerous, out of control and unpredictable.  This kind of acute stress is the well-known “fight or flight” response, and despite its unpleasant characteristics, is a good thing to have, because it helps keep us alive. By its very design, the fight or flight response leads us to fight or to flee.  When our senses perceive an attack, harm, or threat to our survival, the adrenal gland secretes adrenaline, glucocorticoids, and other stress hormones, triggering an instantaneous and simultaneous increase in respiration, blood pressure and heart rate.  Large amounts of oxygen are pumped into the blood stream and throughout the body, enabling muscles to respond both instantly and with immense amounts of exertion.  Once the fighting is over, and the perceived threat—which triggered the response—has been eliminated, our body and mind return to a state of calm.

From an evolutionary standpoint, the fight or flight response is designed to protect us from the predators that once lurked in the woods and fields around us, threatening our physical survival.  During times when our physical survival is truly being threatened, it is an extraordinary response to have on our side, but what happens when the exact same stress response gets turned on for purely psychological states?   When we’re worrying about bouncing a check or making the mortgage payment, having an argument with a family member or boss, or thinking about the ozone layer or mortality, even though it’s not life or death, our perception is often enough to trigger the exact same physiological reaction as if it was.  Our bodies release the same stress hormones, causing us to hyperventilate, our hearts to pound, and our muscles to tense.

Now imagine for a moment how often we Americans find ourselves immersed in this sort of psychological state. More or less frequently, do you suppose, than our ancient ancestors found themselves face to face with a saber tooth tiger?  Well, if our responses to the annual nationwide Stress in America™ survey are any indication at all, the answer is, more frequently – a lot more frequently.  So what’s the problem with that?  The problem is that the human body, while designed to withstand occasional extreme stress for brief periods of time, is not designed to withstand the sustained high level of chemicals released during frequent and chronic episodes of the fight or flight response.

While acute stress can in some cases be thrilling and exciting, chronic stress is not.  Chronic stress is the grinding stress of unrelenting demands and pressures that wears us down day after day, year after year. It’s the kind of stress over which we feel we have little or no control. It’s the stress of financial instability, of dysfunctional families, or of being trapped in an unhappy marriage or job situation. That which becomes old and familiar, which a person gets used to and eventually forgets is even there.  Over time, chronic stress causes a cumulative buildup of toxic and corrosive hormones that our bodies can’t properly metabolize.  Its long-term attrition depletes physical and mental resources, destroying our bodies, minds and lives; upsetting our immune and reproductive systems, impacting our behaviors, accelerating the aging process, altering our brain chemistry and fat cell storage, impairing cell communication and killing us through cancer, heart attack, stroke, suicide, violence, addiction, and a myriad of other hormonal, immune, and autonomic nervous system disorders.

Oh yes, and it has a tendency to disrupt our attempts at change, in case you missed that…

 

External Barriers to Change – Stress Part 1

Since 2007, the American Psychological Association has commissioned the annual nationwide Stress in America™ survey to examine the state of stress across the country and draw attention to its potentially serious physical and emotional consequences.  This handy little survey measures attitudes and perceptions of stress and identifies prominent sources of stress, behaviors commonly used to manage stress, and the impact that stress has on our lives.

Year after year, participants’ responses have revealed high stress levels, reliance on unhealthy behaviors to manage stress and alarming physical health consequences of stress.  Key findings indicate that nearly three-quarters of Americans say they experience stress at levels that exceed what they define as healthy. Money, work, the economy, and personal and family health are the most frequently cited causes of stress.  Although, overall, people seem to recognize that stress can have an impact on health and well-being, citing irritability or anger, fatigue, lack of interest, motivation or energy, headaches, upset stomachs, and changes in appetite and sex drive as commonly experienced psychological and physiological responses to stress, they do not necessarily take action to prevent stress or manage it well.  Sizeable proportions of adults of all ages report using maladaptive coping behaviors such as, overeating or eating unhealthy foods, skipping meals, smoking, drinking and sedentary activities such as watching television or listening to music, to alleviate stress in the short-term rather than taking the necessary steps to decrease stress and improve health in the long run. Lack of willpower and time constraints are the most commonly cited impediments to healthy and sustainable lifestyle or behavior change.  Since research shows that stress and the unhealthy behaviors people use to manage it are key drivers and proven precursors of many chronic illnesses and conditions, including high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, certain types of cancer, arthritis, depression, anxiety, and substance abuse, people who cope with stress in unhealthy ways are likely to end up creating significant personal health problems and more stress in the long run.  Overall, Americans appear to be caught in a vicious cycle where they experience high levels of stress and because they are unable to take the steps necessary to alleviate stress and improve health long-term, engage in maladaptive coping behaviors to alleviate it in the moment, thereby creating serious health problems and even more stress.

Are you dizzy yet?

I’m beginning to wonder if stress is just a part of the American identity.  We, as a society, do not appear to value stress reduction.  We seem to value the opposite, admiring and rewarding the person who not only multitasks doing two or three things at once, but five. Exceedingly stressed and excessively busy lifestyles, it seems, have become a necessary component to achieving the American dream and until we learn to value a more balanced and serene life, stress could easily become our next public health crisis.

Google “stress management” and you will get a million and one hits identifying a multitude of strategies for managing stress.  Exercise.  Get more sleep.  Breathe.  Meditate.  Take a vacation.  Relax.  Sound familiar?  None of these strategies that people try when they are already feeling stressed out are new to us, and if you are able to integrate any of them into your life, I highly recommend it.  But what about strategies for reducing the amount of stress we allow in and take on in the first place?  Surely there is a way to stop some of it before it ever happens, right?  I think so.

The next post will begin discussing some things we might do to take on some of our own stressors. In the meantime, can you identify what are some of the recurring stressors in your life?  Can you then identify any unhealthy behaviors that you use to help you alleviate your stress?

 

How Your People and Places Impact Your Change

Your environment includes the places, climates, energies and moods that make up your cultural and social settings.  I live in a safe little suburban town with relatively stable home prices, good schools, and easy access to groceries, libraries, recreational activities, cultural events, etc.  That is all part of my environment.  I live in Colorado, a state high in altitude, with an arid climate that can impact water resources and lead to wildfires, whose economy seems to be rebounding from the downturn.  That is also part of my environment.  I am a citizen of the United States, a country still recovering from recession, with a relatively stable political climate and consumer driven economy.  Again, that’s part of my environment.  You get the picture.

Your community includes the friends, family, colleagues, and acquaintances with whom you live, worship, socialize, recreate and/or work.  I live with my wife and three kids, socialize and recreate with several of my neighbors, have family in neighboring communities, and colleagues all across the Front Range.  That is all part of my community.

Environment and community can have a significant impact on our stability, safety, security, and opportunity.  Because they heavily influence what we think, feel, perceive, believe, and ultimately how we act and react, they also heavily influence our ability to make changes in our lives. I like to think of this environment and community as the soil that each of us, the seeds, are planted in.  Nutrient rich, robust soil typically yields hearty, prolific plants while nutrient poor, depleted soil yields feeble, barren ones.

A former client of mine, Sally, for example, lived in the same city as a lot of her friends from college.  As single women, they had all had similarly paying jobs and liked to hang out together during their free time doing things they all enjoyed and could all afford.  One by one, Sally and the rest of her posse settled down and got married.  Unfortunately for Sally, most of her friends married “up” financially.  Sally married right where she was.  Over time Sally’s friends began socializing more and more frequently at sophisticated, pricier venues in lieu of the old swingin’ singles day’s standbys.  As her community changed around her, Sally, who didn’t want to lose her friends, tried desperately to keep up even though she couldn’t afford to and eventually found herself with massive amounts of debt and in financial distress.  Sally’s environment and community had become a huge disadvantage in terms of financial growth.

For our purposes, I will define three significant community tendencies that can get in the way of our attempts at change.

First, as we noted above in our justifications, we often use “social proof,” which is “well, everyone else is doing it.”  In this case, we give ourselves a little latitude in our efforts and perhaps don’t stick totally to our new change.

The second tendency that can impact our behaviors is “social contagion”.  As you can probably imagine from the term, like a contagious disease that spreads, our behaviors – whether they be positive behaviors or negative behaviors – can spread to other people or can be caught from other people.  Excessive eating, increased drinking or even just being in a bad mood can spread through social networks causing the people in proximity to behave similarly to those around them.

And the third tendency is similar to our own internal justifications, but it happens when your friends or family help you to justify your behaviors.  I call this “group justification” and it happens quite frequently.  For example, let’s say you go to Starbucks with a friend and on the way there you explain that you’re on a diet and have been trying to eat healthier lately but that this week you’ve been feeling especially stressed out, there is a strong likelihood that your friend will actually encourage you to get a “special treat” at Starbucks and then help you to justify the behavior as stress relief, an outlet, or something that will make you feel better.  And it doesn’t have to be your best friend either.  People who don’t even know you very well will chime in and tell you that it is okay to “let off a little steam” by eating something decadent after a particularly stressful week, even though you’re on a diet and have been trying to eat healthier lately.

Obviously, there’s a flip side to these potential barriers that we want to recognize.  If the community and environment that you are in is supportive, that can be a tremendously beneficial asset.

So, take a moment and see if you can identify in your life some places where your people and places hinder your change efforts. Or, perhaps you can identify how they are helpful!

Justifications

As mentioned in the last post, Internal consistency is restored and maintained through denial when we refuse to recognize or acknowledge that an inconsistency exists.  It is restored through justifications when we defend, excuse or uphold an inconsistent choice or behavior with a reason or explanation.

Justification, the more common of the two responses, comes in several different forms.  Here are some of the most common forms of justification:

1. Rationalization whereby our friends, our acquaintances, or we ourselves offer logical explanations to defend contradictory actions and beliefs in an attempt to restore internal consistency. An example would be, “I’m stressed, I need to blow off some steam so I’m going out tonight!”
2. Moral Licensing happens when we reward ourselves with something that is not in alignment with our values.  For example, “I worked out super hard at the gym today, so I’ll have two deserts.”  Or the other way around, “I’ll eat this cake now because I can work it off at the gym later.”
3. Social Proof is when you justify your behavior by telling yourself or others that it is okay because everyone else is doing it.  Basically, all holidays are evidence of social proof.  It’s also a favorite of teenagers.
4. Arbitrary Resource Devaluation.“It was only…”  If you’ve ever uttered these words to describe a purchasing decision, you have participated in what I call Arbitrary Resource Devaluation . In this situation, an individual intentionally devalues the their resource, time, money or energy in order to make a behavior feel okay.  For example, with money, this can be used for small amounts, like, “yeah, it was only 50 cents.” Or we can do it with larger purchases through comparison, like, “Well it was only $200, but at the other store is was $250.”  If you are compulsively drawn to clearance events, you may be participating in ARD frequently.
5. Future Self –  Often we like to rely on our “future selves” to get us off the hook for today.  For instance, we might allow ourselves to make a purchase today, but tell ourselves that tomorrow or next week we will be more steadfast in our choices and besides, we get paid in a couple of weeks anyway – and I’ll probably get a bonus at work. Our future selves are almost always superhumans that do not have the same weaknesses that we are having today.
6. Mental bookkeeping–We frequently keep track of how we spend our money, time and energy in our head, which is a very dangerous way to manage our resources, but it is quite common.  So here’s what happens, again, using money as an example.  First, we attempt to manage our finances on the fly.  To do so, we often will move funds around in our heads, figuring out when out the next paycheck will arrive and how we can massage our finances to make everything work out.  While nothing has really changed outside of our heads, we feel better about our finances in our heads.  Now if this is just a way to manage finances, it will end there.  However, sometimes there is a second step where we will create all of this mental work in order to figure out how to squeeze and additional expense into the mix.  By figuring it all out in our head, it gives us the courage to move forward with our spending decisions.

These different types of justifications are things that everybody in our culture does.  I still do it all the time. The point of discussing them is not to say that you should try to get rid of them, or to say that they are bad.  But at the least, you can be aware of the fact that you are making a justification for the behavior.  The awareness alone can be very powerful.

So, what are some of your favorite justifications?

 

More Barriers – Internal Inconsistency

Internal Inconsistency is the uncomfortable feeling caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously.

What does that mean?  As we noted earlier, all of us, whether we have written it out or not, has a perception of ourselves and what we believe is most important to us.  We like to think of ourselves as good people with good values like, we value our  “immediate family” or “health” or “our children” or “faith.”  Again, these are things that we believe are very important to us.  But sometimes we find ourselves acting out of alignment with these things that we believe are so important to us. That seems a little weird, doesn’t it? Okay, I know it can be hard to admit to ourselves that we make choices and engage in behaviors that contradict our perceptions of our ideal self because it means that our inner beliefs and outer actions don’t align with one another and this creates an uncomfortable feeling – that is what we call “internal inconsistency.”

To be sure, I have never met anyone who has said that they don’t notice this little issue, this little nagging discomfort that pops up in their life.  And to be honest, nobody really likes this feeling, especially your brain.  And because we don’t like this feeling and the brain doesn’t like the feeling, something needs to be done about it.  So, when we feel this kind of discomfort, we typically respond in ways that attempt to restore and maintain consistency with our perception of ourselves.  And, most often we achieve this either through, are you ready, denial or justifications.

Internal consistency is restored and maintained through denial when we refuse to recognize or acknowledge that an inconsistency exists.  It is restored through justifications when we defend, excuse or uphold an inconsistent choice or behavior with a reason or explanation.

Justification, the more common of the two responses, comes in several different forms.  In the next post, I will go over some of the most common forms of justification.

Looking at Barriers

The identification of barriers and assets is a significant component to making change that is almost always left out.  I am going to highlight some of our internal and external barriers in order to raise your awareness about how this can significantly impact you ability to change.  Then I’ll look at how identifying your assets are an essential component to your ability to make and stick to your change.

Internal Barriers:

Alright, the next portion is a little dense in content, so bear with me because this section will help us answer the question “why, why is it so hard to change?”

Psychologists have identified two main ways that our minds process the world:  System 1 and System 2.  Daniel Kahneman describes these two systems this way: System 1 is the part of the brain that “operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control.”  System 2  “allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computation.  The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration.”  Although both systems are in operation when we are awake, most of the time what we think and do originates in System 1 while System 2 stands by in a comfortable low-effort mode engaging only a fraction of its capacity.  A state referred to as cognitive ease.  It isn’t until our environment changes to such a degree that we begin to experience cognitive strain that System 2 becomes fully and actively engaged.  When this happens the brain exerts more effort and energy than it prefers and so in order to lessen its long-term workload, it looks for ways to shift back from System 2 to System 1 as quickly as possible.  It does this by developing routines and habits.

We typically imagine that our brains process, store and then later recall as memories every single elaborate detail of our experiences and interactions.  To conserve effort and energy however, the brain actually compresses data for storage by reducing our experiences and interactions to a few critical threads like a summary phrase or a small set of key features.  A process called chunking.  When we recall an experience or interaction, our brains quickly and effortlessly reweave the compressed or chunked data and fill in the rest of the details with fabricated data, giving the illusion that the bulk of the information was in our heads the entire time when in fact only a few critical threads were stored. The more familiar our brain becomes with a particular experience or interaction, the more efficiently it is chunks, reweaves, and fabricates data and the less energy it expends.  Scientists believe that routines and habits emerge because the brain continuously seeks ways to conserve effort and energy.  Making new and unfamiliar experiences and interactions into more familiar routines and eventually into ingrained habits conserves maximum effort and energy (remember those Unintentional Changes?). Habits are so efficient at allowing our brains to hum along in System 1 while System 2 stands by at a comfortable low-effort mode, if fact, that our brains cling to them at the exclusion of all else, including common sense.

Think back to the first time you drove a car.  Do you remember how overwhelming it felt initially?  If your experience was anything like mine, it felt like there were a hundred things to remember to do simultaneously and like everything was coming toward you at about six hundred miles per hour.  I had to close the door, adjust the seat, put on and adjust my seatbelt, and adjust the rearview and side mirrors.  I had to remember the keys, which I inevitably left in my pocket, take my seatbelt back off to reach into my pocket and pull out the keys, pick through and shake off a couple of pieces of pocket lint I had gathered along with them, and figure out where exactly to put the key.   Where was the keyhole?  And where the hell was this mysterious place my dad was referring to as the ignition?  Was it next to the keyhole?  Are the two related?  After figuring out that they are in fact one and the same thing, I had to put the key in the keyho… I mean the ignition (OH! I GET IT! It ignites the engine! Very clever) turn it, and start the car.  I had to figure out which pedal was the gas and which was the break, how to maneuver both pedals with one foot (One foot?  Really? Two pedals, two feet.  Oh, don’t use them at the same time?  Got it.  Not good for the car), and oh yeah, remember to re-buckle my seatbelt.  Seatbelt buckled, key in the ignition, turn the key and… Holy crap, what was that!?  I had to learn not to turn the key in the ignition when the car is already running and how to tolerate my dad yelling at me for things that were so obviously the carmaker’s fault (I mean why would anyone make a car that would allow you to continue to turn the key once the car has already been started anyway?).  I had to learn the difference between the windshield wiper lever, the lights, and the gear shifter.  I had to learn how to drive forward, how to drive in reverse, and how to turn.  And I had to learn all of this WHILE learning to share the road with other drivers, way more experienced and capable than I.  I don’t know about you but by the time my first few driving lessons were over, I felt physically depleted and emotionally abused!   That’s because learning to drive is an entirely new experience and so nothing about it is automatic or effortless.  It involves the effortful mental activities of concentration, operation, and action, which all create cognitive strain and demand full and active engagement of brain System 2.

Now, with several years of experience under my belt, driving has become largely involuntary and automatic, routine and habitual.  I drive past that sixteen year old, smile calmly and empathetically, change lanes, maintain a conversation with my wife about when she first learned to drive, change the radio station, adjust the temperature, and make a sharp left turn, all with little or not effort and no sense of voluntary control.

Routines and habits can emerge consciously and deliberately or unconsciously and without our permission.  Sometimes we are aware of a habit and its associated routines and sometimes we are not.  Since we can’t change what we aren’t aware of, the first step in any successful modification of behavior is awareness.

Over time, acquired behavior patterns that are regularly followed not only become almost involuntary but also become permanently hardwired in our brain’s neural pathways.  In fact most research indicates that once these pathways are created, no amount of willpower can make them go away.  Habits are never eliminated entirely but rather shaped and modified through changes in routines. Since our brains establish routines in an effort to conserve energy, changing them is extremely difficult because it demands full and active engagement of brain System 2, a state that our brains try to avoid at all costs.  Overcoming the brain’s natural inclination to resist change therefore takes a significant amount of sustained effort and energy, which is precisely why why why it is so hard to change!