In fact, you lie to yourself and you don't even know about it. We often overestimate our ability to control our thoughts, feelings, and behavior. That is why you don't know yourself as well as you think you do. And today, I'm going to tell you why and how we can know ourselves better. And maybe this may help us make better decisions in a world filled with misinformation and ever-growing choices of products.
Let me give you an example and ask you this. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being I really care about it, how much do you care about buying sustainable products? Now, statistically speaking, most of you would say seven or above.
However, when we show people different products at a consumer research lab at Curtin University here in Perth, eye-tracking data shows that more than 40% of people pay little to no attention at all towards sustainability information on product packaging. Facial expression analysis shows that people tend to exhibit zero increase in liking towards sustainable product in comparison to non-sustainable one. In fact, when we track the size of the pupil, we know they dedicate significantly lower processing power towards sustainability claim, meaning that people pay little attention to sustainability even though they claim they care about it.
That is why my colleague Dr. Sean Lee and I call this the BS project. But of course, when I've been asked as why that is the case, In this case, we just say, well, that's just Billy's initial BS, Billy-san. But why don't our behavior match our word? Why do we lie and we don't know about it? This is because your subconscious processes in your brain plays a significant role in your everyday decision, from what you buy to whether you recycle or even to whether you will comply with that health and safety messages that you walk past every single day.
Now, this is not only surprising but problematic. Social science research relies heavily on research method that simply asks you to report your thoughts, feelings and behavior. But recent research shows that you go through more than 6,000 thoughts a day.
thoughts a day. Now, do you really expect me to tell you about my thoughts and feelings even though every morning my wife asks me, do I look pretty in this dress? It's a very loaded question and I really can't answer her.
But of course, we cannot just throw out self-reported measures and conventional research methods because they can tell us about your conscious thoughts and feelings. However, we'll never be able to paint a full picture you or I cannot report our conscious or subconscious feelings and thoughts accurately. And in addition to this, we know from research that your brain makes decisions based on information that they process, more often than not, subconsciously. For instance, if I showed you a television commercial, would you be able to tell me what you pay attention to in the 23rd second of the commercial?
What about if I asked you to walk down a supermarket aisle or go into a website, can you tell me your... the fluctuation of your emotion second by second. Probably not, right? But here is where consumer biometrics and neuroscience comes in.
Consumer biometrics and neuroscience are bringing hard science techniques to social science for us to better understand the unconscious and implicit way in which you make decisions. By measuring your biometric measures, such as your heart rate, your facial expression, your brain wave, we can now understand the subconscious psychological processes that goes underneath these biometric responses. This psychological process can include your attention level, your engagement level, and even your emotional state second by second.
To give you an example, you know that our hand actually starts to sweat in emotionally intense situation like this, you know? Or when you are riding a roller coaster, or when you're driving back home and you suddenly realize you forgot your wives. birthday.
Trust me, you really do start to sweat in those situations. But because these biometric measures can be tracked second by second, we now have a way to better understand the psychological processes that is underneath these biometric responses. Specifically, we can use eye-tracking analysis to show where you're looking at and therefore examines your visual attention.
Pupillometry, or the size of your pupil, allows us to tell you how much processing power you're dedicating to the task at hand. Skin conductance response allows us to measure the intensity of your emotion or stress level, while your heart rate allows us to measure your engagement level. Your facial expression allows us to measure your emotional state second by second, ranging from happiness to sadness, to even emotion like disgust, anger, surprise, and much more. Brainwave headset and new imaging techniques are allowing us to pinpoint exactly the brain activity that governs some of your thoughts, feelings and behaviour.
In fact, I can also be quite freakish and actually attach wireless sensors on your face and your body to detect the electrical signal that's being sent by your brain or your muscles that activates these biometric responses. So biometric technologies are allowing us to measure your thoughts and feelings while you're scrolling through your social media, walking down your local supermarket, or even when you are sitting back at home enjoying your Netflix movie. And this is the power of the Consumer Biometrics and Neuroscience Toolkit.
By pairing this with conventional research method, we can now understand how you make decisions both consciously and unconsciously. But of course, this is still a very emerging field of research and science. So we have to reframe from over-exaggerating some of our biometric findings. And like unscientific and over-simplistic application of consumer biometrics, you do not have a buy button in your brain that I can press or track to make you pay more or spend more money. If there is, I would not have told you, and I would not be on an academic salary right now.
So what can consumer biometrics and neuroscience tell us? If it's applied scientifically, well firstly, your decisions are very easily influenced by minute changes in our environment. For instance, if I ask you to walk down a supermarket and show you these product shelves, you'll probably think, don't be silly Billy, they're quite similar, I'll respond quite similarly.
But our research is showing us that you will pay significantly more attention to the product shelf on the right because of the lower stock level. In fact, you will like it more, and you'll be more willing to buy that product. And this is your innate desire for scarcity, as evolution has defaulted our brain to pay more attention to, and therefore, are more likely to value scarce resources. So the next time you walk through a supermarket and actually see a limited edition product or a limited time offer, maybe it's time to think twice. We could even look at other application of consumer biometrics.
By knowing these effects and other similar effects, we can now start to prompt more sustainable decisions, more healthier decisions, or perhaps better decisions. But secondly, consumer biometrics and neuroscience are showing us that your decisions are based on salient associations that have been triggered both consciously and unconsciously. And these mental associations can be used as cognitive shortcuts for us to make more efficient, and faster decisions. But in our lab, we can actually change the taste and aroma of the same food product by simply changing the product packaging and the visual cues that are associated with food naturalness, freshness, and even food innovativeness.
We even found a way for you to increase your willingness to pay by 30% on the same bottle of wine. The trick is simple, by putting it into a timber box packaging. because Timberbox is genuinely associated with premiumness or premium product. Of course, don't tell that to my clients because they probably will not like me telling you all these trick and tips. But again, by knowing these phenomena and similar phenomena, we can now start to actually prompt or enhance the consumption of sustainable and ethical products even though they cost more.
And third and lastly, consumer biometrics and neuroscience are really... busting a lot of myths on how we can actually influence our decisions. For instance, many brands around the world spend millions of dollars making funnier vertis spin to make you like the product or the brand more.
However, our research is showing that they're not always effective. In fact, they have no effect at all when you can't draw a link between the human's message to the product or the brand itself. Similarly, If you walk down the street or a supermarket, you probably have seen a billboard or an advertisement or even a banner that actually features easy-to-read fonts or easy-to-read images. But our research is showing us that this is not always ideal.
In fact, sometimes, moderately difficult-to-read fonts and images captures your attention, interest and engagement much better. And again, by busting these myths and de-punking these myths, We can actually start to design ways to optimize health and safety messages that you will pay attention to and perhaps comply with. By applying consumer biometrics and neuroscience with conventional research method, we can start to understand our consumer in a more granular way. We can provide unprecedented insights to enhance the competitiveness of Australian businesses, to design advertisement products and innovations.
that you as consumers truly like. But with better understanding of how our brains make decisions, we can do much more than that. We can start to use this evidence-based approach to help consumers make better decisions, to understand why people believe in misinformation and scams, to prevent them from taking punitive loans, to increase the consumption of sustainable products, and even convince them to take on a healthier lifestyle. And maybe, just maybe, it explains why I have a gym membership, but I never go to the gym.
Thank you.