The invisible forces that influence and persuade people

Did you hear about Feedback Loop / Kerios/Trigger /Simulation/ and so on? They are just those words associated with psychology, precisely how human behave and how their Attitude does shape up, and what instigate to their habit changes. I have learnt they and they have made their entrance in UX too long back. Nevertheless, it’s never too late to learn.

Now I always wondered what drives people toward action and let me tell you why. I am an Information Architect Living in Kolkata erstwhile Calcutta and I do UX to earn a living. Besides living that is my passion too, to know more about the fluids inside the brain.

I wanted to know why and how the word SALE creates such a huge impact on us that we tend to buy randomly without any prior need. This is the time we should take deep dive down and unpack the hidden treasure. How?

Psychologists would have loved to explain these and we may found thousands and thousands of line written various websites. They talk about   Rorschach/TUNNELING/ Sequencing and much more. Cognitive psychology becomes more valuable for UX managers in order to drive right and desired action amongst the user.  

So to cut the long story in short I would like to feature few traits in following lines. I thought psychological triggers could come here in a big way. Let us hope all these lines may help others to define their UX solutions.

Reciprocation

It is our Human Nature that we feel like we need to repay . “The inner tension created in the gap between receiving and giving is often so powerful we will give anything in return just to reduce this discomfort” according to Author and psychologist David Straker.

Ex:- useful service for free

Social Proof

Another Human nature is if you are not sure what to do, ask people , look at the behavior of others - which might guide your actions
—especially your peers.

EX:- Comedy  shows have used laugh tracks for such a long time. Or - affiliations of well-known organizations help us to build trust.

On the web you see ‘Subscriber count’ / ‘Social Shares’ / ‘Customers also viewed’/ ‘Reviews’ or the Testimonials

Imitations

Brain cells that called Mirror Nuron - The discovery of mirror neurones owes as much to serendipity as to skill. The sciences of mirror neurone could be very interesting but before we delve into that let examine what heck is this . In a nutshell ‘a special class of brain cells fires not only when an individual performs an action, but also when the individual observes someone else make the same movement’

Let me put this in an easy way – We are in Restaurant, someone is delighted with a certain dish, we want the same dish to be relished.  We saw people rushing to the movie theatre to watch ‘Hangover ‘ – and we decide we must watch it in the coming weekend.

This how emotions relate to purchasing behavior  , and no wonder this is how campaigns stimulate our mirror neurons (and empathy)

 This has to be the hot topic among online marketers too. Example: You see a person facing a HOT KFC Chicken Burger and stretching his hands with his rolling eyes. If there is a ‘Buy button’   , next thing – you will hit the button and buy it, I bet –why-well in my next blog I shall explain in details. I feel what you feel!!

There are other attributes relating to Human behavior and psychological traits draws experience silently.  Such as Evocation, Identification and may form of Visual Clues – particularly Subliminal.   Putting them all together may not do any justice at all. Let them reveal gradually. But the bottom line is UX is the consequences of these attributes plus the situation, and being a consultant, designer we need to how to provide interfaces which help user to be more productive and less error prone.