Marketing Insights

CMO Minute: Avoiding the Uncanny Valley

By: Dr. James McFarland, People Scientist When it comes to “humanness,” it turns out there is a fine line between appealing and appalling. Although rather than a line, research suggests the border separating the two feelings may be more of a valley. Typically, assigning human characteristics (e.g., body structure, expressions, emotions) to animals or non-living … Continued Read more →

CMO Minute: The Power of Listening

By: Dr. James McFarland, People Scientist We all have our preferred way of gathering information from the world. Some of us read, many of us watch television or interact with social media, and some of us even prefer to take in our information via the structure of online or in-person meetings (remember those?). In all … Continued Read more →

CMO Minute: Windows to the Soul?

A recent study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin has uncovered a surprising result of what happens when attention is directed towards another person’s eyes. Read more →

The Importance of Gratitude

We have all been taught the importance of saying please and thank you, but did you know that a sincere expression of gratitude may also help your bottom line? Read more →

The Looking-Glass Effect

The term “Looking-Glass Self” was introduced by Charles H. Cooley in 1902 to describe how our self-identity is impacted by the people around us.1 According to the theory, how we see ourselves is deeply intertwined with our perception of how we think other people view us and our behaviors. Read more →

Experiencing Information

By: Dr. James McFarland, PhD, People Scientist From a neurological perspective, the memory of an event personally experienced in real-time, such as a game, concert, or award show, is “formatted” differently than one’s general knowledge of the event itself. To put this another way, learning information is not the same as experiencing information, and each … Continued Read more →

You’ve Changed…Or Is It Just Me?

A recent study published by the Public Library of Science (PLOS One) is probing the question of personality. Specifically, did the COVID-19 crisis alter our unique predispositions toward thinking, feeling, and behaving in certain ways? Read more →

Out of Sight, Never in Mind

In the late 1950s, subliminal messaging became a mainstream sensation practically overnight when Vance Packard claimed that imperceptibly flashing the words “eat popcorn” or “drink Coca-Cola” across movie theater screens resulted in an 18-50% sales increase of those items. Read more →

If You Can’t Say Something Nice…

Have you ever wondered about all the anthropomorphizing going on these days? Wait, before you jump up to go wash your hands, don’t worry, it’s not contagious -- well, at least not in the traditional sense anyway. Read more →

Do I Really Need That?

When we think about our lives and what is truly important to us, it should cause us to behave differently, right? Well, it does, but not necessarily in the ways you might think. Read more →

Give Me a Reason to Believe

As much as we would like to believe we are all about the facts and nothing but the facts, we all have hidden biases and self-serving inconsistencies that are slightly out of step with the information around us. Read more →