Prof. Baba Shiv, one of our advisors, just published a fascinating paper on the power of our beliefs to influence brain activation, and on how marketing can influence those beliefs:
Price Tag Can Change The Way People Experience Wine, Study Shows (Science Daily)
- According to researchers at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the California Institute of Technology, if a person is told he or she is tasting two different wines and that one costs $5 and the other $45 when they are, in fact, the same wine the part of the brain that experiences pleasure will become more active when the drinker thinks he or she is enjoying the more expensive vintage.
- “What we document is that price is not just about inferences of quality, but it can actually affect real quality,” said Baba Shiv, a professor of marketing who co-authored a paper titled “Marketing Actions Can Modulate Neural Representations of Experienced Pleasantness,” published online Jan. 14 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (Note: link here)
This Stanford article provides an overview of his research: click Here.
- “The belief in the academic field is that emotions are essential to decision making, otherwise you’ll end up making bad decisions, Shiv says. “But, he adds, explaining his huge contrarian streak, “I can show the opposite as well, that [Read more…] about Is Your Brain Ready To Drink Cheap Wine?
