Prejudiced brains,mentalizing and advertising

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Roger Dooley has some interesting stuff on Our Prejudiced Brains

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In plain English, the subjects’ brains showed different kinds of activation when viewing individuals they thought were similar vs. individuals thought to be different. There was a bit of good news - the differences in brain activation were minimal when the subjects imagined the profiled individuals engaged in a neutral activity, like enjoying Thanksgiving with family.

The marketing takeaway is that people will categorize others as being similar or dissimilar based on both external cues like appearance as well as what they believe to be true about the individual. So, when the salesperson walks into a customer’s office and says, “Hey, I see you are a Notre Dame football fan too! What do you think they’ll do next season?” he is doing more than breaking the ice with the customer. He’s at least moving to neutral ground and at best establishing himself as “like me” in the customer’s mind.

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