Feelings are the most powerful determinants of a person's attitudes and decisions
Known for the breadth of his work on the basic processes of social behaviour, Robert Zajonc helped to create the modern field of social psychology. Image: Marilla Sicilia/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images
“The form of experience that we came to call “feeling” accompanies all cognitions.“ -Robert Zajonc
This is the first in a set of 4 articles where I shall present fundamentals of psychology that are evidently manifest in the work of marketing but little known. One reason is that the celebrity status that Sigmund Freud and to a lesser degree, Carl Jung acquired in their lifetimes eclipsed the work of many other contributors. The standard MBA curriculum may walk through some references to Ivan Pavlov or Abraham Maslow, but a deeper understanding of the work of psychologists is merited. I will introduce the work of a few such stalwarts as best as I can.
Let me begin with the critical area of familiarity and awareness. The marrow of brand building is familiarity. Today, we consider it a universal truth that repeated exposure to a stimulus breeds familiarity with it. Familiarity brings about an attitude change toward the stimulus taking the form of preference, or affection. This preference is emotional and forms at a subconscious level before a person is even aware of it. The more you see it, the more you like it. Any marketer who doubts this will learn a lesson after much money is wasted with scanty results.
But this was not always seen as an axiomatic truth. It was not even understood. In 1876 German experimental psychologist Gustav Fechner suggested that familiarity increased positive feelings toward art objects, but that “supersaturation” leads to aversion. By 1910, Edward B. Titchener was describing familiarity as a “glow of warmth” that people experience in the presence of familiar things. Their work was soon forgotten. Instead, the rise of mass media advertising placed a lot of premium on novelty and creative freshness.
Until the middle of the 20th century, social scientists tended to base their explanations of human behaviour on environmental factors. It was fundamentally the work of Polish-born psychologist Robert Zajonc that allowed us a more complete understanding and considered the functions of the mind as well. Zajonc’s main interest was in the relationship between feeling and thought.