Daniel Kahneman, doyen of behavioural economics, recently gave a fascinating talk at the Royal Institution. And I do mean a ‘talk’. No props. No PowerPoint slides. Just Daniel Kahneman in an armchair, regaling the audience with accounts of his research with co-worker Amos Tversky, followed by plenty of time for questions and discussion. Because so many of his ideas have entered the popular domain, it is easy to forget the originality of his work on judgement, decision making and behavioural economics.
One of the key points he made at the Royal Institution was that the human brain is designed to make quick associations between stimuli and that this takes natural president over any logical search for truth or accuracy. Unless we are aware of this tendency we can easily reach conclusions that are not necessarily correct. We may believe that the cheapest bottle of wine on the menu will taste the worst, or that the clean-cut student is more likely to be studious than the bohemian looking student. And we have faith in such snap judgments because we don’t stop to consider whether other, additional information would help us to reach a more considered decision.
The evening reinforced our belief that, as market researchers we need to explore both these initial ‘fast’ thoughts as well as later ‘slow’, more rational thoughts. As researchers we must understand the initial thoughts and associations that a message or visual concept triggers, alongside the slower, and the more rational brand comparisons that may take place once interest is hooked. The paradox, of course, is that asking people directly about their ‘fast’ thinking, leads to slow thoughts intruding – hence the need for research tools that do not themselves involve slow thinking.