Mysteries of the Mind
Your unconscious is making your everyday decisions
So how does that translate into the physical space? When patients and their families walk into the new hospital, which will be completed in 2008, they will be surrounded by images of butterflies, the ultimate symbol of transformation. Patient rooms will be more like home, and children will be able to exercise some control over their personal space. A huge garden, embodying transformation as well as energy and connection, will be visible from all rooms and accessible to children and their families. "Before, design was a guessing game; it was hit or miss," says Del Sole. "But we know now that at the deepest level this hospital has to be about transformation." So when a sick child, or a worried parent, or a harassed nurse walks into this hospital, a deep and reassuring recognition of the potential beauties of transformation will resonate unconsciously.
Waves of cola. Zaltman, obviously, is not the only person peering into the mind of the consumer. In a neuroscientific take on the time-honored blind taste test, Coke and Pepsi once again squared off. In Blink, Gladwell describes how the Coca-Cola Co. made a costly mistake in using data from blind taste tests between Coke and Pepsi--in which Pepsi was emphatically preferred by most cola drinkers--to change the recipe and create the marketing debacle that was New Coke. Still, even with a less preferred taste, Coke remains No. 1 in the soft-drink world. More recent research that was published after Gladwell's book was finished may explain why.
Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine offered 67 committed Coke and Pepsi drinkers a choice, and in blind testing, they preferred Pepsi. When they were shown the company logos before they drank, however, 3 out of 4 preferred Coke. The researchers scanned the brains of the participants during the test and discovered that the Coke label created wild activity in the part of the brain associated with memories and self-image, while Pepsi, though tasting better to most, did little to these feel-good centers in the brain. P. Reed Montague, director of the Brown Foundation Human Neuroimaging laboratory at Baylor, explained when the study was released last October: "There's a huge effect of the Coke label on brain activity related to the control of actions, the dredging up of memories and self-image." The mere red-and-white image of Coke made the hippocampus, our brain's vault of memories, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for many of our higher human brain functions like working memory and what is called executive function or control of behavior, light up. The point, says Montague, is that "there is a response in the brain which leads to a behavioral effect." And curiously, it has nothing to do with conscious preference.
The dog comes up and begins to sniff. If it remembers you, and you were a nice person, then instantly it wags its tail, perhaps even deigns to lick your wrist. It may avoid you. It may associate you with food or with a swift kick. And all those images, all those associations are evoked by one healthy whiff.
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