Cake or Fruit Salad?

Cake or fruit salad? That's the question asked during research conducted by Stanford University when asking whether Emotion trumps the Rational in our brains. in NPR's "Morning Edition" story, researchers tasked two groups with remembering a series of numbers while walking up and down a hallway -- one group remembering two sets and the other remembering seven sets of numbers. Both were interrupted with a snack choice of cake or fruit salad, with the "two" group selecting fruit salad ant the "seven" group choosing cake - both overwhelmingly.


The conclusion? When the brain is not overloaded, it is more likely to select the rational or "better for you" choice - fruit salad. When our brains are over tasked, our emotional side dominates, and we select what we're really prefer - cake! The ratio was 7:1 in this study, emotion vs. rational.


So what? Good marketers talk about marrying the rational and the emotional, but often times once (especially with the much regulated pharmaceutical industry) rational wins out. But emotion is not just a "soft" factor - it is hardwired in our brains, which this study helps underscore. Granted, our challenges and opportunities are far more complex than a snack choice, but so are the drivers we must factor into our marketing in engaging our audiences.