User cognitive bias: Your brain is playing tricks on you…

People's understanding and judgment of the world are often wrong .

For example, look at the picture below. Which of the two colors do you think is darker and which is lighter?

Obviously, the one above is deeper and the one below is shallower!

In fact, the colors of the two images are exactly the same.

If you don't believe it, you can use a finger to cover the middle area, as shown in the picture below.

Before and after covering the corresponding areas, you will find that the judgment of these two color blocks is actually completely different.

So in the process just now, your judgment was wrong.

Don't be upset about this, because all normal people's brains are the same and will have this illusion.

And when you tell yourself very rationally and with certainty that the two colors are the same, your brain still can't accept it, and your judgment is still that the upper one is darker and the lower one is lighter.

Look at the picture below. Which of the two brown and yellow line segments is longer? Does it feel like the line at the back is longer?

In fact, the lengths of these two straight lines are exactly the same.

Don't believe it? You can measure it with a ruler and you will find that they are indeed the same length.

There are many similar cases:

A. The two middle circles on the left and right are the same size.

B. The size of the middle circles on the left and right sides is also the same.

C. The two straight lines on the left and right are actually exactly the same length.

Once again, you find that people's judgment of the outside world and the real situation of the world are often inconsistent.

This difference between subjective judgment and objective facts is a cognitive bias.

To sum it up with a joke on the Internet:

Do you think what you think is what you think?

Application in life

The cognitive bias mentioned above seems to be some examples from puzzle books, some special illusions. What use are they to our lives and work?

In fact, cognitive biases are used in many aspects of life to a greater or lesser extent.

For example - "How to take photos of girls with long legs"

(This picture is quoted from Zhihu user @娴熟陈双獒)

If you shoot from top to bottom, the girl's legs will appear thicker and shorter; if you shoot from bottom to top, the girl's legs will appear long and thin.

Be careful! This is the same girl . Her legs are actually the same length , but the result of your judgment on leg length is different!

The following figure is an example of practice:

(This picture is quoted from PConline)

This is an application of "cognitive bias" in life.

The girl's legs are still the same length, but with one simple adjustment, the result looks different.

Cognitive biases influence behavior

Some people may think that cognitive bias only affects people's visual judgment and is of no use for other things.

This is too simple. All people's behaviors are based on cognition . If there is a deviation in cognitive judgment, some things may occur that even seem ridiculous.

Here is a very interesting case that will show you how cognitive bias affects human behavior.

There is a documentary program called "Brain Games" that designed an experiment to see to what extent some user cognitive biases can influence user behavior.

The experiment was held in a plaza in Las Vegas, where a queuing area was set up and a sign read "Start queuing here."

This queue will not allow you to receive gifts, buy products, or obtain qualifications...

There is no reason for this queue, nothing, just a sign asking people to queue.

In this situation, will anyone line up voluntarily?

NO! It really didn't work, not a single one.

At this time, the program team arranged an insider to stand first and take the lead.

So he stood there alone.

Will it attract more people to join if there is only one person?

After a while, someone came up and asked what the queue was for. The person who knew the truth pretended to say "I don't know" to see if she could join the queue.

Turns out she wasn't interested and left quickly.

Several more groups of curious people came later, asked a few questions, and then left.

As time goes by, it seems that people are more rational and will not queue up for no reason.

However, things began to take a turn for the better!

A couple came up and after a brief chat, they decided to join in and give it a try.

However, at this time, miracles began to happen!

After the group grew from 1 person to 3 people, more and more people wanted to join.

In a short period of time, the line grew longer and longer, and more people chose to join in.

Please note that none of them know what they are waiting for in line , they are just waiting in line.

Soon, the team began to move.

Do people know where to go?

Obviously they didn't know, but that didn't stop them from following closely the leader in front of them.

Next, the program team arranged several seemingly unreasonable processes.

The first level: They need to go through a maze with 9 bends and 18 turns.

Do you see that this path is not designed properly?

Do you find that people just go in circles with the first person leading the way?

Not only did the people at the scene not fall behind, but they also "loyally" followed the people in front of them.

Level 2: Have people jump over a tape on the ground.

Please note that there are no instructions or regulations for any of the actions here.

Only the first person in line made such a move.

It turned out that they not only danced along, but also danced in various postures - turning around, hopping on one leg, bunny hopping, and they were having a lot of fun.

Level 3: A more complex hopscotch game.

Hopscotch is much more complicated than jumping over tape. Do you think others will follow suit if someone in the know leads them?

The result is that all the adults are playing this game that only children play. If you were there, would you play along?

After the dance, people put on the wreaths given by Elvis. After the music is played, can people line up and dance the conga line with Elvis?

sure!

Because that's what the people in front of them did.

Everyone had a great time!

Don't forget! It all started with a person standing in line, not knowing what he was waiting for.

You have to remember that five minutes ago, these strangers were all doing their own things, but now they are dancing together in the square.

When we interviewed them afterwards about why they joined, they said:

From the process point of view, a queue of "no one knew what they were queuing for" actually brought together a group of strangers, who involuntarily followed suit and did what the program team arranged.

This is a cognitive bias that blindly follows others, but it leads to predictable and specific behaviors .

People "feel" that there is a benefit to queuing because others are already queuing, so they queue too.

Creating this “feeling” is even more important than “facts” in guiding people to take action.

So you will often hear words like: satisfaction, participation, happiness, fulfillment, and accomplishment. These words all represent a "feeling."

In operations and marketing, which are work that guides users to purchase, download, and interact, this feeling creation becomes even more important.

like:

• It’s more important to feel cheap than to actually be cheap;
• Feeling hot is more important than actually being hot.
• Feeling good quality is more important than actual good quality;

Focus on feelings, not just facts

It is useless to focus only on the "fact" of what you have done without creating this "feeling" for users.

One time I went to provide consulting services to a company and learned about their specific products and businesses. I saw that there were indeed some good highlights, and I became very curious - "Why isn't such a good feature written into the copy?"

They will think, "Now that this is mentioned, users should be able to sense it."

But the fact is: I only realized these highlights after having in-depth communication with them.

Some companies only focus on improving product performance but rarely think about marketing.

Time and energy are spent on areas that users cannot perceive, and when the product is launched, the sales are ultimately dismal.

The godlike Steve Jobs also made similar mistakes. When he was making the NeXT model, his attention to details reached an astonishing level, and he invested too much energy in areas that users could not see.

Because of the fine lines left on the chassis, he would fly directly to the processing factory and persuade the mold workers to recast it until it was perfect. He also required that the screws used inside the machine have an expensive coating and even insisted on painting the inside of the case black.

The end result was that the product schedule was constantly delayed and it was not produced until four years later. Ultimately, sales were dismal and the factory with a monthly production capacity of 10,000 units had to be idle most of the time because it could only sell 400 units per month.

Attitude is also a feeling

"I'm sorry! This is the company's policy. I can't do anything about it."

When conflicts arise between users and companies, this is the sentence pattern most often used to block user complaints, but will users really accept it?

Sometimes, users complain in order to protect their own interests, but what actually affects them more is the attitude towards handling things.

You need to make the other person feel that you attach great importance to his problem, care about his feelings, and that you are doing your best to deal with it positively. You need to put yourself in his shoes and consider the situation. Even if the final result does not meet the user's ideal state, the other person can accept it more calmly.

The Huang Xiaochu plagiarism incident that broke out some time ago went viral, and people began to criticize this blatant plagiarism, pointing the finger at Huang Xiaochu's founder, Huang Lei.

The next morning, Huang Lei sincerely posted a headline article on Weibo, saying that he would ask the team to thoroughly investigate the matter and make the actual situation public without any out-of-context quotations.

This sincere and responsible response won Huang Lei recognition from a large number of fans on the Internet.

Many public accounts reposted this Weibo post as soon as possible, and many public accounts even praised Huang Lei for his high emotional intelligence, appropriate speech, and sense of responsibility.

There were some twists and turns in the final outcome of the matter. Although there is no definite conclusion yet, there are still many people who went from blaming Huang Xiaochu to becoming his fans in the end.

The handling of this kind of incident gives priority to the audience's "feelings" rather than just arguing about "facts." With this attitude, the chat screenshots, statements, and solutions that Huang Xiaochu released later to clarify the incident will have a chance to gain everyone's understanding and recognition.

Similarly, the most important thing when getting along with women at home is not to argue about who is right, but to create a feeling of care, love and respect.

However, many men do not understand this point. In the family, they are always rationally analyzing, looking for the truth, giving advice, and pointing out shortcomings, which only makes women very angry in the end.

Feelings are more important than facts.

Cognitive bias in traditional industries

In traditional industries, there are many cases where "feelings" are more important than "facts" .

When a bowl of noodles with soybean paste is served, the sauce is usually spread evenly on top instead of being mixed for you. Why?

Because this way you can feel that there is a lot of meat. If it is all mixed evenly into the noodles, then this feeling of "lots of meat" will become the feeling of "little meat".

If you have eaten Guoqiao Rice Noodles, you will find that this "many feelings " setting is used to the fullest level:

A bowl of rice noodles has all the side dishes and condiments that will be added placed in more than a dozen small dishes, giving you a feeling of "there are so many things".

Although in fact, even if you pour everything into the bowl, the food won’t overflow, but the feeling of "rich variety" and "full portions" is deeply felt by foodies.

When you are shopping in a supermarket, besides looking at the products, have you noticed the lights above your head?

The light on the left is yellow and the light on the right is red.

When buying lights for home improvement at the same supermarket, why do the colors of the lights vary?

Is there some mystery behind the different lights?

One time I bought a piece of meat from the supermarket and took it home. When I got home, I found that the pork, which was very fresh and rosy when I bought it in the supermarket, had become much paler when I got home.

Being inexperienced, I thought the meat was rotten. (In fact, that is the normal appearance of meat)

When I went to the supermarket again, I paid special attention to the lights on the meat stall and found that there was indeed a mystery.

This lamp is not an ordinary white light, but a light that emits a special color.

By emitting red light, the fresh meat appears fresher, and more people will be willing to buy it.

Then why are the lights in the other area shaded by yellow lamps?

Because there are fried foods, fried chicken, braised dishes, pasta, etc., the golden light will make them look more crispy and make people salivate.

Different products use different lighting, but the purpose is the same - to make customers want to buy more after seeing it.

This method of influencing users' cognitive biases through lighting, thereby promoting their purchases, has become very common in the supermarket industry.

Feelings are more important than facts.

The core competitiveness of food influencers

I remember once I had a chat with a food celebrity on Zhihu, and he asked me what the core competitiveness of a food expert is.

I thought about it for a while:

"The heat? The seasoning? The ingredients? The knife skills? The spoon skills? The presentation?"

None of them are right!

The core competitiveness is photography.

ha! That’s right! The core competitiveness of a gourmet expert is not cooking skills, but photography.

Because what most users can access in the community are pictures and videos, the most important thing is whether you can capture them in a way that makes them look mouth-watering.

As for whether the saltiness of the dishes is appropriate, it has almost no impact on the food experts' ability to capture online fans.

It may only take 10 minutes to cook a dish, but background decoration, plating, lighting, shooting, photo editing, etc. may take 2 hours.

Feelings are more important than facts.

The cognitive bias of winning the lottery

Anyone who seriously understands probability theory will know that lottery is actually a game in which the poor spend money to subsidize the rich.

However, many people still continue to buy because they feel they might win.

In their "minds", the probability of winning is much higher than the "actual" probability of winning. This is a cognitive bias that deviates greatly from reality.

Why do you only need to pick 7 numbers to play the lottery?

There are very few choices for these 7 numbers, and they are all familiar small numbers, so people feel that there should be a chance to win.

But how low is the probability of winning the first prize of the Double Color Ball?

1/17721088, which means you will have an average chance of winning once if you buy 17 million tickets. And if you continue to buy 17 million lottery tickets, you will need to spend 34 million to win a prize of 5 million.

If you buy a lottery ticket every day, it will take an average of 48,550 years to win a prize.

Therefore, buying lottery tickets, especially buying lottery tickets for a long time, is destined to be a very unreliable and money-losing thing.

In the actual operation process, lottery is indeed an operation method that can easily trigger user actions.

In the "1 Yuan Treasure Hunt" apps that previously had huge traffic, most of the users who actively participated in the activities overestimated their chances of winning at the beginning of the activities. Many people even invested their family fortunes in the game, and ended up losing everything.

Feelings are more important than facts.

The impulse of emotion

The impulse of many people to buy things based on sentimentality is essentially a cognitive bias.

The recognition of the founder’s values, personality, and spirit will be amplified and passed on to the product.

Looking back now, Hammer's first-generation mobile phone T1 did have many problems, including poor camera, average performance, poor battery life, lag, heat, and fragility.

However, many Hammer fans still maintain a high opinion of this phone. When faced with problems with mobile phones, they will understand them with great tolerance, and the outside world's misunderstanding of themselves will be transformed into a more firm belief - independence, individuality, strength, and non-conformity.

Early users in China who purchased Teslas would obviously encounter problems in actual driving, such as a small number of charging stations, long charging time, and limited driving range.

However, these problems will not prevent those who love Tesla from buying it. The spirit and passion of brave exploration and fearlessness of hardships demonstrated by Musk in Tesla's entrepreneurship have inspired them to ignore these existing problems and difficulties.

Some car owners only began to regret and feel annoyed after they encountered charging problems after picking up their cars.

There will also be many people who insist that this is very good and these problems are not big problems. Because after people make a choice, they will be more inclined to believe that this choice is correct, and will find many reasons for this choice, and selectively ignore some negative news.

A survey shows that many women who are deeply affected by domestic violence, when they learn that others may call the police to punish their husbands, will try their best to stop it and tell their husbands that they also have an understandable side. This is a serious cognitive bias.

This week I went to watch Luo Yonghao launch the Nut Pro, and it was truly amazing. I was so excited that I even cried several times during the process.

I later concluded that Luo Yonghao is good at giving a thing a strong sense of meaning .

The so-called sense of meaning refers to the value and significance people have when doing something.

A thin red line, what does it mean?

To ordinary people, it’s just a red line! Then what else?

So Lao Luo started to tell a story, saying that there was a war called Crimea...

In this war, the British defenders were relatively small on one side and the Russian army was much larger on the other. Miraculously, the British defenders managed to resist the attack with fewer troops.

So military history gave a word:

The thin red line

(Thin red line)

Because of this name, there are many novels, movies, and even other battles...

In fact, we just don’t want to make ordinary things in a mediocre era, and we don’t want to make products without personality in a fleshy era...

A special version is launched with special feelings and special meaning, called the thin red line.

Many people at the scene were excited! I think this phone is so meaningful!

(Isn’t it just a red line?)

There is also a sharp edge that can cut your hands, which is also given the label of "personality".

People who believe in this belief will have a strong sense of pride when they get this phone and look at other people's phones with rounded edges.

Where does this feeling come from?

It is not something that is natural, but is given through storytelling.

Feelings are more important than facts.

Adjust the comparison object

Changing the comparison object is also a common method to create user cognitive bias.

When the Xiaomi mobile phone was first released, in order to prevent users from mistaking it for a domestic copycat phone, it was specifically mentioned that these accessories came from world-class international suppliers.

By comparing multiple data such as CPU, memory, battery, screen, camera, etc. with the world's mainstream flagship mobile phones at the time, and positioning the first batch of users of the mobile phone as enthusiasts pursuing configuration, users have a perception that this phone has top-notch configuration and a very high cost-effectiveness.

However, these users generally overlooked other possible problems - quality issues when making the phone for the first time, poor workmanship, heat generation, ugly design, etc., making it a phone that a large number of mobile phone enthusiasts were scrambling to buy. (I was also grabbing it at that time)

After changing the comparison object and finding the right comparison method, almost no one will regard Xiaomi mobile phone as a domestic copycat phone.

In the Dedao App, which has been very successful in its paid columns, many of the column introductions also use the method of changing the comparison objects to adjust users' perception of the paid columns.

When many people first learned about paid columns, they would think - there are so many free public accounts now, how can a paid column with little marginal cost cost nearly 200 yuan?

The objects of comparison at this time are free reading products such as subscription accounts, Toutiao, and Zhihu Daily.

The copywriter of the column adjusted these comparison objects:

Li Xiang's Business Insider

↑ ↓

Li Ka-shing has a team of four people who are responsible for screening and extracting important news.

Liu Run 5-Minute Business School

↑ ↓

Traditional business schools that charge hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition still require you to spend time attending.

Some of them directly reflect different coordinate objects through columns:

Xue Zhaofeng's Peking University Economics Class

↑ ↓

It is not just a column, but an economics class that can only be taken by those who are admitted to Peking University.

The Road to Financial Freedom

↑ ↓

It is not just a column, but a path to financial freedom.

I don’t know if it’s a coincidence, but these four columns happen to be the best-selling columns in Get. The others, such as "Letters", "Strategies", and "Concerts", are a little weaker, while "Today", "Past Events", "The Big Picture", and "Talking about Technology" are even smaller in quantity.

Of course, the number of column subscriptions is related to many factors, and the above judgment and attribution are a bit rough. But if you think about it carefully, perhaps the object of comparison plays a big role here.

Benchmarking with a good value target directly affects users' feelings and judgments about the product.

Feelings are more important than facts.

Halo effect

One of the important reasons why true and false quotes from Jack Ma are widely circulated on the Internet is that people believe that Jack Ma's business is very successful and his judgments on many things are also accurate.

This is also a very common cognitive bias - the halo effect .

Blindly believing in Jack Ma’s quotes is essentially a cognitive bias of generalizing from a single example. An excellent entrepreneur will have a higher accuracy rate than an ordinary person when judging business affairs, but that does not mean he is always right. In fact, in non-business areas, Jack Ma is not an expert, and the probability of his making mistakes is not much different from that of ordinary people.

However, it is precisely because of this halo effect that many advertisements use celebrities to endorse and famous people to recommend them, just to take advantage of this halo effect.

If you can’t find a celebrity to recommend your product, how can you take advantage of the halo effect?

Make yourself the best in one dimension and have an aura.

There are many dimensions to measure whether something is good or not. If you find a dimension that is easier to achieve and become the first in the industry, you will have the opportunity to have a certain halo effect.

For example, my own development in self-media over the past year or so has more or less benefited from the halo effect amplified by the official account.

If there really is a ranking list of operators’ strength in China, I can be very sure that I will not be in the top 100.

This is not me being modest, but there are a large number of very awesome operations experts who are not well known. They have very strong front-line practical experience, but because they rarely come out to share it, many people don’t know about it.

As someone like me who likes to write, I have gained a lot of attention in the industry and it is easy for me to gain recognition and expectations that exceed my ability. (I personally think that the self-media authors that everyone knows about today are not among the top 100 in terms of strength)

When some readers add me on WeChat, they call me a "great god" or a "great person", which is obviously an exaggeration, at least not yet.

However, while continuously expanding the influence of my personal media, I still took advantage of this halo effect intentionally or unintentionally.

Currently, I have the most followers on personal public accounts related to operations and the most followers on Zhihu columns related to operations. This halo of being the first in a specific segment can easily bring more recognition and attention.

Although I am not the best in domestic operational capabilities, I can still have a similar aura to that of the best, which is quite beneficial.

Feelings are more important than facts.

Cognitive bias can also move people

A few years ago, a great advertising video went viral on WeChat Moments. I was very moved after watching it and shared it with many friends around me.

Video Watch:

The story goes that an organization arranged for a sketch artist who specialized in portrait drawing to draw portraits of the women participating in the experiment simply by describing them.

There will be two drawings, one drawn from the subject's own description and the other from the description of another bystander.

In the end, all women received two portraits.

To the surprise and delight of all the women, when comparing the two portraits, the one drawn based on other people's descriptions was more beautiful.

The video ends with this sentence - "You are more beautiful than you think." and finally presents a Dove logo, presenting the advertisement perfectly!

I was very excited when I saw it!

Yes, it is indeed very easy for us to deny ourselves. In fact, we are more beautiful and better than we think.

Just like the ugly duckling in Andersen's fairy tale, how happy it would be if one day you suddenly realized that you are actually a white swan. So I forwarded it to many of my friends and asked them to take a look at it.

Until one day, I saw this article...

While I was still immersed in the inspiration of this belief, this article exposed the truth of this advertisement and the wrong conclusion of this video. Not only does the "experiment" have many flaws in its design, but it is also contrary to known conclusions - the actual situation is that people are more inclined to praise themselves than to belittle themselves. It is human nature to elevate oneself. The self in most people's minds is better than the real self, not only in appearance, but in every aspect.

A study by Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago and Erin Whitchurch of the University of Virginia conducted a true-false experiment.

The researchers first took photos of all the participants, and then used Photoshop to transform the photos into original, high-attractiveness (beautified) and low-attractiveness (ugly) photos. The researchers then told the participants that the computer would show them some pictures, including their original and retouched pictures. The participants’ task was to identify the original photo among these photos. The results of the experiment show that people are more likely to identify highly attractive pictures as original. Interestingly, this bias only occurred when the subjects were identifying their own photos, but they were very accurate when identifying photos of strangers.

Exaggerating one's appearance is a common cognitive bias, which psychologists call "self-enhancement." Psychological research shows that people overestimate their own likelihood of doing good things, but are very accurate in predicting such behavior in strangers. For example, people tend to overestimate how much they will donate compared to how much they will actually donate, but are objective and accurate in predicting how much strangers will donate.

This advertisement fully stimulated people's yearning for beauty. The resonance caused by cognitive bias brought about a large amount of dissemination. It has to be said that it was a very successful advertisement.

Feelings are more important than facts.

Conclusion

In operations and marketing, feelings are more important than facts.

Understanding cognitive biases is not to deceive users, but to communicate with users in a way that touches them and convey product value.

Don't just focus on changes in facts, but also pay attention to how users actually feel.

The design of products, services, activities, and copywriting should all start from the user's experience.

Only in this way can you implant the idea you want to promote into the user's mind and ultimately achieve the goal that people will think this is what they have always thought.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

The author of this article @飞鱼船长 is compiled and published by (青瓜传媒). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting! Site Map