If you want to understand why people behave as they do, then you need to understand some of the latest science on the brain and the relationship between the brain and behavior. And I want to share with you in the short course, some of the basic concepts behind human behavior, and some of the new and I think really exciting research on brain and behavior that we've been able to figure out because we now have access to a lot of new tools that let us peer into the brain and see what's going on in there. So one of the first concepts is the idea that you can't get away way from biology. So there are certain things about us as animals, as organisms that affect how we behave that are based on biology. So our eyes work a certain way, our ears work a certain way. And our brains have evolved to pay attention to some things and not others.

And these, I guess you could call them constraints of our biology are really important if you're trying to understand psychology and social science and behavioral science. So that's one really important concept to realize that, why we do what we do, why we think what we think why we behave in certain ways, is in some part, a matter of our biology and that that's been evolving over millions of years. So there's some things that you can easily get people to change There's other things that aren't so easy because it's rooted in, in this fairly unchangeable biology. For example, what gets people's attention? Well, we know from the research on our eyes and our brains, that there are certain things that grab attention and other things that don't. So because of the way our eyes and brains are put together, there are changes for instance, in color, in orientation of a shape that will attract our attention.

And we also know that if you change one of those items, it will attract attention more than if you try and change a lot of items. So for example, if something is a very different color than other things that will grab attention, but if a lot of things are different color that may not grab the attention. If one item is slightly different than the rest, that will grab our attention. But if a lot of items are all very different, that doesn't grab our attention. So it is this idea that our attention, and whether you can get someone's attention is partially a factor of biology and how the eyes work or how the ears work. We know that people have what's called a startle response.

So if they hear something really loud, it will really grab attention. So that's an example of the fact that our biology affects our behavior in ways that you really can't do anything about. Here's the second concept that I think is so important and that's that most of our mental processing is unconscious. And this is something we've learned really since about the year 2000. We kind of delved into maybe some things were unconscious when Freud was doing his work in psychology, but there wasn't a lot of science behind what was really going on. And now we know that most mental processing, some scientists say as much as 90% of what's going on up there in our brain, we aren't even aware of, and only a very small percentage are we consciously aware of and that's kind of strange and kind of interesting.

And it means that we can't really know why people do some of the things they do or why they made the decision that they made, and they may not know and also that people tend to think they know and We'll put a reason on their behavior because they like to have a reason. But we have to be suspicious that the reason they say they're doing something or they did something is really the reason because chances are very high that they may not understand. And so it also means that as we talk about being able to communicate with someone, being able to persuade someone to take an action, whatever it is, you're, you're, you're interested in getting someone to do. You can't just communicate to their conscious mind. You can't just communicate to them logically, you've got to communicate to them on a, what we tend to call a deeper level, but really what we mean is an unconscious level.

So we know that emotions and feelings are largely unconscious. But if you don't tap into To them, you're unlikely to get someone to take an action. We know that in order to get people to make a purchase, to buy something they need to feel they actually have to have an emotion in order to make the decision to purchase. So as someone who studies human behavior, again, no matter what your role is, if you're interested in human behavior, you have to be willing then to deal with how to communicate to some of the unconscious parts of the brain. People do not just make decisions and take action based on logic and rationality. And we often like to think or like Mr. Spock In Star Trek and very rational, logical, but we're not.

And if you want to really reach people if you want to communicate with them, if you want to persuade them, you're going to need to figure out how to talk to the unconscious parts of the mind. Now, luckily, that's actually not that hard because it turns out, you know, since that's so much of what we do is unconscious. Pretty much anything you do is talking to the unconscious mind. But the question is, are you communicating with the unconscious in the way you want to communicate with the unconscious? And do you understand the language of the unconscious? Because the unconscious processing of information is very simple.

So the unconscious responds to signals of fear, danger, loss, food, sex or the implication of sex, a feeling of belonging, joy, a basic emotions of joy, hate, anger, disgust. And this is the kind of simple language of the unconscious. The third concept that I want to share with you is from a researcher named Daniel Kahneman, who wrote the book Thinking Fast and Slow. And in that book, he posits the idea that there are basically two kinds of thinking and let me give you an example. So if I asked you to multiply these two numbers together, in your head without pen and paper without a calculator, just in your head, go ahead, try and do that. That's an example of what Daniel Kahneman calls system two thinking.

It's effortful. It's, you have to concentrate. Now, I want you to compare that to the experience if I show you this, and I asked you what is this a picture of what are you looking at? And you probably say something like, Well, it looks like a sad little boy. Now, that's an example of system one thinking it's easy, it's intuitive, it's fastest, effortless. So if you think about the way those two types of brain processing feels, you will get I think that the point that system one thinking is easy, and I don't have to worry about it very much and system to thinking is a lot more harder and concentrated.

And what Daniel Kahneman says in his book is that most people most of the time are walking around in system, one mode, just not thinking that much, not wanting to think that much. And if you realize that if you realize that that's most of the time, most people are in system one mode, then if you want to get their attention, if you want them to make a difficult decision that requires a lot of thinking, you're going to have to do something that kind of jars them out of that system, one mode. So the fact that people are in system one mode most of the time, actually, if you think about it explains a lot of behavior. You know, why do people do the things they do? Well, they're not just not thinking that much. We don't like to think that much.

And in fact, we'll make a lot of errors. If you think about about it in terms of, you know, making the best decision, then you think about it in terms of making errors in our decision process. Now, I would say it's not errors at all, it's just going along with with the way we naturally are. And when you think about it, it makes sense that most of the time we're in system one mode because it uses less brain resources. And so we're able to fairly safely navigate physically and mentally and emotionally through our world. If we're in system one mode.

If we had to be in system to mode all the time. We couldn't be actually because the brain uses a lot of food energy it uses literally uses glucose, which is a simple sugar to do that hard concentrative work. We can't keep the brain bathed in enough glucose to be in the system to mode all the time. We would Just shut down. And so what we've evolved to do then is most of the time be in this effortless, not thinking very much mode. But because we are in that mode, it does make communicating with humans.

Different if you want to reach them, you have two choices. One is you reach them and don't make them think too much. Or the other way is you do something that will kick them into system to mode. So, just understand that most of the time, most people are walking around in system one mode. Another concept is to realize that it is our brain that is really calling the shots. So we tend to think about our senses, our vision, our hearing our sense of touch our sense of smell or sense of taste our perceptions as being real and literal.

But what you're going to find out if you learn more about brain and behavior science is that the the literal perceptions that are coming in, for instance, exactly what our eyes are seeing, or our ears are hearing, or what we're feeling is not our experience. So our brain is interpreting and mediating, all this stuff that's coming in. And based on the situation based on our past experience, what we think we saw or heard, or felt, is actually quite different than the actual sensory input, our brain decides what we saw, our brain decides what we hear. And so, in many ways, you know, you can't trust you can't say to yourself Well, I, you know, it's out. I showed it to them therefore they saw it. And an example of, of this difference between our senses and and what happens in our brain.

There are so many of them, for example, something I called the refrigerator effect. So, how many times have you opened the refrigerator and you're looking for the ketchup bottle and you're looking all over and you can't find it and you say, hey, has anyone seen the ketchup I can't find it. And someone comes up, you know, friend or partner comes up behind you and looks on the refrigerator at what you're looking at and says it's the Right there, it's right in front of you. And indeed it is. So it was always right in front of you. It was right there.

It was in what we would call your central vision, but you didn't see it. So your eyes saw it. And your eyes were sending the signal to your brain. But for a variety of reasons having to do with distraction, having to do with you forgetting what you were looking for, having to do with something bright in the refrigerator, just making you look elsewhere. You didn't see it, you literally saw it, but you didn't pay attention to it. And so it's our brains that are doing this interpreting and deciding what you should remember.

And our memory is another example of the fact that things are not literally what we think. We think our memories are stored on slowly videos but in actual fact, we recreate our memories. Every time we remember something, we are actually recreating the memory trace. So our memories are not reliable. So this idea that our brain are very complicated, and they are constantly filtering information and interpreting information. So if you want to communicate with someone, and you want them to understand what you're saying, or you want them to take action on it, you can't just rely on the fact that you gave them the information or you showed them the information.

You need to understand better, who they are, what they are likely to see, and pay attention to, based on their own experience. And then adjust your information, your product To best reach that particular grid