Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Tuning to the visual signals of your customers

Jonah Lehrer shares a recent study about what we repeatedly do.

The results were straightforward: Navy SEALS are exceptionally good at detecting angry faces. While the soldiers were slower than control subjects at processing happy or scared expressions, the elite troops excelled at seeing those feelings associated with threats and risk. Furthermore, they showed a slightly more potent response in the insula, a brain area associated with the detection of bodily/interoceptive feelings, such as a racing pulse or clammy hands.

In business every day the entrepreneur actually becomes attuned to the faces in crowd. The entrepreneur becomes nuanced in recognizing problems with the enterprise. This all occurs at the subconscious level of course so your are not consciously aware that you are doing this but you are.