In Harmonium

Posted By Marc on December 6, 2006

I am just finishing working on a project for a client that involves looking at how people behave in a particular shopping environment. Nothing new about this type of research, since market research, sociology, anthropology and psychology have all been doing similar things for about a century. It does, however, offer a fascinating insight into how people’s minds behave.

In academia, we tend to teach behaviour as if it were a software programming language: given these situations, people will behave this way. In the real world, however, people are irascible and have a tendancy to behave in ways that are different from the theoretical models so beloved of academics. This fact, by the way, is one of the main reasons why I prefer Anthropological research to the other social sciences – at least we (Anthropologists) will admit that people will act as they choose.

Anyway, back to the project. One of the most fascinating things about the project is what the behaviour patterns say about how the human mind works. The idea behind store displays is to attract customers to buy a displayed product: a rather simplistic application of behavioural psychology. The reality? Well, let’s just say that Leda Cosmides and John Tooby are really on to something with their idea of Evolutionary Psychology.

When I teach Introduction to Anthropology courses, one of the things we cover is hunting and gathering behaviour. Usually, this is in the context of either 20th century H&G groups like the !Kung San or relating back to before the development of horticulture. Back in 2000, I wrote a chapter for the Handbook of Organizational Culture and Climate that argued that modern job searchers were replicating hunter-gatherer behaviour. And now I see the same behaviour showing up in a busy store: plus ce change, plus c’est la même chose.

One of the pieces of optical “software” we have inherited in our brains is a piece of “machine code” that says “you will see what you expect to see based on past experience (real or virtual)”. It’s a very useful piece of coding that is highly parsimonious in its operation since it allows us to “learn” material and, at the same time, to “reprogram” our selves for the current environment. In simpler language, it’s the piece of code that allows us to walk and chew gum at the same time, or to rapidly adapt to a new environment.

One of the most interesting things about this code is that it seems to have evolved “default values” for interpretation, something that Alan Fiske has been looking at with his Relational Models theory. Personally, I like Fiske’s model – I just don’t think it goes far enough, and I’m pretty sure that it can be extended with a really good theory of symbolism; something that I am working on in my copious spare time.

Category: Anthropology, Market Research
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