All posts by : Cultural Relevance Team

The Von Restorff Effect (named after the psychiatrist who first studied it, Hedwig von Restorff) describes our tendency to remember things that stand out or, in other words, that we are more likely to remember the unusual. For example, in a list of words that are all written out in the same way (same size, colour, font, etc.) except for one that is notably different (for instance the only one that is in red), we will obviously notice this one and remember it more clearly. This principle can be applied to all manner of things: words, products, images, communication messages, an unexpected happening during a course of standard events, etc.

This effect manifests itself due to the contrast evoked between one element and the others which causes our brains to wake up and pay more attention, meaning that this different element will not only be noticed in the present moment but stick in our brains for longer. Von Restorff showed in her studies how our eyes and brains are constantly on the lookout for things that disrupt the norm, meaning we are constantly waiting to have our attention seized by anything out of the ordinary. This principle is also known as the Isolation, Prominence or Distinction effect as it is the very fact of being presented with an element that is at odds with everything else.

This principle is often used in the world of marketing and advertising to engage a target audience and is particularly effective in this age of multiple communication platforms. An advert that stands out from the rest (be that through its tone, visuals used, unique message, or other mode of distinction) will be noticed and remembered more clearly than those that are more similar to each other.

A visual cue is a signal that our brain focuses on out of everything that crosses our visual path. Only about 1% of what we see is constructed by our eyes, with the rest being formed by our brains. Our brain is particularly susceptible to visual cueing because it is impossible to notice and pay full attention to every thing that passes in front of our eyes and a visual cue gives some direction as to what to focus on. Everything we see (as well as hear and smell etc.) is just a small portion of the “sensory landscape” that surrounds us at all times.

There are many common visual cues that we have trained our brains to take notice of and are particularly susceptible to. Arrows are one such visual cue that are used for anything from lighting the way to an emergency exit to telling you in which order infographics are meant to be read or a form should be filled out. They are synonymous with movement and progress so are particularly effective to not only draw attention to something but also encourage people to continue on a certain path.

Visual cueing is an important tool for use in any type of marketing and can be particularly effective online. Especially in today’s online world, our senses are overloaded with visual information and so it is important to give our brains a hand when deciding which elements to focus in on. Making use of a visual cue such as an arrow will greatly increase the chances that your site visitor’s attention will be drawn towards a particular element and, what’s more, be more likely to follow through and engage with it (i. e. click on a CTA, fill out a form, etc.).

The Time versus Money Effect was notably studied by Mogilner and Aaker in 2009. They showed that people react much more favourably to sales pitches that make reference to time rather than money. We react much more positively to references to the time we will get to spend with a product over any mention of money (even if that is to say how much money we might save).

Mogilner and Aaker put forward several reasons to explain the Time versus Money Effect. Firstly, we have a much more personal relationship with time than with money so that an evocation of time we might spend enjoying a product creates a more immediate emotional and personal connection with this product, helping to increase our desire to have it. Thinking about the time we will spend allows us to project forward to our own personal experience of using or consuming said product. Time is also a rare resource, less replaceable than money – once time is spent, we can’t get it back – which increases its value. Therefore, if we think that using this product is a worthwhile way of passing our time then it will immediately go up in our estimations. Finally, by concentrating on our future use of this product and not on the price, we are less likely to really think about the monetary value of the product and whether it is in fact too expensive or overpriced. Studies have shown that the act of spending money really decreases our pleasure in purchasing (the Pain of Paying principle) so it is always more effective to concentrate on another aspect of the purchase.

Mogilner and Aaker conducted many experiments to test this principle. In one of them they split students from Stanford University who all had iPods in to 3 groups. The first group was asked “How much money have you spent on your iPod?”, the second group was asked “How much time have you spent on your iPod?”, and the third group wasn’t asked any preliminary question. They were then asked to complete questionnaires about their iPods and the first group, who had had their attention drawn to the amount of time they spent using their iPod, gave by far the most favourable opinions and feedback about the product.

The Time versus Money Effect is a principle that is very useful in sales and marketing strategies as it can be extremely effective to market your products from the angle of time customers will spend using them rather than concentrating on any financial offers or other price-based selling points.

With the Sunk Cost Effect, people have been proven more likely to continue on in vain with a project or plans for which they have already invested money, time or effort, even if they no longer want to or there may be more potential losses to come. This is because they take the money already lost in to account – not thinking rationally about the fact that this money is completely irretrievable and therefore a moot point that shouldn’t be part of their decision-making process.

Experiments conducted by Arkes and Blumer in 1985 revealed that people would actually be more inclined to do something less enjoyable if they perceived the financial value of it to be greater or to commit to doing something they didn’t want to if they’d already paid for it. Have you ever not wanted to attend a concert, film or other event because either something that promised to be much more enjoyable was on offer or because you felt particularly ill and just wanted to stay in bed, but you went anyway solely because you didn’t want to ‘lose’ the money you had spent? The money was gone either way but forcing yourself to attend made you feel like you had gotten some worth out of it when really you would have been happier had you just accepted the loss and done what you wanted.

In web marketing, this is a particularly valuable tool and can be used in many ways. Introducing reminders that show customers how close they are to checking out and the time they’ve already invested on your site will automatically kick in their sunk cost sensibilities and increase conversion. Equally, the Sunk Cost Effect can be great for post-sale purchases: someone’s just bought an expensive computer from you? Offering protective cases or anti-virus software will tap in to their fear that something might happen to that computer and therefore render the money they’ve already spent wasteful.

The Split-attention Effect occurs when sources of information that are mutually dependent for comprehension are separated either spatially or temporally. For example, if you need both a diagram and written text to understand an instruction but these are given to you separately or at different times, you will find it much harder to digest and understand the information. Whereas if both the text and the image are integrated into one visual then this speeds up the process of comprehension and lightens the demands on your brain.

The Split-attention Effect is especially applicable to learning environments and techniques. Students who are given learning materials that combine all required information into one easy-to-read document will learn faster – and retain knowledge for longer – than those who have to take in the same information from multiple sources.

If you were trying to put together a flat-pack piece of furniture and they provided you with the diagrams on one piece of paper and all the instructions and text on a separate piece of paper so you had to keep moving your attention from one to the other to understand – it would be much harder to follow. Integrating the diagrams and related text into one document on which you can concentrate all your attention will give a much greater chance of understanding and success.

Equally, if you’re trying to sell something online and your customer requires 2 or 3 pieces of information from you in order to feel confident that they are making a correct purchase or decision on your site, then all this information needs to be presented clearly and in one location so that they don’t have to search for it themselves and risk having their attention taken elsewhere.

This principle was first explored by social psychologist Sherif in 1935, and later developed by Asch in 1956. Social proof is the idea that we are intrinsically driven to conform and so will often be influenced to copy others’ decisions and actions, especially when we are hesitating or feel as though we don’t have enough information of our own. We tend to assume that surrounding people possess more knowledge of any given situation and that the actions of others therefore reflect correct behaviour.

This social proof principle is driven by our natural desire to behave “correctly” under most circumstances: we are social and tribal beings, and what others think, say or do is important to us and can be a powerful motivator. This principle also relies on a sense of ‘safety in numbers’, meaning if we are all doing the same thing then we feel we are protected and validated in some way. For example, we’re more likely to work late if others in our team are doing the same, put a tip in a jar if it already contains money, or eat in a restaurant if it’s busy. We assume that if others are behaving a certain way then it must be for a reason: the restaurant is good, the service deserves tipping, the work needs to be finished, etc.

Social proof also applies to marketing and sales. For example, online marketing strategies such as displaying validation logos, subscriber count, social shares or testimonials on a website are all based on the social proof principle. The amount of followers, views, likes, subscribers or past satisfied customers that a user sees positively affects how they will perceive the website. It’s for this reason that we consult TripAdvisor for hotels and restaurants, Consumer Reports before making purchases, Kayak for flight choices, Yelp for eating out, and so on. We want to check and validate our decisions before we make them to ensure we are adhering to the same behaviour as our peers and put a lot of stock in what their testimonials and actions tell us.

Social Comparison Theory, first described by social psychologist Leo Festinger in 1954, is centred on the fact that individuals have an intrinsic drive to evaluate themselves and that they prefer to do this through direct comparison with others. Humans are not satisfied with absolute merits and so make use of social comparison to reduce uncertainty and access a more trusted way to define the self.

For social comparison and self-evaluation, people tend to use a marker that they can recognise as being very similar to them to give a fairer assessment of how their opinions or actions compare. For example, if evaluating how successful a career has been so far, individuals are more likely to compare themselves to someone who is from a similar background with comparable education and social experiences to gain a more accurate idea of where their successes lie comparatively.

Consumers are also likely to compare their shopping experiences to that of others who are making the same or similar purchases. No one wants to feel as though they are missing out on a deal or paying a higher price for the same thing. Whether the price offered is fair or not is of little consequence; people will decide whether it is fair for them dependent on whether they perceive other consumers to be getting a better deal.

For example, when shopping online, people will be put off making the final purchase if it is clear that others might receive a discount, say if there is a clear “enter your discount code here” box on the final purchase page or if it is clearly stated that “Members” should enter their membership number to get free delivery etc. This knowledge can be utilised in two ways to help optimise conversions: either make the discount option less prominent or replace an open box with a question such as “Do you have a discount code?” to take away the customer’s immediate sense of being part of the group who have to pay full price for something, which should then make it more likely that they will continue on with their purchase; on the other hand, if people who sign up for newsletters or memberships etc. get some kind of discount then making this more prominent could encourage people to follow through on this Call to Action in order to ensure they’re receiving the lowest price possible.

This principle, studied by Pelham, Carvallo and Jones (2003) asserts that people gravitate toward people, places, and things that resemble the self. It is an unconscious process that is grounded in people’s favourable self-associations: they are biased towards characteristics that relate to themselves. In other words, people like something they have a connection with, even though they may not be aware that this is the reason they feel favourably towards it. For example, customers will gravitate towards a business or website that they feel they share something in common with or that relates directly to something they connect with. This principle of Social Cognition is also referred to as Implicit Egotism.

Academic research has shown through several studies that people’s personal details are likely to affect their life choices. For instance, there are statistically more people named Louis living in the city of St. Louis than in any other city, and people named Dennis or Denise become dentists more often than people with other names. It was also found during a study done in Pelham that there was a direct correlation between people’s birthdays and the number of the address where they lived. It seems that people subconsciously choose towns, careers and addresses that have a link with the primary elements of their identity (name, age, birthday, etc.).

This cognitive bias has vast applications in marketing and sales. It is good practice for brands to adapt their marketing strategies to their target audience in order to incite an immediate sense of familiarity and connection to the product, even perhaps including the customer’s specific details within their product where possible. For example, brands such as Starbucks Coffee and Coca-Cola put the names of their customers on their coffee cups and Coca-Cola bottles so that they immediately feel more connected with the brand.

Single-option aversion describes the way in which consumers are reluctant to pick an option – even one that they like – when no others are being offered. If you are presented with only one option, you will consider choosing this option to be potentially ill-informed or hasty. In other words, you are likely to ask yourself if it wouldn’t be better to consider alternative options before deciding which one to buy, even if the single option available is already what you are looking for. This effect can lead to a product being chosen more often when competing alternatives are included in the choice set than when it is offered alone.

For example, if you walk into a store to buy a TV and there is only one model left, you are more likely to decide you’d prefer to look at other options too before making a purchase, even if the TV available seems to be a good product. Daniel Mochon demonstrated the Single-option Aversion with an experiment in which he offered the hypothetical purchase of a DVD player to participants. His study showed that just 9% of participants said they would buy the Sony model offered when it was the only option whereas the percentage went up to 32% when this same model was offered alongside a Philips model.

This principle is important for the consideration of product marketing and decisions about how many options you should present to your customers. It is better not to offer a too limited choice to your customers as this is likely to motivate them to look elsewhere for other options to which they can compare the products on offer, perhaps ultimately leading to a purchase made through a competitor instead. However, you don’t want to overwhelm them with options either as this can lead to indecision – as described in the “Paradox of Choice” principle – so it is important to carefully consider how you present your products and in what numbers and groupings.