The trouble with pre-testing

Our brains can think, but would really rather not, so we have evolved mental shortcuts that allow us to make decisions quickly and effectively.

The trouble with pre-testing

Dr Ali Goode

Studies show that pre-testing favours ads that are more consciously recalled by our explicit memory. Yet it is our intuitive implicit memory that is more likely to react to persuasion.

Our brain is the most complex thing we will ever know about, yet despite its astonishing complexity, our brains are actually rather lazy, or to put it another way, they are designed to expend as little energy as possible.

Our brains tend towards avoiding having to think and reason. As the father of behavioural economics, Daniel Kahneman, says: "Thinking is to humans as...

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