The actual comment on X looked like this:
It seemed obvious, but it got a surprising number of views.
Looks matter.
But it’s more than that.
It’s the calling out by a doctor that there’s a hard-wired reason for looks making a difference.
However we make that first assessment—someone’s facial symmetry, their clothing choices and condition, their grooming and jewelry, their scent, how they carry themselves, the timbre of their voice—there’s a very rapid pigeonholing: Yay, Nay, or Not Sure.
I’m not a neuroscientist, but I can play one in a pinch: that judgment happens too fast to be analytical. The debate, with eyes squinted and various factors weighed, happens later, if at all.
The like/no-like/not-sure happens in a fraction of a second.
That’s gut speed.
“My dog likes you!” speed.
¡Grok got eaten by the tiger around that corner! speed.
Not just looks
When I meet patients for the first time in the clinic, many of these variables disappear.
Post-pandemic, I’m always in scrubs. They’re nice scrubs (FIGS), but my clothes are basically a “pajamas but you get a pass for being a doctor” uniform.
For a while, most of my face was covered by an N95 mask.
No jewelry to speak of, except for a wedding ring and Apple Watch. No cologne.
Body movement is shaking hands and sitting down attentively.
There are cues, sure. But most of the positive vibe I generate (and we run surveys) comes from being a decent listener and having a not-displeasing vocal pitch.
The point isn’t which visuals hit the buttons. It’s that the brain of other person is making an automatic, very rapid judgment based on whatever cues it can grab in those first few moments.
And that judgment is lizard-brain emotional.
The elephant and the rider
Elephants feature prominently in Eastern philosophy.
There’s the “It’s elephants all the way down” line.
And then there’s the elephant and the rider analogy:
The rider is our higher, conscious brain, what we think of as “us” with our values, worries, and powers of thought.
The elephant is what the rider is guiding, and represents all the murky, powerful stuff underneath: our emotions, passions, fears, and subconscious.
The rider can direct the elephant and turn the beastie as needed. But the elephant is, well, pretty powerful.
Way more powerful than the rider.
How much more powerful? According to Stanford marketing professor, Baba Shiv, 90% or more of our decisions are made based on emotion:
Matt Abrahams: Excellent. So, you’re a neuroscientist by training. Can you help us understand how you approach studying the topics you explore especially, when it comes to communication?
Baba Shiv: Yeah, the fundamental premise, this is based in all the evidence out there that most of human decisions and human behaviors are shaped by emotion and not by reason. And then, if you ask me to put a number to this based on all the evidence out there I would conjecture something like 90 to 95 percent of our decisions, our behaviors are constantly being shaped non-consciously by emotional brain system.
Matt Abrahams: Wow
Furthermore, the intellect acts almost immediately to rationalize the decision and limit the cognitive dissonance of buyer’s remorse. The higher brain centers automatically play yes-men to the lizard brain, doubling down on the choice already made.
90% of anything is huge
This isn’t a wrinkle in the tablecloth.
It’s a steak knife, tip up in the middle of the apple pie.
MOST ALL of our daily decisions are made emotionally, not rationally.
That can be good; our instinctive responses should not be ignored when screaming at us about threats. Going down a dark alley feels bad for a reason.
But bypassing the higher brain also means we’re manipulable by appeals to emotion at the subconscious level. Our buttons can be pushed, sending the rampaging elephant down the boulevard before we know it.
That’s just how we’re built.
What to do
If you’re marketing yourself or any product or service, you’re already doing it. Sex, a banging bass line, and pretty colors: we are persuaded by reason but we are moved by emotion.
If you’re frustrated by a lack of progress in anything (I’m mostly familiar with health and fitness matters), odds are great that the hang up lies in an unresolved emotional drive. You’re being emotionally drawn or pushed in a different direction than you want to go, or emotionally tethered to a place that you can’t get past.
Either way, the emotional levers are neither obvious nor easy to change.
That’s the human condition.
What’s also human is the knowledge in the 21st century of how neuroscience and psychology work, and that ways exist to change both action and underlying behavior.
But Step One is getting past the special snowflake stage. You, me, and everyone we’ve ever known has never been rational. Capable, yes, but coolly ever rational, no.
Start there.
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