“We tend to believe we have rational parts, like Spock, and separate emotional parts, like Kirk,” said Read Montague, director of Human Neuroimaging Laboratory at the Virginia Tech Carilian Research Institute. “But our research suggests that’s not true.”
In fact, their research shows that the same parts of our brain process both rational and emotional information. That means we will sometimes do irrational things despite our best interests.
This insight has a direct impact on your business.
How? You can’t appeal to just the rational or just the emotional in your sales copy and expect to get high conversion. You need to speak to both the Spock and the Kirk inside your prospects’ minds so that they will work together to take the action you are looking for.
This is especially true when making offers because the Spock in us wants the offer to be correct and fair and the Kirk in us will pass up a good offer if it is perceived as unfair. That’s the key … perception.
When your copy appeals to both the logical and emotional needs of your prospects, it is more likely to create the desired action … a sale. You need to keep those in balance, provide enough facts to satisfy Spock, and enough emotional massaging to satisfy Kirk.
“Our results showed that there’s no clean separation between cold calculation and the hot anger that an unfair offer engenders. Kirk and Spock are joined at the hip.”
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Source: “Kirk, Spock together: Putting emotion, logic into computational works.” (2013) Research Magazine, Spring 2013
Another piece of evidence that logic and emotions are intertwined: http://bigthink.com/experts-corner/decisions-are-emotional-not-logical-the-neuroscience-behind-decision-making. Apparently, without the ability to experience emotions, people can’t make even simple decisions! Thanks to Rajneesh Jain for pointing me to this article. Fascinating!