5 Surprising Examples of When People Don't Say What They Do and Do What They Say

“People don’t do what they say, and don’t say what they do.”

A quote you often hear at our office. And while this might sound as if we don't trust fellow humans at Unravel, that’s fortunately not the reason we repeat it so often. But why then? 

We repeat this statement regularly because it perfectly explains why neuromarketing is so effective and gaining more attention. Namely: we humans are incredibly irrational. 

We often think that most of the choices we make in a day are based on well-considered pros and cons. In fact, the opposite is true. The majority of the choices we make occur outside our consciousness driven by feelings, emotions, and mental shortcuts our brain has developed over time. Often, this is handy for making quick decisions. But occasionally, it leads to surprising and sometimes unreal situations. In this blog, we share our 5 favourite examples of that with you.  

1. Golf Clubs and the Power of a Strong Brand

If I were to ask you what factors you think influence your golf performance, I’d be curious to hear your response. Your talent perhaps, the quality of your equipment, a good night’s sleep, maybe the weather? I bet you could list quite a few. But if I told you that the following feature could mean a 20% difference in sports performance, I doubt you’d believe me. 

And yet, this turned out to be true. What am I referring to? The Nike logo. And I really do mean just the logo. 

The clubs below are identical, except for the logo. The difference in sports performance? 20 percent. 

A fine example of how irrational we humans are.

2. The Courtroom 

If there’s one place where you hope for rational decisions, it’s the courtroom. Unfortunately, even here, human irrationality manages to intrude. It turns out that defendants who enter from the right are more often convicted. Bizarre, isn’t it? 

At Unravel, we also call this the Super Mario effect. Apparently, our brain has a preference for things coming from the left because we often expect ‘the good’ from there. The enemy more often enters our field of vision from the right. 

But now that you know this, I’d say: let this knowledge work for you. Want to make a good first impression? Then my advice is: approach from the left!

3. Pepsi vs. Coca Cola

We all know the long-standing battle between Pepsi and Coca Cola. It still surprises me sometimes when a waiter in a restaurant almost apologetically asks when you order a cola: “we have Pepsi, is that okay?” Yes, the love for Coca Cola is clearly strong.

But.. is Coca Cola really that much tastier? If you ask a true fan, they wouldn’t hesitate for a second. Yet, taste buds seem to indicate otherwise. When people have to choose the better cola in a blind taste test, Coca Cola loses 9 out of 10 times to Pepsi. Strange, isn’t it? 

It just goes to show how branding and perception have a huge influence on our choices and judgments.

4. The Great Walkman Experiment 

That people don’t do what they say, and say what they do, is perhaps most evident from Sony’s walkman study. 

They wanted to launch a new walkman on the market. But they couldn’t decide on the colour. So they gathered a focus group to help choose between grey and yellow. After a good afternoon of discussion, the answer was clear. Unanimously, the group said: yellow is the way to go. 

So the participants went home thinking they were done with the research. But.. there was a twist to the experiment. Before they left the building, Sony employees said: “as thanks for your help, you can all take a walkman with you, we can’t sell them anymore” 

Now you can guess which bin was emptied first! ;)

5. The Dr. Oetker of the 70s

In the 70s, the first Dr. Oetkers of that time hit the market. Where you previously bought your eggs, flour, and sugar separately, you could now buy them in a handy combination to bake delicious cakes. At least… that was the idea. But there was a problem. People were not at all impressed with the taste of the cake. It tasted chemical, not fresh, and absolutely not as tasty as a fresh cake. 

The product’s creators were very disappointed and almost gave up. Until a clever marketer said: wait a minute, let’s do a taste test first. What turned out? The cake wasn’t bad at all. People often found it tastier than a homemade cake. 

How can this be? To investigate further, they conducted an association test. It revealed that the packages lacked an important core value that was so important for the cake makers (often mothers at the time) to express their identity. The absence of this had a very negative effect on the product’s taste perception. That missing element? A sense of care! 

And without this value, this – rationally delicious product – unfortunately had no chance of success at that time. 

How Can This Be? 

How is it that despite humans being so intelligent, we still make irrational choices so often? We can answer this question by looking at a bit of history regarding the development of our brain over the years. This development has ensured that we process many stimuli unconsciously and in a faster way. 

And this is a good thing! Because in the past, we couldn’t just walk into an Albert Heijn on every street corner to refuel our brain. Food was scarce! So our brain has evolved to make the right choices with as little energy as possible. 9 out of 10 times incredibly handy. But sometimes, as you can see, it leads to some confusing situations. 

When you start working with marketing or behavioural influence, this is valuable knowledge. By better understanding the brain, you can use the right psychological techniques to positively influence behaviour. Do you have a question where you want to understand or influence behaviour? Let us know.