The X-Mentor | Emotions

Issue #4

The Secret: Love is not what you think, it’s what you feel.

The Source: Lisa Feldman Barrett, Ph.D., Neuroscientist and Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, makes a compelling argument for how our brain constructs emotions. In her book, How Emotions Are Made, she states: “You cannot overcome emotion through rational thinking, because the state of your body budget is the basis for every thought and perception you have.” This book turns everything we thought we knew about our brain on its head.

What It Means: Customers buy emotionally. To say that perceptions drive all economic behavior does not tell the whole story. It is a construction of hidden bodily responses, known as interoception, that influences how we perceive and act in the future. Countless times, I have encountered salespeople or marketers who like to say: “Customers buy emotionally and justify logically.”

But why?

This is where interoception comes in. When customers interact with a brand, product, or service it connects to an emotional feeling. Our brain is constructing simulations, drawing heavily from past experiences, to make predictions of future behavior. And according to Lisa Feldman Barrett, “your experience right now was predicted by your brain a moment ago.” Barrett further states, “the human brain is anatomically structured so that no decision or action can be free of interoception and affect.” Logically speaking, every decision made, or action taken by a customer, or any human in any situation, is influenced by emotions.