The Secret You

What is free will? Who is really in charge of your decisions? Is it you, your conscious self or your unconscious mass? How aware are you of your true self, the true ‘you’ who lays hidden in your consciousness?

In this amazing BBC Horizon episode “The Secret You” from 2009, Professor Marcus du Sautoy takes a deeper look into these questions and tries to show us the evidence of consciousness and its effects on ‘being’.

True, there is no direct link between my blog, on how to gain practical insights into online optimization, and this BBC Documentary (although I will try to make this link later), but the Neuroscience element is simply intriguing and I am confident many of you will find it interesting, too.

The most interesting evidence shown, was from an experiment that proves that we subconsciously make decisions long before we are consciously aware of them. In this specific experiment up to 6 seconds!

The Edge of Awareness

The presenter, Professor Marcus de Sautoy, takes the viewers on a journey into real world experiments being conducted that help answer these questions.

Program Synopsis: “With the help of a hammer-wielding scientist, Professor Marcus du Sautoy goes in search of answers to one of science’s greatest mysteries: how do we know who we are? While the thoughts that make us feel as though we know ourselves are easy to experience, they are notoriously difficult to explain. So, in order to find out where they come from, Marcus subjects himself to a series of probing experiments.

He learns at what age our self-awareness emerges and whether other species share this trait. Next, he has his mind scrambled by a cutting-edge experiment in anesthesia. Having survived that ordeal, Marcus is given an out-of-body experience in a bid to locate his true self.

In Hollywood, he learns how celebrities are helping scientists understand the microscopic activities of our brain. Finally, he takes part in a mind-reading experiment that both helps explain and radically alters his understanding of who he is.“

6 Seconds

As I mentioned before, the experiment I find the most interesting is the last one. In the experiment, Professor du Sautoy is given 2 controllers, one in each hand and is asked to lie down in a MRI scanner. The controllers are to be clicked at random. Professor du Sautoy thereby has full control and can click a controller, left or right, at his own command.

While the Professor is being monitored in the MRI scanner, the scientists go on to show how they can predict which controller the Professor will be clicked… in most cases up to 6 seconds prior to the Professor consciously knowing himself.

So while the scanner tracks when the brain makes the decision, the controllers track the actual moment the conscious decision is made, in essence proving that our subconscious is actively making decisions to situations that are not directly obvious to us long before we are aware of the decision needing to made. [direct link to last experiment]

The eCommerce Connection

Let me try and make this post relevant to my blog… How does this effect online behavior. Is the decision to purchase/sign up being made prior to a visit, during or only prior to the actual conversion action itself? Do the findings from the BBC Horizon documentary debunk conversion optimization to some degree? Is conversion optimization only affecting those who have the intention to purchase/sign up? In another article on my blog, I displayed the insights gained from an exit survey using iPerception’s 4Q with which you can measure the leaks in conversion based on visitors who had the intention to convert.

So how do we go about influencing a visitors’ subconscious, to drive them towards converting? I believe that Robert Cialdini has pointed us in the right direction with his ‘Influence‘ approach, but we must all realize that even influence has its limits. So what will be the next step, beyond influence? How do we go on to predict? I will try to dive deeper into this question in a follow up blog post.

The Secret You

 

For now, and if you have time, watch the Horizon episode in question and be amazed. I have always been a big fan of BBC Horizon, but this episode is definitely one of my favorites.

The Secret You, 5.0 out of 5 based on 1 rating