Neuromarketing. Neurodesign. Neurocinema… The prefix “neuro” being treated like the new “2.0” and it bothers me.
“Neuro” is not a fashionable synonym for the unconscious mind or the brain. It does not refer to an assorted collection of interesting pop psychology findings. It does not confer newness. You should not use the term unless you really are referring to actual neuroscience.
When you bolt the word “neuro” onto an existing term, it’s a kind of shibboleth – it raises a red flag. You are placed on the cusp between two things – being perceived as an actual neuroscientist (which you will need to back up), or being perceived as a try-hard who doesn’t quite know what they’re talking about.
As Chris Heathcote tweeted yesterday: “Still have never seen a presentation on neuromarketing that wasn’t common sense or snake oil.”
Read that book on Neuro-web design? Not a bad read. Plently of Chris Heathcote’s & Cennydd’s CS & SO in it too.
I suddenly thought of Neuro Web Design *after* I hit publish. I really like that book – the only thing wrong with it is the title.
Neurowash is popular purely because it sounds science-y, not because it provides data of any sort of reliability or quality.
Vaughan Bell, as ever, puts it best over at Mind Hacks ; you generally get better data from just asking people how they think/feel, and you generally need to ask people to be able to interpret the EEG data – so why not just ask people?
Excellent link, thanks Mark!
I studied psychology and cognitive neuroscience and so it seems especially obvious that all things we think and most things we do emanate from the brain and subsequently cause changes in the brain (i.e. experience, learning etc.). So identifying any changes before or after something, say an ad campaign, doesn’t necessarily explain it, but usually just describes it. As Harry says, those times when neuro is invoked to ‘explain’ something it’s usually nothing more than filling a gap with the seductive appeal of science – the fallacy of an appeal to authority.