Why We Don't Experience Reality in Real Time and Why It Matters

The image that most readers of yesterday’s post would have seen after staring at the graphic for 30 seconds or so is called an “afterimage.” The afterimage resulted from certain optical cells “getting tired” from 30 seconds of staring and simply shutting down. What remained when you closed your eyes was the face of Jesus.

I use that graphic in my workshops and talks to illustrate the unconscious workings of the brain which cognitive scientist now say account for about 95 percent of all the mental activity that produces our perceptions, thoughts and decisions.

Most consumer researchers and marketing practitioners devote virtually all their attention to the 5 percent zone of consumers’ mental activity when most of what they want to know is more tellingly present behind the curtains of consciousness.

Your brain exercises more influence over your perceptions, thoughts and decisions than your ego’s sense of autonomy is comfortable acknowledging. Here is an example of how the unconscious brain can overrule the conscious self.

After your eyes begin to transmit to your brain alternating pictures of a goblet and two faces facing each other, you will likely be unable to prevent the shift from happening with your conscious mind. In fact, the images will alternate about every three seconds – a time duration that has been identified as the length of time that now exists.

But there is an even shorter interval of time during which your brain makes big decisions on behalf of your conscious mind that deserves considerable attention in trying to figure out how to get people’s attentions – every the challenge in marketing. This is the .2 to .8 of time required for information sent into the brain by the senses to reach your conscious mind.

Those are the most important milliseconds in marketing. You see, you don’t really consciously experience reality in real time. The unconscious brain does, however. This is not an academic point. During the 200 to 800 milliseconds it takes to become consciously aware of what the senses have detected, the unconscious brain can zap your marketing message before it ever reaches the consumer’s conscious mind.

In neuronal time 200 to 800 milliseconds is a long time considering that the computational power of the human brain is in the neighborhood of 200 billion computations per second. Of course a lot of those computations are involved in running the system called your body. However, there still is plenty of processing power available to deal with marketing information.

The same as the broadcasting of radio and television signals is delayed by as 20 seconds after an action has occurred to allow time for engineers to bleep a forbidden expression or action, our brains do much the same.

So, as a marketer, it really is important for me to know how the unconscious brain decides what to bleep and what to send on to the conscious mind for action.

Next: How the Brain Decides What Warrants Your Conscious Attention.