Thanks to all my true followers!

The past couple of months, I wanted to share my interest in communications, social media and marketing with you via this blog. The first couple of blog posts, I introduced you to the world of cognitive science and consumer behavior. Moreover, one of these blogs was about children’s consumer behavior. In this blog I told you about a paper I have written in which I investigated how to gain and maintain the attention of children through communication, encouraging them to choose fruit as a snack instead of candy.  Later on, I wanted to show you the possibilities of social media. In addition to these topics, this blog gave me the opportunity to introduce our self-created smartphone application named GroceryBuddy, which supports people who recently cope with an allergy or diet with doing groceries. Finally, in my last blog I introduced to you Emiel Krahmer, professor Cognitive Science at Tilburg University. In the video interview, he talks about the mass of emotional factors that are involved in the North African revolutions which results in major group formation. How such revolutions and demonstrations occur, has been explained in this blog post from a scientific point of view.

It was a pleasure writing all these blogs in order to share my interest with you. Moreover, I hope that I gave you better insight into my study and the courses I have attended in my pre-master year that I almost have successfully completed.

I would like to end my last blog by saying thank you. Thanks.. to all my true followers! I hope that reading my blogs was fun and interesting for you all! 

What moves people to participate in the North African demonstrations?

Although the news value about the revolts in North Africa is low at the moment, there are still major protests going on against the government in and around countries such as Tunisia and Egypt. Even today, opponents of the local regime still come together to protest against the rulers of the country. If you watch shots on television of such rebellions, you are probably wondering where all these people come from and what motivates them to participate in these revolts. How does group formation during these kinds of rebellions actually occur?

A good example of group formation occurred several months ago in Egypt when Google manager Wael Ghonim gathered many more supporters against Mubarak’s regime via his frequently visited Facebook page. In addition to his Facebook page, numerous Egyptians joined the protest after they had seen how the Google manager burst into tears on television where he was confronted with the victims of the revolution. Ghonim’s tears have seized millions of people. His tears did change the minds of those who first believed that Mubarak had to remain.

How this successful situation has occurred has largely to do with the emotional state in which these people live. A theory of Cacioppo, the elaboration likelihood model, shows that emotions are one of the factors that could influence people’s decisions.

Emiel Krahmer, a professor at Tilburg University who is specialized in cognitive science, explains the situations that are still going on in North Africa from a scientific point of view. In his interview, which can be seen below, he will talk about the mass of emotional factors that are involved in such revolutions which result in major group formations.

Enjoy doing groceries with GroceryBuddy!

Carry lives together with her husband Mike and they have two children: Frank, 8 years old, and Susan, 6 years old. They live in a small town near Tilburg. Carry is the one who usually cooks diner with the result that she is doing groceries most of the time. Doing groceries is not always easy for Carry because her son Frank suffers from a gluten allergy. Just three months ago the doctor found that Frank suffers from this particular allergy and since that time Carry has troubles with preparing suitable and varied dishes for her son.

People who cope with a food allergy of any kind have increased the last few years in the Netherlands. In addition to food allergies, an increased amount of people need to follow a certain diet to stay healthy. Grocery shopping takes a lot of time for people with food allergies or a specific diet. Especially when a diet or allergy is recently determined, people find it difficult to see whether they can or cannot consume a certain product. They need to read the product’s label to find out if there are any ingredients in the product which they are allergic to or cannot eat due to a diet. This takes a lot of time and spoils the ‘fun’ of grocery shopping. Not only people who have allergies or diets themselves, but also relatives and friends of these people have to cope with this issue. For instance when they want to dine together. Moreover, if there are several people with different allergies or diets who want to dine together, it is even more difficult to find a recipe that is appropriate for all those people.

To solve this major problem in our society, I want to introduce you to ‘GroceryBuddy’. ‘GroceryBuddy’ is a personal, clear and interactive Smartphone application for people who recently cope with an allergy or a diet and the relatives and friends of these people, which makes grocery shopping easier, more pleasant and saves time. This application has been designed by me and four other peer students as a part of the course ‘user interface design’.   

The main function which is implemented in the application is the product scanner. Firstly, the user has to insert profiles for the persons who have an allergy or specific diet. All type of allergies or diets, even personalized and complex diets, can be connected to these persons. Moreover, each profile can be personalized with a profile picture of the specific person. When it is time to do the groceries, the user simply fills in the application which persons are joining dinner, and the application immediately shows which kind of diets and allergies have to be taken into account.

In the supermarket it is possible to scan the barcode of a product. Green light means that it is ok to consume that product, where as red light says that the product cannot be eaten with the selected allergies and/or diets. When the scanned product lights green, the application makes it possible to find suitable recipes that can be prepared in combination with the specific product that was scanned. When the scanned product lights red, the user is able to choose alternative products that can be eaten with the selected allergies and/or diets.

In addition to this main function of GroceryBuddy, the user can create a grocery list using the application and he or she is able to save recipes in the submenu ‘my favorites’. Moreover, GroceryBuddy gives the user the possibility to share recipes with friends by sending a private e-mail or by putting a link on Facebook.

That evening, Carry and her family are enjoying the delicious dish that Carry prepared when Frank suddenly says: “This dish is jummie mum! Thank you for making a delicious dinner”. Carry responded: “Thank you boy, but actually you should not thank me but GroceryBuddy!”

In conclusion, GroceryBuddy will make doing groceries much easier, efficiently and more fun! For those who hated doing groceries, with GroceryBuddy your irritations will disappear forever! Just try it and you will see..

Kadhafi and the USA use Facebook to spread propaganda

Currently, Facebook is used especially in the Middle East by youth to call for protests. However, also governments of several countries seem to see Facebook as a useful tool. For example, in Libya young people are trained to disseminate information on the network in favour of Kadhafi and the American military also makes good use of Facebook.

A Serbian Facebook page in support of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi has gathered many page views. More than 46.000 people have so far liked the group “Support for Muammar al Gaddafi from the people of Serbia” at the Facebook social network, posting messages in favour of Kadhafi and against Western powers and coalition strikes.

There are ways for soldiers from the USA to maintain many different identities online. The Facebook profiles are created under false names in order to influence online discussions and to spread propaganda in especially the Middle East. According to David Petraeus, an American general, these online operations are focused on countering extremism and hostile propaganda outside the USA.

Arnold Lubrun, manager of Facebook Benelux, said that Facebook is available for everyone but if something does not comply with the laws, action will certainly be undertaken. The vice-president of Facebook International says that there are active teams who constantly check Facebook for disorders. If they find out that a certain profile is fake, it will be removed immediately. 

Below you can watch a short video (mostly spoken in Dutch) about the opinion of Facebook itself regarding this issue: 

What do you think? Should anyone be able to say anything they want on the Internet or should freedom of expression be limited online?

Social Media, the solution for every company

Nowadays, more and more companies are using social media, for example in promoting their products. However, the prime communication tool among companies, both with customers and among employees, remains the email. Manager of large companies receive 200 mails per day, of which 18% consists of spam. Therefore, managers spend between five and twenty hours a week reading and writing emails.

Atos Origin, an international IT services company, wants to change this current business situation. According to Thierry Breton, CEO and chairman of Atos Origin, the volume of emails that have been sent and received is unsustainable for business while online social networking is now more popular than email and search. Atos Origin sets out its ambition to be a zero email company within three years. Email is replaced by new forms of communication and cooperation such as social media. William Rice, developer and consultant at Atos Origin social business solutions, says that messaging via LinkedIn and information sharing through platforms such as Microsoft Sharepoint are alternatives for collaboration without the use of email. According to Rice, personalized portals will be arise in future where people can label, tag, link, archive and share their own information. An example is OpenID. This is a central platform where various online services such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter can be linked.

William Rice: “The biggest barrier in the transition to a free email environment is the culture change. It is just a matter of getting used to it.”

Get socialized with social media!

Online communication through for example the popular networking site Facebook is a fun way of passing time. However, besides the fact that it is seen as an entertainment tool, online communication offers a range of possibilities for meeting new friends. Each type of person such as a fat housewife, a deaf boy, a shy teenage girl and a busy businessman has a chance to be appreciated and to form close friendships, through the increasing possibilities of online communication. The reduced number of visible cues in online communication provides benefits because people have the ability to present itself in an optimal way. Nobody inserts a profile picture where he or she just got out of bed or looked extremely drunk, right? Everyone wants to present his or her ideal self on social networking sites. The withholding of (negative) information creates a faster sense of similarity. In this situation, the first impression is often positive, resulting in the fact that people like each other faster. Furthermore, people ask more questions online and they reveal more personal information in comparison with communication face-to-face. These interactive strategies, which are often used in online communication, ensure that more and more information is gathered from a certainperson that has been met online. Obtaining this information leads to reduced uncertainty about the specific person. The less uncertainty there is about a specific person, the more people like this person. It can be concluded that online communication especially for the less extroverted person may offer a solution to friendship formation. By the increasing opportunities offered by the Internet, nobody has to be lonely anymore!

Why do you think online dating sites are so successful?!

How children can be encouraged to eat fruit as a snack instead of candy

“Daddy, I want these cookies of Dora”, says his daughter of almost four years old. “Well okay”, dad says. “Just put it in the chart please”. Once they got home, it seems that the child does not like the cookies at all. She takes a small bite and with a dirty face she puts the box away. Obviously, she didn’t like the cookies at all and never ate them. Nevertheless, more than two weeks later, dad went with his daughter to the supermarket again. Incomprehensibly but true, the child asked again for exactly the same cookies.

This sounds maybe a bit strange but this is a true story. While the child knows perfectly well she does not like the cookies, she decides that she wants them again. Why does this child make such a strange decision?

This particular situation is related to children’s consumer behavior.  During the course “Design of Business Communication” I was mainly interested in this specific behavior among very young children. For this course I have written a paper in which I investigated how to gain and maintain the attention of children through communication, encouraging them to choose fruit as a snack instead of candy.

Children are very sensitive for certain stimuli which will attract their attention. A couple of such stimuli are bright colors, unusual shapes, bold characters and unusual surroundings. In addition to these stimuli, children attach great importance to familiarity which means that a famous cartoon character gains much attention of children. Therefore, I gave the advice to design a commercial which meets those requirements. When the commercial includes interactivity, the young viewers get the impression to be part of the story which creates involvement. During this commercial children will be brought into contact with fruit. The commercial has an open end and has its follow up in a supermarket chain where children will be confronted with fruit again in a creative and fun way. To bring children into contact with fruit in a fun way and to make use of famous cartoon characters in the same context, this information will impact the children which results in the storage of this information in their memories. During the follow up in the supermarket, children are able to collect gadgets concerning fruit. At this stadium, the information will be retrieved from their memories again. In this way, fruit will be recognition for children and will be associated with fun which will make them choose fruit faster.

Do you want more information on this topic?

Here you can find an article that has been written by Simone de Droog, Ph. D. candidate at the University of Amsterdam, and colleagues: http://www.ccam-ascor.nl

Would you like to know more about the specific design which has been advised or do you want to give your comment? Just post a message on this page or contact me.

May I have your attention please?

The behaviour that people exhibit often takes place automatically. This is principally the case with learned behaviours such as walking, driving and swimming. In these situations you can easily do other things in addition to the learned behaviours, for example listening to music while you are driving or talking to your partner while you are walking. However, attention and consciousness can affect human behaviour. For example, if you are driving a car in a new city with lots of cars and traffic lights, driving becomes less automatic. You have to devote all your attention to the more difficult task so you need to turn off the music or stop the conversation with your partner.

In today’s life there is so many information available which makes it impossible to perceive all the information we receive. The brain simply cannot process all the information at the same time. Therefore, our brain needs to filter the information we would like to focus on and ignore the rest.

Please watch the following video before continue reading:

So, did you see the gorilla? If yes, did you also notice the certain changing colour or the player on the black team leaving the game? This video is a very good example of selective attention. Another example of selective attention is the cocktail effect. Imagine, you are talking with somebody in a noisy environment, for instance in a pub. Even though you are in an environment with surrounding noise such as voices of other people, you are able to focus your listening attention to the speech of the one person you are having a conversation with.

As described earlier, not only attention affects human behaviour but also consciousness influences the behaviour of human beings. I will give you a little task concerning this topic: take a sheet of paper and write down those things you are thinking of right now, but do NOT think about a white bear. I am sure you cannot think of anything else than the white bear, am I right?

In conclusion, when additional tasks demand too much attention and people become too conscious, it may affect human behaviour. Next blog I will show you how attention and consciousness can influence the behaviour of children.

I spy with my little eye…

“Cognitive science is hard to define but you recognize it when you see it.” That’s where we ended last blog and what I want to show you at the moment. How does a perception in the brain occurs? People perceive visual components as wholes which in some cases may lead to optical illusions. These illusions are all determined by the brain.

To illustrate the function of the brain in relation to perception, I will show you some very easy examples.

What about this one: is the picture in the front an old man with glasses or just a tiny little mouse? 

Probably you see a man in the upper row and a mouse in the second row. This has all to do with the principle of similarity. Our brain interprets similar items as a group which explains that you can see two different things in one picture. 

Another one: What do you see? Three circles with a notch or a triangle with a circle at every corner?

  

The most of you will see a triangle which can be explained with the principle of closure. Our eyes just see three circles with a notch but our brain automatically add missing components to complete a larger pattern.

Let’s try another one: What do you see?

Are you in love with somebody that you would very like to kiss? Then I am sure you see two faces looking at each other. Or are you maybe in the middle of a removal or are you redecorating your room? That is a beautiful vase you see over there, isn’t it?

This illusion is called the Rubin Vase illusion. Our brain must first determine the background of the picture to interpret the image. Hereby, the context where you are living in at the moment determines your interpretation of the picture.

The last illusion has to do with face perception. Do you think the picture below shows a round or a hollow face?

Maybe you would not expect it, but the above face is hollow. Therefore, this illusion is called the Hollow Face illusion. That we perceive the face as a round face can be explained by the fact that humans are accustomed that faces are round.

If I have not convinced you about the fact that the picture above shows a hollow face, watch this video and you will be amazed!

As you have seen in this blog, the brain has a major impact on what we perceive and how we behave, both consciously and unconsciously. So what is attention and what is it to be conscious? I will show you next blog!

An ordinary dog that became famous…

Let’s just continue where we have ended..

Our brain is the central element of everything we do. Before we are able to decide what the best way is to use digital media for marketing purposes, we should have some insights in human cognition. Why do people behave as they behave? An important item that should be taken into account for understanding human behaviour is the process of learning.

It all started with an experiment of Ivan Pavlov in 1927. Firstly, Pavlov was ringing a bell in front of a dog. Because the bell is a neutral stimulus for dogs, the dog didn’t respond to the sound. While confronting the dog with only food, Pavlov was measuring the amount of salivation in response to the food. As the experiment continued, Pavlov rang a bell as he presented the food. Again, he noted a salivary response. Finally, by only ringing the bell, Pavlov observed the same response as having presented food to the dogs; the dog was salivating. The salivating response by hearing the bell is called a conditioned response. The dog had learned to associate the bell with food and responded by salivating.

Just think about your own experiences with dogs. When I think about my own experiences with my dog, which probably sounds very familiar to others who have dogs, he already started barking and wagging his tail by only grabbing his belt!

Now you are maybe wondering, if I am going to deal with human beings and their behaviour, why I am showing you an experiment with a dog. The answer is that the same principles of behaviourism that apply to higher order animals also apply to us humans. We are all truly born to learn. A good example is that human beings cry as a response of pain. This is what it’s called an unconditioned response because this response is not learnt; it is simply inborn. Children won’t cry if they go to the doctor for the first time and see a needle. The needle is, just like the bell in Pavlov’s experiment, a neutral stimulus. However, when children go to the doctor for their second syringe, they will already start crying when they only see the doctor or the needle.

Furthermore, during the lecture of communication theory last Monday, our professor gave another, actually quite funny, example that relates to Pavlov’s classical conditioning experiment. He said that when students hear the word “finally” or any word related to that word during a lecture, they all close their books and grab their bags. And this is very recognizable if I may say! So, a suggestion for teachers: “do not start using such words or phrases before you are sure you have told everything you wanted to tell.” J

In conclusion and as I already mentioned earlier, we are all truly born to learn, both consciously and unconsciously.

This is just a very small part of what cognitive science covers. As our professor ones said during one of our lectures: “cognitive science is hard to define but you recognize it when you see it.” And that is exactly what I want to show you next blog!

Welcome!

Hi guys! I have started blogging as you can see; my first blog is available online! After the first lecture of ‘Business Information Technology’ at Tilburg University, everything was quite unclear to me and so far it still is a big surprise what to expect the coming weeks but I’m excited!

The upcoming 10 to 15 weeks I will write about interesting topics that focus on my study: Business Communication and Digital Media.

During my internship in Oslo in 2008, I wrote many posts on a blog for my friends and family in the Netherlands for half a year. I loved this way of sharing my experiences and adventures with everyone who was interested. In that period, I also realized that writing was actually quite fun! Especially if people posted enthusiastic messages after reading my blog! So guys, leaving a message is allowed and more than welcome! J

Wondering what to expect? The title of my blog actually indicates already a part of what I will be writing about in the upcoming weeks: “It all starts with your brain..”

In the world of business communication, a major item is convincing people. Experts in this field are constantly studying the consumer behaviour of people: What motivates people? Why do they make certain choices? In order to gain insight into this item of business communication, it is important to know how our brain influences the choices we make and the behaviour we exhibit.

Curious about what's coming next? Keep in touch through twitter, facebook, hyves, e-mail or what else and I will see you next blog!