"In The 1950's most major advertising agencies employed Freudian psychoanalysts"

This is a quote from Malcolm Gladwell's book "Blink". The central premise of the book is that humans make snap judgments within a blink of an eye - BUT that this mechanism works at an unconscious or "unaware" level, and attempts to have people explain WHY or HOW they reach these quick decisions often ends in failure. In fact, asking people to explain what the actual snap judgment was is often an exercise in futility.

Gladwell makes the quote because the exploration of the why and how we make decisions is the purview of psychoanalysts and psychotherapists. In my own psychotherapy training, every time I asked "why" to a mock client - my instructors (and the entire class, if they were watching, would cringe at the question). When I was reviewing other students who asked questions like "HOW does that make you feel", I'd call "Dr. Phil" on them.

So how do psychotherapists get at hearing these snap decisions, and at asking the hows and whys? Typically, we look at two things - inconsistencies and explanations. Inconsistencies are often what academic psychologists spend a lot of time studying. They study physiological responses when people lie, they map the human face or they grade how people interact with one another in order to
get deeper understandings of the relationships between individuals. Psychotherapists, however, do not have access to the monitors or methods these academics use - so we end up using what happens in the "here and now" as a way of digging deeper.

We are trained to look for inconsistencies and "explanations". There's a saying that goes something like "I can't hear what you're saying, because what you're not saying is deafening." It's what's not being said that is the useful stuff. For example, if we ask someone to comment on whether they like the look of a new product and they say "Ummmm... well... it's kind of ugly." What is of interest to us is the hesitation the participant is presenting us with, and not what they are saying. There is a reason for the hesitation. What the moderator needs to do is get to the bottom of it as it relates to the client's product (as opposed to relating to their psychological issues).

What I would probably do is just repeat the words "kind of..." back to the participant and see where it goes from there. They may say "Well, I don't know... the colour is a bit off and the sides are too angular." At that point I have all I need - the participant has said "Well, I don't know..." At that point, I know that the transaction is less about the ugliness of the product, and more about the participant trying to come up with words to describe something that is new to them. The door is wide open for me to get deeper meaning words than "ugly" to describe the product. I may say "I see - the colour and the sides. Let's not focus on those. You said it was ugly, yet I get a sense that that word was just your initial reaction. What else is going on?"

Besides having a hesitant participant, an exact opposite situation may occur. A person may say "Oh my God!! Look at the thing. It's a design disaster. My two year old could take Lego and do a better version of it than that!!" From there I may say, "Well, tell me all about it... let it rip." What I will do is let the person explain away, and exhaust themselves, their need to be superior and their need to explain - what this person wants is an audience, and a chance to be heard - whether or not what they are saying is useful or true. I will generally not be roped-in by any of the explanation given (unless something is really striking). Once they are done, I will say something like "Now that you're done... look at it again - and this time, tell me what you really think." In this situation, it is critical to ensure that the participant does not think that that I am trying to bias or change his answer in any way. What I am trying to do is get past the initial BS, and get to opinions that are not based on a person's neurotic desire to criticize.

In closing - Malcolm Gladwell states that when people evaluate new products, they often do not have the language to describe them. This is true - and another axiom of new product development is that people tend to criticize more than they compliment - people don't like change. There is no doubt that initial reactions play a very strong role in marketing - competition is fierce, and many companies can't take the "time" to see if something will succeed or not (which to me is a very sad state of affairs). However, what is initially "figural" for someone about a new product WILL eventually change or shift. It is one of the central beliefs of psychotherapy - people do have the ability to change. The examples above attempt to show how someone can go from an initial impression of a product to the next stage. A good marketing campaign will use this information to get people there faster, and with a higher rate of success.