The Science of Communicating & Marketing Your Business

As I wrote in part 1 of this arc, the article's title tells the story and I'm not terribly shocked by the information in the article. I asked in part 1 of this arc "Why is expectation so low?" and am sharing Reading Virtual Minds, Chapter 6, "Expectation versus Satisfaction" to provide some answers.

In part 1 we noted that often people browsing websites demonstrate minute anxiety responses even though they're in an (assumedly) safe environment.

I'll flip the cards over on this one. Expectation is the answer. When people expect A and get B they go through a few moments of fugue. External reality is not synching up with internal reality and the mind and brain will, if allowed, burn themselves out making the two mesh. One extreme end of fugue responses is insanity, the other extreme end is denial (which is, of course, just another form of insanity; what is called "ignoring the elephant in the kitchen"). Most people just go through a few moments of confusion before incorporation or experience "instantaneous" incorporation, both of which lead to acceptance and integration of the conflicting information. Note that "acceptance" doesn't mean "I accept this" so much as it means the information is integrated with existing knowledge to create a greater knowledge and information base. The extremes of this are something similar to a petite mal and more often hypnotic attention -- the primary learning strategy employed when moving from Stage 1 to Stage 2 learning.

Next up, what do you expect when you're browsing a website?

Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.

Links for this post:

• Blog posts about Reading Virtual Minds, Chapter 6 "Expectation versus Satisfaction"
• Blog posts about Reading Virtual Minds, Chapter 7 "Experience versus Expectation"
• Consumer Psychology posts
• Expectation posts
• Reading Virtual Minds
• Reading Virtual Minds, Chapter 6, "Experience versus Expectation"
• Site Development Lags Expectations
• Susan Prager
• The Site Development Lags Expectation blog arc:
  • Site Development Lags Expectations, Part 1

I'll be speaking at the San Francisco April '07 Emetrics Summit on Quantifying and Optimizing the Human Side of Online Marketing on May 7, 2007. Come on by and say hello.

(Information in this arc is from Chapter 6, "Experience Versus Expectation" of my next book, Reading Virtual Minds. Text and images copyright Joseph Carrabis and NextStage Evolution 2006-2007)