What good would the female gift of “turbo” information processing be if we didn’t have the ability to store a thought and pull it up for comparison when a similar thought enters the brain? A woman's right brain is a vast, deep vault of emotions, memories, and experiences. The key to the vault is a wonderful little trigger called emotional memory.
*****
To illustrate how deep emotional memory is stored within each of us, let’s look at a recent study conducted by Stanford University. Men and women, connected to MRIs, were shown a series of photographs and asked to rate each for emotional intensity on a four-point scale – ranging from neutral (a photo of a fire hydrant, for example) to very negative (an image of mutilated bodies). Based on what we already know, it’s no surprise that the brain activation pattern of the women differed greatly from the men, with a large number of stimulated areas in both hemispheres.
Three weeks later, the participants were surprised with a second test and were asked how many of the images they could recall from the first round. Women remembered a much higher number of highly emotional pictures than men. Why? Because women have a greater overlap in active brain regions and a neural network that registers differently from men. For women, general memories and experiences are much more often based on emotion, not just fact.
When you interact with your customers, are you stretching beyond "Just the Facts, M'am?" Are you connecting through good emotional memories and experiences of the past... are you creating your own good emotional memories for your customers?
The brain is a powerful, powerful engine of commerce....
More on emotional memory soon...
Comments