24. The Unconscious Directs Attention
Imagine you’re walking down a path in the woods when you see a snake on the ground. You freeze and jump backwards. Your heart races. You’re ready to run away. But wait, it’s not a snake. It’s just a stick. You calm down and keep walking on the path. You noticed the stick, and even responded to it, in a largely unconscious way.
Sometimes you’re aware of your conscious attention, but often what you pay attention to is directed by your unconscious.
People Can’t Resist Paying Attention to Food, Sex, and Danger
Have you ever wondered why traffic always slows when people are driving by an accident? Do you moan about the fact that people are attracted by the gruesome, and yet find that you glance over too as you drive by? Well, it’s not really your fault that you (and everybody else) can’t resist looking at scenes of danger. It’s your old brain telling you to PAY ATTENTION.
People have three brains, not one
In Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click, I talk about the idea that we really don’t have one brain, we have three. The new brain is the conscious, reasoning, logical brain that we think we know best; the mid-brain is the part that processes emotions; and the old brain is the part that is most interested in your survival. From an evolutionary perspective, the old brain developed first. In fact, that part of our brain is very similar to that of a reptile, which is why some call it the “reptilian brain.”
The old brain asks, “Can I eat it? Can I have sex with it? Will it kill me?”
The job of your old brain is to constantly scan the environment and answer the questions “Can I eat it? Can I have sex with it? Will it kill me?” That’s really all the old brain cares about. When you think about it, this is important. Without food, you’ll die; without sex, the species won’t survive; and if you’re killed, the other two questions don’t matter. So animal brains developed early on to care intensely about these three topics. As animals evolved, they developed other capacities (emotions, logical thought), but they retained a part of the brain that’s always scanning for these three critical things.
The old brain won’t let you resist it
What this means is that you just can’t resist noticing food, sex, or danger, no matter how hard you try not to. It’s the old brain working. You don’t necessarily have to do anything once you notice it. For example, you don’t have to eat the chocolate cake when you see it, you don’t have to flirt with the attractive woman who walked into the room, and you don’t have to run away from the big, scary guy who walked in the room with the good-looking woman. But you will notice all of those things whether you want to or not.
The old brain is easily distracted
Because of this unconscious directing of attention, your audience is going to be easily distracted during your presentation. You have to minimize these distractions.
If you have any control over the setup of the room, try to prevent having a door that people come in and go out of in the peripheral vision of the audience. Every time someone comes in or goes out, the unconscious will look to see who it is (that is, will look to see if a scary animal has entered the room).
Avoid mentioning or showing pictures of food if you are speaking near a mealtime. Although your mention of food will initially get attention, the audience is likely to keep thinking about food from that point until the end of your presentation.
If it is appropriate to use pictures of attractive people or dangerous situations, go ahead and use a few of those images. They will certainly grab the audience’s attention.