Fact: The human brain becomes more stressed the more it has to remember. This “cognitive load” is often the difference between making a wise decision and making a decision with consequences that can affect your company’s bottom line… Ever had to redo a photo shoot because you didn’t get what you needed? Ever wish you’d hired the right corporate photographer versus the cheap guy? In his book “How We Decide”, Jonah Lehrer asks us to consider a 1999 experiment by Baba Shiv, a behavioral economist at Stanford University: Using two groups of undergraduates, Shiv gave the first group a two-digit number to remember and the second group a seven-digit number. Next he told them to walk down the hall and pick a snack from two options: chocolate cake or fruit salad. When results were tallied, they showed that the group given seven digits to remember was twice as likely to choose the cake as the group given only two digits. Theory? Shiv hypothesized that the cognitive load (seven numbers versus two) made it much harder to choose healthy over decadent. In our current society, the conscious mind is so overtaxed, that all it takes is a few extra bits of information to […] Read More