Uncomplicate

The Psychologist just recently released this article which describes some fascinating findings on how fluency affcts judgement, choice and processing style. As Vaughan, over at mindhacks, describes it:

…we perceive things to be more appealing, easier to handle and more efficient based on how simple they are to understand… The core idea is that we partly judge things on ‘processing fluency’, that is, how easy it is to immediately grasp something. This seems intuitive, as we tend to prefer things that make sense to us, but it turns out that this preference is also heavily influenced by other features.

As a marketer or service provider, how do you ensure that your efforts build in “processing fluency” to create desired behavioural change?

This article brings out some fascinating nuggets on how simple changes in features of presentation can influence judgements of effort, judgements of familiarity, risk and beauty.

Turns out something as simple as the font type can influence how fluently new information is processed. This ease or difficulty of processing, in turn, informs and influences whether people many any decision at all, or defer the decision to later. The article also talks about how familiarity and repeat exposure, among others facilitate fluent processing.

By just presenting information in a different manner, keeping in mind the fundamental workings of the brain, we can influence how people feel about the tasks, and subsequently act in that manner.

Happy reading.

(via mindhacks)