Improve Your Communication with the 3-Brain Theory

Have you ever bought a product that seemed really useful at the time but immediately after realized it wasn’t?

During a decision-making situation, individuals commonly believe they maintain total control and choose the solution consciously, but in reality this is not the case. This condition is perfectly normal. The cause of this can be traced back to the most important organ: the brain.

Being aware of the mechanism that regulates the human mind is essential for conveying the right messages to your target audience. Through precise stimuli, you can guide and encourage desired behaviors.

If the topic fascinates you, we suggest reading our two articles on persuasion levers, where you’ll find 10 concrete examples to apply immediately (go to the first article, go to the second article).

The Three Parts of the Human Brain

We can break down the brain into three parts:

• Ancient brain (or reptilian);
• Intermediate brain (or mammalian);
• Recent brain (or cortical).

These three sections operate autonomously even though they are fully integrated.

Let’s explore them together.

The Ancient Brain (or Reptilian)

This section of the brain is the first to intervene in the processes of interpreting external stimuli. The ancient brain is responsible for managing all those automatic activities, such as breathing, blinking, pumping blood through the heart, and so on. It’s the first part of the brain to have developed during human evolution, and among its tasks is precisely that of protecting the human species, allowing split-second decisions when determining whether there’s danger and what’s the best action to avoid it.

As you can imagine, an individual has no conscious control over these instinctive choices and therefore cannot steer them.

Let’s play a little game.

Seeing this image, you surely felt a sense of threat and therefore became unconsciously alert. This photo activated your automatic response to danger and you couldn’t choose whether to remain calm or not.

The ancient brain makes decisions based on actions we perform daily and in relation to pure survival aspects that characterize humans.

Let’s do another example. Which of these two images attracts you more?

You chose the one on the left, right?

The “shiny” aspect of objects stimulates the ancient brain because it associates the object with the characteristics of liquids, particularly the transparency of water, a primary source for living. This is precisely why, for example, companies produce cans with a shiny appearance, leveraging this “mechanism” that automatically activates in people.

The Intermediate Brain (or Mammalian)

The intermediate brain is present in all mammals and is responsible for processing emotions. Like the previous one, it also acts automatically and therefore is not controllable.

Anything that comes into contact with a person inevitably causes an emotional variation, sometimes even imperceptible.

Looking at this photo, did you feel tenderness, joy, or kindness? Know that these are uncontrolled reactions!

For the processing of an external stimulus, emotional areas such as the Thalamus and the Amygdala are involved, along with two neurotransmitters linked to arousal: Dopamine and Serotonin.

Let’s describe them briefly:

• Thalamus: it’s the first area of the intermediate brain to activate, deciding which other zones to involve. It’s responsible for sensations such as happiness, disgust, or sadness.
• Amygdala: another component of the intermediate brain that processes more complex emotions by tracing them back to a memory or past experience. Let’s do an example. Where were you on August 23, 2008? Probably even with maximum effort you wouldn’t be able to remember. But if instead we asked you where you were on September 11, 2001? The answer would probably change.
• Dopamine: manages motivating behaviors and increases whenever perceptions of self-gratification occur. Some events that cause an increase in dopamine are gambling, discounts and promotions, or an unexpected pleasant event (like a gift).
• Serotonin: regulates mood tone but unlike dopamine doesn’t depend on gratification impulses but on a real attraction. It increases when an individual comes into contact with people similar to them. After all, belonging to a group is closely correlated with the survival of the human race. This is precisely why companies, when advertising a product, choose people similar to those of their target audience, both in clothing and age.

The Recent Brain (or Cortical)

As the name suggests, this part of the brain is the last to have developed.

It’s responsible for managing language, speech, reading, listening, and is capable of producing logical thoughts and planning specific actions, so it’s the only part of the brain that can be controlled.

Let’s play another game. Look at this image: how many women can you identify?

Exactly: the answer is 5!

However, let’s make some considerations:

• The answer, unlike the previous cases, wasn’t so automatic. You had to reason and interpret the situation to get what you wanted, namely the number of women. This is because the recent brain is the slowest of the three in processing information.
• You could have skipped the game and continued reading. This demonstrates that the rational process is fully under people’s control and is completely natural since the recent brain consumes a lot of energy and therefore is activated only when truly needed.

For a company, it’s essential to keep in mind that a user, before proceeding with a purchase, seeks informational (and therefore rational) elements for reassurance: technical characteristics of a product, “made in Italy” label for a garment, ingredients of a food item, and so on.

This is precisely why comparative tables, widely used by major e-commerce sites like Amazon, work so well:

Even metaphorical images can communicate much deeper content compared to a simple promotional image:

This advertisement is based on the very simple principle that anyone can recognize a sandwich but adds the concept that “secondhand smoke is harmful and can become a serious problem.”

The ad is aimed at the recent brain because it requires interpretation. All the elements that compose it serve to attract the primary attention of the ancient and intermediate brain, thus preventing the person from automatically avoiding thinking about what they’ve seen.

We understand from this example how an image plays a more important role compared to text. By itself it can capture attention in less than half a second, proving to be a winning weapon, even in a noisy context like social media where every user is bombarded by continuous stimuli, both advertising and otherwise.

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After reading this article, you’ll have understood that people don’t always act in a logical and rational manner, this is because most of the decisions we make are governed at an unconscious level.

In this sense, every online service needs to be built with a design that can stimulate not only the recent brain but also the ancient one and especially the intermediate one, the generator of emotions.

In our online projects, we take care of every detail, even seemingly insignificant ones, to encourage users to take action, overcoming cognitive conflicts and providing targeted trust amplifiers.

Want to implement neuromarketing concepts in your communication?

We’re happy to help you at any time.

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