Event Psychology Library

This is a collection of reads and research studies about psychology of events. These can be applicable to various aspects of event design, and are listed by categories. Also, you can find other articles and useful papers by searching #eventpsychology on my social channels.

If you want to go pro – check Event Psychology Lab, an online course for smart event profs

Attention

• The History of Cognitive Overload. A FS blog exploring information overload, attention and memory.
• 40-second green roof views sustain attention: The role of micro-breaks in attention restoration Neuroscience study showing how exposure to nature can help significantly restore participants’ focus.
• Sustained Attention in Auditory and Visual Monitoring Tasks: Evaluation of the Administration of a Rest Break or Exogenous Vibrotactile Signals. Research paper.
• Attentional capture alters feature perception. Research paper.
• Scientists Have Identified The Time of Year The Human Brain Is Most Active. Research on how seasons can affect our brain functions (including attention and memory).
• 10 Ways Your Brain Reacts to Uncertain Times. Aka 10 things you need to know about attention.

Biases and effects

• First Impressions matter [PODCAST]
• The decoy effect: how you are influenced to choose without really knowing it
• How to Use the Ben Franklin Effect to Increase Loyalty
• Go Deep: 3 Psychological Effects an Event Planner Should Be Aware of. 3 psy effects in the context of business events: Paradox of Choice; Peak-End Rule; and Planning Fallacy.
• Cognitive Bias Cheat sheet. A helpful list of cognitive biases
• First Impressions Matter for Groups, Too.
• The Power of the Anchoring Effect on Pricing Models
• Hack Your Incentives: The Meeting in Your Attendee’s Head

Decision-making

• This is Your Brain on Events. How unconscious influences, and not logic, affect our behavior and decision-making, and how it affects event design.
• Marketing actions can modulate neural representations of experienced pleasantness. A famous wine tasting experiment showing how price affects wine taste perception. Research paper.
• Impact of contour on aesthetic judgments and approach-avoidance decisions in architecture. Research paper on how architecture can impact people’s behavior and decision-making.

Emotions

• Brains Love Stories: How Leveraging Neuroscience Can Capture People’s Emotions [PODCAST]
• Emotions 101 — Your Curated PodCourse – a selection of podcasts discussing emotions
• What Do Your Attendees Really Want? An article about using Emotional Analytics to understand what your attendees feel and think.
• Incandescent affect: Turning on the hot emotional system with bright light. Research paper on how intensity of light influences our emotional state.
• The influences of Emotion on learning and memory. Research paper
• Social Psychology of Networks: Influence of Emotion on Perception of Personal and Professional Networks. Research paper.
• Feeling more together: group attention intensifies emotion. Research paper.
• ‘How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain’ – [VIDEO] presentation by Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett.
• The Emotions Wheel. An article about the Emotions/Feelings Wheel, which is a handy tool to understand emotions, enhance emotional communication, and boost one’s wellbeing.
• Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart Study. Research on emotion contagion.

Engagement

• Probing the Science of Human Behavior for Better Event Engagement – my article as featured in EventMB.
• 5 ways Neuroscience Drives Engagement at Events Understanding what is behind engagement processes and how it works would help deliberately design for better engagement, here is a good read on the topic.
• How Sleep Affects Attendee Engagement. Get more confident about why you as an event organiser should think about your attendees sleep habits.
• Measuring narrative engagement: The heart tells the story. Research paper.
• 3 Ways to Turn COVID Safety Measures Into Attendee Engagement Opportunities. An example of how reframing helps improve experience.

#EventPsychology design hacks

• Research Proves Your Brain Needs Breaks – 2021 Microsoft research showing why online meetings (and in-person meetings, too, really) should be designed with breaks as part of the agenda.
• Nature of Space – 2021 IMEX report discussing nature-based tips to help event planners ‘remake the way you make’ putting human health and performance at the very heart of our events.
• How Engaging the Senses Creates Meaningful Design. Not quite about events, yet a great article that can help us understand the impact of space and its design on people.
• The psychology of events: Why sticking to a schedule matters. Learn what happens in the brains of your participants if the session overruns.
• Mindful Event Design Whitepaper. Great insights about how physical environments influence event goers.
• Neuroscience Meeting Hacks from Roger Haskett [VIDEO]
• The science of white space at events by Adrian Segar
• How your meeting’s music impacts your audience’s emotion by Cramer
• Paper beats digital in many ways, according to Neuroscience by Roger Dooley
• The surprising power of questions. Useful read when designing event feedback process.
• Give Your Attendees’ Brains a Break, Not a Workout How to create event programme that would not drain participants’ brain.
• Hacking a Behavioral Science Conference. How Behavioral science helps improve conference networking.
• Foods linked to better brainpower
• Post-It® Note Persuasion: A Sticky Influence. Research paper on how including post-it note on a survey increases its completion by 40%
• Background music: effects on attention performance. Research paper
• How Your Meeting’s Music Impacts Your Audience’s Emotion. A great read about setting up the right music as a powerful tool to build emotions you need.
• Influence of Fragrances on Human Psychophysiological Activity: With Special Reference to Human Electroencephalographic Response. Learn various smells’ effect on brain functions. Research paper.
• This Is Your Brain On Storytelling: The Chemistry Of Modern Communication.
• How To Network Better: Effective research-based communication practices [Download required]
• A Case Study Examining the Influence of Conference Food Function on Attendee Satisfaction and Return Intention at a Corporate Conference. [CASE study]
• Does Starbucks Make You Smarter? Coffee, placebo and priming effects – how mere smell of coffee can impact our cognitive functions.
• What does doodling do? Research on the effects of doodling.
• Cup colour influences consumers’ expectations and experience on tasting specialty coffee. An example of color-psychology research here.
• An Introduction to Color Perception A detailed read with plenty of references to studies of how color impacts our emotions and decisions.
• Music and Emotions in the Brain: Familiarity Matters
• How Background Music Influences Our Behavior at Work
• Event Psychology & Event Tech: What’s Behind Pushing Buttons – my interview with Attendify team on how to use event psychology to help adoption of event tech.
• 10 Tips for Rethinking How We Design Meeting Spaces
• Give Your Ideas Some Legs: The Positive Effect of Walking on Creative Thinking
• How Event Psychology Improves Your Events – my conversation with Melanie of Eventplanning BlueprintTV [VIDEO]
• Using psychology to inspire creativity. A 30-min IMEX session packed with science-based tips.
• Using behavioral science to improve events. Another video with several science-based recommendations for better event planning.
• A Behavioral Science Toolkit to aid physical distancing and people movement in a Covid-19 world. A report with actionable tips based on besci concepts.

General

• The Psychology of Events [PODCAST]
• Events Psychology – Field of the Future for the MICE industry. My first article in the series on the topic.
• The Secret Life of Your Attendee’s Brain. ‘An electrochemistry lab’ running on your participants’ minds and what that means for your event design.
• Creating Brain-Friendly Experiences An Interview with Janet Sperstad, CMP.
• Are we ready for event neuroscientists? My take on why we need to embrace psychology and neuroscience in event planning.
• 100 Books to Become a Behavioral Designer. An Ultimate Reading Guide to Designing for Behavior Change by Samuel Saltzer.

Learning

• Why we remember more by reading – especially print – than from audio or video
• 5 ways to make learning stick
• Quiet rest helps us retain detailed memories. Research study
• Learning styles theory: what does neuroscience say?
• Neuroscience-Based Tips to Improve Your Attendees’ Learning
• Why Learning Space Matters. The article refers to school education but is full of useful info that can be applied to learning space at business events.
• How to design events with Adult Learning in Mind – 4 tips to increase learning efficacy using adult learning principles.
• What makes online learning impactful?
• One Simple Tweak That Can Make Learning Seven Times More Impactful

Networking and Community

• The Brain Learns Faces Fastest In Person
• Professional Community Perspectives: How Engaged are Your Members? A short, interesting read that can guide your thoughts if you aim for building an event community.
• How to have more meaningful conversations
• Why Humans — and the Brain — Need Community. On research showing community is as much important for humans as food and water.
• How To Network Better: Effective research-based communication practices [Download required]
• Lost In the Storm: The Academic Collaborations That Went Missing In Hurricane Issac. This research paper provides a fascinating example of how collaborations formed among attendants of (occurring) conferences are associated with more successful co‐publications.

Neuromarketing

• How to Apply Neuromarketing to Your Next Event
• 10 Recent Neuromarketing Research Studies (and Their Real-World Takeaways) [Research papers]

Online/Virtual Events

• Study suggests “Zoom fatigue” is a real psychological phenomenon — but there are three ways to help prevent it
• How to Win at Zoom with Nick Morgan [PODCAST]
• Why Interest in Virtual Events is Waning—and What to Do About It. Think like a neuroscientist to combat virtual event fatigue.
• 3 Ways to Make Virtual Meetings Less Awful.
• Do’s and Don’ts To Make Video Conferences Work For You.

An online, on-demand course on how to apply scientific insights to create impactful event experiences is now available.

Interested? Click below to check the modules and enroll. Questions? Email me: matey.events@gmail.com