Event Psychology

This is a collection of reads and research studies that are applicable to various aspects of event design, 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 planners

Attention

• 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

• 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.
• 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.
• 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
• 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