Event Psychology
This is a collection of reads and research studies that are applicable to various aspects of event design and delivery, 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)
Behaviour
- Experient Podcast: Event Behavioral Insights: Do You Know What You Don’t Know? [PODCAST]
- How Background Music Influences Our Behavior at Work
- 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.
- Post-It® Note Persuasion: A Sticky Influence. Research paper on how including post-it note on a survey increases its completion by 40%
- 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
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
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.
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.
- Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart Study. Research on emotion contagion.
Engagement
- 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.
#EventPsychology design hacks
- 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
- 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
- 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.
General
- 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 to have 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
- 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.
Neuromarketing
- How to Apply Neuromarketing to Your Next Event
- 10 Recent Neuromarketing Research Studies (and Their Real-World Takeaways) [Research papers]
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