Comment by carbocation | Hacker News Reader

Comment by carbocation | Hacker News Reader

From the article, the study compared 48 people given free popcorn throughout the session to 48 people given one sugar cube at the beginning of the session. Those given the sugar cube demonstrated more positive responses to the advertised products.

The variables seem to be: (1) the substance of popcorn vs the substance of sugar cubes; (2) the quantity of stuff administered; (3) the duration over which someone got free stuff; (4) the overall caloric intake; (5) chewing vs non-chewing; (6) the degree to which the absorption times vary between sugar and popcorn.

Let me offer an alternative explanation: if you have nothing to do because your sugar cube dissolved and you're bored, you might pay more attention to the ads. If you're getting an unlimited supply of popcorn, that might be more entertaining to focus on than the ads.

At any rate, this study probably isn't testing what they think it's testing. It certainly doesn't demonstrate that the act of chewing has any causal relationship with their findings.

Not to mention, the surge of glucose from eating the sugar cubes could've very well affected sentiment and responses. Daniel Kahneman talks about this in his book, specifically how groups given a chocolate bar in between tasks performed better than control groups, presumably due to the brain's dependence on glucose, and its fatigue in the lack thereof.

Recent evidence suggests that glucose depletion doesn't seem to affect the brain. For example, [1]. Moreover, the calorie consumption of the brain is basically constant regardless of what it is doing. I would hazard an untrained guess based off of these that the difference is in changes due to the body knowing of consumption of glucose versus any direct effect of the glucose itself. See also the study that athletes performed better after swishing a sweet drink in their mouth and spitting it out just as they did when actually drinking it.

[1] http://www.epjournal.net/wp-ontent/uploads/ep08244259.pdf

Really interesting. Thanks for the link!

The link is broken, could you please post the title and author? Thanks!

might have been this?

http://www.runnersworld.com/drinks-hydration/when-and-why-to...

Looks like it's missing a "c":

http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/ep08244259.pdf

Yes, thanks for the correction! And for the sake of posterity, it's "Does the Brain Consume Additional Glucose During Self-Control Tasks?" by Robert Kurzban

Your alternative explanation is awfully close to "chewing". Chewing is a mild distraction.

My (main) point is that with so many uncontrolled variables, there are many alternative explanations that might have equal justification.

Of less importance (to me) is that my alternative explanation relies not on some physical act (chewing) somehow blocking brand awareness, but rather on the experience-seeking brain being idle or already-engaged when shown ads.

Again, with at least 6 uncontrolled variables, we could come up with dozens of things, from blood sugar trajectories to brain activity to chewing to smelling etc., all of which could be the actual trigger blocking brand awareness. I'm not partial to any one explanation given the paucity of data.

I'd add that playing with pop corn in the hand, feeling its texture, the smell and the small noise tend to steal the brain's focus from the ads. Indeed once the sugar is melted there is less to experience with the body.

Not close enough for them to make the argument that the result is because "chewing disrupts the subconscious mouth movement that cements the brand name in your mind".

Simpler.

The taste of sugar is perceived as positive. This puts you in a better mood. This makes you likelier to associate the ads with positive feelings. This in turn makes it likelier for you to react to ads because you associate those products with positive emotion.

Brains are really good at association. Really bad at cause and effect.

If you want to prove this to yourself, take a date out on a roller coaster or bungee jumping. When your hearts are racing and you feel alive, look at each other. The association you form pretty much guarantees a positive date, even though the person you were with had nothing to do with the adrenaline rush.

Perhaps they could have given some people liquid smoothies and others more solid smoothies with chunks of fruit.

Its easy to poke holes in any applied methodology. I could suggest the time of day wasn't consistent across groups, the seating position might introduce bias etc. But you have to start an investigation somewhere, and I think their methodology was a reasonable balance of practicality.

The work is tantalising evidence for something else going on. Which certainly warrents follow up work. Even if it was just the people were bored and not paying attention to ads, it still has consequences for the cinema business model.

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