Subliminal Activity

Many studies have been done to determine the impact which subliminal messaging have on human behaviour. Humans have a peripheral memory and often remember what they want to remember. In essence a person’s mind can create its own reality (Mlodinow 2013). A subliminal stimulus cannot consciously be perceived by the mind. The stimuli can induce emotions in people and can also affect how they evaluate themselves. Very importantly, actions can be encouraged through subliminal messaging, but not induced. It has been found that subliminal priming will only affect behaviour if it is aligned with a relevant and already existing goal. And although subliminal effects are real, they are probably not strong enough to influence people’s evaluations of things they already have a strong opinion.

3.1.7 Impact of Emotions

Other research has focussed on the impact emotions have on human behaviour. The best argued reason for emotions is that they are fundamentally for the individual’s physical and social safety and wellbeing. Emotions are interconnected systems of thoughts, feelings, motives and bodily reactions which does three basic things. It notifies the individual about important events, good and bad, it focus the individual’s attention on potentially important situations or events, positive or negative and it motivates the individual to behave in specific ways in an attempt to deal with a situation at hand. It can therefore be argued that emotions have action tendencies. It produces changes in the body to prepare the individual to respond to specific situations or warn others of that same situation (Shahrestani et al. 2013).

Emotions therefore play a very important role in Enterprise Engineering. The individual’s emotions are determined by his interpretation of specific events rather than the event itself.

Cognitive appraisal theory suggests that human emotions are extracted from cognitive

appraisals, an assessment of an event’s impact on the individual’s wellbeing and personal concerns. It is therefore possible to change a person’s emotions if you can change their appraisal of a specific situation. It has be seen that humans can even induce emotions on themselves by thinking of things that aren’t really real (The Great Courses 2013).

3.1.8 Influence of Stress

Stress is no unfamiliar concept in modern societies. Anxiety, depression and suicide can all be related back to stress. Therefore, another concept which potentially influences human behaviour (Brady & Sinha 2005). Research shows that there are two main types of stress: acute and chronic. Acute stress is a result of an immediate threat to an individual’s well-being. Chronic stress is the stress that an individual experience much more often. It is suggested that chronic stress is a result of the completely new environment in which people live today, which is significantly different from the environment in which their brains evolved. It is believed that chronic stress is a recent development in humans and developed due to ever changing culture and rapidly increasing technologies (The Great Courses 2013).

The second reason for chronic stress is blamed on the fact that people live with a lot of uncertainty about whether or not they are doing well in life. Humans have changed their environments from an immediate return to a delayed return environment. Modern society suggest that people should invest a lot time and effort each day in tasks that do not have any immediate reward and for all practical purposes without knowing whether they will ever see any reward at all. This results in a constant worrying about the future, while today’s issues are still at hand (The Great Courses 2013).

The third reason for chronic stress is the fact that most people feel very helpless in solving the problems that cause the stress in the first place. When things that create stress lie in the future the threat is only experienced in an individual’s mind, rather than in his physical environment. This means there are very few external things that can be done to reduce this stress. Most common sources of chronic stress involve money, personal relationships, studies, work, health problems and other hassles and irritations which are experienced daily (The Great Courses 2013).

3.1.9 Self-Serving Biases

Most people believe they are better than average on most positive characteristics. They have

self-serving biases. People also believe that physical things associated with them are better

than average and is called the mere ownership effect. People excuse their shortcomings and failures, while claiming responsibility for their success. If someone performs well it is due to their efforts and intellect, while they usually claim little to no responsibility for failure. This is a very important concept in modern business. To some extent it is healthy and it helps people stay motivated after setbacks (The Great Courses 2013).

Nevertheless, these self-serving biases also have large costs for the individual and the people around him. In general people manage their lives better if they see their abilities and characteristics accurately. Overestimating personal ability can lead to people pursuing goals beyond their capability and set themselves up for failure. If an individual constantly think they are right it can also hurt personal relationships (The Great Courses 2013).

3.1.10 Human Incentives

Authors such as Levitt & Dubner (2009) suggest that incentives are the cornerstones of modern society. They suggest there are three main incentives which drive human behaviour namely, economic, social and moral incentives. They continue to say that sometimes certain incentives are so irresistible that people are driven to attain them through unscrupulous behaviour. Something worth having is something worth cheating for.

This is important to notice since many organisations focus primarily on financial incentives as motivation for human behaviour. Perhaps because it is very difficult to quantify an individual’s

social and moral contributions in society. Something which might have been difficult to do in the past, but might become ever more possible in the future.

3.1.11 Irrational Behaviour

Economic models are often built on the assumption that people make decisions by constantly weighing different factors. Physiological research rather suggest that humans react, more often than not, on a basis of simple, unconscious rules that can sometimes produce completely irrational results (Mlodinow 2013; Kahneman 2013). Since organisations and societies consist out of individuals it is important to understand that human behaviour cannot and should not be simplified merely due to the extreme complexities. Simplifications which might lead to negative and even harmful results.