One of the essential ingredients for success in business is the ability to understand the way people think. Knowing how people respond to different information and situations lies at the nub of the decision-making process and can have a profound impact on not just business growth, but also on broader social and economic development.
For academics researching this field, the work can be as satisfying as it is valuable. But for such research to resonate, it requires veracity that comes with experience, vigor and sophisticated research capabilities.
Professor Jaideep Sengupta, Joseph Lau Professor of Business and Chair Professor of Marketing at HKUST Business School, specializes in consumer behavior, or to be more precise consumer psychology. For him, it’s a passion. “I’ve always been fascinated by how the human mind works, how and why we react to different pieces of information the way do and especially how we react to attempts to persuade us ... what works, what doesn’t and why,” he says. “What really gets me going is when I see something that seems counter-intuitive, that we can’t explain right away. So explaining the unexpected is a big part of what I do.”
The research ideas don’t come just from Professor Sengupta. “Some of them come from the very, very good doctoral students I have here. Often, it’ll be their interest that draws me into a project and we work on it together,” he says.
One recent research project looked at how people respond to flattery. Common sense says flattery shouldn’t work – indeed, past research shows that people see right through it. But still it goes on. Why?
Professor Sengupta and PhD student Elaine Chan, now assistant professor at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, decided to explore the reasons. Their research found that flattery evokes two different reactions: first, a reasoned response that it’s an attempt to influence or manipulate; second, a less rational but more human reaction to praise – pleasure. They found that the second reaction happens automatically.
“In our research, we sought to tap into these two diverse reactions: the thought-out one, which is negative; and the automatic unconscious one, which is much more positive. The intriguing part is that it’s the automatic positive reaction that drives people’s behavior later on,” said Professor Sengupta. In a demonstration of these ideas, the researchers found that even when customers “see through” blatant flattery by an in-store salesperson, they are more likely to return and buy from the store after a few days as a result of having been shamelessly flattered!
Such research is clearly valuable for marketing and performance in all shapes and forms. It has obvious applications in the sales environment, but is also relevant in management and other areas where inter-personal skills play an important part. For Dr. Chan, however, as important as the practical value was the rigorous approach to the research. “It inspired me to be more critical in my thinking; he [Professor Sengupta] emphasized the need for deeply analytical logic in research,” she says. “Quality is very important because, as researchers, we need to be able to defend our work, sometimes in front of skeptical audiences.” She adds that her students at Tilburg took great interest in her findings.
Another research interest of Professor Sengupta’s, which has direct societal implications, is the study of how we can resist temptations – especially temptations that take the form of delicious but unhealthy snacks. A tendency to be overweight has now become an endemic problem in much of the developed world, and one of the leading causes of this problem is our inability to exercise self-control in what we eat. Professor Sengupta’s research has looked at several different techniques that can help bolster our self-control in these situations. One very simple but effective trick consists of asking people to recall the last time they succumbed to temptation. Recalling such a past instance of yielding helps people in their resolve to resist that delicious food this time around, because they feel that they did satisfy their “enjoyment goal” on the previous occasion.
There’s a twist to this story, though – always exercising control may not be advisable! An ongoing project of Professor Sengupta’s (with his current PhD student, Fangyuan Chen) shows why it might be wise, as he says, “to occasionally indulge ourselves.” This investigation shows that if the guilt brought about by indulgence can be reduced – for example, when that rich chocolate dessert that you are eating was bought by a friend rather than by yourself – the sensation of doing something fun increases your vitality. And that increased vitality has some highly beneficial effects: people in Sengupta and Chen’s work who engaged in such low-guilt indulgence then became much more creative (doing well on creativity tests) and were also more successful in resisting other temptations.
While Professor Sengupta doesn’t necessarily set out for his research to be directly used in business, seeing the findings being applied is nevertheless gratifying. One research project that has clear relevance for businesses, governments and healthcare professionals looked at health-risk perceptions based around symptoms-matching. It was a project undertaken with another PhD student, Dengfeng Yan, who is now assistant professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Sengupta and Yan examined why people are often unduly pessimistic about their own health, while being objective about that of other people. It’s a phenomenon they termed self-negativity. The key to unlocking such self-negativity, they found, lay in a theory called construal level theory. “What the theory says is that when we form judgments about ourselves, we focus very much on the concrete information that we have and we neglect the more abstract information,” says Professor Sengupta. “In the context of health perceptions, the symptoms are the concrete information –and the base rate, or general prevalence of the disease, is the abstract information.”
For example, fever and headache could easily be flu symptoms, but they are also the symptoms of swine flu. The difference between the two is that swine flu is much less prevalent among the population – so its base rate or frequency is much lower than that of ordinary flu. But when self-diagnosing, base rate information is generally neglected. So a person who has common flu symptoms may well scare themselves into thinking that they have the swine flu because they are focusing on the symptoms alone – while completely ignoring the low base rate of swine flu. This kind of self-negativity can cause unnecessary anxiety and worry, not to mention increasing health costs.
The implications for healthcare provision – and reducing the cost of it – are obvious. The results were shared with a few doctors and they loved it. The study confirms the benefit of having patients come in for a consultation instead of prescribing for themselves and doing so wrongly. Relying on an actual doctor (instead of “Dr. Google” ) is advantageous not only because of the doctor’s expertise – but also, simply because the doctor is not you. So s/he is likely to take factors like the base rate of the disease into account – as we do when we make judgments about others – instead of going solely by the symptoms.
Reflecting on his experience at HKUST, Professor Yan says: “Professor Sengupta is passionate about research and eager to know what's going on. It’s infectious. He instills good habits, such as thinking through a problem from multiple angles, and also the need, when reviewing others' work, to offer constructive suggestions. A straight criticism isn’t enough.” There’s a clear objective to equip students with the tools to conduct research independently – through discussion, asking the right questions and sharing experience.
HKUST Business School is extremely research-oriented, says Professor Yan. The variety of speakers – both internal and visiting scholars from all over the world – was very important for broadening research perspective, as were the courses shared across different departments, he says. “I've benefited very much from this culture.”
Professor Sengupta, who has worked at HKUST since 1996, notes how the likes of Elaine Chan and Dengfeng Yan start out as students, but after working with them and spending time with them they become friends and colleagues. He continues to work with them.
With a nod to flattery, Professor Sengupta’s tip for up-and-coming managers: “Don’t stint on the positive feedback!”