Head Banging: The Availability Bias and Creativity

By: Bill Abramovitz

Back in the good old T-Rex days, our reptilian brains were trained to react to the biggest boom. After all, thumping away from the most vivid threat, say an erupting volcano, was just good survival sense. Millions of years later, our brains still have this cognitive programming. It causes us to remember and react to whatever most strongly stands out from the background noise, and rapidly forget stimuli that don’t. For example, a beautiful waterfall with motorized nymphs in the lobby of your lawyer’s office may give you a more positive impression of his legal skills than his win/loss record warrants. So what’s this mean to you? If your marketing doesn’t stick out, your terrific product could just fade away in the memories of your potential customers.