Checking Out: Adam Alter

Your background is in social and cognitive psychology. How did you become interested in how environmental cues affect our thoughts and actions?
One of the things I noticed as I got further into my graduate career was how many really surprising effects arose from very, very subtle changes in the world around us, and how sensitive humans are to these changes. What was especially interesting is that so many of them were counterintuitive, or very hard to predict ahead of time.

Let’s talk about how your book, “Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave,” got its name.
“Drunk tank” pink is a shade of bright, bubble gum pink. In the late 1970s and early ’80s, psychologists were trying to figure out how to improve the behavior of students in classrooms. They got a grant from the Canadian government, which said, ‘You can paint all sorts of classrooms different colors, and we’ll see which ones have the best effects.’ For some reason, this really bright bubble-gummy pink color calmed the students down, made them more well-behaved and reduced their delinquency rates.

Something as simple as exposure to a color changed their behavior?
There’s something about it that calms people down, even makes them a little bit physically weaker. There’s this famous experiment where [scientists] held up pieces of pink and blue cardboard in front of college-age males and asked them to grip a device that measures grip strength. They found that they were less able to grip strongly when they were looking at pink rather than blue.

How do these findings relate to retail design?
What happens when you go shopping in the real world [is that] buying becomes an experience – something you do, it has a narrative. You look at the options, you pick something, and you take it home. That experience is really important for a human’s wellbeing. We thrive on narrative and on experiences, and when you search for something online and you buy it, it truncates that whole experience. It makes it much less of an experience than it would have been if you’d gone out and actually shopped in the store. 

Is there a finding in your research that’s truly surprised you?
Humans like things that remind them of themselves. We’re a pretty egocentric species, and anything that feels like a metaphorical mirror, as though we’re looking at ourselves, is appealing to us. We all process thousands of marketing messages, yet if there’s a hurricane that happens to share the first initial [in your name], then there’s enough of a personal overlap that it attracts your interest – it cuts through the noise.