按：本文选自《哈佛商业评论》1-2月刊。读完本文你将了解：为什么人们会喜欢熟悉的事物，而漠视新鲜事物。与此同时，我们可以推出结论：1、世界是“非连续性的”，用老的眼光看待事物早晚会出问题；2、要看清楚真实世界需要我们停下来想一想，这件事“是什么”，而不是“像什么”；3、要改变自己，先从反思自己的习惯出发。

人是习惯的动物

THE SCIENCE

HOW HABIT BEATS NOVELTY

习惯如何战胜新奇

MARKETERS SPEND TIME AND MONEY TRYING TO MAKE PRODUCTS STAND OUT SO THAT THEY’LL BE CHOSEN. BUT WHAT IF NOVELTY IS HAVING THE OPPOSITE EFFECT?

市场人员花时间和金钱试图让产品与众不同而大卖，但如果新奇有相反的效果怎么办？

*BY SCOTT BERINATO *

Because people are creatures of habit, they are blind to novelty.

因为人们都是习惯的动物，他们往往对新鲜事物视而不见。

1）Our brains use heuristics and experience to decide what something is, often skipping over unexpected or novel aspects of a scene. The neuroscientist Moshe Bar posits that the brain “is continuously busy generating predictions that approximate the relevant future.” He says, “We think that when we look at something, the brain asks, What is this? But really it asks, What is this like?” That is, we are matching input from the world to things we have encountered before. This rapid prediction process is the mental equivalent of the old game show Name That Tune. The more you’ve heard the song, the fewer notes it takes to recognize it. The less energy required to recognize something, the better. The goal of the marketer is to get the consumer to buy that brand in just one note. Constantly changing the melody and words won’t help.

1）我们的大脑使用启发法和经验来决定某事是什么样子，经常跳过场景中出乎意料或新颖的方面。神经科学家Moshe Bar假设大脑“不断地忙于产生近似相关未来的预测”。他说，“我们认为，当我们看某事时，大脑问，这是什么？但是事实上它在问，这东西像什么？“也就是说，我们将来自外界的输入与之前遇到的事情相匹配。这个快速的预测过程与曾经的游戏节目《听曲调猜歌名》的心理相同。你听到的歌曲越多，识别它需要的音符就越少。识别东西所需的能量越少越好。营销人员的目标是让消费者在一个音符中就购买该品牌。不断改变旋律和话语不会对销售有帮助。

2）The flip side of our blindness to novelty is that the more consistent an object remains, the less work the brain needs to do to identify (and choose) it. As long ago as 1910, researchers called this phenomenon the “warm glow of familiarity”; now there’s neurological evidence that it exists. Tide is a classic example of a product we recognize without much thought. Research has shown that we respond to placement on a store shelf, color, shape, and spatial orientation (in that order). In a process called perceptual priming, the brain relies on those clues. Over time it needs less information and uses less power to recognize a familiar object than to recognize something new.

2）我们对新鲜事物盲目的另一面是，一个物体保持得越一致，大脑需要识别（和选择）时做的工作就越少。早在1910年，研究人员称这种现象是“熟悉带来的温暖的满足感”；现在有神经学证据证明它确实是存在的。 Tide是我们不需要太多思考就能认出的产品的经典例子。研究表明，我们对商店货架、颜色、形状和空间方向（按顺序）的放置做出反应。在称为“感知启动”的过程中，大脑依赖于这些线索。随着时间的推移，它需要的信息更少，并使用更少的力量来识别熟悉的对象，而不是识别新的东西。

3）Apparently this is a closely guarded secret, because marketers spend time and money creating novelty. But new packaging for an established product may not have the intended effect. Change meant to freshen or energize a product line may actually cause consumers to overlook the new design as they search for what they are in the habit of seeing. In a test of this change blindness, product managers were asked to locate a new design for their own brand on a shelf, and they couldn’t easily do it.

3）显然，这是一个被密切保守的秘密，因为营销人员花时间和金钱试图创造新鲜事物。但是，对于既有产品的新包装可能没有预期的效果。试图更新或开发新产品可能实际上导致消费者忽略这些新设计，因为他们会搜索他们习惯看到的东西。在对这种“改变盲目”的测试中，产品经理被要求在架子找他们自己品牌的一个新设计过的产品，他们自己都很难找到。

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原文出处：《哈佛商业评论》杂志

译者：七呵夫

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