Undercover Economist

It might be a brainwave, but what on earth does it mean?


My costume consisted of an electroencephalograph (EEG) cap, which looks like a polka-dot shower cap with wires plugged into it; a pair of wrap-around glasses with a tiny video camera attached; a clothes peg on one finger to measure my heart rate; two other finger monitors that functioned like a lie-detector; a thermometer patch on a fourth finger; and a satchel to hold a computer gathering the data.


This was all part of my efforts to understand ”neuroeconomics”, a new, controversial and eclectic marriage between economics, marketing and various branches of physiology and brain science. With very different aims, economists and marketers are attempting to tap into the dramatic advances in our understanding of the brain that have taken place over the past 15 years. Their tools encompass mood-altering drugs, tests for hormone levels, animal studies and fMRI scans (which use immobile scanners to measure blood flows deep inside the brain).

“Neuromarketing” is the simplest application, and the one in which I was participating. David Lewis, a neurophysiologist at The Mind Lab, a spin-off from the University of Sussex, showed me how the physiological readings could be viewed alongside output from my camera to provide a simple but – presumably – useful demonstration of what really grabbed my attention in the deli. Among Lewis’s findings are that eating chocolate is more exciting than snogging (at least, snogging in an electrical shower cap while surrounded by men with clipboards) and that, subconsciously, young men are more interested in trainers than in the wares on display in an Ann Summers sex shop.


Neuroeconomics may provide more shape to the older and more famous field of behavioural economics. A mixture of economics and psychology, behavioural economics has used laboratory experiments to expose a bewildering number of exceptions to the traditional economic theory of rational choice. At present, though, there is little pattern to what the behavioural economists are observing, and it’s possible that a greater understanding of how the brain works might help to provide one.


Also published at ft.com.