Why Do Babies and Adults Cannot Be hypnotized?
There are many discounts and sales at local retailers during the holiday seasons. Whether it’s a sale on electronics, clothing, toys, furniture or meals, everyone is looking for ways to save money. One group that often benefits is the disabled. The researchers at the University of Washington College of Medicine used a special dual-neuron neuroimaging method to record the facial neural patterns between children and adults using fNIRS.
They discovered that during face-to Face time, both adults and babies showed similar patterns of brain activity. However, when the children were asked to perform tasks, such as naming objects, reading or making simple drawings, they performed better than the adults. The reason for this discrepancy was the strong visual dominance of adults. The fNIRS enabled the researchers to eliminate this visual dominance from the adults’ brains, thus allowing them to do better on the tasks. The study is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the American Psychological Association.
Dr. Mark Zalesky, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Stanford University, said the research is exciting. “This confirms the results from earlier studies using fNIRS which were also replicated in infants.” He continued, “It shows that visual processing strategies required for adults can also be learned by infants, which provides a novel neural foundation for skilled tasks.”
Children will naturally gravitate toward items that look more appealing, making discounts and sales an ideal way to promote these items. For instance, toys and clothing sales during the holidays are the perfect time to highlight all of those great new toys that your baby has been asking for. You can also highlight all of the great clothes that you’ve found for your children that they no longer want or need. Your holiday sales should have a strong focus on children’s needs and wants, since it’s the season to get them everything they love!
Another reason adults and babies cannot be hypnotized the same way is that the adult brain is much stronger and more resistant to hypnosis. While the hypnotic state can be useful when hypnotizing someone who is willing to be hypnotized (such as a lawyer or police officer), the same cannot be said of someone who is not willing to be hypnotized, or who cannot afford to be hypnotized. Since hypnosis can be expensive, it makes sense to find ways to advertise your items in ways that are less expensive. The result is more exposure to your product, but without the need for hypnosis.
When children and adults are exposed to similar items more often, they begin to associate those items with their own use. Research has shown that babies will instinctively repeat words, phrases, and colors. This repetition serves a very important purpose: it helps babies to connect the world around them with objects, actions, and words that they are seeing and hearing. Using this method of marketing, you can easily make sure that your items get remembered by your potential customers. This kind of marketing also makes using the item more likely because it engages both the baby and the adult in the moment, as opposed to just having the baby look at your advertisement and not paying any attention.
Adults and babies cannot be hypnotized the same way either. Research has shown that there is simply no way to make a child become resistant to advertising messages, whether they are directed at him or her. Likewise, advertising messages cannot make adults react negatively to positive items like clothing, toys, and kitchen items. Because children and adults react differently to advertisements, most companies choose to advertise in different venues and with different kinds of products.
Of course, some babies do become agitated by certain kinds of messages, but even these can be successfully marketed to infants. In fact, many parents choose to use images like those found in baby magazines and other commercially available printed items to calm their babies down. This proves that babies cannot be made to react against the items that adults want them to, and that advertising methods for both adults and babies can help create positive experiences for both parties.