People's emotions and their external circumstances play an important role in decision-making related to consumption. Gonzalo Arrondo, post-doctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge and former ICS researcher, presented this idea at an ICS seminar. ICS is the Humanities and Social Sciences research center of the University of Navarra. The seminar was organized by the Emotional Culture and Identity project, which is funded by Zurich Insurance.

Gonzalo Arrondo presented his latest study at the ICS, in which he compared "more self-gratifying and emotional decision-making with other, more practical decisions." To do this, he showed two car models to 22 women between the ages of 21 and 39 and asked them two questions: Which do you like more? Which would you buy?  

"The goal was to go beyond purely mechanistic or simplified explanations about decision-making," he stressed, "The specific question was whether the individual's objectives changed their response to stimuli or whether, instead, the response to stimuli is always the same automatic response and does not influence where people are going, what they are looking for, or their goals."

As indicated by the expert, the brain— specifically the orbitofrontal cortex— plays an important role in decision-making, but the interaction between this structure and the person's external circumstances must also be taken into account.

The researcher concluded that, when deciding, the specific value assigned to an object is not static: "If this were true, the activity in the orbitofrontal cortex would always be the same and this study shows that it changes according to the question."

Consumption and Advertising

Many studies in psychology, microeconomics and, more recently, neuroscience seek to understand how the brain works in light of decision-making, especially decisions related to consumption.

According to Gonzalo Arrondo, his job is not "directly applicable" to advertising, but it can be useful for an advertiser that wants "to know if what they are doing in their job works or not."

 "I do not think we are more consumption-driven now," Arrondo clarified, "Human beings have always consumed and this has been one of the driving factors in the history of mankind. What has changed is that the forms of consumption are so much more varied than 500 years ago."

Gonzalo Arrondo has a Bachelor's in Educational Psychology and a Ph.D. in Medicine from the University of Navarra, as well as a second Bachelor's in Psychology from the UNED. He also holds a Master's in Child and Adult Neuropsychology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the Matia Foundation.