Flashback to 1996, and what do I see?
A prepubescent child whose attention is fixated on the AOL guy running across the screen of her family’s computer. A box with too many blinking lights is making a gawd-awful racket that means it’s getting somewhere and nowhere, as it connects to that information superhighway we’ve taken to calling the Internet.
The child holds her breath, anxiously waiting for the screen to load. An uninhibited smile breaks across her face as a tiny mailbox appears and a digital baritone informs her politely, “You’ve got mail.”
The girl jumps into the office chair she’s been too fidgety to avail herself to and clicks eagerly on the icon, opening the first of several electronic messages she’s received from friends and family. Little digital expressions of love that make her day, awash with the knowledge that the people she doesn’t get to see on a regular basis are still thinking of her.
Snap back to the present, and what’ve we got?
A neuroeconomist, Paul Zak who says that social networking triggers the release of the generosity-trust chemical, oxytocin, in our brains (the “cuddle chemical” known for the bond it forges between mothers and their children).
Zak’s studies have been getting attention from the folks at Fast Company, which is how I stumbled across an article likening our experiences with social networking to falling in love.
In his article, Adam Penenberg describes some of Zak’s experiments, noting the ones he’s personally participated in during his search to understand how social networking affects the psyche.
The experiment that really piqued my interest involved taking a blood sample directly before and after participating in a social networking experience to determine what changes there might be, if any. In the ten minutes between samples, Penenberg jumped on Twitter, updating his status, responding to followers and nosing about.
The result?
His oxytocin levels spiked 13.2% (roughly equivalent to hormone levels experienced by a groom on his wedding day). He also experienced a drop in stress hormones cortisol and ACTH.
Zak’s analysis of the changes?
Penenberg’s brain interpreted tweeting as if he was directly interacting with people he cared about. E-connection is processed in the brain like an in-person connection.
I have to admit that Zak’s proposal resonates with me. How can it not when I’ve numerous friends that I’ve made first through online interaction? When I’ve watched the results of several romances that began on online dating services like Match.com or eHarmony blossom into engagements with upcoming nuptials?
In reading some of the additional experiments and corresponding results, trust is a driving factor in how people interact online. And it’s looking increasingly as though the success of future marketing ventures will depend on the cultivation of that trust amongst their consumers.
