The Buying Brain: Secrets for Selling to the Subconscious Mind by A. K. Pradeep

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    for details) in young people becomes active when they view both positive and negative stimuli. But, in these new studies, the amygdala in older people is active only when they view positive images. They’ve learned to overlook the negative, at least when it’s not impacting them directly.
    Another way to look at this is that younger brains, unaware of what’s ahead and how best to deal with it, cling to negative information, processing and reprocessing it in an attempt to predict and prepare for their uncertain futures.
    Older brains, on the other hand, have a lifetime of experiences, full of positive or at least nondisastrous events to help them. They no longer attend to the negative and may in fact “disattend” or avoid the negative. Seen in this light, the older brain’s tendency to spin information positively is a hard-won life skill and age-worthy brain development, not a na¨ıve perspective.
    Another reason for the “positivity shift” that comes with aging may be that older adults put more emphasis on regulating emotion than do younger adults, and they do so with a greater motivation to derive meaning from life. To get P1: OTA/XYZ
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    The Buying Brain
    to that point, older adults may focus on ideas, activities, and people that bring pleasant feelings and reinforce positive visions of themselves.
    So, in addition to presenting material positively to older adults, be sure you provide them with a positive spin on it that clearly relates back to themselves. Older adults like to feel good about who they are and how far they’ve come. They’ll attend to your message with pleasure if you provide them with a way to relate that information positively to themselves and the positive self-portraits they’ve developed.
    On the flip side of this positive bias is an interesting quirk of the aging brain I touched on earlier—a tendency to overlook the negative. It’s called
    “preferential processing,” and several studies have highlighted it (see the Notes section for details). They indicate that, when presented with a negative message, as you might find, for example, on a warning label or some ad messaging, older brains can “delete” the NOT and remember it as a DO over time. So, “do not take with juice” might be recalled as “take with juice” after several repetitions, even if those repetitions are processed with relatively high attention.
    If you’re thinking that this information is only relevant to caregivers, I’d encourage you to think again. “Do not neglect your IRA” could have the opposite of your intended effect, as could “Don’t forget” the milk.
    Luckily, the fix for this bias is relatively simple: Craft messages for older brains in positive, not negative terms. Say: Remember the milk, the IRA, the brand, not “Don’t forget” it.
    Emotional Resilience
    A related benefit to having an older brain is the resilience that comes with it.
    After all, by the time you’ve earned an aging brain, you’ve most likely seen it all—and have experience dealing with it. This doesn’t mean you’ve triumphed over every adversity. Think back to a few things that caused you to lose sleep in your 20s (Does my boss like me? Should I have been more “visible” at the meeting?) and see what your gut reaction is to them now. More than likely, you’ve learned to “let the little things go.” And, if you’re an expert at resilience, you may have learned that “most things are little things.”
    This “ don’t sweat the small stuff ” idea can successfully underpin most of your marketing messages to older adults. They don’t need to dwell on every tiny detail to embrace your product or service. They’re far

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    beyond the need to rationalize their choices.