Interesting and Slightly Creepy

A friend sent me a link to this article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&

It is titled "How Companies Learn Your Secrets" and is primarily about retailers (using Target as an example) using data mining and targeted promotions to make people better customers. Notably, figuring out when a woman is starting her 2nd trimester based on what she buys and sending her tailored coupon offers to change her shopping habits. While the reporter didn't have access to the data he needed to prove it works (in fairness, he admits this) it sure seems to based on what he presented. Slightly creepy.

Underlying that, however, it is about learned behavior - what the author calls the cue-routine-reward loop. This is the interesting part.

We've all heard about muscle memory. We all know how hard it can be to break a habit, and how often even after we 'break' it we regress. Our brain is capable of being programed to do certain tasks (even complex ones) without much or any conscious thought. The reporter used backing out of your driveway as an example - when you first learn to drive backing up is hard; lots of actions to perform in the correct order. If you've been driving for years you probably back out of the driveway without thinking about it. I sure do. Once you have you get a tiny mental 'reward' - stress of backing up drops off and you're on your way. Cue: getting in the car. Routine: back out. Reward: hard part done, into drive and go! Yay!

To break bad habits it helps to recognize both the cue and the reward, while what we naturally focus on is the routine. If we just change the routine and fail to recognize the cue or provide a reward, we'll probably repeat the old routine if presented with the cue.

The human brain is also interesting... and slightly creepy.