Israeli researchers Dr. Yoram Levanon and Dr. Lan Lossos have developed a form of voice analysis that they claim can tell you everything you need to know about someone in 30 seconds. Levanon's background is in theoretical physics, operations research and the application of mathematical models to management science. Lossos holds a PhD in Neuropsychology. Their strategy stems from explorations of emotional decision making and arose from serendipitous findings while exploring the use of voice analysis in developing a dating service.
Their technique uses voice analysis to classify speakers along three dimensions of limbic system predispositions that they classify as. "survivalists, homeostatists, and growth-oriented "
Levanon is cited as saying:
" an 'emotional relationship' is created between a person and something they experience - a sound, a word, a picture, a person they meet, within these first milliseconds, while the cognitive wheels only begin turning after half a second. The focus of his work has been trying to identify and harness this quick and powerful emotional decision-making system, to figure out how best to influence people. " Link
I'm always a bit cynical about attempts to categorise people with simple metrics however they claim to have backed up their approach with field trials.
" Tomer Chen, former Microsoft marketing manager for small and medium-sized business customers conducted an experiment for Levanon, and found that using his approach, he could double sales, compared with control group that did not use the 'eemotional marketing' technique. " Link
I'd want to see some peer reviewed research and stats before I was prepared to swallow this one, but it interests me in that increasingly marketing companies seem to be turning to the application of neuropsychological knowledge in order to increase their performance.
Its not just marketing companies that are turning to Neuropsychology to enhance their business, there are plenty of other people taking similar approaches. I regularly read Zack Lynch's Brain Waves blog to keep an eye on this area. His post from yesterday "Neuroeconomics Research Driving Evolving Neurofinance Field" is a classic example :
" A recent study published in the Journal of Psychological Science and reported in today's Wall Street Journal showed that a group of individuals with brain damage to some of the more sensitive emotional regulatory areas in the brain made more profitable investment decisions than a control group with no known brain damage. " Link
Zack raises several interesting points, he notes that this research is getting serious attention from high profile investment strategists and that despite the apparent 'benefit' conveyed by the specific impairments, some of the brain damaged investors had experienced personal bankruptcy.
This press release from Carnegie Mellon gives more details on the research and highlights a possible reason why some of the subjects might have experience bankruptcy:
" In this experiment, risk-taking was the most advantageous behavior, so the participants who were less fearful made better choices. However, in other studies, the experiment has been set up so that risky choices had lower expected values, and in these studies, normal subjects tended to perform more optimally." Link
So unsurprisingly brain lesions don’t always make for great finanacial decisions, however the research is resonant with other findings that are highly suggestive that risk aversion behaviour in finance is deeply rooted in primate behaviour. There's a good summary of some aspects of recent evidence for this over at Future Pundit. see: "Capuchin Monkeys Show Same Loss Aversion Economic Behavior As Humans"
Image Courtesy of spectacular fish
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1:12:00 AM 
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