Using Attachment Anxiety in Emotional Design & Marketing
How companies use social pain, to stop customers from leaving
By Brian Cugelman, PhD with editorial production from Debra Weinryb
When it comes to emotional design, people typically talk about positive emotions and user experiences, like how products can make people feel happy. But what they rarely discuss is using emotional design to evoke negative emotions, like stress, anxiety, and even pain.
This is a pop-up that’s triggered on Get Response (www.getresponse.com) based on tracking mouse patterns that indicate users are about to abandon the page. Their joke message plays off attachment anxiety.
People are complex, smart, and sometimes extremely stubborn, which may explain why in the last two thousand years, nobody has discovered an easy way to shape how people think and behave. Yet in the digital era, we're witnessing widespread claims, that the secret to winning friends and influencing people, is to reward them with points and badges.