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The fundamentals of human psychology applied to market research

I’m currently reading the excellent book Good Thinking: A Guide Qualitative Research by Wendy Gordon. Whilst still only in the first chapter, I thought I’d share this quote (emphasis mine):

[William] Schlackman taught me the fundamentals of human psychology applied to market research: people will not share feelings and thoughts with a researcher if these are in any way embarrassing to self-esteem; that people always try to ‘look good’ (rational, intelligent, helpful); that some attitudes and emotions are difficult to put into words; that ‘rationalisations’, ‘ambivalence’, ‘justifications’, ‘projections’ are part of everyday human life and that integrity in one’s relationship with respondents is paramount.

This certainly reflects my experience with qualitative market/user/social research and I think it’s an excellent micro summary of basic tips for researchers.

Should have included this quote in my So you want to be a user researcher? post :)

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 8th, 2010 at 2:06 pm and is filed under Design research. If you enjoyed this post, you might also like to leave a comment or follow @patrickkennedy on Twitter.

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About the author

Patrick Kennedy

Patrick Kennedy is a user experience strategist and design researcher based in Sydney Australia. He leads research activities that improve the user experience of cross-channel products and services; helping both designers and business decision makers in bringing those products and services to fruition. Read more.

Comments

  1. S_Cox | April 12th, 2010 | 10:00 am

    If you are interested in this stuff it might be worthwhile checking out some of Erving Goffman’s stuff – his book “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life” is pretty interesting and talks about different reactions in different settings (being a subject of research is one of those types of settings).

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