It would mean more than you think.

Research from the social psychology literature shows that humans quickly form strong bonds with teams.

“It’s just plain comforting to be part of a group. There is mutual admiration, the feeling of being with like-minded friends, and cooperation beyond what could be expected from ore distant colleagues,” wrote Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass in their classic book, The Media Equation.

Perhaps not surprising. But media research has shown that we also quickly form teams with mediated communication — even a simple computer.

There’s No ‘I’ in Team

Imagine being given a task to perform on a computer. First, however, you’re assigned to the “blue team” and given a blue wristband. You’re then seated in front of a computer with blue trim around the monitor and a label that says “blue team.”

Would you perform differently in that condition than if you have been given the same wristband with no mention of team and had been seated in front of a “green computer”?

That’s exactly the experiment performed by Stanford University professors Reeves (my academic grandfather) and Nass.

So, would you have performed differently if you had been randomly assigned to the “team” condition?

If you’re like most people, you’d swear that you’d perform the same. That’s why experimental scientists, such as myself, bring you into the lab to test hypotheses. Despite your gut feelings, you’re a pretty poor judge of your cognitive behavior.

What happened? By now you probably guessed that there was a difference.

The “blue team” said they felt more a part of a team. I remind you that this was with a stand-alone PC computer, and these participants had often used a computer before.

That’s not especially surprising, but the participants also said they were more similar to the computer, and they said that the computer was friendlier.

Take just a moment to think about that.

These are very real, very human connections that we’re making with a piece of hardware. There was no alluding to the person who programmed the software or a human on another terminal. It was clearly just the computer.

And still participants formed an identification with the computer.

Not over weeks or months. In a few minutes. With an inert piece of plastic, metal, and silicone.

“People are not foolish because they like to work on teams; people are human because they like to work on teams,” wrote Reeves and Nass.

Using Social Media for Real Connections

If you’re so willing to bond with the computer itself, there’s no wonder that we can make such meaningful connections over social media.

Every time you leave a comment on this blog, or Tweet about it, we form a connection. A real, human connection. Hopefully the same happens when I comment on your blog or send traffic your way.

It’s our job to use this sense of identification to form better connections for ourselves and our clients. Use, not exploit, mind you.

Sure we’ve identified with brands through mass media advertising for years. But that’s a many-to-one conversation, and the consumer has no agency.

Today the consumer talks back. And by talking back — even by following back on Twitter — you’re helping your customer identify with your company in a real way.

We don’t easily turn our backs on teammates, and the fact that we so readily identify with others indicates that it’s an inherent need in us.

When you’re writing your next blog post, ad, or news release, think of the reader as a teammate. Think about forming real connections that make you both part of the same team.

Thanks for being part of my team for a few minutes.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, teammate.

Photo credit: iStockPhoto.com

We’re an evolved species, and the genes of those who didn’t like sex aren’t around anymore.

For this reason, naked and scantily clad people are arousing. In my lab, we put electrodes on participants’ palms to measure activity in the eccrine sweat glands, or skin conductance.

The formula is simple. When you see a naked person — even if they’re not real — your body prepares for action. Your sympathetic nervous system activates, your palms begin to sweat below the surface of the skin, and you have a cascade of physiological responses associated with approach.

So it comes as no surprise that advertising drips with sexuality. They’re betting that sex gets your attention, and then you’ll pay attention to the messages and ideally associate positive feelings with the brand.

But does it work?

That’s a tricky question, you see. If you want to see academic research that shows sexy ads to be ineffective, I can provide it. If, however, you’d like to see some data that supports your decision to use sex in your ads, I can show you that, too.

I teach an entire class on sex and violence in the media, and we spend a lot of time trying to figure this out.

The confusion isn’t with the sex. The confusion is with the question that you ask.

You are, after all, a complicated human being and not an automaton.

Although I can tell you that part of your brain likes sex in ads, that does not tell the entire story.

The average man and the average woman have very different ideas about sex. If you look at the work of evolutionary psychologists, they’ll tell you good reasons for this.

For most of our evolutionary history, there were no courts or child support. Thus, for the average man, sex carried relatively little risk. Basically, the man was out a few hundred calories worth of biological material.

The story was different for a woman, however. An errant sexual encounter led to a 14-year commitment.

Thus from the perspective of gene propagation, women needed to be choosy and find a mate who was going to invest in the offspring. Resources were key.

Men, however, had a different strategy. Quantity was most advantageous. If 20 different women were left to raise your offspring alone, surely some of them would survive.

Now, I’ve read a lot of books on evolutionary psychology, but I wasn’t actually around on the Savannah. So I’m not sure these “just so” stories are true.

But they sure fit with our stereotypes of promiscuous, womanizing men. They also fit with the stereotypes of women being interested in a man’s time commitment, resources, and attention.

And apparently they do a good job explaining our responses to sex in advertising.

Women preferred a sexually explicit watch ad when the watch was wrapped in a bow and described as a gift, according to a study in an upcoming issue of The Journal of Consumer Research, according to The New York Times.

That gift business actually hampered men’s enjoyment of the otherwise sexual ads.

Nothing like the idea of commitment messing up some perfectly good sex, eh guys?

Man, we’re the weak half of the species.

Dismaying as the data are, I look forward to reading the actual study. Well-designed experiments such as these give proper credit to the complexity of human cognition and appeal to more mature disciplines, such as biology and psychology.

Sometimes sex works in an ad. Sometimes it fails. But it always compels attention. Your target market likely dictates whether that attention is good or bad.

If your target market is narrow, then you don’t have to worry about these individual differences. But in every case, you need to know.

Sex does sell. To some of the people, some of the time. And just because everyone is tuned to pay attention to sex doesn’t excuse marketers and advertisers from the hard work of knowing their consumers.

Photo Credit: iStockPhoto.com, 123foto.

That’s what the data say. Now I’m curious to know what you think about sex in advertising. What do you say?