7 Starters

Let's begin with getting into the mindset of Approach - Avoid.  Humans, like all other species on planet Earth, spend all day every day approaching and avoiding.  We approach and avoid people, places, ideas, products, services, organizations, brands, pain, pleasure, feelings, and a whole lot more.  As you reflect on your organization, get into the mindset that everything revolves around approach-avoid.  Employees approach by coming to work - employees avoid by leaving your organizations.  Customers approach by purchasing the goods and services your organization provides - everyone else is avoiding.  

To survive, all animals, ranging from amoeba to humans, must approach and avoid certain situations, objects, and possibilities. (1)

All organisms are hard-wired or preprogrammed to make immediate approach-avoidance responses to particular inputs/stimuli. (1)

The information/research available on Approach/Avoid is beyond a single website.  Since our focus is providing services to improve Approach/Avoid for organizations and individuals, this site will mostly contain content that uses Approach/Avoid information and research for that purpose.  

Let's explore the 7 Starters to improve the human experience!

We spend all day Approaching and Avoiding to survive.  

The keys to physical survival include food, water, air, shelter, sleep, and keeping yourself and your loved ones healthy and safe.  For cultural safety, we want to belong and feel respected within our community/in-group and have solid self-esteem to make it through each day.  

With good mapping, we can increase safety (approach) and reduce danger (avoid).  

A quote from the Handbook of Approach and Avoid:

"Survival is the primary motivation for living organisms.." (1)

DO:   Since survival is the primary motivation, this should be a top choice in understanding human behavior along with their approach and avoid actions.  We use constant Approach/Avoid to both physically survive and to survive within our specific cultures.  Over human history, these two were vitally linked.  Physical survival was a bigger challenge which made cultural survival (living in a community of support - not getting kicked out or abandoned) extremely important.  The constant life and death decisions of these two historically continue to impact our current lives today.  Observe how important it is for humans to have support and be part of a group.

Mapping Focus

Our goal is to have a map for both Physical and Cultural Survival.  Like Approach-Avoid, all day and every day people are trying to survive.  Although physical and cultural survival intertwine, we like to separate them on maps to explore their differences and to improve results.  Survival can be a part of any larger map or it can be set up as an individual Survival Map that focuses on how major touchpoints can be improved by exploring Approach/Avoid with survival.  

A person needs to know what is "out there" to survive.  By receiving the inputs through the five senses, humans can survive by gathering what is useful.     

"The human brain is trapped in its own dark silent box called a skull.  The brain has no knowledge of what is going on around it in the world or in the body because it is stuck in this skull.  It is receiving sensory signals from the sensory surfaces of our bodies.  These signals are the outcomes of some changes in the world or within the body.  The brain doesn't know what the changes are of these outcome changes."  (The brain has to guess - next section).  

Thanks to Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett for the above metaphor.  In a quick way, it explains in a Detached Observation way what is happening with the human brain every minute of every day.  It also shines a light on how important perception is.  Lastly, this is done in the subconscious and it is done so fast.  Approach and Avoid decisions are made from the inputs at the 5 senses.

The data from the 5 senses does not come in with meaning.  It's just a barrage of light waves, chemicals, and changes in air pressure with no inherent significance.  The human brain needs to figure out what to do with this data.  

With limited data, the brain has to put the story together without all the pieces.  The brain needs to do this very quick - time depending on the circumstance.  Examples can include:

- Should I try this new product?  

- Is the price fair for this service? 

- Will this investment of my time be good use of my resources? 

- Will this product or service help me survive physically and culturally? 

- Is this new person I just met a friend or foe?

The brain receives vital clues of the outside world through the senses.    

DO:  When taking a satellite view of humans and their senses, here are a few points:

- Humans have acquired and have senses that give access to is what is Useful for them.  The other species on the planet have senses that are Useful for their survival - a dog has what is useful to them or an elephant to them and so on - (Below we highlight species that are at the top of the hierarchy for the 5 senses). 

- Humans do not see the world as it truly is.  We cannot hear, see, or smell everything.  We only get a slice of it.

- Survival is key.  Physical and cultural.  

- Negative and Avoid are more Important.  Rather be safe than sorry.  Sorry can mean that a wrong decision and life is over.  Safety is key and it is prioritized.

- Approach has to make sense - a proper return on energy investment.  

The 5 Senses

Below you will find the 5 senses and a few reasons for their existence.  Also included are species that have top-notch senses.  It helps us to reflect on how humans have what is Useful to us to survive and thrive.  

SIGHT

Detect different wavelengths of light (that are Useful to us)

Detect Movement

Detect Predators, Prey, and Resources

Express Emotions to others

Facial Recognition

Find Mates

Navigate Surroundings

Notice Threats and Opportunities

Parental Care

Pattern Recognition

See Differences 

Situation Awareness

Use to build tools

Additional information on Sight:

Humans enjoy one of nature’s most versatile senses of sight, thanks to the four types of photoreceptors in our retina: rods are very sensitive to light - giving us reasonable night vision.  We also have three different types of cones, which divide the wavelengths of visible light.

The record number of photoreceptors in the animal world is held by the common Bluebottle Butterfly (with 15 types) and by the Peacock Mantis Shrimp (with 12-16 types).  

As neurons change conversation partners, a single neuron can take on different roles.  As an example, the ability to see is so intimately tied to an area of the brain called the occipital cortex that the area is routinely called the visual cortex.  Its neurons routinely carry information about hearing and touch.  If you blindfold a person with a typical vision for a few days and teach them to read braille, neurons in their visual cortex become more devoted to the sense of touch. (3)

SOUND

Communicate and Social Interactions

Detect auditory cues of the surrounding environment

Detect Threats, Danger, and Opportunities

Find Resources

Navigate and Spatial Awareness

Parental Care

Recognition of Events and Objects

When sight is limited, can help navigate

Vigilance when sleeping to be awaken

Humans also have a pretty decent sense of hearing compared to other species:  audible range - between about 20 and 20,000 hertz.  

Animals with specialized hearing - such as dolphins or bats - can reach frequencies of up to 100,000 hertz. The record is held by another animal, the Greater Wax Moth - It can reach up to 300,000 hertz. 

TOUCH

Alleviate Pain and Provide Comfort

Communication of Emotions

Convey Dominance in Social Hierarchies

Detect Danger and Threats

Exploration and Learning

Parental Care

Quick and Effective Alerting Mechanism 

Social Bonding and Connection

Thermoregulation

Tool Use

The Star Nosed Mole (Condylura cristata) is the record holder for the sense of touch, with its peculiar nasal appendages crammed with mechanoreceptors that give it six times the sensitivity of the human hand, our most sensitive area, but it can also sniff out food underwater. To do this, it exhales small air bubbles that it keeps attached to its nose and which are impregnated with odorous stimuli from the water, which it then inhales back into its nasal mucosa. 

TASTE

Appetite Regulation

Detection of spoiled and rotten foods

Identifying important nutrients in food

Maintain balance in diet 

Social and Cultural tastes

The ability of humans to taste is limited to the tongue, which houses our taste buds.  Humans have approx. 10,000 taste receptors.

Catfish have taste receptors scattered all over their bodies—although more concentrated on their chins or the whiskers around their mouths—allowing them to locate their prey in the muddy, murky waters in which they live. Compared to our taste receptors, the largest catfish can have as many as 175,000 taste receptors.    

SMELL

Detect Chemical Signals - Threats, Dangers, and Opportunities

Detection of Food Resources

Finding Potential Mates

Identification of Spoiled and Rotten Foods

Memory

Predatory Detection

Recognition of Familiar Smells and Individuals

Recognizing Personal Items

The size of the human repertoire of odor-receptor genes can even outperform dogs in detecting certain odors, such as those found in bananas, urine, or human blood. 

Dogs noses are far superior to us humans (their sense of smell is 10,000 to 100,000 times better).  Dogs can follow scent trails for kilometers in the same way that we can follow a line on the ground.  Lastly, dogs are outperformed by horses, mice, cows, rats, and bears.

According to the US National Park Service (NPS), the black bear has a nasal mucosa 100 times larger than ours, and its sense of smell is seven times that of a beagle. It can smell food from several kilometers away. “With 300 to 500 bears roaming Yosemite at any given time, it’s more than likely that at least one of them is smelling you at all times,” says the NPS. Its larger cousin, the polar bear, is said to be able to smell a seal from 32 kilometers away, and from almost a kilometer away it can smell the hole in the ice through which a submerged seal is breathing.

The elephant is the olfactory champion. With 1,948 receptor genes, it more than doubles the 811 of dogs. 

Mapping Focus

Ideally, we would want a spot for each of the 5 senses for mapping purposes.  If space is limited, it can be reduced to just perception.  Having a place for each of the 5 senses allows the freedom to explore ideas on how to enhance the human experience by engaging multiple senses.  Every person has their own worldview/perception.  This is important to consider when constructing a map.

Making decisions quickly is vital for survival.  To increase the chance of survival, the brain predicts.  

Here is another good summary from Lisa Barrett:

"Your brain is predictive, not reactive. For many years, scientists believed that your neurons spend most of their time dormant and wake up only when stimulated by some sight or sound in the world. Now we know that all your neurons are firing constantly, stimulating one another at various rates. This intrinsic brain activity is one of the great recent discoveries in neuroscience. Even more compelling is what this brain activity represents: millions of predictions of what you will encounter next in the world, based on your lifetime of past experience."

(5)

To make sense of the light, smells, and noises hitting the senses, the brain relies on past experiences.  Otherwise, that loud bang could be a number of things.  The brain seeks/needs to get it right to protect the health and safety of the individual.    

DO:  Let's reflect on the four topics discussed so far on this page and how they are so important and how they are linked.  

We need to survive - both physically and within our culture.  We use approach and avoid to survive.  To know how to survive, we take inputs from the senses so the brain can know "what's out there" and what we need to do.  

Since quick decisions are vital to survival (especially over human history), the brain predicts.

Mapping Focus

Being wrong about predicting outcomes sets in motion memories of future approach - avoid.  Each of the 7 Starters is important to have on a map - either together or focused individually.  Mapping Predictions at the major touchpoints is vital to understanding and improving moments that can make or break a customer relationship.  By learning and improving the predictions customers have that come to their senses, your organization can reduce the prediction errors that cause a negative emotion (a moment that is now being burned into memory) that will dramatically impact future approach.  Also, if the prediction is really off, that person can become so angry that they will use their energy to tell others to avoid your organization.

Because the brain has so many inputs (touchpoints) and predictions, for our mapping we will focus on the most important touchpoints at your organization.

Memory is important for physical and cultural survival.  We approach and avoid based on past experiences to approach positive inputs and avoid negative ones.  

DO:  Let's use two examples of how past experiences can help us survive.  We will use physical survival in the first example and cultural survival  in the second.  

Imagine back in human history a person going on a hunt.  Time is of the essence as getting food every day was important.  This person needs to go through a wooded area every day to find food for the day.  Memory and Past Experiences will increase this persons chance of survival because within the past, they have learned where the poisonous plants are, the quickest path, and where dangerous animals are likely to be.  Without past experiences and memory, this person would be going out blind every day and "figuring it out" on the fly.   Past experiences and memory bring meaning to the inputs from our senses and help us do better approach/avoid decisions.

In a second example from today, technology is important in jobs and within our social circles.  Imagine having a phone in your pocket but having no memory each time you pull it out with no past experiences.  You would need to seek help every time and each learning cycle would be long and difficult because you have no memory and past experiences.  Holding a job and moving up the social hierarchy would be quite difficult.  

Humans need memory and past experiences to constantly survive.  Linking the Starters so far:

We approach and avoid based on memory and past experiences

We need memory and past experiences to survive

The inputs to the five senses would be just that - inputs.  Inputs without meaning.

Our brain predicts better with memory and past experiences to survive.

Mapping Focus

We like to use a dark color to represent Past Experiences on our maps.  This is because individual past experiences are dark to us and we need to bring light and focused energy to learn and understand how another person is interpreting their world (Survival, safety and predictions).  We as individuals will make decisions that are deep in the subconscious that relate to past experiences.  Communication, feedback, and engaging with others are strategies to better understand the Approach-Avoid behavior in others.

When we make predictions to the inputs we are getting, we need to learn if the prediction is correct.  

Emotion can be thought of as the process by which a human brain computes the value of a stimulus for the purpose of responding adaptively. (2)

"...emotions can be usefully construed as survival-based dispositions to action..." (2)

Emotion is built on basic motivational circuits that have evolved to sustain life.

DO:  Emotions are used to survive.  For both physical survival and within the culture.  Did our brain make the right prediction.  We NEED to learn if it did.  Yes, that whole survival thing is part of this as well.  

Within a customer experience, you can put all 6 together and see how it works so far.  Lets try a reflection using a customer visit to a restaurant with their friends:

- A customer uses Approach Avoid to determine where they will go to obtain calories and feel positive.

- Physical Survival - Is the food healthy?  Is the place clean?

- Cultural Survival Example - Someone embarrasses customer in front of their friends with derogatory remark.  

- All human senses are in full use to interpret the experience.

- The customers brain is predicting the wait of service, the quality of food, cost, the surroundings, etc.

- Past experience helps in determining if this current experience is positive or negative (future approach and avoid).

- An emotion plays out (Ex:  the customer receives a bill that does not reflect the brain predictions and the customer gets upset)

Mapping Focus

Each person has their own emotions to learn the world around them.  Learning the strength of emotions in others can help us improve moments and experiences.  Strong Approach or Avoid emotions from a current experience builds a memory/experience that teaches us the likelihood of future approach and avoid decisions.  Along with mapping emotions, we feel it is vital that an organization have an avenue where a person can express their frustration (prediction error).  

It is metabolically costly for a brain to deal with things that are hard to predict.  

DO:  The cost is different for each person.  One person may subconsciously say Yes, I will learn about you even though you are different than me.  Another person, without knowing why, will not want to learn about a person different from them.  (3)

Additional DO:  Each one of us has our own level of 'energy' we will use to approach/avoid.  One person may be curious to try something new and another person does not choose to extend additional energy and will stick with their routine in life.    

We hear the term "Quick Wins" in the service field.  A quick win is where an organization takes a quick step to improve service and provide a win for both the organization and the customer.  Improvements on how a person uses their energy with an organization can provide quick wins.

A few examples of how mapping moments and experiences for better customer energy use can include:

- Improve navigation speed for physical and digital touchpoints (ex- Finding products in the store or navigating a website quicker)

- Having a quick way where customers can get help when needed

- Respecting the time of a person and using better time management perception in cases where one cannot reduce waiting time

- Having better knowledge of a person's objective can provide clues on how to reduce unnecessary energy use

Mapping Focus

The proper use of energy is key for survival.  Time and energy are limited for all of us.  Individual energy varies with each person and that particular energy can vary throughout each day due to circumstances.  Time and energy management are crucial to improving Moments, Experiences, and Results.  This importance will increase as individuals continue to take on additional inputs.  

The final 7 Starter is Action.  After all the inputs, predictions, and emotions, a person takes action.  This is the Approach or Avoid that a person's subconscious and consciousness do.  Our society is built on actions.  An organization's or an individuals success is determined on their approach/actions - the decisions that they have made.  

Let's summarize 1- 7:

Mapping Physical and Cultural Survival will help your organization improve ways to help a person survive and thrive in an uncertain world

Mapping Human Perception will allow your organization to improve touchpoints to induce more approach and reduce avoid where a person's subconscious is receiving these inputs

Mapping Brain Predictions allows your organization to learn and improve ways to match and exceed these predictions

Mapping Memory/Past Experiences will allow your organization to have more ways to "learn" more about the darkness of a person's past experiences that lead to their brain prediction at an important touchpoint.  

Mapping Emotions will help your organization feel how another person interpreted their experience with your organization on what memories can be going forward that will induce either more approach or increase the chance of avoid with your organization.

Mapping Energy will help you find spots for quick wins to improve a person's energy use with your organization.

 Lastly, mapping Actions will show you the results of your organization's work to improve 1 - 6. 

Mapping Focus

Having Actions on a map is important to understand the subconscious decisions of others.  The better we understand Actions the higher likelihood we will improve Results.  Incorporate the Actions of others to monitor the effectiveness of your designed improvements.  People can 'like' your organization all day long.  However, it is their Actions that decide your survival.  

Let's explore the Mapping Services!