Your Online-Shopping Experience Was Grown in a Lab
How companies are using biofeedback to sell more products
As you scroll through a website—say, TheAtlantic.com—you’re sending a lot of signals. Your eyes dart from headline to headline, bypassing a few before choosing which to read. Your brow furrows at one article. You laugh at a clever turn of phrase in another. Your face flushes in anger when you watch a charged video on an issue important to you. Usually, all these physical cues go nowhere other than the reflection of your computer screen. But now, businesses are hoping to game your attention by closely examining all these bodily responses.
The consulting firms that specialize in this research usually start by hooking focus-group participants up to research-grade neuroscience equipment as
