The Reptilian Brain And Behaviour

• Triggers can cause automatic behavioural responses.
• Your behaviour and thoughts can be “influenced” with triggers.
• Not all triggers have the same effect, and can come in varying intensities.

Triggers Of The Reptilian Brain

In general anything to do with sex, power, self image and food, will trigger reptilian brain responses. 

Interestingly, these are the very same triggers that are used in the media and advertising to influence your behaviour, and “encourage” you to act or think in a certain way.

In this article we shall look at some of the main triggers that are used, and their affect on your behaviour.

Sex

Sex is widely used in the media and advertising, and comes in many different forms. Sex can range from graphic full nudity, to attractive visually appealing models or presenters.

Sex stimulates reptilian behaviours such as worship, submission, aggression and wanting to seek a mate.

Sex tends to cause the unconscious irrational brains to become dominant, at the expense of your conscious rational brain.

This makes you less likely to critically analyse any incoming information, thereby making you far more susceptible to persuasion.

This is where the expression “Sex Sells” comes from, and it’s true. It is well known in advertising that using sex increases sales, which is why it is used so widely.

Power / Social Status

Power, or the prospect of gaining or loosing power, is another important trigger to look out for, and one which also activates unconscious brain responses.

The most common way power is used, is through money. Anything that promises you lots of quick and easy money, automatically triggers a variety of reptilian brain responses. Most notably, greed, aggression and compulsive behaviour.

This is why get rich quick schemes are so popular, as the prospect of easy money causes people to react in automatic and irrational ways.

However the result of these schemes is invariably wasted time and money, something which the conscious thinking brain knew all along.

Note : Anything that can improve your life, or make it worse, is a form of power. Power can be further subdivided into personal power, power over others and power over your external environment.

Self Image

Things that promise to improve the way you look, and/or the health of your body, stimulate reptilian brain responses such as obsessive compulsive behaviour, dominance and self maintenance.

This is why some people can become addicted to buying clothes, shoes, vitamins and their overall appearance.

What you may notice when you see people advertising these type of products, is that they all tend to be very attractive. Ever wonder why?

Whilst attractive people are used because sex helps increase sales, another reason sex is used is because it makes you feel inadequate. Especially if you are not as attractive, wealthy or powerful as the person advertising the product.

This stimulates aggression, jealousy, submission and/or a desire to compete with them.

By purchasing the product, your unconscious and irrational brains associate the purchase of that product with the person advertising it.

This is one reason why celebrities are commonly used in advertising. As it provides a false illusion of the product transferring what the celebrity has over to you (divisional transference of power).

Food

Without food your genes would be unable to replicate, and your body would die.

Since the reptilian brain evolved to serve the needs of your genes, and keep your body alive, food is therefore an extremely powerful trigger, generating strong reptilian and emotional brain responses.

Food can cause intense feelings of pleasure (emotional brain response) whilst also stimulating greed, dominance, aggression and obsessive compulsive reptilian behavioural responses.

However in western society where food tends to be plentiful, aggression is generally not associated with food. But should food suddenly become hard to obtain, an aggressive reptilian brain response will be activated.

When this occurs food riots are a common sight, and people will begin to behave somewhat similar to a pack of animals fighting over a piece of meat.

Triggering Behaviour

All of the triggers that were previously described can result in automatic irrational behavioural responses, whereby the conscious thinking logical brain is bypassed, and the unconscious irrational reptilian brain dominates.

The easiest way to understand this is to remember that sex, power, self image and food can cause people to behave completely differently to how they would normally behave. Acting more like animals, rather than rational human beings.

And the stronger these triggers are (such as during a food shortage) the more a persons character will change, and the more like an animal (primal) they will act.

Intensity Of Tiggers

An important point to remember however, is that triggered behaviours may later be amplified or down-regulated by the emotional and thinking brains.

Usually the emotional brain will amplify or down-regulate, and the thinking brain down-regulate these responses. In a later article we shall talk about this in more detail.

So the next time you feel a strong desire to buy something, or behave in a certain way, look for the triggers that you were exposed to. As there is a good chance they were responsible for making “your” decision for you.

Mixing Triggers

Generally you will find many triggers are used in combination (e.g. sex and power), rather than individually.

This is because unless a trigger is especially powerful (e.g. scare food vs plentiful food), its power to cause a behavioural response within you may be somewhat limited. 

And if you have been exposed to something repeatedly, you become desensitised to it. Meaning a stronger trigger is needed to create the same response a weaker trigger used to create.

The Exorcist

A very simple example to demonstrate this point can seen with horror movies. If you have never seen a horror movie before, you are likely to find watching one very scary and frightening.

For example, when “The Exorcist” was released in 1973, many people found it so frightening they would faint and throw up.

However once you become used to seeing horror films, you become desensitised to them, needing increasing amounts of horror to scare you.

So always take into consideration the intensity of a trigger, before judging its potential behavioural influence.

Note : The reptilian brain thinks in images, so pay particular attention to the pictures and videos you see.

However do not neglect the words you see or hear, as vivid descriptive language can also be used to create images in your mind.

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