More than 95% of purchasing decisions are made by our fast, instinctive 'System 1' brain.

Deciding what to buy
is largely driven by automatic
processes that lie below
conscious awareness
But What Really is the System 1 Brain?
In his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains that our brains make decisions in two ways:
System 1: fast, instinctive and emotional decisions
System 2: slower, more deliberate and logical decisions
We may like to think that more complex or important decisions are made more rationally by System 2, but if you’ve ever chosen a car based on colour, or recognise that cuddly Meerkat toys help sell insurance, that may not be the case.
As an example, in the supermarket we’re typically using System 1, taking us just 3 seconds to buy a product and even less to decide on what to buy.
Why Does System 1 Matter?
If we want to improve product outcomes we need to be able to:
- Reliably predict who will buy what
- Help iterate and optimise to make products better
As System 1 is what we use when shopping most of the time, for most things, we need to target System 1 if we want to robustly predict people’s choices.
How Do We Target System 1?

VYPR’s platform is built to tap into System 1. This means you don’t need to understand behavioural science to use VYPR – we’ve baked it into our Steers.
A few ways we do this:
- Our mobile app encourages the unconscious automatic response
- Steers are short, fast, and independent – we know long surveys encourage either System 2, rushed random answers, or both
- We limit text to reflect what people will actually read in real life
And many more – leverage this robust scientific approach to your product process with VYPR.