An interview with Pat Fagan: bringing mind to business.

When people think “psychologist” their imagination jumps to Freud sitting in his arm chair, notepad in hand, repeatedly asking “so how do you feel about that?”

This is not the case, our psyche is applicable to every aspect of our lives. Throughout his career, Pat Fagan has been working to integrate behavioral science into a commercial context. Bringing mind to business.

We sat him down to chat about what he does, why he does it, and how you can do it too.

How would you describe your job at CrowdEmotion?

My title is “Head of Emotion Sciences”. Often I explain what I do as “turning mind into money”, in other words helping businesses use psychological techniques to answer questions like: is this advert memorable, or does it change how people perceive my brand? So somebody might smile at the end of an advert but what does that mean? Are they smiling because it’s silly? Are they going to remember it? Does that mean they’re actually going to buy it?

So why CrowdEmotion? What made you take the job?

CrowdEmotion sits in an expanding market where the potential is limitless. This role gives me the opportunity to sit on the ground floor and creatively contribute to a rapidly expanding field. The laidback, flexible environment doesn’t hurt either. That’s what I love about working here, as long as you get the work done it doesn’t matter when, where or how you do it. People’s brains don’t simply work in the hours of 9 to 5.

How do you feel CrowdEmotion has the potential to further expand into the field of psychology?

Again, potential is limitless. Emotion is involved in everything. For example, we could branch out into mental health, helping autistic people recognise emotions or depressed people recognise when they’re headed for a dangerous place.

CrowdEmotion’s software also opens new avenues for research in experimental psychology. Research on emotion is plentiful, but now our technology can do it better. Really you can do anything, it’s pretty cool.

And finally, if you could give one tip to a current student who wants to follow in your footsteps what would it be?

Networking, you may have heard it a million times but just do it. I’m pretty bad at this, but it is really really valuable. Of course what you know matters, if you’re bright and hardworking, that matters. But who you know also matters. If you read a book and like it, just email the author, buy them a coffee. Don’t be shy. Maybe even do some free work for people here and there, because they’ll pay you back in opportunity.

To read more about Pat’s quest to integrate behavioral science into the commercial market or CrowdEmotion’s mission to give tinman a heart, subscribe to our newsletter

Also Make sure to check out Pat’s book #hooked : revealing the hidden tricks of memorable marketing, and the secrets to producing content that works!