You overspent on the latest golden iPhone, pair of Louboutin shoes, or BMW? Don’t feel guilty, science shows you cannot help.

So says Diana Derval, neuromarketing expert, contributor for Harvard Business Review and Chair of the market research firm DervalResearch, whose newest findings are rooted in neurophysiological science. Professor Derval, who is teaching luxury and neuromarketing at Donghua University in Shanghai, at Sorbonne, and at IFA Paris, explains that luxury and shiny objects attract polarotactic people like a magnet. Her findings, already presented at the European Neuro-Ophthalmological Society (EUNOS) conference in Budapest, and at the World of Gems V conference in Chicago in partnership with the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), will be featured at Elsevier 3rd Asian Sensory and Consumer Research Symposium on 13-15 May in Kuala Lumpur.

Fig. 1. Light polarization (courtesy of DervalResearch, source: Derval D. (2018), Designing Luxury Brands: The Science of Pleasing Customers’ Senses, Springer)

“Light is an electromagnetic wave and has a direction, called polarization. It was established recently that polarized light helps birds navigate but the impact in human was still unclear. We discovered that polarized light plays a huge role in the attraction to luxury”, explains Prof. Derval.

Polarotactic people are attracted to linearly polarized light -like in a sunset on the sea, or in a shiny car (especially black or red cars, as they happen to reflect light similarly to how water would do) and to circularly polarized light- like in stars or in diamonds. What makes us polarotactic, and more tempted by luxury items? Diana Derval found answers literally looking into our eyes, with the help of the Imagine Eyes in-vivo retinal camera rtx-1e: luxury and non-luxury shoppers apparently present different retinal mosaics with variations in the orientation of their photoreceptors.