Is the Lizard Brain Real in Marketing
The lizard brain comes from a 1960s model of a brain built in layers. Researchers who study brain evolution reject the layers, and the marketing advice resting on them has to be defended on other grounds.
Answer to the question
Is the lizard brain in marketing real?
No. The lizard brain comes from Paul MacLean's triune brain, which proposed a reptilian layer beneath mammalian and human layers. Researchers who study nervous-system evolution reject that layering (Cesario and colleagues, 2020), and a 2022 comparison of lizard and mouse brains found no clean split into ancient and new areas. Advice built on it needs other support.
Key takeaways
- Seth Godin wrote in 2010 that the lizard brain is 'the pre-historic lump near the brain stem that is responsible for fear and rage and reproductive drive', and that it hates change, achievement and risk.
- Joseph Cesario and colleagues (2020) report that researchers who study nervous-system evolution have long rejected the idea of newer brain structures added over older ones, and that the idea is widely shared in introductory psychology textbooks.
- A 2022 study in Science compared a bearded dragon brain atlas with mouse data and found some neuron types conserved and others diverged, so the brain cannot be cleanly divided into ancestral and novel areas.
- Dan Ariely and Gregory Berns (2010) write that there is no evidence for a single buy button in the brain, and that neuromarketers are quick to invert findings.
- Lisa Feldman Barrett (2017) calls the layered model one of the most successful misconceptions in human biology.
Seth Godin once described the lizard brain as "the pre-historic lump near the brain stem that is responsible for fear and rage and reproductive drive." Researchers who study how nervous systems evolve reject the anatomy in that sentence, and it does not explain why customers buy, hesitate or resist change. The lizard brain is marketing's most durable piece of neuroscience, and it rests on a reptilian layer, left over from ancient ancestors, that the comparative evidence does not support. The advice hung on it may or may not hold, and it has to be defended on other grounds.
A pre-historic lump near the brain stem
Godin's post, "Quieting the lizard brain", links the lump to what he calls the resistance, an inner voice that urges caution, slowness and compromise. On his account the resistance grows as a person nears finishing a project, gaining an insight or finding out what they want, because "the lizard hates change and achievement and risk." He uses the lizard to explain why people act against their stated goals and why organisations hold excessive meetings and ship mediocre products. In an interview about his book Linchpin the same month he placed the lizard brain "near the top of your spinal cord, near the amygdala" and called it prehistoric.
Both date from January 2010, and sales training carries the idea on to the checkout. The conversion-marketing site CXL reports that neuromarketing "has suggested" that an old brain, the primitive fight-or-flight part, "makes most of our decisions", and credits Patrick Renvoise and Christophe Morin's book Neuromarketing with six stimuli that speak to it: self-centred messages, contrast, tangible input, a strong beginning and end, visuals and emotion. CXL is a secondhand source here, and the book itself was not checked.
How a 1960s model reached the sales floor
The lizard comes from Paul MacLean's triune brain. MacLean developed the model through the 1960s and set it out in The Triune Brain in Evolution (1990): three layers, a reptilian complex for instinct and survival, a limbic system for emotion and a neocortex for reason, each added on top of the last and each able to act semi-independently. He also coined the term "limbic system", in 1952, and that term survives. Carl Sagan took the model to general readers in The Dragons of Eden (1977), a book that won a Pulitzer Prize.
Lisa Feldman Barrett, whose How Emotions Are Made (2017) seeds this article, writes that the layered model "remains one of the most successful misconceptions in human biology" and names Sagan among those who popularised it. She quotes a neuroscientist who calls the mapping of emotion onto the middle of the brain and reason onto the cortex "just plain silly", and who adds that all brain divisions are present in all vertebrates.
Remains one of the most successful misconceptions in human biology.
MacLean's model was a serious synthesis of the comparative anatomy available to him, and it did useful work by placing emotion inside the biology of the brain. Being superseded is the ordinary fate of such models. The error lies in what popular writing built on it afterwards, and the lizard brain is the most portable part of that structure.
What the comparative anatomy found instead
Joseph Cesario and colleagues take the belief apart in a 2020 review in Current Directions in Psychological Science. Their target is the idea that newer brain structures were added over older ones during vertebrate evolution and produced behavioural flexibility and language. Neurobiologists, the authors write, have long rejected that view, which conflicts with agreement among researchers who study nervous-system evolution. They describe it as widely shared in introductory psychology textbooks, offer examples of how it may have slowed progress in psychology, and end on a direct request.
"We urge psychologists to abandon this mistaken view of human brains."
Cell-level evidence has since arrived. A 2022 study in Science, led from the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, built a cell-type atlas of the bearded dragon brain and compared it with mouse data. Some neuron types were conserved between the two animals and others had diverged, so the authors concluded that the brain cannot be cleanly divided into ancestral and novel areas.
The animal was a bearded dragon, an actual lizard.
A third line of evidence is a review of neural organisation across vertebrates, published in 2019 in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. It argued that association and integration are features of every vertebrate brain, that large-scale systems involving the midbrain, hypothalamus, thalamus, basal ganglia and amygdala are shared across vertebrates, and that cognition, emotion and motivation are inseparable because each depends on combining incoming signals.
The amygdala, the hypothalamus and the midbrain exist and matter. What the evidence removes is a separable layer that takes over when feeling runs high. Barrett makes a parallel point about the limbic grouping: the regions MacLean put together are, in her account, general-purpose hubs involved in language, concepts and stress regulation as well as emotion. The word limbic survives in textbooks as shorthand for a historical grouping, and the safe claim is that it names a convenience, not a functional unit.
| Claim in marketing use | Where it comes from | Research position |
|---|---|---|
| The brain is layered, with a reptile underneath | MacLean, 1960s to 1990; Sagan, 1977 | Rejected by researchers of nervous-system evolution (Cesario and colleagues, 2020; the 2022 Science atlas) |
| An old brain makes most purchase decisions | Neuromarketing training, as reported by CXL | No evidence for a single buy button (Ariely and Berns, 2010) |
| Fear, rage and reproductive drive sit in a lump near the brain stem | Godin, 2010 | Emotion, cognition and motivation depend on shared, integrated networks (2019 review) |
| Simple, visual, emotional messages work | Neuromarketing training | Not an anatomical question; settled by tests of the message |
No buy button, and advice that survives
Neuromarketing had its own reckoning in 2010, when Dan Ariely and Gregory Berns reviewed it in Nature Reviews Neuroscience. They write that there is no evidence for a single buy button in the brain, because purchase decisions have many contributors, and that neuromarketers are quick to invert findings, treating activity in a region as a sign that a person likes something. That inversion is reverse inference, which runs a scan backwards, from an observed activation to a claim about what the person felt, and which is only as strong as the region's selectivity for that feeling.
The lizard brain account of purchase makes the same move at larger scale: it reads a behaviour, names a structure and takes the name for an explanation.
Their own conclusion was constructive. Imaging, they argue, may reveal hidden information about the consumer experience, and its most promising use may come before a product is released, while it is still an idea. Their criticism leaves neuromarketing as a method standing and takes away the old brain as its theory.
Godin's lizard works best as a name for the fear of shipping work, and a reader can take it as metaphor. The metaphor costs little until it is read as anatomy, when a customer's hesitation gets explained by a structure that the research does not support. Hesitation at a checkout has many sources, among them price, trust, effort and doubt about fit.
The six stimuli are advice about attention and message. Putting the key point first and last, using concrete language, showing contrast and making the visual work are claims about how people read copy, and they can be tested the ordinary way, with messages put in front of customers. Whether the six stimuli work is a question for experiments on messages. The lizard brain adds nothing to the answer, because a message that works would work whether or not anyone has a reptile in their head. Marketers can keep the practice and drop the anatomy, testing each message on buyers, since a message that works is a finding about people reading it.
Common questions
Is the lizard brain in marketing real?
No. The lizard brain comes from Paul MacLean's triune brain, which proposed a reptilian layer beneath mammalian and human layers. Researchers who study nervous-system evolution reject that layering (Cesario and colleagues, 2020), and a 2022 comparison of lizard and mouse brains found no clean split into ancient and new areas. Advice built on it needs other support.
Does the limbic system still count as the emotional brain?
The structures are real, and the term is still used as shorthand. The claim that they form one emotional system is the part in dispute. Barrett describes the regions as general-purpose hubs, and the 2019 vertebrate review treats emotion and cognition as integrated rather than housed in separate places.
Can marketers still use emotion and simple messages?
Yes, but the case rests on tests of messages, not on brain layers. Ariely and Berns found no single buy button, and they saw most promise in imaging used early, before a product is released. A message that works is a finding about people reading it, whatever the anatomy behind the feeling turns out to be.
Sources
Barrett, L. F. (2017). How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Pp. 81 to 82, as recorded in the vault's digest of the book.
Cesario, J., Johnson, D. J., & Eisthen, H. L. (2020). 'Your Brain Is Not an Onion With a Tiny Reptile Inside.' Current Directions in Psychological Science, 29(3), 255-260. doi:10.1177/0963721420917687. Read at the level of the abstract.
Hain, D., et al. (2022). 'Molecular diversity and evolution of neuron types in the amniote brain.' Science, 377(6610), eabp8202. doi:10.1126/science.abp8202. Read at the level of the abstract.
Pessoa, L., Medina, L., Hof, P. R., & Desfilis, E. (2019). 'Neural architecture of the vertebrate brain: implications for the interaction between emotion and cognition.' Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 107, 296-312. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2019.09.021. Read at the level of the abstract.
Ariely, D., & Berns, G. S. (2010). 'Neuromarketing: the hope and hype of neuroimaging in business.' Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(4), 284-292. PMID 20197790.
Godin, S. (2010, 28 January). 'Quieting the lizard brain.' Seth's Blog. https://seths.blog/2010/01/quieting-the-lizard-brain/
Godin, S. (2010, 25 January). 'How To Produce Like A Linchpin By Understanding Your Lizard Brain.' Mixergy interview. https://mixergy.com/interviews/linchpin-lizard-seth-godin/
CXL. 'Old brain stimuli' (a summary of the neuromarketing method of Patrick Renvoise and Christophe Morin). https://conversionxl.com/old-brain-stimuli
MacLean, P. D. (1990). The Triune Brain in Evolution: Role in Paleocerebral Functions. New York: Plenum Press. Cited as recorded in the vault's note on the triune brain; not opened for this piece.
Sagan, C. (1977). The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence. New York: Random House. Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, 1978: https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/carl-sagan