This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.

Honey, when was the last time you bake the cake?

Last week, dear.

When American food companies introduced cake mixes in the 1930s.

They figured they had a winner.

All you had to do was add water to the mix and pop it into the oven.

You don't have to be an expert when you use my cake mix. The men really go for it.

There was just one problem.

American women were not going for it.

Sales lagged for nearly two decades. women were not going for it.

Sales lagged for nearly two decades.

Northwestern University researcher Lauren Nordgren

says the lack of interest wasn't because the cakes tasted bad.

The problem was psychological.

What baking a cake represents is care.

And the perception was, was that making cake with a prepackaged mix was a violation of that act.

General Mills hired a psychologist named Ernest Dictor who came up with a clever solution.

Instead of including dried eggs in their mixes, General Mills asked Baker's to add fresh eggs.

When you make a cake from a mix, which do you want?

A fresh egg cake or a cake made with dried eggs.

Why fresh eggs, of course.

Cracking eggs and whisking them into the mix gave Baker's the sense that their cake was

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