psychiatry and the social sciences
influenced and manipulated
habits
influencing our behavior
The Hidden Persuaders
In the 1950s Vance Packard published The Hidden Persuaders, outlining key psychological techniques used in advertising. He identified eight compelling needs which are shared by all human beings. He claimed that if you offered, or threatened to remove one of these eight needs, you had the power to sell literally anything! The eight needs are:
1. Emotional security
2. Reassurance
3. Ego gratification
4. Creative outlets
5. Objects to love
6. Power
7. Roots
8. Youth/Immortality.
Today some companies even use, neuromarketing such as MRI scans to find out which car design most excites their target customers. So how did this all begin? Its thesis is simple: sometime before the midpoint of the 20th Century, American advertisers began appropriating techniques from the fields of psychology and sociology to manipulate us as consumers...
Battle For The Mind
The Hidden Persuaders was written in a time where the field of psychoanalysis were making advertising agencies probe into our subconscious to establish more efficient marketing...
It was influential in things such as advertising to children The focus was on targeting the youth mark not much has changed, young girls and boys. These children eat food, wear out clothes, use soap. They are consumers today and will be the buyers of tomorrow. This is what advertisers are doing each and every day. They say "Here is a vast market for your products. If you Sell these children on your brand name and they will insist that their parents buy no other."
Yes! Many farsighted advertisers are cashing in today... and building for tomorrow ...by molding eager minds" through Project Education Material supplied to teachers.
It added reassuringly: all carrying sugar-coated messages designed to create acceptance and demand for the products-
"In commenting on this appeal Clyde Miller, in his The Process of Persuasion, explained the problem of conditioning the reflexes of children by saying, that it takes time, yes, however if you expect to be in business for any length of time, think of what it can mean to your firm in profits if you can condition a million or ten million children who will grow up into adults trained to buy your product as soldiers are trained to advance when they hear the trigger words 'forward march.' " One small phase of the seduction of young people into becoming loyal followers of a brand is seen in the fact that on many college campuses students can earn a part of their college expenses bypassing among fellow students handing out free sample packages...
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"Fascinating, entertaining and thought-stimulating."--The New York Times Book Review
The result is that many of us are being influenced and manipulated far more than we realize, in the patterns of our everyday lives.
psychiatry and the social sciences
influenced and manipulated
habits
influencing our behavior
new area of modern life. It is about the way many of us are being influenced and manipulated—far more than we realize—in the patterns of our everyday lives. Large-scale efforts are being made, often with impressive success, to channel our unthinking habits, our purchasing decisions, and our thought processes by the use of insights gleaned from psychiatry and the social sciences. Typically these efforts take place beneath our level of awareness; so that the appeals which move us are often, in a sense, "hidden."
manipulators. The possibilities of using the insights of psychiatry and the social sciences to influence our choices and our behavior are so inviting that no one anywhere can be sure nowadays that he is not being worked upon by the depth persuaders.
The use of mass psychoanalysis to guide campaigns of persuasion has become the basis of a multimillion-dollar industry. Professional persuaders have seized upon it in their groping for more effective ways to sell us their wares—whether products, ideas, attitudes, candidates, goals, or states of mind.
Geared campaigns to this depth approach by using strategies inspired by what marketers call "motivation analysis." Meanwhile, many of the nation's leading public-relations experts have been indoctrinating themselves in the lore of psychiatry and the social sciences in order to increase their skill at "engineering" our consent to their propositions.
We still have a strong defense available against such persuaders: we can choose not to be persuaded. In virtually all situations we still have the choice, and we cannot be too seriously manipulated if we know what is going on. It is my hope that this book may contribute to the general awareness. As Clyde Miller pointed out in The Process of Persuasion, when we learn to recognize the devices of the persuaders, we build up a "recognition reflex."
An important book in the history of advertising,
This slim volume, already more than half a century old, remains readable and relevant today!
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