11mo ago

It's disturbing how we as a society are okay with ad companies weaponsing psychology

So many people that take psychology courses end up working in the advertisement industry because that's where the jobs are if you have a psychology degree. Very few people sit back and think about the implications of the scientific study of the mind being used by companies to distort peoples perceptions and make them buy things.

They are literally trying to control our minds. It's not a conspiracy theory this is out in the open public information. If some companies decided to they can make you depressed to sell more things to you and you wouldn't even know it.

Imagine the pick a teenage boy. This boy is a bit shy and insecure. Now, psychology was originally intended to help people. Under the capitalist model it doesn't. Now this teenage boy instead of being recommended stuff to help them will instead be recommended the likes of Andrew Tate and so on. This person won't even know what hit them and won't even understand the turn of events that will lead to those videos being recommended. But they are recommended to him. Suddenly his change in behaviour pushes people away and he falls deeper and deeper into a rabbit hole.

They get more depressed. More lonely so they start buying shit like AI girlfriends but they aren't real. They get recommended more hateful content as well. They will sprial deeper into depression. This person will likely seek help at this point. Perhaps they'll recommend putting effort into real world connections so they download something like tinder. But all these apps are designed to make you pay in order to succeed so he pays to get special access. Now the ad companies know they'll loose money if this now grown man becomes confident so they start recommending content that'll make them more anxious and depressed about the experience. They give up and retreat further into depression. The whole time the person who is being targeted, their family, their therapist and their loved ones will never be able to put the dots together. They'll wonder what went wrong not knowing that their personality was already decided for them by ad companies years ago.

So like that they add companies weaponising human psychology can target a teenage boy and basically plan out the next ten years of their life. Think about how dystopian the weaponisation of psychology is when a family member of yours goes down the alt right pipeline after "suddenly" being recommended such videos.

56 comments

I "joke" all the time that the CIA ended their mind control programs because they succeeded and moved all if it into the private sector in advertising.
- All humor has a bit of truth in it, else it wouldn't be pertinent.
  
  Humor can work simply because you fear something is true. Or want it to be true. It doesn't have to actually be true. It just has to be plausible.
- Shit, we own the private sector. Or they own us, I can never remember
  
  Capitalists own the private sector. Everyone else is just human capital.
  
  You comment would get more votes if it didn’t creep everyone in the hell out because you’re totally right

Yes, it's absolutely horrific where we're at. But there is an upside!
If you're able to acknowledge its existence and protect against it, you've built a tremendous foundation for preserving your mental health that will last a lifetime.
One thing I've learned over the years is that these ad companies (and the companies who deploy their services) only have control over you if you give them permission to.
Block ads whenever you can.
Avoid apps/websites that use dark patterns. .
Work to improve your health (physical and mental), find meaningful tasks, be with people in real life or enjoy the outdoors alone; the less time you spend on ad territory, the less impact they will have on you.
Buy from ethical companies, if possible.
Avoid "influencers", people who constantly promote "sponsored content", and other strongly bias sources for your information or entertainment.
- These are great suggestions. I'll add a book to that list: "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by Dr. Cialdini. (Not so coincidentally, his doctorate is in social psychology.)
  It's been a few years since I read it, and if I'm remembering correctly it's oriented toward business people. Regardless, it teaches you what to watch out for and how to mitigate its effects on your own psychology. People use this book everyday to exploit others, so why not learn their tricks?
  
  “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Dr. Cialdini.
  Thanks for the recommend! I'm going to check my library for it!
- Building on this, I also want to warn against the attitude that 'ads don't work on me'. A lot of people seem to think that they have some kind of mental filtering system such that they are immune to manipulation. They sometimes talk about how they deliberately make a point of not buying from some company who advertised in a way they didn't like, or whatever.
  I'll just say this: you don't have a special power. The ads do work. Maybe not every ad has the effect that you think they are aiming for, and not ever ad is targeting you. But if you are exposed to advertising, then it will affect how you think - and some of the people making these ads are serious experts with lot of research to help them manipulate your habits and behaviour. It's a type of social technology that has advanced over time. It's better to avoid it rather than assume you are immune.
  
  I.e. you are not immune to propaganda
  
  I am digging up this old thread to add that the social media scrolling epidemic probably employs a behavior modification technique named 'partial reinforcement' when the desired behavior is not always rewarded but occasionally https://www.simplypsychology.org/schedules-of-reinforcement.html#Partial-Intermittent-Reinforcement-Schedules The learned behavior is stronger. You see people scrolling endlessly even in platforms there is no advertising. Or you see people, even the Internet is out, they will still kill some time on the computer or phone playing games they would never open otherwise. They have been conditioned to be in position to consume "content". This persistence of learned behavior is typical of the partial reinforcement schedule. Now what is the reward? Perhaps rage, arousal, or other stimulation. You scroll and scroll anyhow, till something dopamine-inducing comes up. The behavior persists even in other platforms. If you are interested I have started a thread about an attrition approach to major platforms (https://lemmy.ml/post/17679530/12103132), and what OP calls the weaponization of psychology by advertising platforms is something that doesn't sit well with me, from a humanitarian and anarchist perspective.
- For even more comprehensive of an understanding, another resource is Adam Curtis' documentary: The Century of the Self
  
  Thanks for the recommendation.
  I finished watching it, and I'm both fascinated and furious.

We as a society aren't okay with it. There's tons of pushback against it. But the corporations own the politicians that make the laws. We need to revoke the "corporations are people" ruling to make any progress on this and many other fronts.
- Fully agree. I would also hope to see a complete ban on advertising to children, and to get rid of obnoxious billboards.
  
  One thing I love about where I live is that billboards are illegal. Every time I go somewhere that has a lot of billboards I'm overwhelmed with how intrusive they are.
- Corporations are also practiced at using advertising campaigns to sway the general public against policies that would weaken the company's power.
  So to change this, some brave politicians would need to act not only against the financial interest of themselves and their political party, but also possibly against a large chunk of the general public pushing back against the changes (most likely led by 'mainstream media'). Politicians willing to do this kind of thing exist... but unfortunately not enough of them.

That's exactly where I wanted to work, but before you hate, I wanted to get into advertising because I didn't like what I saw and thought I could do better. I got the degrees, took the psych classes, and set off to change the world for the better. Nobody hired me.
You can't buy what you don't know exists, and there are some awesome things out there. But being hammered by messages or propaganda is lazy and abusive; I don't put up with it.
So yeah, I'm an wannabe advertiser turned massive ad blocker/privacy supporter. Screw the industry.
- I saw a lot of my own experience in your comment, and wanted to add a bit of my story. I work in web development, and years ago I was tasked with learning Google Ads so we could start offering it as a service to clients. So exciting at first, learning the ins and outs of such a powerful platform -- But in practice, it was a cynical and dehumanizing experience. Dissecting thousands of real human beings' search phrases for some untapped keyword, in an effort to cash in on their weakest moments. Not what I got into this field to do, either.

Also can't forget gaming companies that have turned many modern games into Skinner-boxes.
- I just flatout refuse to play a game that has any kind of monetization in the first few menus. It's amazing how many games that cuts out.
  If you advertise DLC before the game loads? Instant refund.
  
  ill pirate games, and those come with all the dlc out of the box, no bullshit. its awesome.

You know all that research that gets done by colleges that gets published? You know how they're all bound by ethical guidelines about how they conduct those studies?
You know who doesn't publish their studies? You know who's not bound by those same ethical guidelines? Merely by law? You know who has way more expendable cash? And a vested interest in spending it this way?
Look into the careers of guys like Ernest Dichter or Louis Cheskin. And those guys only did it into the 80s.
Imagine the knowledge some of these companies have with smartphone usage data and shit. It's wild.

Welcome to capitalism babyyyyyy

Young girls have had this happening for decades. Today they're constantly being fed fake images and cartoonishly filtered women in videos as the base standard of beauty. They're told that their flaws are "ugly" and "embarrassing".
But buy our makeup / skincare / acne treatment / anti-fat tea and you'll finally be beautiful and people won't think you're ugly flith!!
- My idea of what a woman is permanently warped and my idea of what the averqage breast size is seems stuck as "Big boobed anime lady" and my idea of big boobs is "Hyper Breasts"
  Thanks Beauty Industry!

It also counters the consumer-as-rational-agent model that underlies most mainstream economics.

This isn't a recent thing, it's been going on since the beginning of psychology in the early 20th century. The doco 'The century of the self' explains it all https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
- since the beginning of psychology in the early 20th century
  TIL tha psychology is not as old as I thought it was
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  https://www.piped.video/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

I recently found out that you can watch full youtube videos without ads if you only watch the... whatsitcalled...thumbnail?... you can even enabke the sound. No adds! That feels like a loophole. There's better solutions, but this one feels special, since it's in the official youtube app. I can't believe they left that in on accident though, but I'll take it.

Reminds me of Minutemen's song Shit From an Old Notebook: "Let the products sell themselves Fuck advertising, commercial psychology Psychological methods to sell should be destroyed"

That's the beautiful thing about weaponizing psychology; if you've done it well enough, people won't even realize that you've done it

brought to you by CIA

we had this for solid few years already https://archive.org/details/the-alt-right-playbook-how-to-radicalize-a-normiee

They always have and we don't really get a choice in the matter. The reason why you're noticing it increasing particularly online is because there was a time not too long ago that it didn't have any of the bullshit and in some ways they're still figuring it out.

I mean,
I don't think psychology is meant to help people.
It's neutral, neither good or evil. While you can argue it's pretty dark how deep the psychology can go, it's hard to go into a deep evaluation of that.

To me the shit is as barbaric is treating cancer with chemo-therapy. It's going to be one of those things future generations look back on with total disgust and horror like the way we look back and people dumping their shit buckets into the street.

Welcome to the club. I‘m 36 now and have seen this for the past 10+ years while its also speeding up. If I tell people they look at me with empty eyes.
Solution would be to create a movement but most people are too busy. Lmk if you want to start something.

Yep. It’s why “TV” was such a “thing”. Also, Reagan.

And yet if you try to defend yourself (say, by painting over billboards), you'd be the one charged with a crime.

Outside of products that are themselves addicting, I don't really see any actual harm coming from advertising. Yes, I fucking hate ads, but thats because they are annoying and interrupt the things I do like. The real manipulative practices I see come pretty much from the video game's industry. Alcohol and tobacco are naturally addictive and the people who make and sell those products do rely on that for sales; but the advertising isn't making them more addictive. Games, on the other hand, are true weapons of psychological warfare.
Many development companies have psychologists on staff specifically to come up with new, stronger ways of addicting players or causing FOMO, or otherwise manipulating a small handful of the population susceptible to such a degree, they would go into ruin spending money on useless digital shit. And it's like every little thing in the game. Your eyes are generally watching a game you're enjoying a lot more than a TV ad, billboard, radio advert or other form of advertisement we are constantly bombarded with.
You ever see a video or play Call of Duty and wonder why there is so much "noise" on screen? Why it rewards you for every little thing you do? Because completing goals triggers endorphins. Instead of waiting for a win or loss of an entire game, they can hook you on the good brain chemicals by giving you tons of smaller accomplishments in rapid succession. When games have rarity levels for things you can buy with real cash, things that can literally be created out of thin air if they so desired because it's a piece of software, it's manipulating you into thinking somehow there is some scarcity in a thing that in actuality has none.
They are so good at manipulating the player, they can get you to do things subconsciously just with a few tricks of level design. A lot of this manipulation is just the nature of the beast; but plenty AAA devs weaponize the shit out of it and it's pretty scary that if they wanted to, they could likely "Manchurian Candidate" someone. Though I suppose there is some humor to be found in that violence itself in a game does little to make one violent IRL; but it actually would be possible to design a game that drives the right person to violence, if someone was sadistic enough to make such a game.

Interesting thoughts. I'd like to know how many people feel compelled to make a purchase because they see an ad rather than because they actually need or want something. My assumption is that this number is very low, but I can only speak through my own experience in my life and those who I'm close to. If someone has a sickness, I'm not sure we can blame an ad for their decision making. My wife is bipolar and has had episodes of excessive spending ($15K in a week once), but I don't blame the name brand items she purchased or restaurants she went to, she just has a condition that needs outside help.
- I’d like to know how many people feel compelled to make a purchase because they see an ad rather than because they actually need or want something. My assumption is that this number is very low
  If that’s the case, then most advertising budgets are wasted and companies could increase their sales by diverting that money into improving their products or reducing their prices. But none of them seem to be doing that successfully.
  
  It's not the direct ad that does it. They don't want you to see a billboard, drop what you're doing and order that tv. They want to bombard you with their name and make you subconsiously associate their name with the word "tv" or even better, the idea of a tv. So next time when you do need a new tv, you'll be like "I know that brandname, that feels familiair and comfortable, I'll take that one".
  That's what they pay the psychology students for, to come up with schemes like that.

I don't like your use of the word "capitalist". This feels more like a communist or liberal recruitment speech. (No offense or hostility intended)
I think we should focus people and the hard work they do

Everyone weaponizes psychology. Not just ad companies. Your boss, your friends, politicians, your child when they want you to buy them a new toy, the plot of a good book. People need to learn critical thinking.
- Come off it. Not everyone is trying to manipulate you into acting against your best interest. Which is precisely what advertising is.
  
  Sometimes. Sometimes it's just "we both know you're going to have to buy this anyway so please buy our version of it"
  There's a scale of harmful from that all the way up to scams, with "you don't need this but we're going to trick you into thinking you do" in the middle
- Not every user is weaponization.

56 comments