Comment by mandmandam
3 days ago
> you're so hyperbolic and hysterical I don't even know where to begin.
No they aren't.
The situation is just so absurd and extreme, yet normalized, that accurately describing it makes people sound weird. That's why Chomsky speaks in that extreme monotone, to counterbalance the very real horror and extreme nature of the things he is saying.
How does the belief that advertising drives major behaviour change square with 50+ years of psychological research showing that behaviour change is really difficult?
What on the face of those two statements is a conflict?
Long term behaviour change is difficult. Short term behaviour change; not so much.
To take a classic example from the "sociopathic" mind of Bernays himself:
> The targeting of women in tobacco advertising led to higher rates of smoking among women. In 1923 women only purchased 5% of cigarettes sold; in 1929 that percentage increased to 12%, in 1935 to 18.1%, peaking in 1965 at 33.3%, and remained at this level until 1977
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom
And there's far, far more to it all. Sometimes you don't need people to change their behaviour, you just need them to be confused (say, about climate change, or who to vote for), and sometimes you just need media corporations to go soft on you because they like your money.
Sometimes you're advertising to kids, because childrens brains are more malleable. They form habits early.
Advertising made smoking cool; it made diamonds valuable; it greenwashed fossil fuel companies that sold our species future for short term profit. If you don't call that behaviour change, what do you call it?
> Advertising made smoking cool Nicotine is incredibly addictive, so one would suspect that that addiction made the change stick better.
> it made diamonds valuable
This one is interesting, in that diamonds are valuable for a one off high value purchase (i.e. wedding rings). I'd need to think about this a bit more, but on the face of it is a good counter-argument.
> Long term behaviour change is difficult. Short term behaviour change; not so much.
Can you provide some evidence for this?
Context: I have a PhD in psychology, and have read so many behaviour change meta-analyses that show really, really small effects so my prior is pretty strongly against this.
Additionally, I worked at a big tech on ads, and while one could definitely see changes in conversion rates due to ads, the incremental changes (i.e. measured by experiments) were much, much lower such that a good model of Google/Facebook etc is that they show ads preferentially to people who were probably going to convert anyway (it seems to work well in situations where there is no awareness of the business, but for larger businesses it's all about taking your competitors customers).
So my thesis is more that advertising re-allocates the dollars spend between (mostly) interchangeable products, which is consistent with the psychological research.
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