Littered Trash

QuoteOne of our favorite subjects is the way marketers can use psychology to manipulate you into doing what they want (we don't think "brainwashing" is too strong a word).

We know what you're thinking: You're far too cynical to fall for the ads you fast forward through on your DVR or the little tricks employed by marketers and politicians to push your subconscious buttons. But are you sure? Because science has found ...

#5. The Color of a Pill Can Trick You into Thinking It's Working

#4. "Priming" Can Play Us Like Puppets
Quick: When's the last time you bought flowers at a grocery store? Never? Yet when you walk through the door at most grocery chains, what's the first thing you see? Here's what's right inside the door at Whole Foods

What the hell? These are grocery stores, people are there to buy food. Why would they lead off with a fringe product that 99 percent of the shoppers probably won't even look at? It has to do with the subtle science of mind control known as priming.

Yes, it is entirely possible to manipulate people into certain behaviors without them knowing it. We're not talking about subliminal suggestion, the disproven gimmick that claimed it could make people buy products by inserting hidden messages in movies. No, the real technique is priming, and it's as sinister as a windowless white van at a playground.

What? How?

The idea behind the flowers is that, as we've touched on elsewhere, hitting you with a product that is highly perishable yet fresh will "prime" you into thinking of freshness, and that you will carry that "freshness" mindset with you all the way back to the discount meat case. It sounds like bullshit -- humans don't connect completely unrelated ideas like that, right? Yet it's confirmed pretty much every time they test it.

Sometimes "priming" is as simple as finding that people will keep a room cleaner if it smells like disinfectant -- that subtle reminder is enough to make people think, "This is a clean room, I should keep it clean." But when you see how far they can take this, it gets weird.

In one study [link to [url=http://www.yale.edu]www.yale.edu (http://www.yale.edu/acmelab/articles/bargh_chen_burrows_1996.pdf)][/url] scientists instructed volunteers to form sentences using words associated with old people, under the guise that it was a language proficiency test. So, one sentence could have been "The Depends were too elderly (in Florida.)" That's just an example we made up. So these hip, presumably liberal young college students were pumped with terms associated with the elderly, and guess what happened next?

No, they didn't hike up their pants to their nipples and start watching Jay Leno. But as they left the study, they walked slower than the students who were given neutral words earlier. The students primed to think of elderly stereotypes took on characteristics they associated with the elderly. Seriously, this happened. And you can get the same result in infinite ways; in another experiment, those who were primed with words conveying rudeness (like "aggressively," "bold," "rude," "bother," "disturb" and "intrude") interrupted the experimenter more frequently during a conversation after the tests.


#3. Our Views on a Subject Depend on How It's Phrased

You're probably already aware that minor changes to the wording of a survey can alter people's opinions. During the health care debate, for example, four separate organizations conducted polls to see what percentage of Americans supported a so-called "public option." Their results ranged from a measly 44 percent to 66 percent support, due in large part to differences in wording. Calling it a "government administered health insurance plan -- something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and older get" garnered 66 percent support. And calling it "a government-run health insurance plan" plummeted support to 44 percent. Calling it "Just what Mussolini would have wanted" reduced the number to 2 percent.

You might think that it's just a matter of people not actually understanding how the system works ("I said I wanted Medicare, not GOVERNMENT!"), but it really is all about how the brain can be manipulated with very subtle differences in wording, regardless of your knowledge level.

What? How?

In this study, social psychologists sent out surveys to several hundred registered voters before an election. Half the recipients were asked if it was "important to vote." The other half were asked if it was "important to be a voter." With this one difference, the people who read the word "voter" were nearly 14 percent more likely to actually vote on Election Day. The researchers suspected that using the word "voter" caused people to identify themselves with the word. Since these people considered themselves to be voters, they were more likely to get out and vote.

On the other hand, using the word "vote" implied that the survey was asking the people to perform a task. Even if they answered "yes" to the question, they felt no association with the word (i.e., they weren't voters, they were just being told to vote), so they were less likely to follow through. One was about a simple action, the other was about being a type of person.

So what happens if someone implies that you're a "gamer" or a "runner" or a "hooker"? You do the math.

#2. You Emotionally Bond With People You Sing With

#1. Cars Have Facial Expressions, and We Buy Accordingly

Way less than 50% rule applied, just a lot to read here
[link to [url=http://www.cracked.com]www.cracked.com (http://www.cracked.com/article_19646_5-creepy-forms-mind-control-youre-exposed-to-daily.html)][/url]