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Ads work by cultural imprinting, not emotional inception

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Re: Ads work by cultural imprinting, not emotional inception

#81

Post by tedks »

jessriedel wrote: post #36
GuiA wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It looks like the author of this is just some random engineer without a lot of backround in marketing or persuasion psychology. That's a shame because he's clearly interested in it. Little parenthesis: if you're interested in a subject, make the effort to read about it from well established sources (very often, books). The author of the posted article relies on sources like LifeHacker and pop psychology journalism…

That sounds nice, but in practice it's extremely difficult because academics have very little incentive to make their rigorous research discoverable, much less accessible, to laymen. I agree that arm-chair theorizing is almost always a waste of time, but a layman probably contributes more by trying to bring his own particular expertise (software engineering or whatever) to bear on the problem -- on the off chance tha…

Influence is maybe a hundred pages, very accessible, and written by one of the foremost persuasion researchers out there.

You're just justifying laziness. Software engineering does not, in fact, qualify you to comment on human minds, which are very different from software. Presumably you wouldn't accept design advice from a doctor because of some claimed way to bring medical practices to bear on software engineering.

Re: Ads work by cultural imprinting, not emotional inception

#82

Post by tedks »

pknight wrote: post #68
tedks wrote: post #16

Oh man. That's a doozy. Well, uh. >We may not conform to a model of perfect economic behavior, but neither are we puppets at the mercy of every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a billboard. We aren't that easily manipulated. Yeah. Yeah we are. It looks like the author of this is just some random engineer without a lot of backround in marketing or persuasion psychology. That's a shame because he's clearly interested in it an…

After 5 years of getting my degree in psychology the dirty little secret I have found is this: all of the persuasion studies are incredibly appealing to marketers and the general pop and also the researchers who are incentivized by money and reputation. Making deep insights is akin to crack for a scientist. But the truth is most effects and mechanisms are overemphasized and exaggerated, because it makes a more compel…

I'd definitely agree that they're over-hyped, that said, they are incredibly effective in aggregate even if the individual effect sizes can be small. They don't need to be incredibly effective, either, just more effective than the competition.

Re: Ads work by cultural imprinting, not emotional inception

#83

Post by tedks »

estefan wrote: post #63
tedks wrote: post #16

Oh man. That's a doozy. Well, uh. >We may not conform to a model of perfect economic behavior, but neither are we puppets at the mercy of every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a billboard. We aren't that easily manipulated. Yeah. Yeah we are. It looks like the author of this is just some random engineer without a lot of backround in marketing or persuasion psychology. That's a shame because he's clearly interested in it an…

I'm pretty sure what the article says isn't incompatible with Cialdini's Influence at all. IIRC he also says that the more publicly an individual takes a position, the more they feel the need to remain congruent with that position in future. When people decide they want to be seen as a certain kind of person, they want to remain consistent with that. That's why if you want to reach a goal, you should tell as many of…

>When people decide they want to be seen as a certain kind of person, they want to remain consistent with that. That's why if you want to reach a goal, you should tell as many of your friends and family about it as possible so you risk "losing face" if you fail.

Commitment/consistency pressure is another well-studied technique; more used in sales than advertising for obvious reasons. It's also a peripheral cue rather than a central cue.

I think the article is an attempt to make human behavior in the face of advertising seem economically rational. It's explicitly so, in fact. This just isn't true.

>hat's what the guy is talking about when he basically says that the flaw of the 'association' argument is that there's insufficient feedback, only visual cues rather than, say, receiving a massage.

You are ignoring that observational learning exists. You should study this concept (observational learning specifically) and then come back to this article and make a more informed judgment.

Re: Ads work by cultural imprinting, not emotional inception

#84

Post by tedks »

bowlofpetunias wrote: post #23
tedks wrote: post #16

Oh man. That's a doozy. Well, uh. >We may not conform to a model of perfect economic behavior, but neither are we puppets at the mercy of every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a billboard. We aren't that easily manipulated. Yeah. Yeah we are. It looks like the author of this is just some random engineer without a lot of backround in marketing or persuasion psychology. That's a shame because he's clearly interested in it an…

So how come this doesn't work for me? I am not influenced by advertising in the least. I find it all equally annoying. I'm not being pretentious, but when I look at the stuff I buy (and I'm as materialistic as the next person, slightly obsessed with 'design', and attached to a brand like Apple), none of it I've seen in ads. Advertising uniformly has the effect of pissing me off and can even turn me off brands. And I'…

> So how come this doesn't work for me? I am not influenced by advertising in the least. I find it all equally annoying.

Like all knowledge, this is probabilistic. Variance exists and a mechanism that will reliably cause an effect will not cause that effect to the same degree to 100% of the human population. Individual differences do exist.

>I honestly cannot fathom why any intelligent human being would be influenced by something as unsubtle and obvious as advertising.

Then you are ignorant of the workings and mechanisms of a very massive industry and research area. That is not a thing to be proud of.

Re: Ads work by cultural imprinting, not emotional inception

#85

Post by tedks »

spindritf wrote: post #64
tedks wrote: post #16

Oh man. That's a doozy. Well, uh. >We may not conform to a model of perfect economic behavior, but neither are we puppets at the mercy of every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a billboard. We aren't that easily manipulated. Yeah. Yeah we are. It looks like the author of this is just some random engineer without a lot of backround in marketing or persuasion psychology. That's a shame because he's clearly interested in it an…

Yeah. Yeah we are. How do you know? The "science of persuasion" sounds like something I will read about tomorrow in an article about problems with replicating its results. Not to mention that not spending enough time on making a decision can be rational, as in rational ignorance.

>How do you know? The "science of persuasion" sounds like something I will read about tomorrow in an article about problems with replicating its results.

How can you know anything, spindritf? Indeed.

Attaining any absolute proof is generally regarded as impossible in the philosophy of science due to the problem of induction. As such, science has shifted from logical positivism (requiring verification of ideas as truth) to falsificationism (judging ideas on the amount of evidence in favor of them up to the point at which they become falsified).

Now, the mechanisms I mentioned have been replicated many times, by different researchers, and are mostly between 30-40 years old, but if the pop science press has entirely turned you off anything but LHC results because you pattern-match it to "something that might have problems replicating" you could also reassure yourself based on the massive, billions-a-year advertising industry that is largely based on a combination of artistic talent and these principles. If this doesn't convince you that these results are at the very least operationally useful instead of "true" in some Platonic sense, I don't know what could.

Indeed, heuristics exist because they worked over the course of human evolution. But those heuristics might not be best now, nor are they unable to be manipulated by advertisement.

Re: Ads work by cultural imprinting, not emotional inception

#86

Post by tedks »

pknight wrote: post #66
estefan wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure what the article says isn't incompatible with Cialdini's Influence at all. IIRC he also says that the more publicly an individual takes a position, the more they feel the need to remain congruent with that position in future. When people decide they want to be seen as a certain kind of person, they want to remain consistent with that. That's why if you want to reach a goal, you should tell as many of…

> That's why if you want to reach a goal, you should tell as many of your friends and family about it as possible so you risk "losing face" if you fail. If only that were the case, that would be grand. The opposite tends to be true more of the time. http://www.psych.nyu.edu/gollwitzer/09_Gollwitzer_Sheeran_Se...

I'm glad you linked to that; I think it's a great study.

Personally, I think there are probably goals more suitable for using social pressure for, and goals more suitable to keep secret. But I've still kept most of my goals secret until I have at least an MVP so I don't fall victim to the short-ciruiting mentioned in the article.

Re: Ads work by cultural imprinting, not emotional inception

#87

Post by spindritf »

tedks wrote: post #85
spindritf wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Yeah we are. How do you know? The "science of persuasion" sounds like something I will read about tomorrow in an article about problems with replicating its results. Not to mention that not spending enough time on making a decision can be rational, as in rational ignorance.

>How do you know? The "science of persuasion" sounds like something I will read about tomorrow in an article about problems with replicating its results. How can you know anything, spindritf ? Indeed. Attaining any absolute proof is generally regarded as impossible in the philosophy of science due to the problem of induction. As such, science has shifted from logical positivism (requiring verification of ideas as tru…

the mechanisms I mentioned have been replicated many times, by different researchers

Could you offer some references?

Re: Ads work by cultural imprinting, not emotional inception

#88

Post by gress »

philh wrote: post #79
DanBC wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Toothident is more likely to be recommended by 4/5 dentists in a world where it is better than other toothpastes, than in a world where it is worse. This is false and it is dangerous. Dentists are not experts in toothpaste; they're not experts in the latest toothpaste research. A dentist recommending toothident will probably have no idea about whether toothident is better or worse than some other toothpaste. For a…

My argument doesn't rely on dentists being experts on toothpaste. It relies on them knowing more than I do about toothpaste, on average. I can think of plausible mechanisms that would discriminatingly push an unusually good toothpaste to the top of dentists' recommendations. Offhand, I can't think of any that would discriminatingly push an unusually bad toothpaste up there. By "discriminatingly", I mean that e.g. adv…

It sounds as though you are assuming that the signal that dentists receive from advertising will be equal for all toothpastes and so the signal from some evaluation of knowledge of toothpaste quality will still be enough to make the better product be the one they recommend.

Re: Ads work by cultural imprinting, not emotional inception

#89

Post by tedks »

spindritf wrote: post #87
tedks wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How do you know? The "science of persuasion" sounds like something I will read about tomorrow in an article about problems with replicating its results. How can you know anything, spindritf ? Indeed. Attaining any absolute proof is generally regarded as impossible in the philosophy of science due to the problem of induction. As such, science has shifted from logical positivism (requiring verification of ideas as tru…

the mechanisms I mentioned have been replicated many times, by different researchers Could you offer some references?

No. I'm not going to hold your hand and feed you links. You'll go off and get another link and think that your link is as good as my links.

I mentioned two books in my first comment. Read them. They summarize about a half century of research.

Re: Ads work by cultural imprinting, not emotional inception

#90

Post by RangerScience »

I've heard of this idea before under the term "Lifestyle Advertising". You don't sell the product, you sell a "culture" that "exists", with your product being a means to signal "membership" in that "culture".

Things to Google:

- LessWrong "Applause Lights" - Burning Man Ten Principles (specifically, Decommodification, Radical Self-Expression, and Participation)

PS - I really like the point about "you need to know that everyone else knows what this means..." - that's a good point!

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