BOOKS | Vance Packard | 1957
A seminal work that explores how individuals are influenced and manipulated, often unknowingly, in their daily routines, purchasing decisions, and thought processes. Extensive efforts, frequently achieving impressive success, are being made to channel public habits and choices using insights derived from psychiatry and the social sciences. These persuasive appeals typically operate beneath conscious awareness, rendering them, in a sense, hidden.
While some manipulative attempts may appear amusing, others are disquieting, suggesting what could develop on a more intensive and effective scale. Scientists have provided powerful tools, allowing mass psychoanalysis to become the foundation of a multi-million-dollar industry.
Professional persuaders have embraced this approach to more effectively market products, ideas, attitudes, candidates, goals, or states of mind. Although some research for the book originated from British sources, it was predominantly gathered in the United States, where manipulation of the public had taken a firmer hold, positioning Americans as among the most manipulated people outside the Iron Curtain.
However, manipulation by playing upon the public's subconscious is spreading, with major American proponents of this depth approach also operating with the British public. The potential of psychiatric and social science insights to influence choices and behaviour is so compelling that individuals globally cannot be certain they are not being influenced by these depth persuaders.
The Depth Approach
The depth approach to influencing behaviour is employed across numerous fields, utilising a variety of ingenious techniques. Its most extensive application is in affecting daily acts of consumption, significantly influencing, if not revolutionising, the sale of billions of dollars' worth of products.
Two-thirds of America's hundred largest advertisers have aligned their campaigns with this depth approach, employing strategies inspired by what marketers term motivation analysis. Concurrently, many leading public-relations experts have immersed themselves in the principles of psychiatry and the social sciences to enhance their ability to 'engineer' public consent. Fund raisers increasingly adopt this approach to solicit greater financial contributions.
A considerable and growing number of industrial concerns, including some of the largest, seek to refine and mould the behaviour of their personnel, particularly executives, using psychiatric and psychological techniques.
This depth approach is also evident nationally in professional politicians' intensive use of symbol manipulation and reiteration on the voter, who is increasingly treated as a subject of conditioned reflex.
Persuaders often probe everyday habits for hidden meanings, revealing individuals as sometimes comical actors in a world that can be both genial and anxious. These investigations offer startling explanations for many daily habits and behavioural peculiarities, indicating that the subconscious can be quite wild and unruly.
The primary objective of these investigations is to uncover the underlying reasons for behaviour to more effectively manipulate habits and choices in the persuaders' favour. This has led to inquiries into a diverse range of behaviours, such as reasons for fear of banks, attraction to large automobiles, motivations for home purchases, reasons men smoke cigars, the correlation between car drawings and gasoline brands, the 'hypnoidal trance' experienced by housewives in supermarkets, and children's preference for certain cereals.
These explorations sometimes reveal concerning attempts at probing and manipulating. Some probers systematically investigate hidden weaknesses and frailties to more efficiently influence behaviour. For example, staff psychologists at a large advertising agency examine individuals to identify and target messages to people with high anxiety, body consciousness, hostility, or passiveness. Another Chicago advertising agency has studied the housewife's menstrual cycle and its psychological concomitants to develop more effective appeals for selling food products.
In this probing and manipulating, seemingly nothing is immune or sacred. The same Chicago ad agency has applied psychiatric probing techniques to young girls. Public-relations experts advise church leaders on becoming more effective manipulators of their congregations. In some instances, persuaders even choose friends for individuals, as exemplified in a large 'community of tomorrow' in Florida, where friendships are provided along with household amenities in a single, comprehensive package.
Sober examples of these new persuaders in action extend beyond merchandising to politics and industrial relations. A national political party chairman alluded to his merchandising approach in a 1956 election by referring to candidates as products to sell. Many industrial concerns subject administrative personnel to psychoanalysis, with their career trajectories charted by trained external experts.
A trade school in California boasts that it socially engineers its graduates into 'custom-built men', guaranteeing desired attitudes from an employer's perspective. The efforts of persuaders to reshape human minds were succinctly summarised by the president of the Public Relations Society of America, who stated that their work involves 'the fabric of men's minds'.
Professional persuaders receive direct assistance and guidance from respected social scientists, some of whom have participated in seminars to instruct manipulators on successful mental manipulation techniques.
While this probing and manipulation contains constructive and amusing aspects, it also possesses seriously anti-humanistic implications. Much of it represents a regression rather than progress for humanity in its ongoing struggle to achieve rationality and self-guidance. A new element is entering American life with the increasing power of persuaders. The typical American citizen is often portrayed in media as shrewd, a thoughtful voter, a rugged individualist, and a careful, discerning consumer.
While most people aspire to this image, and some rightfully embody it, professional persuaders often present these glowing images with reservations. In their internal communications, these persuaders, who sometimes refer to themselves as 'symbol manipulators', frequently view the public in a less flattering, though perhaps more insightful, manner. They often characterise individuals as collections of daydreams, obscure hidden yearnings, guilt complexes, and irrational emotional blockages.
People are seen as 'image lovers' prone to impulsive and compulsive actions, whose seemingly senseless quirks are annoying yet whose increasing docility in responding to symbol manipulation that incites action is gratifying. Supporting evidence for this view has encouraged a large-scale shift towards depth channels in efforts to influence behaviour.
These symbol manipulators and their research advisers have developed their depth perspectives by collaborating with psychiatrists and social scientists, particularly psychologists and sociologists, who function as 'practical' consultants or establish their own research firms.
These new experts, with varying levels of training, typically identify themselves as 'motivation analysts' or 'motivation researchers'. Louis Cheskin, head of a Chicago research firm conducting psychoanalytically oriented studies for merchandisers, defines motivation research as seeking to understand what motivates people's choices.
It employs techniques designed to access the unconscious or subconscious mind, as preferences are generally determined by factors of which individuals are not conscious. In buying situations, consumers typically act emotionally and compulsively, unconsciously responding to images and designs associated with the product in their subconscious mind. Cheskin's clientele includes many of America's leading consumer goods producers.
Motivational analysts, in collaboration with symbol manipulators, are adding depth to the selling of ideas and products, learning to offer significantly more than the tangible item itself.
A Milwaukee advertising executive noted that women would pay two dollars and fifty cents for skin cream but only twenty-five cents for soap because soap merely promises cleanliness, while cream promises beauty. This executive concluded that women are purchasing 'a promise', and that cosmetic manufacturers sell hope, just as vitality is purchased with oranges, and prestige with automobiles.
Merchandisers are mentioned more frequently in this exploration due to their greater immediate financial stake, leading them to invest more heavily in pioneering the depth approach. However, other persuaders, including publicists, fund raisers, politicians, and industrial personnel experts, are rapidly entering the field, with others promoting any cause expected to follow.
These 'depth boys' pursue their operations quietly, often making direct information difficult to obtain from deeply involved companies. Some officials have requested anonymity after being candid about their practices.
Some researchers demonstrate a lack of sensitivity to the anti-humanistic implications of their work. While many advertising professionals perform their roles straightforwardly and respectfully, the depth manipulators are acquiring a power of persuasion that warrants public scrutiny.
Persuading Consumers
The shift towards the depth approach in marketing was largely driven by persistent difficulties encountered by marketers in persuading consumers to purchase the vast output of their companies. A particularly troubling aspect was the apparent perversity and unpredictability of prospective customers.
Marketers frequently incurred significant losses in campaigns that, based on conventional logic, should have been successful. This led to increasing dissatisfaction with traditional market assessment methods, commonly referred to as 'nose-counting', where interviewers gathered statistical data on stated consumer preferences.
The fundamental flaw in this traditional approach was the finding that what people stated to interviewers often bore little relation to their actual behaviour in a buying situation. Consequently, many astute marketers began to question three basic assumptions concerning human behaviour:
##### 1/ People do not always know what they want:
A major ketchup manufacturer, after receiving complaints about its bottle, conducted a survey where most respondents expressed a preference for an alternative design. However, when the new bottle was introduced in test markets, it was overwhelmingly rejected in favour of the original, even by those who had preferred it in interviews.
Similarly, male beer drinkers who expressed a preference for a 'nice dry beer' were unable to articulate what 'dry' meant in the context of beer, revealing diverse interpretations.
##### 2/ People do not always tell the truth about their wants and dislikes:
Marketers concluded that individuals are more likely to provide answers that portray them as sensible, intelligent, and rational. Accepting a customer's stated wants was deemed the 'least reliable index' for manufacturers.
For instance, the Advertising Research Foundation criticised magazines for accepting stated reading habits as valid, noting that people tend to admit reading only high-prestige publications. This could lead to a false impression, for example, that _Atlantic Monthly_ is America's most-read magazine, while confession magazines, despite significantly higher readership, are underreported.
A brewery discovered a vast discrepancy between reported and actual consumption of its 'light' versus 'regular' beer, concluding that the question implicitly asked about refined taste. Experiments by the Color Research Institute showed women instinctively choosing a modern waiting room but later stating a preference for a more ornate, traditional room.
Similarly, individuals who denied borrowing from personal-loan companies were revealed to be actual borrowers in company records. A study by McCann-Erickson found that 40 per cent of people who claimed to dislike the taste of kippered herring had never actually tasted them.
##### 3/ People cannot be trusted to behave rationally:
This proneness to irrationality was notably observed by the Color Research Institute during package design tests for a new detergent.
Identical detergents in different coloured boxes elicited distinct responses: a yellow box led to complaints of the detergent being 'too strong' and damaging clothes, a predominantly blue box resulted in complaints of clothes appearing 'dirty', while a balanced blue-and-yellow box received overwhelmingly positive feedback. A department store increased sales of a fourteen-cent item by 30 per cent when it was priced at 'two for twenty-nine cents'.
One of the most costly errors in merchandising history involved the Chrysler Corporation's early 1950s assumption that automobiles were purchased rationally. Based on surveys and executive reasoning, Chrysler produced more compact cars, believing the market desired vehicles without frills, easy to park, and with shorter wheelbases.
This resulted in a significant drop in market share from 26 per cent in 1952 to 13 per cent in 1954. Chrysler then overhauled its styling, producing longer, lower cars, leading to a substantial market rebound in 1955.
Toothbrushing habits provide another example of seemingly irrational behaviour. While most people claim to brush to remove food particles and combat decay, they typically do so once a day, in the morning before breakfast—the least effective time from a dental hygiene perspective.
Research revealed differing motivations: hypochondriacs responded to 'decay' appeals, extroverts sought bright teeth, but the majority brushed for a 'taste sensation', a thorough purging of overnight tastes. This led major toothpaste merchandisers in 1955 and 1956 to emphasise appeals like 'clean mouth taste' or 'cleans your breath while it guards your teeth'.
_Business Week_ observed that while people do not always seem reasonable, their behaviour is purposeful, making sense in terms of their goals, needs, and motives. This, it asserted, is the key to understanding or manipulating people. Another challenge for marketers was consumer satisfaction with existing products, despite factories producing an ever-increasing volume of goods.
By the mid-1950s, American goods producers achieved prodigious output, promising further expansion with automation. This led to the view that Americans 'must consume more and more, whether we want to or not, for the good of our economy'.
_Christianity and Crisis_ grimly commented in late 1955 on the pressure to 'consume, consume and consume, whether we need or even desire the products almost forced upon us', noting that the dynamics of an expanding system required persuasion to meet productive needs.
With rising prosperity, the average American had five times more discretionary income than in 1940. However, these discretionary funds could be deferred if consumers were satisfied, posing a threat of depression if not spent. Senator Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin humorously summarised this by stating that the problem was 'too little cheese consumed', not 'too much cheese produced', amidst a national surplus.
In the early 1950s, amidst threats of overproduction, a fundamental shift occurred in executive focus, from production to marketing.
The president of the National Sales Executives declared, 'Capitalism is dead—[[Consumerism]] is king!' This urgent need to 'stimulate' consumption led to new prominence for professional persuaders, particularly in advertising.
In 1955, nine billion dollars were spent on United States advertising.
Many Americans possessed perfectly usable products, leading to the concept of 'psychological obsolescence', where marketers aimed to make consumers feel ashamed to use older items. Gas-range manufacturers were urged to emulate car makers, who aimed to make cars older than two or three years perceived as outdated.
By the mid-1950s, merchandisers were encouraged to become 'merchants of discontent', creating wants and dissatisfaction with the old.
A third major dilemma was the increasing sameness and standardisation of products. Consumers frequently stated that brands of gasoline, tyres, cigarettes, and other products were 'all the same'. This posed a challenge for advertisers to create logical sales arguments when products were essentially identical