The Story of Psychology (123 page)

Not surprisingly, there has been considerable opposition to integrity tests by labor groups on several grounds: that they are neither valid nor reliable and therefore falsely rate some honest people as dishonest, damaging their reputations and opportunities; that they are an invasion of privacy; and that they have an “adverse impact” on minority groups, eliminating higher percentages of them than of whites from job opportunities. Nonetheless, the integrity testing business has grown and thrived in recent years.

In 1991 a task force of the American Psychological Association, after making an exhaustive two-year study of honesty tests, concluded that the publishers of many tests offer no substantiation of their validity and utility. The association therefore strongly urged employers not to use such tests. But for the few tests for which information was available, the task force found:

The preponderance of the evidence is supportive of their predictive validity…To the extent that evidence is available, it is consistent with the idea that these tests reflect aspects of personal integrity and dependability, or trustworthiness.
56

Later studies by the APA and other sources again found that some integrity tests have respectable levels of validity and that others do not. The would-be employee who is asked to take an integrity test is at risk of being incorrectly rated dishonest.

Emotional stability testing:
In November 1989 a man named Sibi Soroka, who had applied for the job of security officer at a Target Store in California
and been required to take two tests, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory and the California Psychological Inventory, filed suit against Target’s owner, the Dayton Hudson Corporation, charging invasion of privacy. The tests (discussed in an earlier chapter), have many purposes, among them to screen out emotionally unstable applicants for “safety sensitive” positions such as police officer, airline pilot, and nuclear plant operator. They include hundreds of items, some touching on religion (“My soul sometimes leaves my body,” “I feel sure there is only one true religion”) and some on sex (“I wish I were not bothered by thoughts about sex,” “I am very strongly attracted by members of my own sex”).

Soroka complained that he had been upset by the tests, which had invaded his privacy. He asked for a preliminary injunction preventing Target from using the results or continuing such testing. His lawsuit made headlines; there had been many privacy-invasion suits over drug testing in employment settings, but the claim that standard personality tests used in employment screening were an invasion of privacy broke new ground. The court denied Soroka’s request for a preliminary injunction but an appeals court granted it. That court did not rule out all such testing but only whatever contained unjustifiably invasive items, like those pertaining to sex and religion. In 1993 Target Stores reached a $1.3 million settlement with Soroka and other plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit filed in Alameda Superior Court, though Target admitted no legal wrongdoing.
57

Soroka’s case established a beachhead in the attack against personnel testing. Other recent suits have attacked it on the grounds of defamation and the inflicting of emotional distress. The borderline between the justifiable use of testing and its misuse is being redrawn; where it will finally lie, one cannot now be sure.

Covert Persuasion: Advertising and Propaganda

“Nothing in life is more pervasive than persuasion,” wrote psychologist Eleanor Siegel in the
APS Observer
some years ago, adding:

Nearly every social interaction between humans—and between members of many nonhuman primate species—has a strong element of persuasion. Knowledge about the psychological processes that affect people’s decision making therefore carries tremendous positive potential.
58

And tremendous negative potential. Until the modern era, human beings who sought to persuade others to believe in their gods, make love, or sell them goods for less than the announced price did so by generally known and customary means, of which the others were presumably aware. The Roman senators listening to Cicero deliver his attacks on Catiline, the near-mutinous crewmen hearing Columbus’s firm assurances, the Puritan worshippers dutifully attending to the Reverend Cotton Mather’s fulminations against sin and portrayals of damnation, surely recognized that their minds and hearts were being played upon in culturally prescribed fashion, and made their judgments within that context.

But with the advent of scientific psychology, it became possible for informed people to use certain findings of the new science to influence the minds and feelings of others by methods not generally recognized as persuasive techniques.

This can be well-intended. The sophisticated techniques used by teachers in motivating children to learn and by psychotherapists to inspire patients to change are examples of the many ways in which covert psychological persuasion is employed for the benefit of others.

But the techniques can also be used to induce behavior that is harmful to the subjects, not merely in terms of concrete costs but at the price of freedom of choice. Those who are persuaded may be deprived of their rationality and become little better than Skinner’s Ping-Pong-playing pigeons, mindless creatures blindly obeying the will of others, heedless of their own best interests.

The use or abuse of psychology to persuade had become so pervasive by the early 1990s that social psychologists Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson called their 1992 study of the subject
The Age of Propaganda.
They meant not just political or religious propaganda but any “communication of a point of view with the ultimate goal of having the recipient of the appeal come to ‘voluntarily’ accept this position as if it were his or her own.”
59

Since we are interested in the misuse of covert persuasion, we will bypass overt forms of persuasion, like honest advertising; techniques of propaganda that rely not on covert use of psychological principles but on “disinformation” (the [George W.] Bush administration’s fraudulent assertions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction); deceptive labeling (the administration’s switch, when no WMD were found, to the claim that the U.S. invaded Iraq to liberate the Iraqis from oppression); unconcealed appeals to easily aroused emotions (a picture of an adorable baby sitting in a Michelin tire, or of the Marines raising the
flag at Iwo Jima); and, finally, certain military uses of psychology, including nontorture POW interrogation techniques and brainwashing, which are hardly covert and, in any case, are considered ethically justifiable during warfare.

But the use of psychological knowledge to persuade covertly is very common in advertising. Much advertising, to be sure, forthrightly portrays the product in an attractive light, praises its virtues, and states its price. However, a considerable part of the $400 billion spent each year in America on advertising of all types pays for messages conveyed by covertly persuasive techniques derived from psychological principles. As the journalist Vance Packard revealed long ago in
The Hidden Persuaders
, a muckraking 1957 exposé of these methods, psychoanalytic principles were then being used on a large scale—and, he later said in 1980, still were—to “channel our unthinking habits, our purchasing decisions, and our thought processes… Many of us are being influenced and manipulated, far more than we realize, in the patterns of our everyday lives.”
60

The early applications of psychological principles to advertising by Walter Dill Scott, John B. Watson, and others were relatively aboveboard, but in the late 1940s devious, cunning, and more potent applications were introduced by several people acquainted with Freudian theory. The best-known of them was the late Ernest Dichter. Born in Vienna, he earned a doctorate in psychology at the University of Vienna and briefly practiced psychoanalysis but, being Jewish, fled the Nazis in 1938 and came to the United States. Unlike most other refugee psychoanalysts, who resumed the practice of their profession in their new surroundings, he recognized that American advertisers were bigger game than neurotics, and began peddling his services as an expert who could identify unconscious desires in consumers by which they could be motivated to buy the client’s products.

Dichter was not the only one with this idea; others aware of the psychology of the unconscious were beginning to do similar work. But he was the key figure in what was known as “motivational research.” He used psychoanalytic theory to formulate hypotheses that he then tested by means of interviews, questionnaires, and sample ads on several hundred families in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, where he had his headquarters. Ebullient and dynamic, Dichter unabashedly proclaimed that a successful advertising agency “manipulates human motivations and desires and develops a need for goods with which the public has at one time been unfamiliar—perhaps even undesirous of purchasing.”
61

A good example of his work is the first study in which he used motivational
research. His client was Compton, the agency that had the Ivory Soap account. As Dichter recalled years later, he told agency executives, “Bathing is a psychologically liberating ritual. You cleanse yourself not only of dirt but of guilt.” The evidence he produced by means of interviews and questionnaires convinced them; with his help they adopted as their ad copy “Be smart and get a fresh start with Ivory Soap…and wash all your troubles away.”
62

He also radically changed the thrust of cigarette advertising. In the early 1950s, cigarette ads either stressed enjoyment or reassured readers about the effects of smoking on health. Dichter considered both approaches feeble. The typical American, in his analysis, was basically puritanical and tended to feel guilty when using any self-indulgent product. Accordingly, Dichter told agency people handling a cigarette account, “Every time you sell a self-indulgent product, you have to assuage guilt feelings and offer absolution.” To identify such guilt-reducing rationalizations for smoking, he made an in-depth study of 350 smokers and discovered a dozen “functional” reasons why one should smoke: to relieve tension, to be sociable, to convey a sense of virility, and more. As a result, his client’s ads, and soon many others’, showed people smoking under pressure, in company, and out on the range.
63

For some years, motivational research was the hot idea in advertising and still is used to some extent. But by the 1970s advertisers had become less enamored of psychoanalytic trickery—it had not paid off as dramatically as they expected—and began turning to later psychological research for techniques of covert persuasion.

One useful finding, first made in the late 1960s and reaffirmed repeatedly in more recent years, was Robert Zajonc’s discovery of the “mere exposure” effect. As we saw earlier, Zajonc found that repeated exposure to even a meaningless symbol creates in the viewer a sense of familiarity and a favorable response. Psychological consultants to advertising agencies advised their clients that frequent brief repetition of the brand name and logo, even without reasoned and time-consuming argument, would sway the viewer. Many advertising agencies tested the method and found that it worked. The endless reiteration of a product name during a long football game or tennis match (along with, of course, macho or sexy imagery, scenes of fun in the sun, and the like) has its effect. When fans shop for beer or tennis shoes and come on the name they have seen so often, they have an automatic and unthinking favorable response.
64

Over the past several decades, the method has also become endemic in TV commercials for political candidates, to the detriment of the democratic
process. In place of reasoned argument about issues, the prevalent practice is to subject viewers to a barrage of thirty-second or even shorter commercials hammering home the candidate’s name and simplistic “sound bites” that change many people’s preferences through sheer repetition. One could call this propaganda, but there is little difference between such propaganda and covert advertising; in both cases something is being sold to the viewer by devious means. Similarly, in many small towns and city neighborhoods the current campaign tactic of sticking little signs along roadsides or on front lawns bearing only the candidate’s name—no message and not even a party affiliation—is intended to make the name so familiar that it will incline the wavering voter to choose it without knowing quite why.

Some other laboratory findings that have recently been put to use in product advertising and propaganda:

—In an experiment based on classical conditioning theory, subjects saw pens of one color while hearing pleasant background music, and pens of another color while hearing unpleasant background music. Later, when offered a choice of pens, they tended to pick the color that had been paired with pleasant music. The principle, widely used in TV commercials, sounds innocuous, but it induces people to make a choice without an awareness of why they choose as they do.
65

—In contrast to this short-term conditioning effect, a long-term “sleeper effect” has been experimentally demonstrated. Over a period of time, the emotional response created by an ad is dissociated from the product name, even though the emotion causes the name to be remembered. Thus, an ad that commands attention by creating unpleasant emotions—a recent TV commercial for a laxative shows a man grimacing while a deep male voice groans in discomfort—can be productive rather than counterproductive.
66
Viewers may think it stupid of the advertiser to use an irritating or annoying commercial, but in the long run they remember the product, not the disagreeable reaction. —More generally, if the message is presented in ways that arouse fear, it is more likely to work than would factual or rational argument. The method is often used in public service messages that portray the dire consequences of certain kinds of behavior, and in commercials for fire or flood insurance, pest control, air bags, and the like.
67

—Various characteristics of the person delivering the message can have a significant covert persuasive influence. Fast speakers are generally more persuasive than slow speakers.
68
Handsome, beautiful, sexy presenters, and celebrities in general, are believed by advertisers to exert important covert influence. Clothing can have a similar effect; for years, though less often now, advice about medications or diet was usually delivered by an actor wearing a white lab coat.

—A particularly subtle technique, in selling political positions, is for the speaker to present both sides of the argument, particularly when likely to be heard by people opposed to his or her own view. A presenter who does not seem to be obviously trying to persuade listeners to change their attitude is often, paradoxically, more effective than one clearly seeking to do so.
69

—An experiment conducted by Leon Festinger and Elaine Walster many years ago showed that overheard discussions are more likely to change a hearer’s mind than those in which the hearer knows the speakers are aware of his or her presence. Unconsciously, we are more swayed by a communication not intended to persuade us than by one intended to do so. A commercial for a well-known brokerage firm used to show all the people in a room falling silent and straining to overhear a person privately giving his companion a piece of that firm’s advice. The same principle underlies the many “candid camera” commercials in which a person, unaware of being filmed, testifies to the virtues of some product.
70

—A team of social psychologists conducted an experiment to find out the effect of distraction on the person listening to a persuasive message. They discovered that listeners who were distracted during a reasoned argument were more convinced by it than those who were not distracted; the effect was strongest when the argument was weak. The researchers’ explanation: Distraction interferes with the viewer’s or listener’s ability to evaluate or mentally argue against the message. Pratkanis and Aronson say that TV advertisers have made use of that finding:

Advertisers can, for example, “compress” a thirty-six-second commercial into a thirty-second time by running the ad at 120 percent of its normal speed. Psychologically, time-compressed ads are harder to argue against. Metaphorically, the advertiser is persuading
at 100 miles an hour while you maintain the speed limit and try to defend yourself at 55 miles an hour. You are bound to lose.
71

TV viewers may wonder why so many recent commercials are a pell-mell series of brief flashes of images plus a rat-a-tat-tat of words; that’s why.

—A particularly immoral method of covert persuasion is the use of symbols based on repressed hatreds or fears. A notorious example is the series of commercials conceived of by the late Lee Atwater, architect of George H. W. Bush’s 1988 presidential campaign, charging that Michael Dukakis was responsible for the weekend furlough of the convicted murderer Willie Horton, who, while out of prison, tortured a man and raped his fiancée. But the real intent of the commercial was the impact created by the picture of Horton, an ugly, fierce-looking, dark-skinned black man.

—In a brand-new ploy, demonstrated in two experiments at Simon Fraser University, participants who had to solve an anagram (GANECY) before seeing the name of a brand of product were more likely to say they had seen the brand before than participants who were not asked to solve the anagram, and when shown a list of brand names in the same category, preferred the one they thought they had seen before. Why did they? The researcher, Antonia Kronlund, says the “Aha!” experience of solving the puzzle (AGENCY) generates a good feeling that is then misattributed to the first brand name seen. Says Ms. Kronlund, “Such techniques can be used by marketers in magazine layouts, in store displays—the possibilities are endless.”
72

—Finally, the ethos of covert persuasive techniques is candidly, almost proudly, displayed in the online ad of John Wiley publishers for its 2006 book
Covert Persuasion: Psychological Tactics and Tricks to Win the Game
by Kevin Hogan and James Speakman:

A guide to all the tricks salespeople need to turn “no” into “yes”!

Covert Persuasion
synthesizes the latest research in the field of influence with the extensive experience of psychologist and public speaker Kevin Hogan to produce an unbeatable guide to the psychological tricks that win sales battles. Based on cutting-edge science, Hogan and James Speakman reveal dozens of previously
unknown verbal and nonverbal tricks and tactics that will have customers saying “yes” before they even realize it. A salesperson fully aware of all the nonverbal and verbal cues and hints that lead a customer to a particular response will always have the upper hand.
Covert Persuasion
reveals more than ten keys to subtly elicit agreement from even the most stubborn customer.

Other books

You Had Me at Hello by Mhairi McFarlane
La Rosa de Asturias by Iny Lorentz
The Highlander by Kerrigan Byrne
The Ice Marathon by Rosen Trevithick
All of My Love by Francis Ray


readsbookonline.com Copyright 2016 - 2024