We are far less in control of the things that we buy, such as cars, than we think. In a new study,
Mindgames on wheels we show how marketing created the demand for oversized, polluting SUVs and call on advertisers to “Drop the Brief” from major polluters.
Our research shows how when we make choices they have already been heavily edited - you could say ‘manipulated’ - beforehand in ways which our conscious brains are oblivious to - and then shocked to discover.
The extraordinary extent to which this is so was memorably demonstrated by the
‘triple dipped chicken’ experiment done for the youth campaign, BiteBack2030 to change the food system.
Consumption
In it a group of teenagers - unaware and stunned by the outcome - were successfully conditioned by advertising to all choose the same unhealthy dish from a menu of 50 options, when they arrived at a restaurant.
The conclusion was, that industry is frequently choosing for us, and that individuals are often not responsible for making so-called bad choices, because we have been manipulated by methods beyond our conscious control.