I write this blog post after having just played The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim for a gratuitous (and probably quite obscene) amount of time. Its been one of the most anticipated games to be released this year and has had extensive advertising with the first trailer being aired over a year ago, and its the psychological aspect of that which will be my topic for this week. Psychology has been used more and more lately to understand why people buy and to influence them into buying certain products, as well as how to overcome a customers resistance to buying products.
But is it ethical? By using these tricks such as Vicarious Learning (From Bandura’s Social Learning Theory) in order to make people purchase a product that they have seen a famous person use, the Coriolis effect to determine which way people will walk in a supermarket (and how to place items accordingly, mainly the bright shiny ones), the fact that we slow down near shiny surfaces (combine that with what I just stated and you have slow customers moving exactly how you want them to) and the fact that when our brain identifies with a brand it actually fools our senses, are we being good people?
We are effectively taking away their free will. Yes, they do still have the choice of what they want to buy, it is ultimately up to them but it still seems like a bad use of the research. One of the ethical guidelines for conducting research is free will, the participant should not be forced to do anything they don’t want to do. Surely this should be a guideline for the application of the research as well, our understanding of the mind should not lead to excessive control of it. I understand that it would be particularly difficult to enforce, we can deny the ability to perform research, but we can hardly police companies, the internet, tv and radio in order to prevent this from happening yet surely influencing people in this way should be thought of as wrong. I’m not criticising marketing here, every shop has a right to be able to advertise and promote itself, with information about new and cheaper products being one of the main ways that they get customers to come in. Just when it comes to using psychological tricks to get people buying what they might not have actually wanted to, I consider it to be unethical. Far worse unethical things have happened, I do only consider this to be a minor breach, yet it is still one nonetheless.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=T9UZ0ggJcKQC&pg=PA76&lpg=PA76&dq=right+handed+shoppers&source=bl&ots=dA5-TZdgtT&sig=hFlgYB-3tHw0rzOFEtDrzI9yu_Q&hl=en&ei=KluKTMz7LMLsnQeV5LiwDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false End of page 78 for the Coriolis effect
2nd paragraph of pg 76, slowing down near shiny objects.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=neuromarketing-brain&page=2
How labels overcome our senses.
I do not believe that you can argue that advertising is unethical, unless it is blatantly misleading.like when the product is advertised to consumers as being able to do a certain effect when actually the product is not capable of doing what is being advertised in the campaign.Then that would be unethical,because the customer is being deceived,manipulated and essentially robbed of their money .Additionally if an advertisement diminishes understanding of the product then again that is unethical,however in regards to store layout ,and where items are put on shelves,yes that is manipulative but like you say everyone has free will .So unless the customers perception of the product is being manipulated through advertising then it can’t really be argued that advertising is unethical.
It is true that there are a lot of advertising techniques being used or trialed that attempting to make use of psychology to cause people to change their minds and buy or sign up for things they wouldn’t normally but I’m not sure either how effictive or unethical this is. Attitude change is difficult, and adverts should be able to do their best to persuade comsumers their product is best, they have done this for years in sneaky ways like make-up ads using a male voice for the “science” bit because of research like Kenton (1989) have found they are percieved as having more expertise. I agree any techniques that could become misused or used for the purpose of misleading, or if people aren’t aware of what they are doing, shouldn’t be used though.
There has been a lot of psychological research into persuasion and attitude change which has been manipulated by the media. However, not all media companies use it for unethical purposes for example, campaigns to encourage people to stop smoking or wear a seatbelt in cars. There are so many examples in the media which appear to have employed psychological findings in the adverts. Toothpastes brands are just one example, they tend to include a scientists or a person who appears to have expertise in the area as this has been found to be more influential in selling their product (this was shown in the Hovland-Yale model of persuasive communication).
I would say research into persuasion is socially sensitive as it could be used for negative and unethical purposes. On the other hand, advertisement is monitored with strict regulations about deception therefore ethics should not be a problem.
I think you’ve highlighted an important point here: the use of the knowledge of psychology in advertising is about persuasion rather than deception. Whilst this may be considered an infringement on ‘free will’, ultimately if information about a product is not misrepresented to a person, the responsibility lies with them in terms of deciding whether or not to buy it.
The misuse of knowledge will always be a controversial topic in psychology. However, I think that there are more concerning applications would be situations such as the implication of psychologists in devising torture methods, rather than issues such as advertising and the media.
I agree with your point that if psychologists have to adhere to ethical guidelines in research then when that research is applied, such as in the case of marketing and consumer psychology, it should also adhere to such guidelines. Ethical guidelines set out by professional bodies (such as the American Psychological Association) consistently state the importance of free will and the ability to give free informed consent. Plus, it is also known that psychologists need to avoid misrepresentation and false advertising, so applied research should also have these limits. Research done by Seoul International Color Expo (2004) found 84.7% of people asked thought that color (compared to other factors) was largely important when making the decision of what product to buy. This research can then be used to influence people to buy things they might not neccesarily want. More research needs to be done on large (stratified) samples of the population in order to see if there is such an extreme effect influencing peoples buying habits. But the study would need to take place in a setting that insured high ecological validity so that the results could then be generalised back to real life.