Psychology & the Ads

Why is the average U.S. citizen afraid of banks? Why does he love big cars? Why, when he goes into an automobile showroom, does he get excited over the convertibles and wind up buying a sedan? Why do most housewives go into a hypnoidal trance in a supermarket?

These are some of the loaded questions that occupy increasing numbers of psychologists and psychiatrists. Depth psychology now probably has more influence on the U.S. at large through business and advertising than through clinics or mental-health programs. Not so long ago, when an advertiser was using psychology, it was a hit-or-miss affair of hunches; today it has become a solidly entrenched and complex specialty known as MR (short for motivation research). In The Hidden Persuaders (David McKay; $4), Free Lance Writer Vance Packard analyzes the mass psychoanalysis carried on by MR.

The purpose is to condition customers--recalling Pavlov's dogs which salivated at the sound of the dinner bell--so that they will drool at the sight or sound of a selling gimmick with a symbolism that appeals to the unconscious. MR practitioners are convinced that most shoppers buy irrationally, to satisfy unconscious cravings. To explore the cravings--and to learn why some men smoke cigars, or how women choose shoes--MR interviewers use such psychological tests as the Rorschach cards, the TAT (Thematic-Apperception Test) or even the formidable MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory). They often interview their quarry in groups, because there prejudices may be revealed more freely, like confessions at a revival meeting. As with psychologists in other fields, their conclusions often seem to be commonplaces dressed up in Freudian jargon, or else fantastically far reaches, e.g., air conditioning satisfies an unconscious desire to return to the controlled climate of the womb. But to judge from the commercial results, the MR men are right at least part of the time.

Guilty Cokes. One MR outfit, Social Research Inc. of Chicago, set out to discover what was wrong with tobacco advertising by learning why people smoke. It did not need to go so deep into unconscious symbolism as the Freudians, who see the cigarette as a nipple substitute. Its psychologists found just what was needed at the preconscious level: "Americans smoke to prove they are people of virile maturity. They see smoking as proving their vigor, potency." This, explained Social Research, "is a psychological satisfaction sufficient to overcome health fears, to withstand moral censure, ridicule, or even the paradoxical weakness of 'enslavement to habit.' " Youngsters who smoke are trying to be older, the MR men concluded, and older people who do so are trying to be younger.

Another factor, which applies to soft drinks and hard liquor as well as tobacco, has to do with pampering oneself" and feeling guilty about doing so. Dr. Ernest Dichter, a Viennese psychologist now practicing MR at Croton on Hudson. N.Y., and one of the pioneers in the field, concluded that every time a "self-indulgent" product is sold, the buyer's guilt feelings must be assuaged by couching the advertising in terms to make the self-indulgence morally acceptable; for example, by saying you deserve candy.

Two-Tone Loans. When it came to explaining fear of banks, a Rochester agency learned that potential clients are afraid of being rejected when they apply for a loan (this could be rational, but is more likely the result of irrational, unconscious feelings of unworthiness). They see the banker as a forbidding father figure who will disapprove of their untidy financial affairs, who can scold or withhold approval. Dr. Dichter found that loan companies, charging higher interest than banks, got more business because they had a "lower moral tone"--the borrower could feel superior instead of inferior.

Autos presented quite a problem to MR. A man wants a big car because it is a mark of status, or so the majority thinks. But another function of the automobile is "to express aggression." So the more horses under the hood the better. The average harried head of a household seeing the convertible in the showroom window has ad-supported visions of sophomore heedlessness and a beautiful blonde sitting beside him on the imitation-leopard upholstery. But after such vicarious thrills, he lets conscience be his guide and buys the sedan, which he thinks the family needs. It was to meet this ambivalence that Psychologist Dichter helped inspire the hardtop. It had most of the disadvantages of the sedan and none of the real advantages of the convertible, but it fooled the id and scored a marketing bull's eye.

As for women, they often prefer supermarkets to cozy neighborhood stores with friendly clerks because they are afraid to betray their ignorance about food. In the big markets they can take their time reading the labels, fill their carts with luxury items, then put them back on the shelves if conscience bothers them--all with no embarrassment before a knowing clerk.

Home, Sweet Wine. Author Packard lists several hidden needs MR plays up: P: Emotional security, e.g., big home freezers, which may be uneconomic for an average-size family but are comforting to people who want to have more food around than they actually need to eat. P:Reassurance of worth, with luggage that is more expensive than necessary but gives an air of importance to the go-now, pay-later traveler. P:"Creative" outlets, like ready-make cake mixes, which require the housewife to add one or two ingredients as her individual contribution. (In the depths of MR, psychologists claim to have learned that "baking a cake is, traditionally, acting out the birth of a child.") P:Love objects, among which Author Packard loosely lumps Liberace, who, say MR men, was sold to women past child-bearing age by manipulation of Oedipus symbolism.

P:Sense of roots, with wine for family dinners the prime reminder of "the good old days--the home, sweet home wine--the wine that grandma used to make." P:Immortality, important mainly to life-insurance salesmen who assure buyers that through their financial foresight they will continue, after death, to control the destiny of their beneficiaries.

MR is still new enough for its accuracy to be hotly debated. Packard quotes one practitioner of the penumbra art as saying: "It is about as far advanced as public-opinion polling was in the early '30s." But because it is subtler, and specifically because it deals with the unconscious, MR is probably far more influential than Gallup polling, and potentially more sinister. Psychologist Dichter offers a smooth line in defense: "Persuasion is education. Ideally people should never be influenced, but the fact is they are constantly influenced by parents, teachers, etc. . . . Creative discontent is wholesome; only when the goal of persuasion is to instill stale contentment is it immoral . . ." But a Honolulu public-relations man has misgivings: "One of the fundamental considerations involved here is the right to manipulate human personality . . . What degree of intensity is proper in seeking to arouse desire, hatred, envy, cupidity, hope, or any of the great gamut of human "emotions?"

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