Thought Manipulation: The Use and Abuse of Psychological Trickery (12 page)

As stated previously, the debate over regulation in the advertising market is only part of a broader debate. The comprehensive controversy involves the question of how to conduct a decent, stable society. Therefore, before discussing in detail any “invisible solutions” to the problem of manipulative behavior, it seems more appropriate to explain and elaborate on Hayek’s view of a good society. For this purpose, I add another dimension to our discussion: the knowledge dimension. The knowledge dimension is important in understanding Hayek’s world view in general and his unique contribution to the social sciences in particular. Ironically, this area puts Hayek’s political position in a questionable light, as the manipulation phenomenon demonstrates the difficulties quite clearly.

PROGRESS, KNOWLEDGE, AND MANIPULATIONS

Most of Hayek’s work is devoted to the question of how to build and conduct a decent, stable society. Hayek’s answer is that the best way is to allow the members of society to conduct their private life and social life freely. According to his vision and following Bernard Mandeville and Adam Smith, when a society allows human beings to interact freely which each other, under a minimal legal framework of course, a spontaneous order that enables the individual to elicit maximum benefit from social interaction is created almost miraculously.

The paradigm of spontaneous order is based on the perception that in a free market system, the selfish interests of the individuals are channeled spontaneously to the benefit of the whole society. The principle is that private interest is the dynamo moving society forward, whereas competition and market demands are the regulator. For example, the producer that wishes to sell his products and maximize profits becomes obligated to take into account the market requirements and therefore must produce quality goods that are in demand. In this way, a harmonic system that operates efficiently arises spontaneously.

Hayek goes beyond the classical model of producer and consumer and suggests an ideal decent society as a multidimensional free market. In other words, he generalizes economic conclusions and arguments to other dimensions of social life, such as ethics and politics. In order to do so, Hayek brings into the discussion of decent social order the knowledge dimension.

Like many economists, Hayek posits that our world is suffering from a scarcity of natural resources. Our existence is dependent on the ability to deploy our limited resources efficiently, effectively, and for different purposes. The practical meaning is that our survival depends on the development of knowledge, and the development of knowledge, of course, opens new possibilities in the many dimensions of social life. For example, many inventions and innovations that influence our daily life (for example, the Gyro navigator) were first developed for military purposes.

The growth of knowledge is one of the vehicles that push society forward, but the direction is unpredictable. The village idiot of today can be discovered as the genius or the social reformer of tomorrow. The problem is that we do not have objective criteria to distinguish between them a priori. Hence, it is important to protect individuals from coercion and crippling governmental control and regulation.

Hayek emphasizes that the acquisition of new knowledge is the privilege of very few individuals, while its distribution to the rest of the population is a long and complicated process. A gap always exists between the well-being of those who have access to advanced knowledge and those not yet reached by innovation: “...long further efforts are necessary before the new knowledge that has sprung up somewhere can be put to general use. It will have to pass through a long course of adaptation, selection, combination, and improvement before full use can be made of it. This means that there will always be people who already benefit from new achievements that have not yet reached others.” In contrast to the common wisdom, or at least the common Marxist wisdom that emphasizes the destructive aspect of socioeconomic gaps, Hayek examines this issue from a different perspective.

Searching for new ways and breakthroughs often entails serious risk. Almost all research and development requires significant investment without any guarantee of success. As many examples in today’s high-technology field demonstrate, however, successful experiments might be very beneficial for the innovators. Many pioneers in this sophisticated industry built startup companies and became millionaires. Surprisingly, Hayek emphasizes that the benefit of new knowledge is the vehicle that drives society as a whole forward because the significant advantage enjoyed by the pioneers provides an incentive for those who stay behind to close the gap: “...new knowledge and its benefits can spread only gradually, and the ambitions of the many will always be determined by what is as yet accessible only to the few.”

The socioeconomic gap that Hayek praises might appear cruel or unjust. However, this is a necessary condition for the development and progress of society. “It appears cruel because it increases the desire of all in proportion as it increases its gifts to some. Yet so long as it remains a progressive society, some must lead, and the rest must follow.”

The extravagance, luxury, and benefits that are the by-products of the accessibility to new knowledge operate in two directions. On the one hand, it serves as incentive for those who stay behind to close the gap and therefore pushes society as a whole forward. On the other hand, the luxury of the pioneers is the social payment rewarding those who had the courage and initiative to risk and undertake new enterprises.

The interesting point is that the same Hayek who so vehemently declines to enter the psychological dimension into the political discussion (the mental dimension is outside the limit) argues that the progress of society depends heavily on a general human quality to desire whatever other people have and we do not. “Most of what we strive for is things we want because others already have them.” As far as I understand, this is a psychological argument. If we add to our discussion the psychological dimension, it seems that Hayek disregards the existence of social institutions, such as advertisement companies, whose survival depends heavily on the dimension that Hayek alternately disregards and then emphasizes in essential importance.

To be consistent with Hayek’s view means to admit that the survival of any advertising company operating in competitive market depends on its ability to elaborate and improve its “professional” knowledge. Therefore, it is not surprising that the late Amos Tversky, whose work on “cognitive illusions” (that is, biasing characteristics of human judgment) won the Nobel Prize in economics, said that much of his scientific discoveries were already known to “advertisers and used car salesmen.”

It seems that advertisers make many efforts to accumulate knowledge of people’s behavior and the incentives that motivate them. The purpose, of course, is to use this knowledge effectively, efficiently, and for different purposes. Hayek’s way of thinking points out that the advertiser sees in any potential consumer a limited resource with respect to his financial ability and “objective” needs. Therefore, the advertiser acquires knowledge in order to “use” his resource, the consumer, effectively, efficiently, and for various transactions.

The advertiser expends much of his efforts to utilize the domain where the needs seem to be endless—the mental domain. To be more specific, the advertiser obtains knowledge in order to manipulate the target by creating links between physical goods and his mental needs and deprivations. Ironically, coherency with Hayek’s explanation of social progress means acknowledging that psychology plays a major part in the success of the advertisement. In other words, our irresistible desire to strive for things “others already have,” which motivates us to act, could be suitable for dreams, fantasies, and false presentations.

Advertising is a prospering industry. Its success seems to be stable. Advertisers are invited to increase the propensity to consume in times of crisis and in ages of economic boom. This win-win situation brings to mind two important points in Hayek’s philosophy:

1. Successful institutions take an active part in designing the individual’s preferences, behavior, and lifestyle.

2. The survival of institutions in competitive environment demands constant development and elaboration (in Hayek’s terminology, sustaining success in a competitive market requires, continuously, accumulating new knowledge in order to use resources effectively, efficiently, and for different purposes).

This simple exercise of thought may lead us to wonder: Do advertisers increase the propensity to consume by exploiting human weaknesses? Are advertisers able to design, construct, and dictate our lifestyle? Do they create manipulations that minimize our ability to oppose, reject, and resist their impact and influence?

The advertising industry seems to be a difficult topic to many capitalist thinkers like Friedrich Hayek, as it has the potential to challenge the view that a free-market society is the best available social order, especially with regard to the individual’s independence and freedom of choice. Moreover, it is specifically the knowledge dimension, the important dimension that Hayek introduces into the ethical-political discussion that enables the demonstration of the difficulties. However, a sophisticated and deep thinker like Hayek would not stand astonished or defeated for long, but before constructing Hayek’s possible answers, a further elaboration on the challenge and the difficulties will be appropriate.

KNOWLEDGE, MAGIC, AND MANIPULATION

Tautologically, given fair play the participants freely acknowledge, agree, and commit to the rules of the game. In the context of modern advertising that would mean emphasizing the quality, practicality, and functionality of goods rather than exploiting one’s knowledge of sensitive psychological weaknesses for marketing purposes. Of course, the important question should be the location of the moral boundary where the game starts to become unfair. According to the first impression of Hayek’s view, it seems to be a fictitious problem because a free and responsible human being has the ability to reject, object, and resist to almost any manipulative attempt. But is this actually so? Interestingly, Hayek’s perception of the development and division of knowledge in society raises severe doubts on that very score. Inevitable questions immediately come to mind: Does the knowledge that the professional manipulator (the advertiser) acquires enable him to diminish any resistance by the target (the consumer)? Are people who are persuaded to operate against their best interests indeed acting in an irresponsible manner (as is implicit from the first impression of Hayek’s thought) or is there anything more?

A short story from the writings of the well-known anthropologist Edward Evans-Pitchard may be illustrative. The story is about two tribesmen who went to search for honey. The first one did not succeed and returned home empty-handed; the other one reached his goal, but a lion devoured him on his way back. The survivor who failed his mission was jailed and tried for murder. The allegation was that he had killed his friend by witchcraft.

As far removed and advanced as we may hold ourselves from the primitive world, we nevertheless face similar situations in our modern world. For example, a girl who has been raped is convinced afterwards that she is to blame for the rape (as portrayed in the movie The Magdalene Sisters); the beaten wife who, besides being passive to her husband’s aggression, agrees with him that she is responsible for his brutal behavior; the view that the Holocaust is God’s punishment to the Jewish people because many of them did not follow his obligations.

The common denominator to all those cases is that they seem to combine infantile motives with magic. The Evans-Pritchard’s story from the primitive world helps illuminate certain aspects of this puzzling trend. It is well known that believers in magic usually dismiss coincidence. They believe that to every event there is a reason and meaning. Therefore, the tribesman in Evans-Pritchard’s story was in deep distress because he could not understand the reason for his friend’s tragedy. Ironically, the murder allegation released him from his bewilderment: “he was jealous of his mate, it was alleged, and so took revenge on him by killing him: he magically had turned himself into a lion, killed his mate and then resumed his human shape.” At the end of the day, the tribesman agreed to confess to witchcraft and be punished accordingly.

In order to go back to the main issue of this book, I would make a few assumptions: the accusers have a strong incentive to convict the accused according to his confession, they do not believe in magic, and they are knowledgeable in the secret of the primitive world. Our “new” story posits that the accusers used an accessible knowledge in order to maneuver the innocent tribesman to confess to a crime he did not commit. However, the inevitable question that arises once again is this: Could the tribesman, in spite of his beliefs and even with his limited thinking, object to this kind of maneuver and plead not guilty?

As stated previously, it seems that advertisers use to their advantage the accumulated knowledge of the motivations that govern human behavior. Their huge budgets and sophisticated research methods enable them to strengthen their influence. The efficacy of “professional” manipulations seems to surpass the ability of the target to resist any unwelcome influence because very often the target is not passive during the manipulative interaction but is actually cooperating with the manipulator, no less than in the story of the innocent tribesman drawn to plead against his own case. Therefore, I ask again: Is this real cooperation or only a prima facie one? In other words, what looks like cooperation actually may be the outcome of the manipulator’s ability to exploit the target’s human weaknesses.

It appears that Hayek and many free-market economists are great believers in the human being’s ability to choose. Therefore, almost any person should be held responsible for his own choices and behavior and their consequences. However, this is only part of the picture because, according to Hayek, in a free society the market forces have the ability to solve, or more precisely to diminish, the problem of damaging influences.