An Analysis on Psychological Principles behind Advertising

Analysis Paper

INTRODUCTION

Advertising is, with no doubt, a psychological process. People perceive the

advertisements, make mental judgments on the products presented and even desire
the very thing displayed in the ads. One may wonder how many psychological
concepts and theories are at work in the background. This analysis paper will
present the possible theories that are responsible for the incredible effect
advertisements place on the targeted customers-to-be.
Impact of Advertisements
Some may snort when being told that advertisements really work. These
sceptical minds seem to have resistance to advertisements themselves, and think that
everyones mind would operate in the same way. Unfortunately, people who can
resist the effect by advertisements are rare.
Scott (1908) reported an interesting experience: actually if an advertisement
portrayed a piece of soap as being relaxing, one would actually feel relaxed when
using it. Advertisements do not only lure you to buy their products, they may even
alter your perception on the product if you ever buy them.
You may even refute: well, Scott said so, I dont think so. Read Montague
(McClure, Li, Tomlin, Cypert, Montague, & Montague, 2004) leaded a group of
scientists to do an experiment on reference to Coca Cola (Coke) or Pepsi. The
result was astounding.
When participants were asked which cup of drink they preferred without
indication of the brand of the drink, number of people preferring Coke and people
preferring Pepsi were split into two halves equally. However, when the participants
were presented two cups of identical drinks, with one labelled as Coca Cola and
another without any, the participants reported preference on the cup labelled. The
label Pepsi did not produce such effect (McClure, Li, Tomlin, Cypert, Montague, &
Montague, 2004).
With fMRI scanning, the label Coca Cola evoked activation in several brain
areas, including hippocampus and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex which are suspected
to be responsible for recalling cultural information that biases preference
judgements (McClure, Li, Tomlin, Cypert, Montague, & Montague, 2004).
These are evidences telling us, advertising does not only affect our purchase
preference and behaviour. The impact can be rooted deep down even to our brain

which we have no way to control.

Definitions, Assumptions and Overview
No one would question what advertisements are. A dictionary definition of
advertising is the business of trying to persuade people to buy products or services
(Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, 2008).
In consumer researches, there is an assumption which helps evaluate the
effectiveness of the advertisements: the sales of a product and the memory impact
the advertisement of the corresponding products have on the customers-to-be are
positive correlated (Heller, 1956). In other words, if people remember a product
more, they are more likely to purchase it and this leads to a raise of sales.
This implies that any method strengthening the memory on the products
presented will leads to an increase in sales. It is reasonable to expect such strategies
will be frequently used in advertising.
Another popular model on how advertisements operate originates on attitude,
which is an important psychological concept. Attitude can be understood as items
of social knowledge, built from the experiences, beliefs, and feelings generated by the
attitude objects (Zanna & Rempe, 2008). It is believed that advertisements may
influence the audiences attitude and it in turns influence their purchase pattern
(Vakratsas & Ambler, 1999).
Therefore, any theories regarding attitude and influences on attitude may play a
role in advertising. Appeal to attitude is used in advertising (Karders, 2005).
Thanks to the discovery by Pavlov, behaviourism offers a handy way to
manipulate peoples behaviours in advertisements. Classical conditioning and
operant conditioning, hand in hand, can be powerful tools in advertising industry.

THEORIES

Strengthening of Memory
As mentioned above, there is an assumption on the positive relationship
between memory and sales of product. The validity of such assumption is unknown.
However, the impact of advertisements may prove the assumption to be far powerful
from imagination.
This assumption gives us a few insights into how advertisements tick. One main
principle is to make audiences remember your ad. This may be a tough job, as
human brains treat advertisements to be trivial (Krugman, 1965). As trivial incidents
are not attended, in most cases they will be easily forgotten .
Repetition
Intuitively, one way to make trivial things memorable is to repeat it. School kids

all know how to recite an article by repeating it for numerous times. It is therefore
not surprising for companies to repeat their advertisements in extremely high, and
possibly annoying, frequency.
However, simply repeatedly broadcasting one advertisement may do you no
good. It is found that the memory towards a particular advertisement follows an
inverse-U pattern over the frequency being seen (Scott, 1908). Poffenberger (1925)
suggested that plain repetition of the same old advertisement violated our
expectation on advertisement that ads should be giving out new information.
Negative emotion emerges and this may discourage remembering the advertisement.
This begs the advertisers to produce different versions of advertisements differing
only slightly.
Some may doubt the efficiency. But there was research showing that repetition
with variation can prevent the deterioration in memory with frequency being
exposed, or may even strengthen the memory at best (Poffenberger, 1925).
Nordheilm (2003) also provided evidence that advertisements with sufficient
variations will have higher brand recall rate.
Attention
Another has close relation with psychological theory. It is believed that by giving
more attention, the target can be remembered better due to more processing on the
information (Sutherland & Sylvester, 2000). So, various ways that can enhance
audiences attention can also strengthen their memory on the advertisements.
Despite the difficulty in agreeing on a single definition, attention is widely
accepted as limited mental resources which are of human consciousness as suggested
by Styles (2006). Psychologists who are particularly interested in attention usually
investigate how our brains mediate such limited capacity to attend to nearly infinite
information in our everyday life (Styles, 2006).
One interesting property of attention is that we can control where we attend to
relying on executive attention. Also, as attention is limited, human cannot attend to
all incoming stimuli at once (Smith & Kosslyn, 2009). It is theorized that enhanced
attention increase process, so ultimately it can make people remember better
(Sutherland & Sylvester, 2000). This is why advertisers advocate grasping peoples
attention.
A more important question is, How? A rule of thumb is difference. No
matter it is something different with what were in the past, or something so different
that it stands out from the others surrounding it, it definitely catches attention
(Scott, 1908).
Some examples are bright colours among black-and-white
advertisements, novel and creative presentation of products and new and interesting
story plots in advertisements.
Besides capturing attention, holding attention to an advertisement may also
increase memory on it (Scott, 1908). Some advertisers thus put little riddles or puns
in the advertisements. When the audiences see the advertisement, they may try to
solve the riddles or the pun. When they think about it, they pay attention to the
advertisements, and the advertiser can just sit and wait for the reward when sales

rises.
Gestalt Psychology
Some may consider this branch of psychology as
philosophical in nature. However, no one should deny that the
whole branch of perception grew out of it. Gestalt psychology
emphasizes the perception of object as a whole, rather than just
the sum of the parts (Murray, 1995). It is similar to holistic
processing.
This is the trick. As our brains beg for the wholeness of every
object we perceive, if something is missing, our brains will try to
fill in the blanks and make it complete, at least in our mental
image (Heller, 1956). This is known as closure principle. This
phenomenon is not unusual. If we look at figure 1, we are tempted
to think of it as a square, rather than a group of straight lines.
This is how our brains close certain stimuli. This serves a kind
of elaboration generation of information. Although we do not
create the bit of information, we actively produce what the
information should look like. According to generation effect, this
kind of elaboration can promote consolidation of memory
(Slamecka & Graf, 1978).
Actually, there is an experiment proving such phenomenon.
Heller (1956) conducted an experiment and see whether missing
letters in slogans would increase participants memory on them.
The result confirmed that missing letters may cause higher
recognition rate of the slogans.
The application to the real world is to deliberately miss out
one or two letters in the brand name, product name or slogan. Of
course, a real miss of letter will be perceived as mistake and no
advertiser will allow it. One way is to skew some of the letters of
the words (figure 2). The audiences are then forced to complete
the words in their brain, in turn strengthen their memory on it.
This is not only applicable to words. This is often seen in
graphical logo design (figure 3). By not completing the shape
intended, the same effect can be expected.
Cueing
Cueing does not enhance your memory, but it may make you
recall the brand better whenever you need related products. It
works like classical conditioning, but do not produce the same
effect as it does not increase nor decrease certain behaviours.
Cueing is done when a cue is paired with the recall target. With
sufficient repetition, people may readily recall the target word
after the cue is presented.

Figure 1 Although
the
shape is incomplete, you will
see it as a square no matter
what.

Figure 2 You
may
not
notice, but the O in TWO
is not closed. Although it
may escape from your
awareness, you brain do
work to close the circle, and
this
inevitably
increases
your memory to this logo.
Source: logo of a business
company called Nine Two
Five (925).

Figure 3 Please
pay
attention to the top of
pandas head. We can see
that no line close there.
Instead, we feel like there is
an invisible arc closing its
head.
Source:
logo
of
Wildlife Fund (WWF).

World

If an ad keep repeating the slogan feeling good? Have a Coca Cola! you will
probably recall have a Coca Cola! each time you hear feeling good? Pairing the
brand name with everyday language can increase brand recall (Sutherland &
Sylvester, 2000). If you coincidentally want a cup of drink at the moment, it is very
likely that you will go and buy a can of Coca Cola.
The tie-up of pop songs with the advertisements works in similar way. You may
recall the brand when you listen to the song (Sutherland & Sylvester, 2000).
Attitude Appeals
There are three components for attitude. First, it is cognition, our awareness
and understanding of the world. The second one is affect, which is our consistent
belief or opinion on certain things, including feelings and evaluations. Lastly, it is
conation, or some may name it as action or behaviour (O'Shaughnessy &
O'Shaughnessy, 2004).
Functions of Attitude
Four types of functions are derived from attitudes components. They are,
namely, knowledge function, value-expressive function, ego-defensive function and
adjustment or adjustive function (Katz, 2008).
Knowledge function is obviously derived from the cognition part. It is believed
that knowledge function is to sum up information to enhance decision making
(Karders, 2005).
Value-expressive function and ego-defensive function are related to the affect
part. The former helps individuals express their own moral values and opinions to
other in social settings, as its name suggests (Karders, 2005). It can promote social
interactions. The later, claimed Katz (2008), has close relationship with Freudian
Psychology, as it works like defence mechanism it helps individuals maintain good
feeling about themselves and shield them from threats, either imaginary or real
(Karders, 2005).
Adjustment function is similar to the pattern of behaviour noted by
behaviourism (Katz, 2008); people have tendency to approach pleasant object, event
or people, and want to avoid unpleasant ones (Karders, 2005). With no doubt, this
comes from the conation component of attitude.
Application in Advertising
These are not only theories. Advertising industry used these functions in
appealing to attitude. One big concept that readers must have in mind is, attitude
works in two different directions: promotion-focused and prevention-focused. The
former aims to promote certain attitude, while the later wants to inhibit it.
Due to the knowledge function, the advertisers try to rely on the audiences
thinking when they design the advertisements. In promotion-focused ways, the
advertiser would present features of products and let the potential customers to have
their own inferences from the statements (Karders, 2005). Usually, if the inferences

are correctly drawn, the audience should be able to derive the good outcome of using
the advertised product (Karders, 2005). Prevention-focused technique emphasizes
what unpleasant results can be avoided by using the product (Karders, 2005). Some
sales may deliberately present the information more ambiguously to cause confusion
in their customers-to-be. This creates a need for closure and some may make the
decision to purchase so that the knowledge function can be at rest after it (Karders,
2005).
Using the self-expressive function, celebrity advertisements and nerd alert ads
are promotion-focused and prevention-focused respectively.
Celebrity
advertisements use image appeal (Karders, 2005). This creates a desire to be like the
person portrayed in the advertisements and may make the audiences buy their
products ultimately. Sexual selection works in similar ways by pairing the product
with a person perceived as successful and sexually desirable (being a potential mate)
of the same sex with the target audience (Cuno, 2009). Nerd alert ads work in
different way. The advertisements project people who do not use their products as
nerds (Karders, 2005). If the audience feel repulsive to being a nerd, this may make
them buy the advertised products.
Promotion-focused and prevention-focused strategies in advertising using egodefensive function aim to provide sense of security and ways to avoid threats
respectively (Karders, 2005). Sometimes we see authority figures or people
pretending to be authority figures in advertisements. This gives people an assurance
that the product is effective because if the doctor says it can cure headache, it must
work. If the ads can also demonstrate how the product advertised can remove any
unwanted outcomes, this may also persuade the audience to give it a thought when
they have to buy that kind of product.
Adjustment function of attitude may look similar to the ego-defensive function
at the first glance. With deeper examination we would know that adjustment
function relies on the consequences of the action taken (Karders, 2005) and is highly
similar to operant conditioning. Simply by presenting how the product can induce
pleasure (promotion-focused) and remove pain (prevention-focused) can yield
effective results (Karders, 2005).
Conditioning
Classical conditioning, evaluative conditioning and operant conditioning are
three main concepts in extreme behaviourism. They describe how human being may
be controlled and influenced by their environment.
Classical Conditioning
No student of psychology major would have not heard about Pavlov and his dog.
Because of the incontrollable salivation of the dog when it hears the bell signalling
the time for meal without the meal given, Pavlov discovered a phenomenon called
classical conditioning.
Classical conditioning involves pairing of a conditioned stimulus (CS) and an

unconditioned stimuli (US). CS is a neutral stimulus that triggers no response, while

US will trigger some response naturally. The response which naturally results from
US will be conditioned with CS. With sufficient exposure to this pairing, CS will be
able to trigger the response and become a conditioned response (CR) (Pavlov, 1960).
Most people should be familiar with the advertisement campaign Happiness
Factory of Coca Cola. The audiences are infected by the delighting atmosphere of
the advertisements. Is this just a piece of artwork of the advertiser? Is this just the
creativity spurt of the video producer? Psychologists would bet no.
When you are enjoying imagining the fantasy land in the advertisement, this
feeling of joy is conditioned with the brand Coca Cola with sufficient exposure to
the same advertisement. Then, whenever you see a can of Coke, you will recall the
joyful feeling in the ads. It is very likely that you will buy a can of Coke to maintain
that joyful feeling in you.
Evaluative Conditioning
Instead of pairing of neutral stimuli, classical conditioning can be done with
stimuli with preference. This will, hopefully, make the audience like the product
advertised by pairing it with another liked item (Houwer, 2009) celebrity, popular
cartoons or cute illustrations.
This is another reason, other than attitude appeal, that celebrity is frequently
used in advertisements. Of course this is not risk-free. If the celebrity is found to be
involved in scandal or crime later, the conditioning effect will disappear immediately
(Houwer, 2009). Another reason that this may not work is that, in the writers
humble opinion, the celebrity used is not as popular as the advertiser expected.
To strengthen the effect of evaluative conditioning, some advertisers may
increase the frequency of their ads. An interesting point is, the effect of conditioning
follow the same inverse U-shape like plain repetition of advertisements the more
you repeat it without variation, the weaker the conditioning is (Nordhielm, 2003).
Of course things are not as simple as this. At least the conditioning will not cease if
the conditioned feature is simple like, plain squares, circles and lines. However, it is
found that if both the condition stimuli and unconditioned stimuli are complex items
that involved elaboration in semantic level, the more you present it, the less powerful
it become after the peak is reached (Nordhielm, 2003). The solution is mentioned
before repetition with variation. Now we know that there is more than one reason
why advertisements have several versions.
There is one factor that may enhance conditioning out of the advertisers
control: your awareness to the advertisements when you watch them. Nordhielm
(2003) found that during television watching, if conscious processing is not involved
or the viewer cannot defend himself or herself against the message intended by the
advertiser, the viewer will be more persuaded. A dangerous fact is that, as pointed
out by Sutherland and Sylvester (2000), people start to relax after the tenth second
they star at the television. This creates a hypnotic or trance-like quality during
television watching (Sutherland & Sylvester, 2000). This probably makes the
audience at a vulnerable state to the conditioning planned by the advertisers.

Operant Conditioning
Burrhus Frederic Skinner is the famous psychologist who refined the theory of
operant conditioning to extremely detailed extent. It is found that certain behaviours
can be increased by giving rewards (positive reinforcement) or removing undesirable
stimulus (negative reinforcement). Behaviours can also be decreased by giving
punishment (Weiten, 2008).
You may wonder how people are awarded by watching advertisements. After all,
the current technology does not allow advertisers to give out candies to the
audiences. The good thing is reward does not have to be physical.
No one should be strange to the satisfaction brought about after working out a
riddle or understanding a pun. This is the trick. Besides capturing your attention,
riddles and puns can be used to produce good feeling after you work that out. In no
doubt you will feel better towards the ad. Then, it is very likely that you will like the
product more (Sutherland & Sylvester, 2000).
Miscellaneous
There are some psychological theories which are not under the three big tenets
above, yet undoubtedly have potential contribution to advertisements.
A well-known one among psychologists is mere exposure. It is said that the
mere exposure to certain object may produce preference to that object when being
made to make a choice. With repetition, this may produce a sense of familiarity,
which further enhances preference for the product (Scott, 1908).
Music itself makes slogan more memorable. An experiment provided evidence
for enhancement of memory of verses of texts. It is found that the recall rate of text
is significantly higher when the participants repeatedly hear it sung than hear it
spoken. The extinction found due to delay is also minimal (Wallace, 1994).
Halo effect is the influence of ones overall judgement of a target to specific
attributes (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977). For example, if you feel good to an ad as a
whole, this may influence your feeling towards the product, being a specific feature of
the ad, too.
Perceived popularity may also be responsible for the effect of advertisements.
As people tend to conform to the major trend, by claiming being the top product may
produce perceived popularity (Hollis, 1996; Rein, Kotlet, & Stoller, 1987).
Interestingly, repeating the advertisement may heighten the perceived popularity as
well (Sutherland & Sylvester, 2000).

ANALYSIS

A Critique

As critical thinkers, we should take everything with a grain of salt. Can the
theories above really explain what advertisements are doing?
Challenges to the Assumption
First of all, the assumption that memory to the brand or the product is positively
correlated with sales is just an assumption. Remembering a brand does not
guarantee buying of the product as a definite consequence. It is not hard to recall
some brands that you cannot forget but will never buy.
In addition, the relationship between memory and sales is complicated. Even if
remembering the brand can influence purchase pattern, no evidence provide that the
influence must be in positive direction. If the advertisement gives the audience a
good impression, of course it is not surprised that people will tend to buy that
product if they remember it. However, if an advertisement annoys people, it may
drive people away even if it is better remembered.
The assumption simplifies the matter which is complicated in nature, and we
should be aware that the same rule may not be expected in the real world.
Can Memory really help?
The methods said to be increase your memory value on certain products may
increase your tendency in buying it, but we should be careful on interpreting this
phenomenon is it really the enhanced memory on the product that makes you buy,
or is it something else?
Repetition may work because it produces a sense of familiarity. Thus, it is the
sense of familiarity instead of remembering it that makes you like and buy the
product.
Creative presentations are said to attract attention which promotes memory, but
people may love the product just because they appreciate the creativity of the
advertiser.
Gestalt psychology may just serve creative and aesthetic purpose. Although the
experiment proved that missing letters may enhance memory 0n certain slogan, the
design of the experiment is unnatural and it is hard to generalize it. In the
experiment design, asterisks are used to replace letters (Heller, 1956), but no
advertiser will do the same thing in their advertisements. We also face difficulty in
isolating this factor in reality as it may simply be the beauty of the design that gets
people remembering the ads.
Cueing may be doing the thing we expect, but we still cannot eliminate the
possibility that cueing works actually in the opposite direction people may like the

slogan because, being paired with an everyday language cue, it is familiar or catchy.
Then, the liking of the slogan influence peoples preference on the brand of the
product. In this case, we cannot conclude that it is cueing that makes people
remember the brand.
What Attitude is really doing?
Attitude appeal sounds powerful.
differences.

However, the theory ignores individual

Knowledge function highly depends on the ability of the audiences to make

inferences. If, unfortunately, the targeted audiences of a particular ad are of a more
literal type not good at extracting meaning from statements, they may think that
the advertisement is uninformative.
Some may also argue that celebrity ads do not work for a minority of people who
do not admire celebrities. Although majority of the population envy, and may even
anticipate becoming, a celebrity, we cannot ignore the minority who do not. Of
course, this depends on the targeted market of the advertisement. If the advertiser is
not promoting products with small market, using celebrity will be a quite effective
way.
Nerd alert ads may have negative effect. The minority of nerds will probably
hate these ads. Despite the fame of the Get a Mac campaign produced by Apple
Inc., the using of a dull and inflexible character to represent a PC (with Microsoft
Window OS possibly) may annoy the computer geeks who love Microsoft by
associating such a negative image with PC. This kind of ads may work on people who
do not have preference on either side, but they will probably offend the group of
nerds and this part of the market is not secured. Some people may even dislike the
kind of attack displayed in the advertisement and prefer the product associated with
nerds.
Whats going on with Conditioning?
Conditioning faces the same difficulty with attitude not all people response in
the same way to conditioning.
Not all advertisements trying to classically condition people succeed,
particularly ads for new estates. The advertisers usually try to create an atmosphere
of a grand, big and decorated place. But some go too far to the extent of producing a
fantasy land. Audiences who expect informative and realistic advertisements will not
get the advertisements. They may even refuse to take the estate advertised into
consideration, thinking that such estate does not exist and feeling deceived.
Evaluative conditioning is not much better than celebrity advertisements. It is

hard to identify a figure that is favourable to everyone. What is liked varies from
person to person.
Operant conditioning faces the risk that not everyone could understand the pun
or answer the riddle. If the advertiser put on a very rear pun, then they should
expect only a minority of people will feel rewarded watching their ads. In the same
way, an advertisement may fail if the riddle incorporated is too difficult for the
average population.
In this case, the advertisement may be regarded as
uninformative or incomprehensible, and stuffed into the trash bin of human mind.
Consequences
Although the theories may not be adequate in explaining why the
advertisements work, we cannot ignore the impact of advertising and the
consequences following it.
It is not hard to imagine the possible effect of celebrity ads on various brands.
The famous brands nearly use all kinds of advertising techniques in their ads
celebrity ads, classical conditioning, attitude appeal and etcetera. It is not surprising
that if the faithful constant consumers of those brands are under effect of those
advertisements. This should be paid extra attention to as quite a number of people
bankrupt because they spend a large proportion of their properties on brandy
products.
It is worth paying attention to ads of financial services. They portrayed
luxurious life on their ads and attempt to make it a reason of getting loan or using
credit cards. Currently, a lot of people are in debt because of loan and consumption
of credit cards. They are not aware of the consequences of borrowing loans and using
credit cards without financial planning. And the ads that avoid telling them the
negative aspects may increase the number of people doing so without careful
planning and management of their properties.
A Review on the Presentation in School Talk
After this literature review, it is found that what is presented in school talks can
contain more theoretical aspect of the related issue. Without explaining the theories,
the audiences may not be persuaded that advertisements are powerful. We have to
acknowledge the fact that few people are aware of the influence of advertisements.
Another pressing issue of the school talks on advertising is that, the examples
used are not closely related enough to the targeted audiences (secondary students).
Few students would pay attention to advertisements of credit card, as most of them
are not qualified to apply for a credit card that that age. Another reason is that they
do not have to worry about money because the family will support them financially.
It would be better if the examples are drawn from ads that advertising the products
that they will be likely to use, such as the advertisement of soft drinks, restaurants,
stationeries or entertainment equipments.

The speech also does not include the impact and effect of advertisements. This
faces the risk of not raising the awareness of the audiences to a sufficient level that
can counter the influences of advertisements. It is better to demonstrate the effect of
advertisements with closely related examples to the audiences. This, besides raising
their interest when being invited to participate, can also raise their awareness to the
issue and lead them to think about advertisements critically.
No Counterattack?
However, the impact of advertisements is not irreversible.
Although conditioning seems powerful, it is at the same time a double blade
sword. If the advertisers can pair up healthy looking celebrities or delightful
atmosphere with their product, we can also pair up the real consequence of using
them with the products. For example, there are a lot of pictures of teeth after over
consumption of soft drinks circulating on the internet. This is counter-conditioning
according to Houwer (2009). In clinic, it is a therapeutic technique and it is called
aversive conditioning the pairing up of unpleasant stimuli and undesirable
behaviours.
However, the effect of counter-conditioning may not be as promising as we
thought. Martin Lindstrom co-operated with two scientists, Gemma Calvert and
Richard Silberstein, and conducted an experiment, trying to determine the
effectiveness of the warnings on the cigarette packages. Pictures of lung tumours,
open sores and disintegrating teeth are printed on cigarette packages, which are
supposed to be aversive to any potential consumer of the pack of cigarette. The
participants of the experiment reported a decreased desire of smoking after viewing
those warnings. However, an fMRI scanning revealed that nucleus accumbens was
activated when the smokers view the warnings that area will be activated whenever
a person desires something biologically. The magnitude of the activation did not
vary statistically no matter the smoker view the warnings or not. In other words, the
warnings, which are supposed to counter-condition the cigarette ads, activated the
brain to desire the very thing that the person should not consume (Lindstrom,
2008).
Of course, despite the biological urge to smoke a cigarette, it is possible to quit
smoking by will power. By presenting the consequences of smoking, we can
persuade people that smoking is harmful, and they should be able to make the
inference of the message no smoking through knowledge function of attitude. Yet,
whether the individual will follow their chemical signals of their brain or the logical
deduction of their mind really depends on the individuals preference.
It seems that counter-conditioning may not be an efficient way to combat
advertising. However, it is essential to point out that, only smokers will still have

their nucleus accumbens activated when viewing the warnings. If counterconditioning cannot stop smokers from smoking, at least it can let non-smokers give
a second thought before trying the first cigarette.
Another way is to make people aware of the real impact of the advertisements.
As mentioned above, when people are relaxed or are not ready to defend the
messages conveyed, they will be the most easily conditioned ones. If we can
demonstrate the real impact of advertisements, people will start to be sceptical
towards ads. This can greatly reduce the effect of any kind of persuasion in ads.
Lastly, we can point out the fact that advertising is a kind of mental
manipulation. Hypnotisers know that people do not want to be controlled, and will
try their best to resist being manipulated (Sidis, 1898). By pointing this out, people
would be more resistant towards any kind of messages in ads.
Although the above methods seem possible, there are a few concerns that we
have to consider. We need more time to process negative sentences and more errors
are expected (Wason & Johnson-Laird, 1972). According to operant conditioning,
people may tend to dislike negative sentences as processing them is not rewarding.
Rather, more energy is used and there is possible frustration following if any error is
made. Thus this brings up the concern of the practical issue of how to convey the
above message without putting too many negations in the passage. For example,
instead of do not believe advertisements immediately, we may use give it a second
thought before believing ads.

CONCLUSION
The advertisements we watch everyday uses several psychological principles to
succeed in finding customers.
They try to make people remember their brand, so that when people need
similar product they will go for their brand. The advertisers repeat their ads, capture
audiences attention to their ads, make incomplete slogans and brand logos to let
audiences mind remember them well by closing the slogans and logos mentally and
pair up their brands with everyday language.
The advertisers also appeal to the audiences attitude. They try to exhibit the
advantages of their own product, tell the audiences that using their product can make
them cool and popular and let them know that their product can make them happy
and remove unpleasant consequences.
Classical conditioning, evaluative conditioning and operant conditioning are also
used in advertisements. By pairing up happy stimulus with the product people may
recall the happiness whenever they see the product. If people frequently see a
product get paired up with a person they like, they may like the product
consequently. People may find a brand good if every time they see its ads, they feel
rewarded by getting the puns and answering the riddles in the ads.

Mere exposure can make people like the product because of the sense of
familiarity. Incorporating slogans into melodies can make people remember the
slogans well. Halo effect makes peoples liking on the whole advertisements
influence their opinion on the advertised products. Producing perceived popularity
may also attract more customers.
However, by counter-conditioning, raising peoples awareness towards effect of
advertisements and pointing out the manipulating nature of the advertisements, we
may reduce the effect of advertising industry.
From these strategies, we may promote the correct attitude towards
advertisements, and ultimately correct the citizens attitude towards buying.

(5578 Words)

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