Story of Psychology - Morton Hunt [417]
Dichter was not the only one with this idea; others aware of the psychology of the unconscious were beginning to do similar work. But he was the key figure in what was known as “motivational research.” He used psychoanalytic theory to formulate hypotheses that he then tested by means of interviews, questionnaires, and sample ads on several hundred families in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, where he had his headquarters. Ebullient and dynamic, Dichter unabashedly proclaimed that a successful advertising agency “manipulates human motivations and desires and develops a need for goods with which the public has at one time been unfamiliar—perhaps even undesirous of purchasing.”61
A good example of his work is the first study in which he used motivational research. His client was Compton, the agency that had the Ivory Soap account. As Dichter recalled years later, he told agency executives, “Bathing is a psychologically liberating ritual. You cleanse yourself not only of dirt but of guilt.” The evidence he produced by means of interviews and questionnaires convinced them; with his help they adopted as their ad copy “Be smart and get a fresh start with Ivory Soap…and wash all your troubles away.”62
He also radically changed the thrust of cigarette advertising. In the early 1950s, cigarette ads either stressed enjoyment or reassured readers about the effects of smoking on health. Dichter considered both approaches feeble. The typical American, in his analysis, was basically puritanical and tended to feel guilty when using any self-indulgent product. Accordingly, Dichter told agency people handling a cigarette account, “Every time you sell a self-indulgent product, you have to assuage guilt feelings and offer absolution.” To identify such guilt-reducing rationalizations for smoking, he made an in-depth study of 350 smokers and discovered a dozen “functional” reasons why one should smoke: to relieve tension, to be sociable, to convey a sense of virility, and more. As a result, his client’s ads, and soon many others’, showed people smoking under pressure, in company, and out on the range.63
For some years, motivational research was the hot idea in advertising and still is used to some extent. But by the 1970s advertisers had become less enamored of psychoanalytic trickery—it had not paid off as dramatically as they expected—and began turning to later psychological research for techniques of covert persuasion.
One useful finding, first made in the late 1960s and reaffirmed repeatedly in more recent years, was Robert Zajonc’s discovery of the “mere exposure” effect. As we saw earlier, Zajonc found that repeated exposure to even a meaningless symbol creates in the viewer a sense of familiarity and a favorable response. Psychological consultants to advertising agencies advised their clients that frequent brief repetition of the brand name and logo, even without reasoned and time-consuming argument, would sway the viewer. Many advertising agencies tested the method and found that it worked. The endless reiteration of a product name during a long football game or tennis match (along with, of course, macho or sexy imagery, scenes of fun in the sun, and the like) has its effect. When fans shop for beer or tennis shoes and come on the name they have seen so often, they have an automatic and unthinking favorable response.64
Over the past several decades, the method has also become endemic in TV commercials for political candidates, to the detriment of the democratic process. In place of reasoned argument about issues, the prevalent practice is to subject viewers to a barrage of thirty-second or even shorter commercials hammering home the candidate’s name and simplistic “sound bites” that change many people’s preferences through