Reddit reviews The Hidden Persuaders

that's hardly an original idea

This The Hidden Persuaders goes back to 1957

A few things:

The Hidden Persuaders is a classic on advertising. Manipulative tactics associate products with happiness,subconscious desires, and inner longings. But products themselves aren't really going to meet those inner needs, so advertising them that way is kind of deceptive. It's difficult to say it's explicitly lying, but there's something insidious to it.

Advertising allows anyone with funds and something to sell to frame the discussion on anything. In framing the discussion, one can be entirely truthful, while biasing them towards whatever it is you want them to do. There is incredible power in defining the paradigm that people use to think about your product or products in general. It's still not necessarily lying, but leaves people without a full perspective.

One example of this is the promotion of symbols as reality. Here's an essay on this, related more to propaganda, but it's relevant here. Today there is so much branded merchandise: if you're a fan, you can get Star Wars or Minions on literally anything at any store. But the promotion of these products basically relies on the paradigm that a representation of the thing you like is as good as that thing, or that being a "true fan" means loving all the related merch. It isn't, though--a Star Wars mug is nothing like the actual experience of watching Star Wars, and Minion cereal is nothing like watching Despicable Me. The idea that liking something means liking a bunch of useless crap which happens to be related to it via a symbol is a manufactured paradigm which helps companies sell things, but I doubt it actually makes anyone any happier.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/097884310X/ref=nosim/bookfindercom0e

The Hidden Persuaders Good read on the fusion of psychology and advertising.

Much of our behavior comes from parts of the brain that are not accessible to the awareness of a person. When you ask a person why they did something, more often than not you will get a shore story that the awareness makes up to explain the behavior but the real motivating factors are completely different and come from deeper parts of the brain.

For example

Researchers found that as a probation judge got closer and closer to lunchtime he was less and less likely to grant parole. If he were asked why he had not granted parole in a specific case he would site things about the defendant or the case but never site the fact that his blood sugar was dropping and it was impairing his cognitive abilities. The real reason was that it was safer and required less brain function to deny parole than to think through the facts and take a chance on a parole going bad.

The story his brain concocted to justify denying parole was completely disconnected from the real reason which was low blood sugar and the resulting cognitive impairment.

If you ask him why he denied parole in this case you are wasting his breath and yours. He doesn't know the answer but will give you a cock and bull story that seems plausible in the situation but really has nothing to do with why he was motivated to deny parole.

Love sex and marriage are particularly subject to this phenomena. If you want a load of meaningless blather go back and ask your ex partners why they left you. Guaranteed the answer they give you will have little to do with why they left. Even if there was a sharp break in the relationship like an infidelity that was found out there will be little or no understanding of what motivated the infidelity.

For more on this Google 'Priming in psychology' 'Psychology memory priming' 'Examples of priming'

This has been known since Freud but really came into prominence in the age of advertising. Here is a book that was published in the fifties. https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Persuaders-Vance-Packard/dp/097884310X