Thought Manipulation: The Use and Abuse of Psychological Trickery by Sapir Handelman

and comedy can be very thin. In this respect, laughter is some kind of automatic reflex of emotional activity, at least under our classification (as a “real” good laugh seems to be a spontaneous reaction). Therefore, it would not be too much of exaggeration to wonder if a mechanism that makes us laugh could similarly encourage us to buy.
    In any case, it is easy to assume that black olive growers will not object to us gladly buying their product, and for us, the consumers, it is much more fun to buy out of entertainment. Still, the more serious riddle remains: Are such “amusing” and “irrational” strategies effective and profitable?
    Trying to sell physical goods by attacking or even creating mental deprivations seems to be synonymous with producing artificial demands. To put it differently, manipulative advertising is designed to disturb the rational evaluation of a product by creating the illusion that the product can satisfy desires that it probably cannot. In our previous example, the advertiser is simply trying to take advantage of a person’s depressed sex life in order to turn him into a fanatical consumer of black olives.
    Milton Friedman, the well-known economist, argues that employing Erich Fromm’s psychological techniques is inconsistent with the basic rules of the competitive market: supply, demand, and maximizing profits. In a competitive market, Friedman argues, it is more useful, effective, and profitable to approach “real needs” than create artificial demands. He believes there is not much economic sense in using Erich Fromm’s irrational methods of influence.
    In spite of Friedman’s economic calculations, however, many times it is hard to find a direct relationship between the physical functionality of goods and their appearance in advertisements. For example, the connection between soft drinks and eternal youth, as is the latent message of many advertisements, is not valid. Nevertheless, it seems that this irrational claim, which has held for so many years, is quite profitable for certain soft drinks companies.
    Professor Friedman, who is not blind, notes that even if certain advertisements indeed manufacture “artificial wants,” at least to certain level it is always necessary to compare alternatives for dealing with this issue. The alternatives at stake are free advertising and advertising that is under governmental control. According to Friedman, the first alternative is out of a bad lot, and the second one is a complete disaster.
    ADVERTISEMENTS, REGULATION, AND DECENT SOCIETY
    The controversy over the regulation of advertising in a modern economy is part of a wider dispute concerning the question of how to conduct a decent, stable society. Erich Fromm and Milton Friedman come from two competitive traditions. Fromm’s ideas are rooted in the socialist Frankfurt school, while Friedman believes in a capitalist society conducted as a free, competitive market. The capitalist approach is more relevant and more dominant at the present time. Therefore, I focus most of my attention on the liberal side of the social-political map, but without ignoring criticism from the left.
    When discussing capitalism, it is almost inevitable that Friedrich August von Hayek—a well-known proponent of the free market system—will be mentioned. Hayek’s work is identified with the rebirth of classical liberalism in the twentieth century, and his polemical treatise, The Road to Serfdom , is a watershed in the debate over the question how to construct the foundations of a good society. This short political pamphlet contributed to the shift in attention from modern socialism, the rational conduct of society, to capitalism, the free market system.
    The most severe social issues in the beginning of the twentieth century were the rise and flourish of totalitarian regimes. Towards the middle of this century, the most critical problems were encompassed under the following questions: How does a society prevent