First off, advertisements definitely do work via simple association. Humans use liking as a heuristic for virtually all decisions (we decide in favor of things we like), so increasing liking increases purchases fairly reliably. A warmth appeal like a Coke ad with smiling faces will reliably create an association between Coke and positive emotions just because that's how humans are wired. If you activate two concepts together, you link them. This is just how humans work and is the basis of most of cognitive psychology. Many, many things make sense once you start to see things in terms of co-activation and priming.
I think the article has aged much better than that comment, given the recent replication crisis in science. Unless I’m misunderstanding, much of the published research into priming and the like has turned out to be heavily exaggerated.
The article’s theory of cultural imprinting nicely explains why advertisers pay a premium for Superbowl ads. Unless you assume that not only consumers, but advertisers are highly irrational...!
A warmth appeal like a Coke ad with smiling faces will reliably create an association between Coke and positive emotions just because that's how humans are wired. If you activate two concepts together, you link them.
I don’t think that part is a tautology; it’s a specific theory, once thought to be very generally true, now thought to be possibly-partly true.
I’m inclined to agree with the article, that it’s overly simplistic. People aren’t 100% rational, sure, but they also aren’t quite as trivially swayed as that theory assumes.
I think "manipulating behavior" would be a more neutral and correct way to put it. This way, it highlights how some people will reject every ads because they value freedom and independance more than usual, while some others won't mind as long as the ads are useful to them.
I found this comment from the 2014 thread interesting (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8346265):
First off, advertisements definitely do work via simple association. Humans use liking as a heuristic for virtually all decisions (we decide in favor of things we like), so increasing liking increases purchases fairly reliably. A warmth appeal like a Coke ad with smiling faces will reliably create an association between Coke and positive emotions just because that's how humans are wired. If you activate two concepts together, you link them. This is just how humans work and is the basis of most of cognitive psychology. Many, many things make sense once you start to see things in terms of co-activation and priming.
I think the article has aged much better than that comment, given the recent replication crisis in science. Unless I’m misunderstanding, much of the published research into priming and the like has turned out to be heavily exaggerated.
The article’s theory of cultural imprinting nicely explains why advertisers pay a premium for Superbowl ads. Unless you assume that not only consumers, but advertisers are highly irrational...!