2 ms·

So what about alcohol, tobacco, coffee, tea, weed, sugar, or fat? And isn't the goal of all ads psychological manipulation?

• zanny 11y ago
  There is a difference between allowing the temptation, and exploiting psychological conditioning. I'd definitely consider arguments that western culture has in many ways developed the advertising industry as a means of systemic psychological manipulation. There are a lot of people who make irrational purchasing decisions based on what is on the TV, and there is some degree of exploitation in that behavior. Practically speaking we want to think that anyone over the age of 18 is a competent rational capable human adult with acceptable brain chemistry, but in practice I'd imagine very few people are perfectly healthy mentally, it is just the degree to which mental illness is apparent. Look at how common depression is, or how diagnostic rates for Autism and ADHD have risen dramatically in the last three decades. That is not to say we have more mentally ill people today, we are just paying more attention to individual psychological profile to deduce that there is much more nuance to mental health than just being insane or not.