Persuasion marketing and psychological operations

What are your purchasing habits?

If your usual ketchup had a completely different package, would you still buy it?

There are psychological phenomena working while we shop at the store, which is the study of persuasion marketing. Persuasion means to, “pleasantly urge acceptance,” and marketing is processing of, “moving goods from producer to consumer.” Therefore, persuasion marketing is, “the act of positively convincing a consumer to purchase a product from a seller.”

The goal of persuasion marketing is to induce a belief that the product is necessary for the consumer—i.e., “should”, “need to”, “have to” purchase the product—which may influence purchasing behaviour. Persuasion techniques—including visual design—can alter the perception of various types of messages including prices, popularity and validity.

Let’s look at some examples.

Example 1: Pricing and discount scheme text style

Figure 1 demonstrates visual text changes used to price items and discounts. Sizes, fonts and placements subconsciously correspond with our goals as shoppers. Next time you’re out shopping, study the advertising label and observe its design.

Figure 1 — Text persuasion

Example 2: Twitter popularity legitimizes message

Figure 2 is a fictious example demonstrating the influence of numerical scoring and its perceived popularity. On the left, comments are approximately equal to likes, indicating a popular opinion. However, on the left, the retweets and likes have been artifically lowered to produce the appearance of dislikes or a “ratio’ed” effect. This is why the Youtube Dislike button was hidden during COVID-19 vaccination campaigns.

Figure 2 — Numerical scoring increases popularity perception

Example 3: Twitter blue checkmark design

Figure 3 demonstrates how colouring and symbol selection alters the perception of a message. Take for example the Twitter blue checkmark. This simple symbol—when in conjunction with a message—enhances the perceived validity and authority of a message.

Figure 3 — Twitter’s blue checkmark for “verified” accounts

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Psychological Operations

Persuasion marketing exploits unconscious psychological phenomena. The US Military uses psychological techniques to carry out military operations.

“Psychological operations (PSYOP) are operations to convey selected information and indicators to audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.

The purpose of United States psychological operations is to induce or reinforce behavior perceived to be favorable to U.S. objectives.” — Wikipedia

Let’s look at a summary from a Yale persuasive messaging study described in The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter. This study analyzes mass media messaging that encouraged populations to vaccinate against COVID-19. The study measures experimental messaging effectiveness categorized by, “Treatment Names.” We saw similar, “Treaments,” playout during the 2020-2022 vaccination campaigns through mass media.

Why Anger towards the Unvaccinated was Intentional Psychological Manipulation

To generalize and understand this method, let’s create a simple model of persuasion using the Hegelian Dialectic where:

1. Problem - A perceptual opposition of beliefs

2. Reaction - The level of cognitive dissonance in response

3. Solution - A presuasive message accepted as a belief

Rhetorical devices—including social emotionally learned words—are placed in a modal sequence that induce an emotional response, which produces mental stress. Mental stress—i.e., cognitive dissonance—requires a psychological resolution, which may result in the acceptance of the proposed persuasive message. This occurs through either acute or cyclic exposure.

Reinforcement occurs after several cycles of acceptance when perceptual opposition becomes perceptual agreement, which creates an emotional attachment to the persuasive message. External opposition to the persuasive message may produce cognitive dissonance and result in projection as a means of resolution—i.e., message propagation.

The persuasive messages from the study include:

1. Intention to Vaccinate

2. Advise Friend

3. Judge Non-Vaccinator

Table 1 lists sample text from The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter.

Keywords are labelled in bold and explicit modality is underlined. Column 1 is the highlighted sample text, column 2 is the assessed modality and column 3 is the assessed emotional conflict. The text is an active suggestion if modality is a necessity, whereas possibility represents a passive suggestion. (Note that assertoric refers to a not possible not belief, which is equivalent to necessitity.)

The purpose of these sample texts is to accept one or more of the three persuasive messages. The degree of individual cognitive dissonance impacts the probability of acceptance.

Table 1 — Dialectic assessment of sample text

As you read through the sample text make note of:

1. How the ordering of social emotionally learned words affects your emotional perception, i.e., keyword placement is not accidental.

2. Your emotional state if the modality is a necessity vs possibility.

3. Your emotional state based on the emotional conflict.
   i.e., are you more affected by fear, induced emotion, self-interest or self-image?

This is is a clear example of how the recent COVID-19 psychological operation conveyed selected information to influence emotions, motives, and objective reasoning and alter the behavior of governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.

Psychological Protection

How do we protect ourselves against these malicious tactics?

Ethos

Let’s analyze a quote by Yuri Bezmenov, a KGB defector who fled to the West from Communist Russia while deployed in India.

“A person who is demoralized is unable to assess true information.” — Yuri Bezmenov

The word demoralize affects an individual’s ability to assess information. From Merriam-Webster dictionary, demoralize means: 1) to cause to turn aside or away from what is good or true or morally right : to corrupt the morals of; 2) to weaken the morale of; 3) to upset or destroy the normal functioning of, and; 4) to throw into disorder.

Our primary level protection comes from ethics. A moral individual with integrity is more difficult to persuade than someone immoral and unprincipled.

Truth does not matter to those who are immoral and ideologically subverted.

Never surrender your morals and principles.

Logos

Our secondary level of protection is logical assessment. Logic does not resemble spoken language. “True information,” and, “False information,” in spoken language is a belief and not logical fact. It is mathematically impossible to prove if information is True or False.

Perceived information is either possible or not possible, which is why scientific analysis uses confidence intervals to measure observational probability. However, this level of rigour is not feasible when naturally consuming information. The default position for assessing information is doubt—i.e., information is maybe True or maybe False.

Assume information is possibly false and prepare contingencies accordingly.

Pathos

The last level of protection requires emotional intelligence.

“[Emotional Intelligence is] defined as the ability to perceive, use, understand, manage, and handle emotions. People with high emotional intelligence can recognize their own emotions and those of others, use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, discern between different feelings and label them appropriately, and adjust emotions to adapt to environments.” — Wikipedia

Awareness of your emotional changes can indicate if a message is attempting to produce mental stress. This suspicion allows you to avoid believing persuasive messages and re-evaluate information without reaction.

Information that induces an emotional response is attempting to persuade you.

Persuasion marketing and psychological operations silently exist in your everyday life.

This is what I call the Invisible War—the war on the human mind.

Always be aware of the information you consume. It could be poison.

Check out this thread to view a collection of propaganda research.