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Neuromarketing.

Making advertising as insidious as possible through neuroscience:

Neuromarketing?s raison d?être derives from the fact that the brain expends only 2 percent of its energy on conscious activity, with the rest devoted largely to unconscious processing. Thus, neuromarketers believe, traditional market research methods ? like consumer surveys and focus groups ? are inherently inaccurate because the participants can never articulate the unconscious impressions that whet their appetites for certain products.

If pitches are to succeed, they need to reach the subconscious level of the brain, the place where consumers develop initial interest in products, inclinations to buy them and brand loyalty...

But should we worry that a technique that probes subconscious brain patterns might be used to unduly influence consumers, turning them into shopping robots without their knowledge and consent?

And, obviously, the same methods would work in political advertising, ending democracy as we know it. On the plus side: We won't know it. It already happened, right? I mean... #1: Look at who's President. And #2: We're seeing crazy-ass commercials like this:

Full post as published by Althouse on November 15, 2010 (boomark / email).