The Hidden Persuaders:
What makes us buy, believe – and even vote – the way we do?
by Vance Packard
David McKay Co, 1957; Random House, 1957; Pocket Books of Canada, LTD., 1957, Montreal; ASIN 0-679-50030-8
“In this book you’ll discover a world of psychology professors turned merchandisers. You’ll learn how they operate, what they know about you and your neighbors and how they are using that knowledge to sell you cake mixes, cigarettes, cars, soaps and even ideas.
“The Hidden Persuaders casts a penetrating light into the murky world of the motivational researchers. It tells how these shock troops of the advertising world are subtly charting your inner thoughts, fears and dreams so that they can influence your daily living.
“Written with humor and in nontechnical style, The Hidden Persuaders weighs the successes and failures of their persuasion — where they are aiming to take you, and how!”
Excerpts:
“This book is an attempt to explore a strange and rather exotic new area of American life. It is about the large-scale efforts being made, often with impressive success, to channel our unthinking habits, our purchasing decisions, and our thought processes by the use of insights gleaned from psychiatry and the social sciences. Typically these efforts take place beneath our level of awareness; so that the appeals which move us are often, in a sense, ‘hidden.’ The result is that many of us are being influenced and manipulated, far more than we realize, in the patterns of our everyday lives.
“Some of the manipulating being attempted is simply amusing. Some of it is disquieting, particularly when viewed as a portent of what may be ahead on a more intensive and effective scale for us all. Co-operative scientists have come along providentially to furnish some awesome tools.
“The use of mass psychoanalysis to guide campaigns of persuasion has become the basis of a multimillion-dollar industry. Professional persuaders have seized upon it in their groping for more effective ways to sell us their wares — whether products, ideas, attitudes, candidates, goals, or states of mind.”
From Chapter 1, “The Depth Approach”
“We still have a strong defense against such persuaders: we can choose not to be persuaded. In virtually all situations we still have the choice, and we cannot be too seriously manipulated if we know what is going on. It is my hope that this book may contribute to the general awareness. As Clyde Miller pointed out in The Process of Persuasion, when we learn to recognize the devices of the persuaders, we build up a ‘recognition reflex.’ Such a recognition reflex, he said, ‘can protect us against the petty trickery of small-time persuaders operating in the commonplace affairs of everyday life, but also against the mistaken or false persuasion of powerful leaders...’”
From Chapter 23, “The Question of Morality”
Contents
- The Depth Approach
Persuading Us As Consumers
- The Trouble With People
- So Ad Men Become Depth Men
- ...And the Hooks Are Lowered
- Self-Images For Everybody
- Rx For Our Secret Distresses
- Marketing Eight Hidden Needs
- The Built-in Sexual Overtone
- Back To The Breast, And Beyond
- Babes In Consumerland
- Class And Caste In The Salesroom
- Selling Symbols To Upward Strivers
- Cures For Our Hidden Aversions
- Coping With Our Pesky Inner Ear
- The Psycho-Seduction of Children
- New Frontiers For Recruiting Customers
Persuading Us As Citizens
- Politics And The Image Builders
- Molding “Team Players” For Free Enterprise
- The Engineered Yes
- Care And Feeding Of Positive Thinkers
- The Packaged Soul?
In Retrospect
- The Question Of Validity
- The Question Of Morality
Reviews
“Fascinating, entertaining and thought-stimulating!”— The New York Times Book Review
“A brisk, authoritative, funny and frightening report on how manufacturers, fundraisers and politicians are attempting to turn the American mind into a kind of catatonic dough that will buy, give or vote at their command.”
— The New Yorker
“Book you must not miss!”
— Cleveland Press
Other books by Vance Packard:
- The Human Side of Animals
- The Status Seekers
- The Waste Makers
Related sites
Book Summary and Critique: The Hidden Persuaders
http://www.alanperlman.com/source/samples/booksum_pursuade.html
Vance Packard — Pop Sociologist of Marketing Scams and Much More
http://www.goodbyemag.com/nov/packard.htm
“Vance Packard burst upon the scene in 1957 with his best-selling The Hidden Persuaders, a book which is useful to contemplate, both for its revelations of the psychological manipulations used by advertisers and the rise of irony in pop culture.
“The Hidden Persuaders sold over a million copies — a stunning achievement for a work of non-fiction at the time and still a pretty fair figure for pop sociology. In THP, Packard revealed that marketers had discovered myriad ways of selling that played havoc with consumers’ brains.”
PR Watch
Public Interest Reporting on the PR/Public Affairs Industry
by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton
http://www.prwatch.org/
“PR Watch offers investigative reporting on the public relations industry. We help the public recognize manipulative and misleading PR practices by exposing the activities of secretive, little-known propaganda-for-hire firms that work to control political debates and public opinion. “Whether the issue is health, consumer safety, environmental preservation or democracy and world peace, citizens today find themselves confronted by a bewildering array of hired propagandists paid to convince the public that junk food is nutritious, pollution is harmless, and that what’s good for big business and big government is good for the rest of us.
“Unlike advertising, public relations is often hard to recognize. ‘The best PR is invisible,’ say industry insiders. To spin the news in favor of their clients, PR firms specialize in setting up phony citizens’ groups and scientific ‘experts’ who spin out contrived research using junk science.”
Six of the most notorious PR propaganda firms are the Rendon Group, Ruder-Finn, Hill & Knowlton, Shandwick, Burson-Marsteller and Ketchum PR.
Media Beat
http://www.fair.org/media-beat/
“Media Beat is the insightful weekly syndicated column on media and politics written by FAIR associate Norman Solomon. It runs in newspapers across the country.
“Utne Reader called Solomon one of ‘the fiercest and most articulate media critics around.’ A Los Angeles Times reviewer wrote: ‘The bold, muckraking tone of these columns offers a welcome respite from the decerebrated discourse that too often passes for contemporary journalism.’”
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting — FAIR
http://www.fair.org/
“FAIR, the national media watch group, has been offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986. We work to invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practices that marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints.
“As an anti-censorship organization, we expose neglected news stories and defend working journalists when they are muzzled. As a progressive group, FAIR believes that structural reform is ultimately needed to break up the dominant media conglomerates, establish independent public broadcasting and promote strong non-profit sources of information.”
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