Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Make Love Not Scars

This powerful advert is part of an effective campaign based in Delhi that aims to rehabilitate victims of acids attacks and ban the sale of acid. It is incredibly persuasive due to its clever use of shock tactics. The advert copies the style of many popular beauty videos, but with one key difference, the girl presenting is the victim of an acid attack. Dahl, Frankenberger and Machanda (2003) suggest shock tactics are an effective tool for persuasion because they violate norms. This surprises the audience leading them to use additional cognitive processing, such as retention and elaboration, when presented with the shocking message. In addition, a violation of norms leads to cognitive dissonance as it creates an inconsistency between an individuals beliefs and behaviour (Festinger, 1957). For example, an individual may think of themselves as a charitable or caring person, but this advert reminds the viewer of a cause they have not supported. Therefore, the viewer can resolve this dissonance by donating to the charity, turning the negative emotion into a positive one. However, using shock tactics can be risky. They can make people feel uncomfortable and thus, in order to reduce any dissonance they may be feeling, individuals may simply change the channel or hide the ad. ReferencesDahl, D. W., Frankenberget, K.D., & Machanda, R.V. (2003). Does it pay to shock? Reactions to shocking and nonshocking advertising content among university students. Journal of Advertising Research, 43, 268-280. Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Persuasion and Influence 2016-11-18 01:37:00

Loser to lady-killer, listen up. This advert is for a Daihatsu, a functional, spacious, yet very uncool car. “Family men” needing something to drive for the school-run typically purchase it, so it definitely lacks the sexy reputation of an Audi or the flashy displays of wealth from a Lamborghini. Yet this is a very entertaining advert, as it uses humour, and taps into the sort of person that the customers of this model want to be, whilst at the same time pointing out the main desirable feature of the car- how spacious it is. They know that this car won’t fulfil all their lady-killing desires, but this advert includes them in a personal “in-joke,” whilst saying “but seriously, I can hold five children, a buggy, two suitcases, eleven lunch boxes, two dozen toys, six bricks of Lego, and your wife.” There is a huge amount of support for humour in advertising. Sternthal & Craig (1973) explained that humour works in advertising because it creates a positive opinion of the source, resulting in a positive mood in the audience, making them more susceptible to persuasion. Worth & Mackie (1987) exposed students in either a good mood or a neutral mood to either a pro-attitudinal or counter-attitudinal message comprised of either strong or weak arguments. They found that participants who were in a good mood exhibited more signs of reduced systematic processing (an advertisers goldmine), and more attitude change than those in a neutral mood. Furthermore, their responses showed less of a contrast between strong and weak messages than those in the neutral condition. This is excellent news for the Daihatsu, as it means that the humour used in the campaign may lessen the contrast between this model and a better one. Sternthal & Craig (1973) also claim that humour attracts attention, which makes the car more memorable. The availability bias therefore ensures we have this car in the forefront of our minds. Schwartz et al. (1991) demonstrated that participants who were asked to recall six examples of their own assertive behaviour rated themselves as more assertive than those who were asked to recall twelve examples. This is because the condition where they had to recall twelve examples was much harder to do. It can therefore be concluded that if a car was easy to recall due to a humorous advert, people may rate it more highly as they might assume that if it weren’t a good car, they would not have spent so much time thinking about it. Finally, Sternthal & Craig (1973) argue that humour may distract the audience meaning that they are less likely to produce counter-arguments against the message. In the example at hand, the audience could argue that they want a car that is a little sexier than the Daihatsu, however because its’ uncool reputation has been acknowledged in its own advertising campaign, it is protected by a humorous buffer. To conclude, if you actually want to be a lady-killer, this is not the car for you. However if you are ever in the position of having to sell this sort of car, or indeed yourself (e.g. want to ask someone out, but are certain they are out of your league), humour is the way forward. It creates a positive opinion of the source, a positive mood in the audience, will be memorable and therefore easy to recall, and distracts the audience from all the negatives (e.g. a dodgy haircut or the fact you live in your mum’s basement). Good luck. References            Sternthal, B., & Craig, C. (1973). Humour in Advertising. Journal of Marketing, 37(4), 12-18.             Worth, L., & Mackie, D. (1987). The cognitive mediation of positive affect in persuasion. Social cognition, 5(1).             Schwarz, Norbert; Bless, Herbert; Strack, Fritz; Klumpp, Gisela; Rittenauer-Schatka, Helga; Simons, Annette (1991). “Ease of retrieval as information: Another look at the availability heuristic”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 61 (2): 195–202.

Why did I just buy a jumpsuit I am not sure I even want?

For anyone who knows me, I am IN LOVE with online shopping. Most of my student loan goes into funding my ‘hobby’ and it is one I am so not ashamed off. Online shopping really kicked off around 2003 (“The History of Online Shopping in a Nutshell”, 2010) when Amazon posted their first yearly profit, although it had been around prior to this; and it was only a few years after this it found a place in my heart…I think it all started when I was 8 and watched my dad buy our new trampoline online. I was sat with him and helped him choose it and I was SO excited for it to arrive. This excitement got even greater when he told me we didn’t even have to go to the shops to pay for it, his little plastic card had done it for us! The trampoline was to arrive in a week or so. My dad probably regrets letting me sit in on the purchase, for about 4 months afterwards I was buying toys online and getting them delivered home with his ‘little plastic card’. I obviously pretended I had nothing to do with the strange packages arriving at home most weeks, but soon enough I was caught out. Online shopping is great, you don’t have to traipse around the shops getting hot and bothered trying to find an outfit that might not even be there; everything the store has to offer is on one handy web page. As the old ‘endowment effect goes’ – consumers value products more once they actually own it, and simply touching an item may increase a shopper’s sense of ownership and compel the consumer to buy the product (Gregory, 2009). An Ohio State University study demonstrated this effect using coffee mugs (Wolf, Arkes & Muhanna, 2008):          Participants were shown an inexpensive coffee mug and allowed to hold it for either 10 or 30 seconds.          They were then allowed to bid for the mug in a closed (bids cannot be seen) or open (bids can be seen) auction.          Before bidding, the participants were told the retail value of the mug ($3.95 in closed auction, $4.95 in open auction)         Results = People who held the mug for longer bid more         Results = People who held the mug for 30 seconds bid more than the retail price 4 out of 7 times However, with online shopping you don’t even come close to the product, so how do they persuade us to buy anything? This was answered for me a few days ago when I was once again online shopping.   I wasn’t really looking for anything in particular, just browsing, but each time I opened a new item I noticed these pop ups appearing. This is definitely a new feature of the Missguided website, as a loyal customer I know their site inside out, but this was the first time I had seen them use this nifty persuasion technique – Social Proof.Social proof is a phenomenon whereby people assume the actions of others in order to ensure or attempt to reflect the correct behaviour in certain situations. It is a type of conformity, we believe that others have interpreted a situation in a correct way and so we follow their lead. A notable study by Asch demonstrates this effect A group of 8, 1 participant and 7 confederates to the study, viewed 3 linesThey were asked to say which of the 3 lines matched the target line in sizeThis was a very unambiguous task, there was only one line which obviously matched the targetThe true participant answered last on all trials and the confederates consistently gave the wrong answer to the taskResults = 1/3rd of the time, participants conformed to the wrong answer of the confederatesThis study shows we base our ideas of what must be correct on what other people seem to be doing, it doesn’t matter what we think is true, it matters what everyone else thinks. So how does this fit into online shopping?Well, when I saw the jumpsuit I wasn’t sure if I liked it. It was a bit different, unlike most things I owned and I just all round wasn’t sure about it. However, the minute I was told ‘5 people are checking it out now’, ’26 purchases in the last 48 hours’ it was sold. Only after I received it today and realized that it is in fact not very nice at all did it sink in, I had been victim to Missguideds’ social proofing persuasion techniques. References: Gregory, S. (2009, March 4). Breaking news, analysis, politics, Blogs, news photos, video, tech reviews – TIME.Com. Retrieved November 17, 2016, from http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1889081,00.htmlRetrieved November 17, 2016, from http://www.instantshift.com/2010/03/26/the-history-of-online-shopping-in-nutshell/Wolf, J. R., Arkes, H. R., & Muhanna, W. A. (2008). The power of touch: An examination of the effect of duration of physical contact on the valuation of objects. Judgment and Decision Making, 3, 476.