Introduction:
How you spend money, is not just your brain wave, media influence and psychology plays more role than you think. Media Influence has been here since 3000 BC (Babylonians Time) according to Frank S. Presbrey. From industrial revolution to the dot com era till today, we can think of the innovations media has gone through. It is not just the advertisement that we see but the whole bag of psychological tricks that are being employed to force or convince us consciously or unconsciously to spend. In today’s article I will try to bring your attention to some of the ways, the media companies use to influence our spending habits. It is just an ad but it is not what we are looking at.
FOCUS POINTS:
1. Evolution of Psychometrics: Sir Francis Galton pioneered psychometrics using physical tests and surveys; modern media, especially social media, now facilitate understanding human behaviour by tracking search queries and creating behavioural profiles for targeted advertising.
2. Availability Heuristic in Decision Making: Frequent exposure to products online influences purchasing decisions; the more a product is shown, the more it remains in a person’s mind, increasing the likelihood of buying it.
3. Impact of Affect Heuristic: Emotional attachment affects decision making, often leading to purchases without considering previous possessions or costs due to emotional biases toward certain features (e.g., colour or design).
4. Role of Cognitive Ease: Advertisements designed with appealing visuals and legibility create a sense of trustworthiness, leading consumers to believe in the product’s quality and influencing their spending habits.
5. Focusing Illusion: Immediate thoughts can overshadow global evaluations, leading to decisions like buying a new car or house based on perceived immediate benefits, while neglecting other important life aspects.
Psychometrics: Media Knows you More
Sir Francis Galton is considered to be the father of psychometrics. By the use of physical tests and surveys (IQ Tests) humans’ cognitive abilities were measured in the early psychometrics. In the age of media including social media, it has become easier to understand our behaviour. The two lives that we are living today are Physical life and Social Media Life. In the age of mobile phones, most of our time is being spent around our social media life. The dress that we searched for or the pants that we might like is following us around our social media life. Cookies, a way of storing information helps the media companies to actually store our search queries that in-turn become our search behaviour and then become our social media behaviour profile. People are grouped on the basis of their liking and disliking: human psychology and then the companies target these groups to sell the products. With your consent, it has become a piece of cake to track you on social media.
Availability Heuristic: I may Buy it
The ease and the instances that come to our minds while evaluating a specific topic influences human beings’ decisions. A group of German psychologists lead by Norbert Schwarz raised the question: How the frequency of a category affects the human decision? Suppose that you want to buy a dress, the first step would be to search for it or similar dresses on the internet. The search phase might include going to many different websites compare the price and quality. It might happen that the dress is expensive and you plan to drop the idea of buying it but is your search history going to understand your choice? I believe, no. You will be shown that dress whenever you will be on internet searching or social media surfing. The dress will probably be shown to you in different contexts by pairing it with different shoes or probably the style will be changed to fit different weather conditions. As you move on with your physical life, the idea primed by your internet usage will still be in your mind and that will attract you towards buying that dress or a similar dress. The more the idea of a product stays in your brain the more you are inclined to buy it. That’s one way, media influence on how you spend money.
Affect Heuristic: I will buy it
Decision making on the basis of emotional affection towards something while not considering the costs of the decision is affect heuristic. You have two black shirts in your cupboard and black is also your favourite colour. You go to city canter and you see an ad on an ad-board about a black costume. Availability heuristic has started the chain of events in the brain. You are tempted to check the price of the costume online. As you are emotionally attached with the black colour, affect bias is playing its part to arouse you with the idea of that black costume. In the mean time you have forgotten about the two black shirts that you already have and you are ready to buy a third one. The design might be different but the attachment towards that particular colour overweighted your thought process of buying one black shirt. The cost of the decision is small because it is just a shirt. Think about cars and you will feel the heat of the cost. Learn more about 5 books that will change the way you think about money.
Cognitive Ease: This is trustworthy
I have seen the advertisement of this product and I like it, is a typical example of exposure effect. The bright colours and legibility used by the media teams to make it more true to life, feel easy on the eyes. It is a part of cognitive ease that clear fonts, nice colours and amazing animations make something trustworthy for you. It has happened to almost all of us that we see an advertisement of a product that has been made in a way that looks particularly of high quality. Once the product is delivered we have already planned to send it back. The quality of the advertisement tricks us to believe that the product is good. This is a way to make our brains’ strain-less to believe what we see and thus our spending habit is shaped by the media. 5 habits to make you financially stable. Read it!
Focusing Illusion: The best decision, I ever made
Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it, Daniel Kahneman. This statement illustrates the importance of that single decision, you are making at the moment. It will be the most important decision of your life but in that particular point in time. Buying a big house because it has more rooms and a garden, buying a new car because it has three more features than your previous car are examples of focusing illusion. The present thought instilled in you by the above mentioned psychological heuristics, overweighted the global evaluation of that house or a car that all other aspects have become smaller for the time being. You are just focused on the idea of a new car because it will make your life easier but you have actually lost the focus of all other important aspects of your life. You are prone to focusing illusion unless you shift your focus towards other aspects of your life.
Conclusion:
The media’s influence on our spending habits is deeply rooted in a variety of psychological techniques that have evolved over millennia. From utilizing psychometrics to understanding our behaviours and to leveraging availability and affect heuristics to keep products at the forefront of our minds and hearts, media companies strategically manipulate our perceptions and decisions. They employ cognitive ease to build trust through visually appealing advertisements and capitalize on focusing illusion to make specific decisions seem overwhelmingly significant. By being aware of these tactics, we can better understand the underlying forces shaping our consumer behaviour and potentially make more informed and conscious decisions in our day to day spending. Let‘s not forget that ad spending on social media is projected to increase up to 255.8$ billion by 2028 just through mobile. The importance of reflecting upon our decision making process has become important than ever.
