Author: Dorian Greer Email: editor(at)seducingthebuyer.com

Category: Marketing / Advertising / Psychology Copyright 2005

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Covert Advertising Psychology through Confirmation Bias by Dorian Greer

Confirmation bias is a tool of choice for covert influence. It's agreeable, it's easy to use, and can motivate smartest of people to believe in weirdest of things.

WARNING: This article gives an example of confirmation bias used to make otherwise intelligent people believe impossible things. The example chosen is based on pervasiveness, to make point obvious, but some might be offended. Publishers beware - example MAY adversely affect some of your audience.

What is Confirmation Bias?

Source: http://skepdic.com/confirmbias.html

"Confirmation bias refers to a type of selective thinking whereby one tends to notice and to look for what confirms one's beliefs, and to ignore, not look for, or undervalue relevance of what contradicts one's beliefs."

This simple yet profound definition is why prejudice won't die, why smart people believe weird things, and why facts seldom (if ever) change a strong belief.

Reinforcing Factually Untrue

The feedback loop created by selective thinking is classic hypnotic methodology. Confirmation bias is thus a way of "pacing one's self" into a state of hypnotic belief.

When used in advertising, confirmation bias is pacing of choice, for raw hypnotic influence.

To wit: The more one absorbs information that agrees with what they already believe, contrary evidence holds less and less value. This is why a person can be "talked" into a hypnotic belief system that is contrary to real world.

Try these examples by answering each question TRUTHFULLY:

1. Does Santa Clause really exist, (led by flying reindeer)? 2. Is our moon made of Swiss cheese? 3. Can snakes talk? 4. Have you ever witnessed magic flying carpets, or a real genie? 5. Do horses fly (Pegasus)?

Now notice that none of these have any factual basis as being true. But they all exist in fantasy, make-believe worlds.

1. Use extra white space creatively in your subject line. You can add extra blank spaces between your words or letters.

2. Combine capital letters with lower case letters. Use all capital letters in every other word or use a capital letter between every other lower case letter.

3. Add text symbols in your subject line. You could use them between words and letters. Start and end your subject with a text symbol. ( *, $, >,{,] )

4. Begin your subject line with word "STOP!". People have been trained their whole life to stop what they are doing when they see that word.