Austin Fontaine 
Megan Novelli VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cac99V5cNpE
I was thinking a lot of the bombardment of truth that I apparently found out about myself, i.e. the nazi lover missing the frontal lobe, and just started reflecting on the experiments shown. It seemed as though it was saying that the things and messages around us shape us. Moreover, it showed how easy it was to get us to perform in the way others want, or to pick what another wants us to because of hidden agendas and messages. I do believe in free will, but I also know that it is not so far fetched to think that we can be, “taught,” so to speak, to do and pick what others say to. This is subliminal advertising, and it is everywhere. Take, for instance, the McDonald’s color of the arches. It has been proven that yellow is most significantly paired with hunger, and people tend to feel hungrier when presented with yellow. Thus, they made their arches to be yellow, as well as put a lot of yellow in the joint itself, so that people would more than likely buy and consume more food.
That’s more of a blatant one, so think for a minute about beauty commercials and how they are structured. When you see a hit name artist or celebrity sitting there, all beautiful and tricked out with a bunch of photo shop and make up, you are thinking, “I think I may need to buy this.” They show you how beautiful they are and how beautiful you, “can be,” by showing off their own thoughts of beauty. In a deeper way, they are also showing you what your definition of beauty should be. Even if you say, “well she looks so trashy like that,” it helps shape what you think beauty is, which will then make you look towards another brand or style that has been touched on. Sadly, we wouldn’t even know how to define these words, or even put more than a 5 minute thought or conversation on them, if we weren’t influenced.
This is also why I chose this link. I personally love this link because it shows two things in my opinion: it shows that there are, in fact, people out there specifically taught and educated to manipulate what you want and desire, and that ALL people can be affected. The best thing is, reverting back to me saying that I believe in free will, once we become conscious of all that affects us we can thoroughly define our lives as individuals instead of just people or products.
Michael Bartholomew
11:33 am, 11.22.10
Though probably to a lesser effect on me with the beauty products, you’re right in that a lot psychology goes into advertisements. It makes me wonder just how many of my decisions are driven by subliminally-primed advertisements. It also makes me curious if some people are less affected than others, and if so, just what variable is responsible for it? Or maybe it’s not so much a general immunity to an advertisements but less a susceptibility to the more common methods of subliminal advertisements. In which case, it would only be a matter of time before companies figure out their weakness at the rate this keeps going.
Courtney Price
12:19 pm, 11.22.10
I agree, much of advertising is psychology (maybe that’s why IO gets paid so much). I think the subliminal nature of advertising can do a lot to women when it comes to looking “prim and proper”. I know that a lot of my friends get really excited when those fun “infomercials” come on with some magic makeup that covers up everything. So, now I am going to ask you this, do we as future psychologist have an obligation to morally inform our friends and families that they are, in a round about way, being manipulated into spending their hard earned money?