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Impulses: Engineering Behaviour

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Brand Machines, Sensory Media and Calculative Culture

Abstract

This chapter analyses how advertisers construct a discursive image of the contemporary consumer that conforms to the central premises and ideological requirements of the participation paradigm described in Chapter 2. The chapter argues that the advertising industry uses central claims made by the neurosciences and behavioural economics regarding humans’ inherently cognitively flawed nature for simultaneously promoting advertising as a valuable ‘utility’ for consumers and for justifying attempts to engineer consumer behaviour by means of persuasive technologies and ‘nudging’ choice environments. This conceptualisation of the contemporary consumer paradoxically integrates notions of human irrationality and consumer empowerment in a way that it can serve as a moral justification for the utilisation of a wide range of technologies of social influence and control.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Society & Design, Bond University, Robina, Queensland, Australia

    Sven Brodmerkel

  2. School of Communication and Arts, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Nicholas Carah

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  1. Sven Brodmerkel
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  2. Nicholas Carah
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Brodmerkel, S., Carah, N. (2016). Impulses: Engineering Behaviour. In: Brand Machines, Sensory Media and Calculative Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49656-0_3

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