What to do when you spot invisible manipulation

TOTAL READ TIME: 4 MINUTES

According to the directions, this is the correct amount of detergent. Why the big scoop, then? © Kathy J. Sotak

I’ll let you in on one of my insecurities: the laundry room. Why do my clothing tags say “Tumble Dry Low” when there isn’t a corresponding label on my dryer? Will somebody tell me when to use “Permanent Press?” Finally, will my whitener/brightener detergent mess up the rich color of my fabrics?

It was this last conundrum that made me read the instructions. My jaw dropped wide open when I then learned that for a regular load of laundry, the amount of soap to use is only 1/8th of the blue scoop included with the container. This is equivalent to about one and one-half tablespoons.  

I am getting tricked. With a giant scoop, they are fooling me into using too much. This ends up causing me to purchase their product more often, generating more sales for their company.

Have I piqued your curiosities?

Let’s move to canned soup. The ingredients have changed since we were growing up. Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) is a common ingredient today, along with hidden MSG ingredients like hydrolyzed protein and autolyzed yeast extract. These flavor enhancers trick our brain into eating more than we should, and have been linked to headaches, obesity, depression, and mental disorders (Credit: Vani Hari, a.k.a. The Food Babe).  

Are we getting tricked? Yes.

Now let’s explore self-serve retail check-out lines. To make consumers want the self-service line, they reduce the human lines to just one or two, causing consumers to mentally say, “Aw heck, I may as well use the self-serve check-out line.” By keeping the lines longer where humans can service you, it forces behavior change to make us want to scan our own items. This allows companies to reduce their labor expenses, but at what cost?

Finally, lets change gears to software algorithms of social media. Have you noticed that Facebook now shows ads every two to three posts? Go ahead and count. Have you noticed that when you join a group, the group posts are hidden after 30 days? They decide our content, we don’t. They don’t even show all our friends’ posts. Isn’t that why we joined in the first place? I wonder what all of those micro-seconds of scrolling advertising is doing to our subconscious mind.

Even the headlines we read are emotionally charged, because they know “Emotion drives clicks. Clicks drive revenue.” This WordPress-based blog provides a Headline Analyzer to measure how good a title is. As you can see from the scores below, the more emotionally charged, the higher the score. (By the way, the headline I chose for this post is a middle-of-the-road score of 65.)

  • Spotting Invisible Manipulation = 34
  • Lessons from Laundry Soap, Canned Soup and Algorithms (51)
  • How to Fight Invisible Manipulation = 72

I didn’t mean to get us riled up. But I have been riled up for a while. We deserve to be in charge, make our own choices outside of the influences from evils like laundry soap, canned soup and software algorithms.

I may be exaggerating a bit… but perhaps this viewpoint sparked you to observe at a deeper level.  If so, I’d love to hear your examples from your lens.

Cheers to us as we consciously notice when someone else is trying to influence our own emotions or behaviors. In the meantime, let us joyously choose to brighten our laundry, merrily eat our soup, then decide which check-out line is best for us.

I usually choose the human line – and for some odd reason, these days they are extra happy to greet me, have a light conversation and scan my items.