There is a proven technique for selling products that will kill their users. It is resorting to what cognitive psychologists would call “focus bias.” Divert one’s attention away from the health risks by showing a happier alternative universe. This is the way magicians strut their stuff or politicians seek to get you to ignore their failing performance.
What is focus bias?
The term comes from cognitive science and describes when someone looks in one direction and misses something much more important right next to it. This is what magicians do with their arm waving and patter. Politicians also use it to draw attention away from the negative parts of their policies. You may experience it when you are driving and focused on a stop light while failing to notice the car right in front of you has come to a full stop. Doctors are susceptible to this, too. Dr. Jerome Goopman in his excellent book, How Doctors Think, spends a chapter on how radiologists looking for something specific on an X-ray may even fail to notice an anomaly, like a missing collar bone.
Do you think you are immune to this bias? Test your self with this video.
If you didn’t do so well, try it again.
Marketing death
In an earlier post “Merchants of Death–E-cigs or Assault Rifles,” I showed an example of how producers of Juul e-cigarettes seek to distract the potential user away from the potential health risk by making the user look cool. Big tobacco made piles of money using this advertising technique for years even though the cost to society was huge. Think of the studly Marlboro cowboy or the sexy Virginia Slim. Who wouldn’t want the sure thing of looking cool versus the possibility of dying? That is an easy question especially for a teenager.
The terrific tv show Mad Men shows a wonderful example of this technique when Lucky Strike is seeking Don Draper’s help to design an advertising campaign to distract from the growing awareness of the cancer threat. I love that video. The young and eager Pete tries to sell the line that every society has a death wish. People realize death is inevitable so why not enjoy life. The Lucky Strike executive is about to storm out at the absurdity of this argument until Don gives them a better slogan, “It’s toasted.” The notion is advertising sells happiness. Men want the feeling of freedom, driving in a
Actually that clip is historically inaccurate. At that time Lucky Strike was less worried about its appeal to men than to women because women were not smoking yet. Lucky Strike even redesigned the colors on the pack to ones they believed women were more likely to prefer. To make sure Lucky Strike was remembered from among all the cigarette choices they pushed the simple acronym LSMFT. If you don’t know what that means, you must be a millennial. 🙂 Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco.
Another practitioner of this technique is the drug industry. Watch how any drug ad seeks to minimize the dangers by showing wonderful outdoor settings, playing with kids, walking in the woods, or bicycling. The intended message is the drug permits that life style. Yet listen to the sound track. Without watching the video, the mandatory warnings in the sound track said quickly leave a clear,
The fast food industry is yet another example. Now a days many of them show calories and fat, but you have to read a little chart laid out in small font in a fashion meant to discourage reading. Enjoy our luscious burger; don’t worry about your coming heart attack/
These are just a few examples of how focus bias is used to manipulate you to sell you things or ideas injurious to you. Is there any protection against it? When you are seeing messages like this, always ask yourself: what don’t they want you to see?