Manipulative Designs

I remember in the very beginning of the year, Janelle told us that even the layout of Hamilton was created with manipulation in mind; the admissions offices are tucked away in a back corner of campus, behind the library and down the road from some of the nicest dorms and buildings that we have. By making prospective students drive through half of campus just to find the admissions house, the college lures them into campus and effectively forces them to look around for a bit before they can find their way back out.

The same principle is applied in a less subtle way by commercial stores. I remember middle school shopping trips to stores like Hollister, who divided their stores into several interconnected rooms with sale items at the back--a layout purposefully designed to lure people in and force them to look around before leaving. And even in a more widespread example, there's always the manipulative "impulse buy" counter right in front of the check-out area so when you wait in line to pay for your groceries, you also pick up a few magazines and some candy bars.

But apart from being sold something--like a pack of gum at the check-out counter or a "coincidental" tour of a college--what else are we manipulated by?

My immediate thoughts jump to social psychology (as I mentioned in the post with the Solomon Asch experiment). If you're watching a sports game and someone starts the wave, then you're incited to join in because everybody else is, because your participation is vital for the stunt to work, and probably because you have a preconceived notion that doing things like the wave are to be expected at sports games. So the way that you are enticed into the crowd atmosphere relies on the way that you are manipulated by those around you.

And then there's technology. Netflix has its automatic "play next" feature that sucks its viewers in, Facebook has an infinite scroll and ticker tape designed to get you more interested in other people's social media personas, and even Gmail has advertisements picked out specifically for you based on the content of your emails. As each of these platforms attempt to become more individualized, they each also become more manipulative.

To an extent, we are even manipulated by our own senses. When we smell good food, our brain releases all kinds of fancy chemicals that make us feel hungry. When our sensory input tells us that we have been in a similar situation before, we subconsciously color the way that we will act in the current situation.When we hear the person sitting next to us humming a Beach Boys tune that we may not even like, we often end up humming it along with them. When we see a lot of words on a blog post such as this one, many of us will be manipulated by the apparent length and decide to not read it.

While this post is clearly a fairly cursory survey of the multitude of things that manipulate us, it goes to show the variety, intensity, and extent to which all of us are manipulated each and every day--often times without and realizing it. So the next time that you're craving a slice of pizza, ask yourself if that's what you really want or if you've just been manipulated, perhaps by an advertisement, by seeing a friend eat some, or just by being hungry.