Advertising has a direct influence on culture in certain societies. The two cultures I will provide as examples of this phenomenon are the United States and Japan.
In the United States, one of the most well known examples is the diamond engagement ring. The prevalence of this tradition in American culture is entirely attributable to the De Beers Group and the successful advertising campaign they conducted in the the 20th century. De Beers also conducted a similar advertising campaign in Japan, and the result was the same.
In Japan, KFC conducted a very successful advertising campaign that started in 1974 that associated Christmas dinner with a KFC meal. Today in Japan, it is a widely practiced custom to eat KFC during Christmas. It actually became part of the culture.
Alright, so with these two examples we see that advertising can, and has, shaped culture. This seems to be the case especially in highly commercialized countries like the United States and Japan. I am curious if there any countries that are resistant to these types of campaigns, as I don’t think I have much understanding of the forces at play here. My next point comes as a result of a personal exploration with my depression. That being said, I do not believe that what I am about to say is the root cause of my depression, but merely that it is likely a contributing factor.
I believe that the culture of advertising seen in the United States and Japan, and probably other heavily commercialized countries, causes widespread psychological stress, or cognitive dissonance. This dissonance is caused by one of the fundamental strategies of advertisement, to create an ideal “happy” version of yourself that you can purchase, just by buying whatever product is being advertised. It implants this notion of a desirable ideal into your mind that creates a self-discrepancy, a difference between your ideal self and your current self. However the notion of what an “ideal self” is, is the thing the advertisers are trying to manipulate. Once you purchase the product, you can relieve some of that psychological stress, because you are now closer to the ideal self that has been sold to you. They are creating stress, sadness, cognitive dissonance, and purchasing their product can provide you with happiness. Of course none of this is explicitly laid out in their campaign, but I believe it is their strategy.
Again, to re-iterate an earlier point, I do not believe this is the sole cause of depression. However, I do believe it to be a contributing factor. Many people do understand consciously that the world depicted in advertising is idealized, but my inquiry in this area is concerned with the underlying effects, the subconscious, so to speak. Are people somehow internalizing these unreachable ideals as actual goals, even if they aren’t aware of it? Is this happening at a cultural level?
It’s not just advertising that is responsible for creating this type of cognitive dissonance. We can see it in many music videos, or on social media, where entire (mostly unattainable) lifestyles are being represented as the ideal. Then, when an individual fails to achieve that ideal, which will be the case for the majority of people, they view it as a personal failure to achieve a goal, which can result in lower self esteem and depression. Instagram seems like another example case, especially because it is a primarily picture driven network. People present curated, or in some cases manipulated, moments of their life as their presence on Instagram, which again, creates cognitive dissonance in the consumers of those photos. It once again shifts the ideal self into an unattainable realm. We also see the depiction of the ideal life in mass media, such as movies, TV shows, and popular music. The 3 person household is commonly depicted, or finding true love, or just having a significant other. It creates an “ideal” self that seems to be pushed even at a cultural level. However, people in Japan and the United States are not necessarily doing those things, and it is again creating that dissonance. Movies and TV seem to reflect a married lifestyle as “the norm” when in fact the marriage rate is declining in the United States. More than half of 18–34 year olds are single. I’m not trying to say that any of these things are bad things, but it seems that mass media and advertising are a bit behind the times, and reflect the culture of the past as the norm, and when the present reality doesn’t match the “ideal” past, that creates cognitive dissonance.
Depression is a complicated topic and I definitely am not speaking with authority on it here, I am however grasping at explanations for why it seems that depression is becoming such a widespread phenomenon today. I am aware of the fact that it wasn’t until recently that psychological issues like depression were discussed like they are today, and that part of the reason it seems like more and more people are experiencing these illnesses is because the vocabulary didn’t exist, nor did the cultural precedent for being open about depressive thoughts. That being said, it still seems as if depression is on the rise, and I am merely asking you to explore some potential explanations for this with me. Also, for the record, I believe that my personal case of depression was mainly caused by failures that I experienced at a young age and the people around me at the time who did not teach me how to properly cope with those failures, and instead tied them to my self-worth. I do think that this cognitive dissonance existed in me as well though, so again, while I don’t think it was solely responsible, I do think it played a part.
Many studies have been conducted on this topic, which seems great! Just doing a quick google search resulted in a few papers that really seemed on the nose. Unfortunately they are behind paywalls so I did not read them, but I will provide links to them here anyway (maybe you are willing to pay):
- https://www.jstor.org/stable/2489486?seq=1
- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10496491.2011.620494
Now to get to the capitalism part of the discussion. It seems that this strategy of advertisement that relies on intentionally creating cognitive dissonance to sell a product works really well. It has been happening in the United States, Japan, and other highly commercialized countries for decades now, and in some cases, it has even changed the culture. The people are voting for it with their money, so to speak. Money in the capitalist society is the ultimate feedback mechanism. We are buying the products. If it’s making money, why stop? That’s seemingly the danger of unchecked capitalism. Making money is the ultimate moral act, all other consequences be damned. I don’t know the results of the above studies, but I do wonder if in the future we will think of marketing and advertisement differently, or if there will be better education around it.
I do want to clarify some of the earlier points I made. I do not believe that all advertising or marketing creates this “ideal self” driven cognitive dissonance. I have noticed that media as a whole has trended towards being more inclusionary in the last few years, which is great to see. I also do not believe that everything on Instagram is fake or bad. I’ve seen plenty of funny and entertaining adverts and plenty of inspiring and beautiful Instagram posts. The main goal of this article is to get folks thinking and talking on this topic. My hope with this kind of thing is to help people recognize these kinds of patterns of manipulation so that we can hopefully stop our internal notions of the ideal self from drifting into the unattainable, and actually accomplish our dreams.
