>>President Obama’s campaign staff was filled with social psychologists.
JFK’s 1962-63 national security seminar ( industrial college for the armed forces) included Vance Packard’s “The Hidden Persuaders” on the recommended reading list.
This text was a study of the tricks used by ‘Mad Men” advertising teams on Madison Avenue in NYC as prompted by psychologist research on market manipulation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/books/review/Greif-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
The Hard Sell
By MARK GREIF
Published: December 30, 2007
The volume I made off with was a 75-cent paperback of “The Hidden Persuaders” by Vance Packard. It did scandalize me, completely. But it did so by exposing the secret world of advertising and brands. Published in 1957, it is now enjoying its 50th anniversary and a new edition from Ig Publishing, with an introduction by Mark Crispin Miller. I remember my own edition as small enough to hide — not that I really needed to — but packed with dynamite. It had a lurid cover illustration showing a barbed fishhook buried in a gleaming apple. Packard’s book reached into the darkest corners, not of sensuality, which I was sure I knew all about from television, but of the cynical selling in the commercials that ran between the shows...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vance_Packard
In The Hidden Persuaders, first published in 1957, Packard explores the use of consumer motivational research and other psychological techniques, including depth psychology and subliminal tactics, by advertisers to manipulate expectations and induce desire for products, particularly in the American postwar era. He identified eight “compelling needs” that advertisers promise products will fulfill. According to Packard these needs are so strong that people are compelled to buy products to satisfy them. The book also explores the manipulative techniques of promoting politicians to the electorate. The book questions the morality of using these techniques.
I read that in Junior High, I really liked that book.
Report From Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability of Peace, (1967)
http://www.hermes-press.com/lewin1.htm
***Vance Packard’s “The Hidden Persuaders” on the recommended reading list.***
Everyone should read this book! It was a staple around my Mother-in-law’s house.