Your Brain's "Buy Button"

A questioning of Commercialism and its effects on the brain have been a question of mine in response to the New York Times article: "If Your Brain Has a 'Buy Button,' What Pushes It?" by: Sandra Blakeslee . If you don't have time to read the article from the link provided, to summarize, talks about the power of your brain and its loyalty towards brands based on commercials. Its studies show that people who have the same alert factor of satisfaction in the brain to pepsi and coke choose coke as their perfured beverage based on brand loyalty.

Recently corporations have been teaming up with neuroscientists to explore the brains reactions to advertisements and learning how to trigger what they would call our "buy button". They test our reaction to the ad, package, new product name, and design. They also use celebrity faces and songs to catch our attention and to associate with the product. These tactics are starting to play central roles in our behavior as consumers. It is motivating our emotions to feel good when we buy or use these products and rewarding our brain after we hit the "buy button".

When i read this article it has started to get me thinking, if they can target and partially control our brains through commercials and advertisements who says it will stop here? What happens when the government can hack into our brains and hit our "buy button" for new policies we would otherwise oppose? With literally no way to avoid advertisements and commercialism in our daily brains and new advancements on studies of the brain and how it works, i'm undoubtedly scared.

As humans we are vulnerable we fall into these traps easily. Children see a toy on television or in a store they automatically want it, and if parents see a way to save money they automatically tune in and are hooked. We need to learn why we want something other than going with our gut, because that is being influenced, without doing that were falling into a cloned lifestyle where our choices will be taken over.

We need to stand up for our freewill and not fall victum to this trend by being aware of the technology and how easily our brains are being hacked. Next time you see a commercial promising certain results, a new movie trailer, or just an advertisement for food take a step back and say to yourself, "do i really need to buy that, or like that". It may help a little, but sadly may be to late to question that because it is hard to say what your real decision is, and distinguishing between that and your brains "buy button's" decision.