This is how advertisers think:

What do we sell here? We sell temptation, desire, animal instincts… We want to show the true nature of man. He is a savage. He needs food and fire. He hunts and gathers. What does he get? He gets a hot dog. We are pagans. We love rituals. When our team scores, we become noisy. What do we want? We want a hot dog. Children – little angels. No they’re not. They are monsters. We give them tuna sandwich. They don’t want tuna sandwich. They want hot dog. We need women. Mothers… we want their daughters. Do you know what a women wants? Do you? We do. A woman wants hot dog. We need sex. We need a dangerous food, a food full of sin. That’s what we want. What is that food? It’s a hot dog.

These lines illustrate the most common strategy employed by ads in order to sell – they convince the viewers to buy a product because the ad stirs up their sexual desires.

Sexual images have been a staple of advertising since the very birth of the industry. Women’s faces and bodies adorned Coca-Cola calendars back in the 1890s and have been employed to sell virtually everything since. But in recent decades, sexual imagery in advertising has become more common, more explicit, more exploitative, and more violent. According to the New York Times, “Sexual themes… are being used as never before to cut through the commercial clutter and grab the consumer’s attention.

Hedonist [see bottom of the page] messages can be found everywhere these days. We’re witnessing a global brainwashing campaign, and the advertising industry is one of the main players involved the process.

Whether we choose to buy products supported by hedonist ad campaigns or not, we must face the fact that they are part of our lives. They can be seen not only on TV and on the Web, but also everywhere in the offline world.

Some ad campaigns are sending their messages without camouflage. Like Keanu Reeves said in Sweet November: “We need sex…”.
The thing with these ads is that they put pressure on our minds, even if we’re not aware of this. This pressure may not be strong, but it lasts for years… maybe even for a lifetime.

If continue to go this way, we’ll soon see ads depicting completely naked models advertising for bottled water, or toys for our kids…

The use of women’s bodies in ads is essentially a cheap trick that marketers use instead of making more thoughtful arguments on behalf of their products. The mechanism used in these ads is quite simple: Attractive bodies are employed to grab attention and stimulate desire, which advertisers hope will then be transferred to the product. Buy the beer, get the girl. In this way, women’s bodies are equated with commodities, presented as the rewards of consumption.

Now let me tell you something more about the pressure that I was talking about. You may not realize it, but it is real and it will affect you when you’re feeling weak, lonely, bored, depressed… resulting in increased chances of you buying a product that has ads with sexual connotations.

Recently, the advertising industry has managed to drop to a new low. Continue Reading �

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If I’d show you a simple drawing for just a second, how many details would you remember? If you would see the picture of a person for the length of a second, and after a second of pause you’d be presented with the same picture containing a different person, you think that you would notice the difference?

If you’re thinking of answering ”Yes!” to that question, you’d better think again…

Daniel Simmons, a psychologist at the Illinois University, conducted a simple experiment, about which you can read more by downloading it.

Here’s a short excerpt:

We created a situation that allowed us to surreptitiously substitute one individual for another in the middle of a natural, real-world interaction. The situation we chose was asking directions of a pedestrian on a college campus. We temporarily interrupted this interaction by carrying a door between the experimenter and the pedestrian. While the experimenter was occluded by the door, another experimenter took his place and continued the interaction after the door had passed. If change detection failures are based on the passive nature of mediated stimuli, these substitutions should be clearly detectable.

You’re still thinking that your visual memory is good, don’t you? Well, let’s put it to the test. Continue Reading �

After discussing the connections between weather and the human psyche on a previous article, it’s time to get up and fight to minimize the effects bad weather has on your mood. This is what I came up with after doing some research. Keep in mind that these are general guidelines, and they may or may not work in your unique case. But they’re worth a try, you have nothing to lose.

What to do:

1. Take a nap. I think that this is the best thing to do. Chances are that the weather will get better by the time you wake up, and even if it’s not sunny, at least you’ve got fresh new energy.
2. Expose yourself to bright light. If the sun doesn’t shine, try and emulate the light. Make your environment as bright as you can. It will improve your mood and drive sleepiness away.
3. Energize yourself. An energizing drink can do wonders in these circumstances.
4. Take a cold shower. This will get your blood in motion, drive sleepiness away, and improve your mental abilities. Often, just washing your hands will refresh you and make you feel less sleepy.
5. Use a ionizer. It reduces fatigue and improves mental clarity.
6. Supplement the intake of vitamin D3, which is the hormone of sunlight. Bad weather influences the levels of vitamin D3 in your body and this leads to changes in the levels of serotonin in your brain. Serotonin is believed to play an important role in the regulation of anger, aggression, body temperature, mood, sleep, vomiting, sexuality, and appetite.
7. Listen to some upbeat / uplifting music. It helps improve your mental state.
8. Cheerful sunny yellow is your friend. It is considered an optimistic color and it enhances concentration. Try to surround yourself with some yellow objects. Continue Reading �

Not being rational, feeling depressed, low on ideas, not able to focus, feeling aggressive and low on optimism? You can blame the weather, as studies suggest that it can have a deep psychological impact on humans.

Prior studies on the association between weather and psychological changes have produced mixed results. In part, this inconsistency may be because weather’s psychological effects are moderated by two important factors: the season and time spent outside.

In two correlational studies and an experiment manipulating participants’ time outdoors, pleasant weather (meaning higher temperature or barometric pressure) was related to higher mood, better memory, and broadened cognitive style during the spring as time spent outside increased.

The same relationships between mood and weather were not observed during other times of year, and indeed hotter weather was associated with lower mood in the summer.

These results are consistent with findings on seasonal affective disorder (SAD), and suggest that pleasant weather improves mood and broadens cognition.

Following are the findings of a study called “A multidimensional approach to the relationship between mood and weather” (by Howarth E, Hoffman MS). Continue Reading �

Dave Chong, from davechong.com compiled a very useful list containing tips on how to wake up early.

Waking up early is a very good thing to do because it gives you an extra quiet time in the morning, before the day officially starts. The full list contains 15 tips. I’ve selected only the most efficient ones.

These 5 tips work wonders for me.

1. Have a good reason to get up. I belive this has the utmost importance. Without a good reason, you’ll have no motivation to get up.
2. Go to bed earlier. I don’t think you’ll be able to go to sleep at 5:00 in the morning and manage to wake up half an hour later.
3. Sleep more effectively. If it’s impossible to go to sleep earlier, try to get a shorter, more efficient sleep. Quality rules quantity.
4. No more another 10 mins. The most dangerous enemy that you have in this fight is a sweet thought - “10 more minutes…”. Get rid of it as soon as it comes in your mind. Continue Reading �