Reading: Arrington – Advertising and Behavior Control

In Robert Arrington’s essay, “Advertising and Behavior Control”, he argues not that advertisers are deceiving people, but that they are actually controlling people, that our autonomy—our freedom to choose—is eroded by advertisements that aim to create desires in us. He argues that when an advertisement’s purpose is to get us to want something that we wouldn’t have wanted otherwise, the advertiser seeks to control our behavior—that is, to make us do something that the advertiser wants us to do, not what we ourselves want to do.

Download Text: Robert Arrington – “Advertising and Behavior Control”