Undue Influence: Definitions and Applications - California Courts ...

judgment over them. Paradoxically, the researchers observe that in achieving power, caregivers
experience a sense of powerlessness.
Mandeville and Hanson (2000) describe how caregivers of persons with developmental
disabilities exercise power and control at both the individual and systems levels. At the
individual level, caregivers and family members may use isolation and abusive tactics to
maintain power and control. At the systems level, caregiving agencies depend on hierarchical
and authoritative styles that grant powerful roles to caregivers in their relationships with
consumers. The service models employed by agencies can also add to the isolation of both
caregiver and consumer. Caregivers who must meet agency expectations to manage the lives of
consumers and contain their behavior, without full consideration for their equality and
interdependence, can act out their authoritative role in an abusive manner.
Persuasion in the Consumer Context
The use of both normal and unfair persuasion has also been explored in the consumer
context. In the mid-1950s advertisers began incorporating the insights of psychology into their
work. “Motivation research” investigated the psychological reasons why individuals buy specific
types of merchandise and why they respond to specific advertising appeals. It was further used to
influence their choices about goods and services. It viewed consumers as governed by
irrationality and insecurity and moved by eroticism (Richards, MacRury, & Botterill, 2000).
The more sinister aspects of marketing were revealed to the public in Vance Packard’s
popular book The Hidden Persuaders (Packard, 1957), which explored how advertisers use
psychological methods to tap into unconscious desires in order to persuade consumers to buy
their products. Packard exposed how motivation research was used not only to probe people’s
minds, but to control their actions, providing examples of how ad campaigns were tailored to
exploit vulnerability and how subliminal messages were embedded into advertisement to
produce desired responses. Among the studies he cited was one by James Vicary, who claimed to
have provoked a rush to concession stands at a New Jersey movie theater by flashing orders to
buy food on the movie screen at speeds faster than the eye could perceive.
Subsequent studies failed to support Packard’s theory or demonstrate that efforts to
manipulate the unconscious did in fact lead to behavioral changes favorable to specific marketers
83