People can be persuaded by using simple psychological principles to influence our behavior, like keying on fears or aspirations. True, some regard this as a pitiless form of manipulation since it often targets our vulnerabilities and emotional responses to elicit a specific response. But even in the face of these influences, we nonetheless remain otherwise empowered to form our own reactions – and respond accordingly. Each one of us has full jurisdiction and ownership over our emotional receptors, having experience things that have shaped and prioritized them over the course of our lives. And while marketers do their absolute best to amplify our insecurities and fears, we are still making free choices – for very personal reasons – about how we manage those emotions and our reactions.

Feeling your receding hairline is gnawing away at your virility? Rub some Rogaine on your scalp.

Think that potbelly won’t go over well at the job interview? Sign up to Orange Theory.

Want to be less repulsive to the opposite sex? Chew some Trident.

What these clever marketers are not-so-subtly doing here is presenting a dilemma asking you to consider the trade-off between satisfying your emotional triggers (fears and insecurities) and economic security (dollars in my pocket). Yet despite their persuasive contentions, at the end of the day you’re still in full control of interpreting their messages, filtering them against your own internal cognitions, and choosing how to respond. So, if being bald, jobless, and friendless isn’t worth $62.19, then even the most ruthless marketer is likely to concede that you should then be entitled to keep your money.

And while you can condemn marketers for playing on our deepest anxieties and insecurities to sell their products, we nonetheless always remain free at any time to redefine and rebalance our values. It’s precisely our acknowledgement of this that make us much more inclined to blame ourselves for responding to clever marketing rather than to blame the company for laying the trap.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that the world would be improved with more marketing campaigns. But on their own, the “gamification” staple of dishing out points and badges for desired behaviors are a much less honorable form of manipulation. 

Do these tactics work in the short-term? Possibly. We’ve seen plenty of “gamified” applications reporting metrics suggesting astonishing degrees of user engagement. But this does not surprise me in the least, as I never cease to be amazed at the lengths people will briefly go to in order to feed their inner OCD demons to boost points totals, level-up to “Grand Master,” or battle their way up a few more spots up the leaderboard.

Yet even the unfortunate souls whose get temporarily sucked into “points & badges” reward schemes will eventually realize the absurdity of jumping through hoops to gain advantage within an imaginary economy. Even worse, those who permit themselves to commit further to the scheme will become increasingly likely to acknowledge their insincere or involuntary actions and simply consider them as a “fair payment” for the reward they get!