Augmenting Animality: Neuromarketing as a Pedagogy of Communicative Surveillance by Selena Nemorin A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Social Justice Education Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto © Selena Nemorin (2015) Augmenting Animality: Neuromarketing as a Pedagogy of Communicative Surveillance Doctor of Philosophy, 2015 By Selena Nemorin Graduate Department of Social Justice Education Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto Abstract This research project considers ethical questions around neuromarketing and its implications for human freedom: How is neuromarketing shaping our subjectivities? How is neuromarketing disrupting our processes of meaning-making? If neuromarketing is scrambling our thinking, can we be free at all? The findings of this inquiry reveal that the practices inherent in the operations of neuromarketing as a form of communicative surveillance instrumentalize the consumer as a means to advertising ends. Neuromarketing discourse constructs and interprets consumers as brain images and particular brain types, reduced further to kinds of instinctive/affective reflex triggers to external advertising stimuli. The key difference between traditional forms of marketing and neuromarketing lies in what the technological apparatus can do to manipulate the consumer brain, that is, bypass the consumer’s capacity for critical reflection, reducing the consumer to the metaphor of mind as animality via the animalization of thinking, as this dissertation argues. My research seeks to advance understandings of the relations between neuromarketing and constructions of consumer subjectivities. I present a critical hermeneutics of neuromarketing discourse through an examination of narrative devices embedded in multimodal textual artifacts, looking to reveal recurrent themes, metaphors, explicit and implicit assumptions, beliefs, and values. I draw on a hybrid analytic that merges thematic ii textual analysis and philosophy, using Heidegger’s tripartite thesis that the stone is worldless, animal is poor in world (animality), and man [sic] is world-forming, as a conceptual frame for showing how the discursive structures of neuromarketing work to animalize consumer thinking as a brain to study, disinhibit, and manipulate for instrumental ends. The tripartite division is useful heuristically as a method for revealing the crudeness of certain dimensions of the neuromarketing program inasmuch as they assume the consumer is situated in an understandable world, without explicating the process of understanding and/or the concept of world when meaning-making. I contend that neuromarketing aims to disrupt and override the thinking processes of consumers. By disrupting thinking, neuromarketing works in opposition to freedom of intelligence as foundational to a democratic way of life. Neuromarketing technique violates our freedom to choose. iii Acknowledgements This project has taken me several years to complete and was made possible through the support, guidance, and encouragement of my academic mentors, family, and friends. To my committee members: My esteemed professor Dr. Megan Boler, thank you for your supervision and confidence in me. Your academic rigour, critical orientation, and tactful assessments substantially improved the quality of my dissertation. You nurtured me to hone my skills to the best of my ability. I extend my gratitude to Dr. Andrew Feenberg who always made time to answer my questions on philosophy of technology. With your guidance I was able to work through Heidegger’s most abstruse metaphysical ideas and apply them to the machinations of contemporary media communication contexts. I am lucky indeed to have had you as my mentor. Dr. John Portelli, thank you for your wisdom, guidance, and encouragement throughout the years. Your passion for the relations between freedom and self left a lasting impression. Dr. Leslie Regan Shade, many thanks for your practical advice, for immersing me in critical discourse analysis, and for introducing me to curious feminist digital policy geekdom. Dr. Paul Edwards, your work has significantly influenced my intellectual development, and I count myself fortunate to have had you as my external committee member. Dr. Peter Trifonas, thank you for sharing your insights into the pedagogy and resistance pieces of my research puzzle. Your valuable suggestions have given me much to think about. To my family and friends: Karys, my little love, your curiosity about the world keeps me smiling. Thank you for being patient with me as I worked day and night to complete this project. You bring joy to my heart. iv Maman, grace a toi je n’ai jamais perdu l’espoir. Je serai toujours ta petite fille qui t’aime beaucoup. Paul, if it were not for your unwavering support and friendship I would not have had the strength to accomplish this monumental task. Thank you. Dearest Cynthia, I am grateful for your cheerful encouragement and “big sister” words of wisdom. Drs. Michelle Forrest and Susan Walsh, thank you for your kindness and moral support throughout the years. Glenn, the first person I befriended at OISE. I will always remember with fondness our regular tea sessions during which we grappled with tricky philosophical concepts for hours at a time. A special gratitude to my peers who have been a source of comfort and inspiration: Sarah, Laura, Anthony, and Rula, my heartfelt thanks for your friendship. Clinton and Sean, two bright sparks I met in a seminar course on Heidegger’s notoriously difficult Being and Time. Countless conversations with you both helped me untangle the intricacies of Dasein and world. In addition, I would like to thank the government of Ontario and the Department of Social Justice Education, OISE, University of Toronto, for the financial support you granted me through my doctoral program. Without your assistance my project would not have been possible. v Table of Contents Introduction 1 .1 Defining neuromarketing 4 .2 Differences between traditional marketing and neuromarketing 6 .3 Violating freedoms: Neuromarketing as communicative surveillance 8 .4 A critical hermeneutics of neuromarketing discourse 11 .5 Chapter outlines 14 Chapter One: The World of Neuromarketing 18 1.1 Consumer surveillance: Market research as an advertising tool 19 What is the relationship of neuromarketing to traditional advertising 24 and marketing persuasion? 1.2 Neuromarketing: A global phenomenon 25 1.3 Professionalization of neuromarketing 26 1.4 A psycho-social technique: How is neuromarketing “done”? 27 Hardware: Neurotechnologies 28 Functional MRI (fMRI) 28 Electroencephalography (EEG) 28 Magnetoencephalography (MEG) 28 Steady state topography (SST) 29 Other biometric measurements 29 1.5 Neurological boosts and consciousness moulding 30 Subliminal hits 30 1.6 Affect: Moods, emotions, feelings… and instincts 32 Hardware/non-hardware and rules 33 Metaphor elicitation 33 Sands Research 34 Government-business partnerships 36 Evocation and faith-related triggers 36 1.7 Can neuromarketing do what it says it can do? 38 1.8 Summary 41 vi Chapter Two: A Larger Scientific Context: Metaphors for the Mind 43 2.1 Cognitivism: Mind as computer 46 Artificial intelligence: Structures of understanding into parts 50 British cybernetics: The adaptive brain 54 2.2 Connectionism: Neural networks 56 2.3 Embodied dynamicism and enaction: Self-organizing dynamic systems 57 Neuromarketing and the tripartite brain: Antonio Damasio 59 2.4 Other metaphors 62 Mind as animal-machine 62 Mind as reflex-machine 62 2.5 Summary 63 Chapter Three: Techno-Cultural Horizons in a Digital Media World 64 3.1 Horizons of meaning 67 3.2 Reading neuromarketing: Technology as text 68 3.3 What is world? 70 3.4 Four senses of world: Neuromarketing as a disciplinary matrix 73 Sense three: Ontical-existentiell sense (involvement) 73 3.5 Objective subjectivity: The truth and nothing but the truth 78 3.6 Assumption: Customers do not know or do not have access to truth 80 3.7 Assumption: Customers might know the truth but they lie about it 81 3.8 Assumption: Neuromarketing can predict which products will be successful 83 3.9 Selling neuromarketing to consumers 86 3.10 Assumption: We know you better than you know yourself 89 3.11 Summary 90 Chapter Four: Dasein and the Critical Reflective Human 92 4.1 What does it mean for human beings to be in the world? 94 4.2 Structures of understanding: How do human beings make 97 meaning in and from the world? 4.3 Unreflective coping: Dasein’s most basic mode of understanding 100 4.4 Autopilot coping vs. interpretive understanding 103 vii 4.5 Discourse: Social dimensions of communicative practice 107 4.6 Neuromarketing as a technique of world disclosure 108 4.7 Branding consumers: Revealing the world through signs and 113 disturbances 4.8 Triggering affect: Manipulating mood, emotions, and feelings 116 Attuning consumers to a mood of consumption 118 4.9 Dasein: Limitations 121 4.10 Summary 122 Chapter Five: Mechanics of Stone: The Worldless Consumer 124 5.1 Privileging human over animal: What does it mean to have a world? 125 5.2 Poverty as deprivation: The animalization of thinking 127 5.3 Mechanical/inanimate: Worldlessness 129 5.4 Metaphor: Brain as buy button 130 5.5 Poor in world animals 139 5.6 Summary 140 Chapter Six: Augmenting Animality: A Chimera of Human-Animal 142 and Machine 6.1 The animalization of the consumer 145 6.2 Metaphor: Mind as animality