Chapter 10: Exploiting emotional vulnerabilities

Humans do not like to experience uncomfortable emotions like guilt, shame, fear or regret, and will often make decisions to avoid those emotions. This can be applied in an exploitative way to steer users into, or away from, certain decisions. This has been employed for many years in print and TV advertising, and psychological research has shown it to be effective.

For example, Krishen and Bui (2015) recruited 122 participants, showed them an advertisement relating to obesity and had them complete a survey involving hypothetical scenarios and attitudes, including the intention to subsequently consume an indulgent dessert.¹ Two advertisements were used: one with a message about fear (top image), and another with a message about hope (bottom image).²

Advertisement featuring an image of a woman’s right hip and upper thigh in a swimming costume or leotard. Over the image is some text: ‘Stops going for short walks during lunch’; ‘Starts ordering unhealthy take-out’; ‘No bikini that breaks some obscenity laws’. The slogan reads ‘Fearing this change in your future?’ — ‘Fearing this change in your future?’ – advertisement used in an experiment by Krishen and Bui (2015).

Advertisement featuring an image of a woman’s right hip and upper thigh in a swimming costume or leotard. Over the image is some text: ‘Starts going for short walks during lunch’; ‘Stops ordering unhealthy take-out’; ‘Buys a bikini that breaks some obscenity laws’; The slogan reads ‘Hoping for this change in your future?’ — ‘Hoping for this change in your future’ – advertisement used in an experiment by Krishen and Bui (2015).

The researchers found that the fear-based advertisement was significantly more effective than the hope-based advertisement in encouraging the intention to abstain from consuming an indulgent dessert. Today, fear is commonly used to elicit behaviour in public health campaigns, and the ethics of this tactic is debated.³ Emotions are also widely employed to manipulate users of apps and websites, which we’ll cover in part 3.

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Since 2010, Harry Brignull has dedicated his career to understanding and exposing the techniques that are employed to exploit users online, known as “deceptive patterns” or “dark patterns”. He is credited with coining a number of the terms that are now popularly used in this research area, and is the founder of the website deceptive.design. He has worked as an expert witness on a number of cases, including Nichols v. Noom Inc. ($56 million settlement), and FTC v. Publishers Clearing House LLC ($18.5 million settlement). Harry is also an accomplished user experience practitioner, having worked for organisations that include Smart Pension, Spotify, Pearson, HMRC, and the Telegraph newspaper.