#Resource Flat Advertising Thanks, Tom. V interesting. While I appreciate Chater's theory, I’m not entirely convinced. It’s valuable to have a range of perspectives, especially given that we still don’t fully understand how the brain and mind work, so much remains possible. My main concern centres on the extensive research linking childhood trauma to adult behaviour. If we didn’t store our experiences, what would inform our actions as we grow? Our unique life experiences shape us as individuals and influence how we think and approach different ideas. For example, in a focus group discussing vegan issues, my response isn’t improvised; it’s shaped by past behaviour and a desire to reinforce the values I’ve demonstrated to others. Consistency matters to me, and my previous experiences provide a framework for how I respond to any given topic, based on what I want to be known for. --- I agree experiences shape our behaviour. Finding a message that taps into broad experiences is the difficulty. The psychiatrist and philosopher Iain McGilchrist in [The Master and His Emissary](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pvr_gubcWUk) argues that the brain’s two hemispheres attend to the world in different ways. The left hemisphere tends to focus on analysis, categorisation, and abstraction, while the right hemisphere is more attuned to context, meaning, and lived experience. Persuasive communication works best when it speaks first to the holistic, contextual understanding associated with the right hemisphere, rather than presenting purely abstract arguments. The neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has shown that decision-making is shaped by emotional signals tied to experience. In [Descartes’ Error](https://www.awesomebooks.com/book/9780099501640/descartes-error/used?gc=GB&dwg=Cj0KCQiAk6rNBhCxARIsAN5mQLvP3qZ9Zr9j1X7_dafABYfkT13AJ57Puhqhjrl-KtGwJVyzQfX4_dYaAtjBEALw_wcB&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=22269009095&gbraid=0AAAAADocATDOTvELgcRelaIZmaK3Ob4Uz&gclid=Cj0KCQiAk6rNBhCxARIsAN5mQLvP3qZ9Zr9j1X7_dafABYfkT13AJ57Puhqhjrl-KtGwJVyzQfX4_dYaAtjBEALw_wcB), he describes how “somatic markers”—bodily feelings associated with previous outcomes—guide our choices. These signals are not elaborate unconscious theories about the world, but they are embodied traces of experience that bias how we respond to situations. Damasio and Chater suggest the right hemisphere of context, meaning, and lived experience is more important in messaging than pure analysis, categorisation and abstraction of the left hemisphere. Our behaviour is influenced by emotional learning. Research on trauma suggests something similar. [In The Body Keeps the Score](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJfmfkDQb14), Bessel van der Kolk argues that intense experiences can leave lasting patterns in the nervous system that shape behaviour long afterwards. The mind may improvise its explanations, but the body carries the imprint of the past. Another perspective comes from Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber in [The Enigma of Reason](https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/theory-knowledge/201808/the-enigma-reason-brief-review). Their “argumentative theory of reasoning” proposes that human reasoning evolved less for discovering truth in isolation and more for social communication and justification. We make intuitive decisions first, and then generate reasons afterwards in order to explain or defend those decisions to others. When people explain their views, the reasoning they present is constructed in the moment. Yet Mercier and Sperber emphasise that people begin with stable intuitions, loyalties, and identities—political commitments, moral instincts, or social affiliations—that they then defend in conversation. The improvisation lies mainly in the explanation, not in the underlying orientation. The idea that advertisers can secretly manipulate a deep unconscious is doubtful. The old “hidden persuaders” model assumed that marketing can plant desires deep inside the psyche. If the mind is less like a layered iceberg and more like a storytelling system responding to context, influence may operate differently. Research that builds on this is [System Justification Theory](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lmcBIwOZ6c), developed by John Jost is a theory that people have a psychological tendency to defend and rationalise the social systems they live within, even when those systems disadvantage them. Jost’s research suggests individuals prefer explanations that make the existing order appear legitimate, stable, or inevitable. This has important implications for persuasion and messaging. If people are motivated to justify the systems around them, then messages that appear to threaten their sense of social stability or identity may be resisted regardless of their factual strength. Conversely, ideas may spread when they can be framed as consistent with values people hold or as extensions of familiar norms. Taken together, these perspectives suggest a richer picture of how influence works. A number of philosophers and psychologists have described the self not as a hidden inner core but as an ongoing narrative. For example, William James suggested that personal identity emerges through the continuity of experience rather than from a fixed essence. As he wrote in The Principles of Psychology: “A man’s Self is the sum total of all that he can call his.” In other words, the self is not a mysterious interior object but a living accumulation of experiences, relationships, memories, and roles. Similarly, the philosopher Daniel Dennett describes the self as a narrative construct. In Consciousness Explained he writes: “The self is a centre of narrative gravity.” Dennett’s idea is that the mind continually constructs a story about who we are. Like the centre of gravity in physics, the “self” is not a physical object inside the brain but a useful organising point that emerges from the stories we tell about our actions, values, and history. If the self is partly a narrative construction, as James and Dennett suggest, then effective messaging works by entering and reshaping the stories people tell about themselves. Advertising that resonates tends to connect with identity: who people think they are, what they value, and how they wish to be seen by others. At the same time, Damasio’s work reminds us that emotion and embodied experience guide decision-making, while Mercier and Sperber show that reasoning functions as post-hoc justification within social dialogue. McGilchrist suggests that meaning and context carry more persuasive force than abstract argument, and System Justification Theory reminds us that people are motivated to protect the legitimacy of the social world they inhabit. For advertising and persuasion, this implies several things: • People rarely adopt ideas because they are logically demonstrated. • Messages work best when they connect with existing intuitions, identities, and emotional signals. • Narratives are powerful because they help people integrate a message into their ongoing sense of self. • Context matters: the meaning people construct around a message depends on the situation in which they encounter it. • Messages that align with, or gently reinterpret, existing social norms are more persuasive than those that appear to directly challenge them. In that sense, the mind is not a blank improvisational surface. It is closer to a story continually being written—guided by experience, emotional learning, social identity, and the interpretive work we do in the present moment. Understanding persuasion, then, is less about planting ideas in a hidden unconscious and more about helping people incorporate a message into the story they believe they are living, while recognising that many of those stories are tied to the broader systems and identities people feel motivated to defend.