The origins of modern fear-based advertising trace back to the work of John B. Watson, a foundational figure in American behaviorism who was dismissed from Johns Hopkins University following a scandal involving an affair with his graduate assistant, Rosalie Rayner. Before leaving academia, Watson and Rayner conducted the infamous 1920 experiment on an infant known as "Little Albert," demonstrating that emotional responses, specifically fear, could be conditioned through association with neutral stimuli. By pairing a white rat with a loud noise, they induced a lasting fear response in the child that generalized to other white objects, a study now regarded as profoundly unethical but which established the premise that emotions could be artificially engineered.
After his academic career ended, Watson joined the advertising firm J. Walter Thompson, where he became a vice-president by applying behaviorist principles to commercial campaigns. His strategy involved conditioning consumers to believe that failing to purchase specific products would expose them or their loved ones to physical or social harm. Notable examples include campaigns for Scott's toilet paper that depicted medical emergencies caused by harsh tissue and Johnson & Johnson advertisements warning mothers of dread diseases if they did not use the company's hygiene products. Watson also leveraged social fears, promoting toothpaste brands by suggesting that bad breath and discolored teeth would lead to social rejection rather than focusing on dental health.
Watson's approach was later paralleled in the field of public relations by Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud who utilized psychoanalytic theories to argue that human actions are driven more by unconscious desires than conscious ideas. While Bernays focused heavily on public sector influence, including efforts to support U.S. entry into World War I and campaigns for the United Fruit Company that portrayed Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz as a communist threat, both men shared a core philosophy: social control could be achieved through emotion-based mechanisms without regard for factual truth. Bernays justified this propaganda by claiming it was necessary to prevent democratic populations from spiraling out of control.
Today, the methods pioneered by Watson and refined by Bernays are ubiquitous in political advertising, where fear-mongering often relies on completely fabricated facts. This widespread use of psychological conditioning to generate fear regarding physical or social harm presents an existential challenge to the maintenance of democracy in many countries. The legacy of the Little Albert experiment has thus moved beyond its original context of child-rearing advice to profoundly influence public life, particularly within the political arena where truth is frequently sacrificed for emotional impact.
Sources: Psychology Today.