What Junk Values Have You Been Fed?

Modern advertising and consumer culture feeds us a steady diet of junk values that can lead to increased rates of depression and anxiety, and generally make us less happy.

What I watched: “Un-sabotage yourself with intrinsic motivation” with Johann Hari. Posted September 18, 2023.

This morning I opened up social media and did my usual quick daily scroll. Being a gay man, I have lots of beautiful men on my social media feeds. Among the randomly captured shots were an abundance of highly curated images and videos of massively muscled and ripped guys projecting the ethos of male perfection to their followers. I try to not compare myself to these men, but sometimes I lose that battle.

Yesterday I had a discussion with a friend who is driving himself into depression due to his obsession with becoming wealthy and moving up the corporate ladder. He hates his job. He doesn’t dislike it. Per his own words, he hates it. He has other professional opportunities should he care to entertain them, but he’s focused like a laser on the high salary of his current job. He’s constantly comparing himself to his peers within and from without his company, especially in terms of wealth, and judging his level of success based on where he sees himself in some imaginary ranking of corporate success.

Someone I know proudly announced to me his purchase of what I consider an extremely expensive car. I know what this person does for a living. I know their income level doesn’t justify such a purchase. This same person has complained before that it’s at times difficult to make financial ends meet. Yet here he was with an expensive car he’d mentioned to me multiple times. I’d go to Las Vegas and put a big money bet down on a table that in a year his car will just be a car and he’ll regret the debt he’s saddled himself with. But for now, he sure looks cool driving that car!

Anyone reading this post could likely point to dozens of instances of observing people’s behavior and connecting it to what advertising we consume. The entire advertising industry is predicated on creating a longing for something whether one needs that something or not. Even better, they try to create a longing for an extremely expensive something that may be of no better quality than a lower priced something but carries with it a certain elitist social signal of wealth or class.

Virtually all those lures to buy and consume are attempts to trigger your extrinsic motivations and suppress your intrinsic motivations. As writer and journalist Johann Hari alludes to in the video, much of advertising and consumer culture instills in us a set of junk values because of the push of extrinsic motivations that are hurting us all.

“Intrinsic motivation is defined as the doing of an activity for its inherent satisfaction rather than for some separable consequence. When intrinsically motivated, a person is moved to act for the fun or challenge entailed rather than because of external products, pressures, or rewards.” (Source)

“Extrinsic motivation is when someone feels motivated to do something to gain a reward or avoid a punishment. For instance, they may hope to get money, gifts, or recognition. Alternatively, they may fear having fewer privileges or being grounded. Both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation can be both useful and harmful.” (Source)

Philosophers and thinkers for as long as their musings have been documented have explained that typically intrinsic motivations for doing something are better than extrinsic.

So, for thousands of years now, philosophers have said "If you think life is about, you know, money and status and showing off, you're gonna feel terrible, right?" From Confucius on down, people have been warning us that.

We’re all an ongoing mix of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and the balance between these two types of motivations changes over the course of our lives.

Our motivations form our values. Research suggests that the more you err on the side of extrinsic values because you consciously or unconsciously do things because of how you appear to other people, the more likely you’ll suffer from depression and anxiety.

It's been found in 22 studies with depression, and 14 studies with anxiety.

Hari likens the junk values we’re fed on a daily basis to junk food. We all know junk food isn’t good for us. Well, junk values are just as bad for us, but they’re more insidious because we don’t always realize how much we’re being sold the proper ways to be and what to buy in order to be more acceptable to who we see in the mirror and to the throngs of outsiders, many of whom we don’t know but still want to impress for some reason nonetheless.

This is not healthy. This is not a recipe for good mental health. This is not a way to foster happiness in our lives.

Don’t think advertising has that strong of an impact on us? Check out one of the many studies Hari references in the video.

The study observed five-year-olds in a sandpit split into two groups. One group was shown two advertisements for a toy. The other group was not shown any advertisements. That was the only difference between the two groups.

At one point, the researchers gave the kids the option of being able to play with a nice boy (I guess these were all boys) who didn’t have the toy that was promoted in the advertisements, or they could play with a nasty boy who did have the toy.

You can probably guess where this is going. The kids who didn’t see the advertisement mostly chose the nice boy without the toy. The other group who saw the advertisement mostly chose the nasty boy who had the toy.

Only two advertisements did this!

Now consider the hundreds of advertisements you’re pummeled with daily at every turn. Television. Online. Buses. Billboards. Everywhere you turn there’s an advertisement trying to get you to part with your money, often with the promise you’ll be more beautiful, attract more sexual interest, be held in higher esteem, or otherwise set apart from that group of people who don’t embrace these consumer messages quite so much.

We all live with junk values. I sure do. I know you do too. They’re inescapable. But what we can do is be aware that these junk values exist and that we’re being sold them nonstop.

Awareness is the first step toward self-improvement. Maybe if we’re all a bit more aware of the junk values we’re being fed we can blunt their impact in our minds and with our actions, and that will likely result in us being much happier.

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