The Psychology of Infomercials: Persuasion and Manufactured Urgency

A Brief History

The infomercial in its familiar form emerged in the United States in the mid-1980s, following the deregulation of the limits that had previously restricted the amount of commercial time permitted per hour of television. When these limits were relaxed, the program-length commercial became possible, and advertisers seized the opportunity to create extended presentations that could develop a product's appeal at length, filling the inexpensive late-night and early-morning airtime that traditional programming did not want. This regulatory change opened the door to the infomercial as we know it, the extended, program-length commercial that could deploy the full machinery of persuasion over many minutes rather than the seconds of a traditional advertisement. The extended format allowed the infomercial to develop techniques impossible in a short advertisement, the dramatized problem, the extended demonstration, the accumulating testimonials, the building urgency, and the direct-response mechanism that urged immediate action. Over the following decades, the infomercial refined these techniques into a reliable formula, and it produced its own celebrities, the charismatic pitchmen whose enthusiasm and credibility became central to the form. The format also expanded its range, from kitchen gadgets and cleaning products to fitness equipment, beauty products, and financial schemes, applying its refined techniques of persuasion across an ever-widening array of products. The infomercial's endurance across the decades, and its migration to new platforms as media have changed, testifies to the effectiveness of its refined techniques of persuasion.

The Problem and the Promise

The infomercial typically begins not with the product but with a problem, dramatizing a difficulty or frustration, often in exaggerated and comically desperate terms, to create in the viewer a felt need that the product will then promise to solve. Before presenting its solution, the infomercial establishes the problem, showing people struggling comically with the difficulty the product addresses, dramatizing the frustration and inconvenience of life without the product. This problem-first structure is a substantive and deliberate technique, and it reflects an understanding of how desire is created. People do not desire a solution to a problem they have not registered as a problem, and so the infomercial first amplifies the problem, heightening the viewer's awareness of a difficulty they may have accepted or not much noticed, creating a felt need that the product can then promise to satisfy. This problem amplification manufactures the need that drives the desire for the product, the exaggerated dramatization of the problem creating a felt dissatisfaction that the product promises to relieve.

The dramatic demonstration that follows, showing the product solving the amplified problem with striking effectiveness, exploits the persuasive power of vivid, concrete demonstration. The infomercial demonstrates the product working, often with dramatic and vivid effect, the demonstration showing the product solving the problem in a striking and memorable way. This vivid demonstration is persuasive because vivid, concrete information tends to be more persuasive and more memorable than abstract claims, the dramatic demonstration of the product working carrying a persuasive force that a mere description of its benefits would lack. The striking visual proof of the product's effectiveness carries a persuasive and memorable force that abstract claims cannot match.

The Machinery of Persuasion

The infomercial deploys, in concentrated form, the principles of influence that the psychologist Robert Cialdini identified as the fundamental levers of persuasion, and recognizing them in the infomercial illuminates both the form and the principles. Cialdini identified several principles by which people are influenced, including social proof, authority, liking, reciprocity, commitment, and scarcity, and the infomercial deploys these principles systematically. Social proof, the principle that people look to others' behavior to guide their own, is deployed through testimonials, the parade of satisfied customers attesting to the product's effectiveness, and through claims of widespread popularity. The infomercial's testimonials and popularity claims exploit social proof, the tendency to be influenced by evidence that others have bought and benefited from the product, the sense that many others have found it valuable lending it a credibility and desirability that direct claims could not. Authority, the principle that people defer to credible experts, is deployed through the invocation of experts, doctors, or specialists who endorse the product, borrowing the authority of expertise to lend the product credibility. And liking, the principle that people are more easily influenced by those they like, is deployed through the charismatic, likable pitchman whose warmth and enthusiasm make the viewer receptive to his message.

The principle of scarcity, the tendency to value more highly what is scarce or available only for a limited time, is deployed through the manufactured urgency that is the infomercial's signature, the limited-time offer, the limited supply, the call-now-or-miss-out. The infomercial manufactures scarcity and urgency, the limited-time offer and the warning that supplies are limited creating a sense that one must act now or lose the opportunity. This manufactured scarcity exploits the substantive tendency to value the scarce and to fear missing out, the artificial urgency spurring the viewer toward immediate action before the opportunity is lost. The urgency also exploits loss aversion, the tendency to feel potential losses more keenly than equivalent gains, the framing of the offer as a limited opportunity making the failure to act feel like a loss to be avoided.

The Price Theater

The presentation of price in the infomercial is a carefully staged theater, exploiting the psychology of how people judge value and cost. The infomercial does not simply state a price; it stages an elaborate presentation of value and price designed to make the price feel like a bargain. A central technique of the price theater is anchoring, the establishment of a high reference price against which the actual price seems low. The infomercial often establishes a high value for the product, citing what it would cost elsewhere or what it is worth, before revealing the much lower actual price, the high anchor making the actual price feel like a bargain by comparison. This anchoring exploits the substantive tendency for judgments of value to be influenced by reference points, the high anchor shifting the viewer's sense of what the product is worth and making the actual price feel like a substantial saving.

The signature technique of value stacking, the accumulation of bonuses and add-ons, exploits the sense of accumulating value that makes the offer feel increasingly irresistible. The infomercial's famous refrain that there is more, the piling on of bonus items and additional products, creates a sense of accumulating value, each addition making the offer feel more generous and the price more justified. This value stacking exploits the substantive sense that a deal offering more and more for the same price is increasingly good, the accumulation of bonuses creating a feeling of abundance and value that overwhelms careful judgment of whether the items are actually needed or worth the price. And the direct-response mechanism, the urgent call to action, the number to call now, reduces the friction between desire and purchase, capturing the aroused viewer's impulse before deliberation can cool it. That reduction of friction is what allows the aroused impulse to translate immediately into purchase.

Arousal and the Bypassing of Judgment

Underlying all the infomercial's techniques is a single strategic aim, the creation of an emotional arousal and urgency that bypasses careful, deliberate judgment and spurs impulsive action. The infomercial works by generating excitement, urgency, and desire, an emotional arousal that moves the viewer to act on impulse rather than on careful deliberation. Psychologists distinguish between two modes of thinking, a fast, intuitive, emotional mode and a slow, deliberate, reasoned mode, sometimes described as System 1 and System 2. Impulsive decisions, made quickly and driven by emotion, are the province of the fast, intuitive system, while careful, deliberate decisions engage the slow, reasoned system. The infomercial is designed to engage the fast, emotional system and to bypass the slow, deliberate one, generating an arousal and urgency that spurs impulsive action before careful deliberation can intervene. The manufactured urgency, the accumulating value, the emotional excitement, all work to move the viewer to act quickly, on impulse and emotion, before the deliberate system can raise the questions, do I need this, is it worth the price, that might prevent the purchase.

The late-night and early-morning scheduling of many infomercials may itself contribute to this bypassing of deliberate judgment, reaching viewers when they are tired and their capacity for deliberate reasoning may be diminished. Fatigue can diminish the capacity for the effortful, deliberate reasoning that might resist the infomercial's persuasion, and this timing may contribute to the form's effectiveness, reaching viewers when their deliberate reasoning is diminished and their susceptibility to impulsive, emotionally driven action is heightened. While this connection should not be overstated, the scheduling of many infomercials at hours when viewers are tired is consistent with the form's strategy of bypassing deliberate judgment, reaching viewers when the deliberate system that might resist is least equipped to do so.

Reflections for the Viewer

The infomercial, often dismissed as the lowest form of advertising, is in fact a sophisticated instrument of persuasion, a concentrated and explicit application of the psychology of influence. For those who watch it as entertainment or curiosity, the infomercial offers a certain camp appeal. For those who watch it with an eye to its techniques, the infomercial offers a genuine education in the psychology of persuasion, its influence principles deployed with an explicitness that makes them easy to see and to learn from. The techniques it deploys, problem amplification, social proof, authority, liking, manufactured scarcity and urgency, anchoring, value stacking, and the generation of arousal that bypasses deliberate judgment, are not unique to the infomercial but operate throughout advertising and persuasion more broadly, often in subtler and less visible forms. Learning to recognize these techniques in the infomercial, where they are deployed explicitly, can help one to recognize them elsewhere, where they are subtler, and to resist them. The recognition that one is being subjected to manufactured urgency, to anchoring, to the generation of arousal designed to bypass careful judgment, is itself a defense, allowing the deliberate system to engage and to raise the questions the infomercial hopes to bypass. If you find yourself moved to an impulsive purchase by an infomercial or any persuasive appeal, the recognition of the techniques at work, the pause to engage deliberate judgment, the questions of whether you need the product and whether it is worth the price, are valuable defenses against the manufactured desire and urgency that persuasion deploys. A few questions are worth sitting with: When was the last time I bought something because I wanted it, rather than because I had just been made to feel that I might lose the chance to? What does urgency feel like in my body, and can I learn to notice it as a signal? And where else in my life is someone starting a clock for me?

The skills that resist manufactured urgency are ones families can build together, through teaching emotional regulation and building confidence in children, so that a child learns to notice the feeling of being hurried and to pause before it decides for them. For the companion piece in this series, see the psychology of game shows.

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