Marketing Changes Your Brain

Running head: MODULE 9 CRITICAL THINKING 2 The reason why I chose the topic for my final paper “Marketing Changes Your Brain” is because we are constantly surrounded by advertisements on a daily basis to where the government is basically brain washing us from birth to be consumers in this capitalistic society. Also this topic reminds me of one of my favorite professors, Dr. Choi who teaches Sociology at San Diego State University. His lectures were always life changing, and I could tell in the conviction of his voice that he is strongly passionate about his profession and loves teaching undergrads. One of the main topics of the semester was about consumerism and how it affects us every single day. Statistics show that the average American will come across 5000 different types of advertisements a day (Lecture, Choi). There are millions of ways we come in contact through ads these days including, commercials, posters, covers on food, and etc. What I basically learned in this class was that we should be more aware of what it means to be consumers of Capitalism and to realize how much we have been exploited to be constant consumers.
The reason many of us fall for advertisements we see is because many of these companies purposely make their commercials activate a part of the brain’s reward/pleasure center. The pleasure center is made up of nucleus accumbens and ventral tegmental area which the brain receives dopamine (Plotnik, Kouyoumdjin). This reward/pleasure is closely associated when individuals do pleasurable things such eating favorite foods, watching movies, sex, and drugs (Plotnik, Kouyoumdjin). In the module 9 critical thinking, the article explains how the consumption Coca Cola will activate the reward/pleasure center which is another example of why many Americans are addicted to it. It is ironic that Americans in recently years have put so
Running head: MODULE 9 CRITICAL THINKING 3