Craving Validation: From Fast Food to Insta Reels

We all know that others, especially mass media, can influence the way we represent our bodies. Traditional and social media contribute to our standards of what is a normal or desirable body shape. They can also mess with people's body satisfaction. But could ads and Instagram posts be changing the way you physically see your body? In this talk, I will take a closer look at experiments that tried to explain this phenomenon as a bug in a normal perceptual process, called visual adaptation. We will see why researchers are still unsure about this theory and what we should do about it.

We all need a little retail therapy every once in a while. Yet, the emotions we experience when shopping can have profound impacts on what we buy. From splashing out on something sparkly when feeling happy to impulse buys of chocolate ice cream when feeling sad, the power of emotions often leads to spontaneous shopping decisions that were unplanned and, more often than not, unnecessary. Join me as we explore the psychology of emotional manipulation and demonstrate how marketers get you to feel, not think, when shopping.