Can 'marketing' sway a monkey's choices?

NEW YORK, Aug. 1 (UPI) -- A U.S. psychologist and a New York ad agency are creating a marketing campaign aimed at monkeys to investigate human susceptibility to marketing messages.

Yale psychology Professor Laurie Santos says the experiment is an attempt to determine if that susceptibility is embedded in our DNA inherited from long-ago ancestors of both people and monkeys or whether it is a strictly human behavior, The Boston Globe reported Monday.

A previous study found thirsty rhesus monkeys would pass up the chance to be given juice to stare at photos of high-status monkeys or female monkeys they found attractive.

The new study seeks to find if human behaviors, such as responding to marketing to make what might seem seem like irrational decisions about wants and desires, are also present in animals.

"We're creating actual monkey brands; we made a logo that has 100 percent never been used by a human," Elizabeth Kiehner of Proton Studio, a New York ad agency, said.

The plan is to create a kind of visual message to see if advertising can change a monkey's preferences between two things he might like equally well.

It will mimic the way human marketing is done, Kiehner and her partner, Keith Olwell, said: Can you take two equivalent products and, by means of a marketing message, make people want one in preference over the other?