How Branding, PR, and Media Influence Emotions, Identity, and Behaviour

Most people believe their emotions are private.

Personal.

Generated from the inside out.

That belief is the first lie.

Your emotional reality is not formed in isolation. It is shaped by the stories you are immersed in, the language that frames your choices, and the narrative systems that define what is normal, acceptable, admirable, or dangerous.

It’s framed by bot farms engaging with you in Reddit, on X, and across social media. Pushing narratives to get an emotional reaction and shift your views on topics.

The powers that be that decide what is “conspiracy theory” and what is fact… even though science is often catching up to what is fact.

This isn’t a conspiracy theory.

It’s a documented function of power.

Emotional Reality Is a Designed Environment

You don’t feel anxious, hopeful, ashamed, inspired, or empowered in a vacuum.

You feel those emotions inside a narrative environment.

And that environment is engineered.

PR defines what is acceptable to question.

Media defines what matters, what threatens you, and what deserves moral outrage.

Together, they do more than influence opinion. They shape emotional permission:

• What you’re allowed to feel

• What you’re allowed to doubt

• What you’re allowed to say without social punishment

Psychology has shown for decades that emotion is context-dependent, not purely internal. Research on framing effects demonstrates that the same information produces different emotional and behavioural responses depending on how it’s presented. Social norm theory shows that people unconsciously regulate their emotions based on perceived group consensus.

Reddit came under fire recently due to an unauthorized experiment conducted by researchers from the University of Zurich on CMV users. This experiment deployed AI-generated comments to study how AI could be used to change views. And change views it did.

The algorithm doesn’t reward nuance or different views. It creates an echo chamber feeding you more of what you engage with creating stronger and stronger tribal viewpoints that become more entrenched as we engage further. The only one that benefits? The social media platforms as the sides clash and attack eachother in comments while increasing their time on said platform.

In other words: your emotions are socially conditioned before they are consciously chosen. We then believe that we consciously chose our emotions, and beliefs, without realizing the nefarious manipulation below the surface of our daily lives.

That is emotional reality.

Narrative Power Regulates the Nervous System at Scale

Narratives don’t just inform cognition — they regulate physiology.

Studies in neuroscience and social psychology consistently show that:

• Repeated exposure to threat-based messaging increases baseline anxiety

• Socially reinforced narratives shape stress responses

• Emotional contagion spreads through media ecosystems

In one well-known large-scale experiment, researchers demonstrated that emotional tone in news feeds measurably influenced users’ emotional states — without their awareness.

People don’t feel “off” for no reason.

They are responding to unspoken narrative cues:

• What’s safe to say

• What’s dangerous to believe

• When to feel afraid

• When to feel proud

• When to feel ashamed

• When to look away

With new research coming out showing us what we likely felt all along: Our brains and nervous system are not designed for the modern social media world. We are not meant to be laughing at a funny cat video, then heartbroken and crying over an animal abuse case, then enraged over politics, then happy over a baby announcement of your favourite celebrity.

We are not designed for this world, and it is creating an internal emotional environment that we never consciously agreed to yet makes the public increasingly easier to control as fear creates uncertainty and people desperately seek for certainty.

When you don’t understand the narrative environment you’re living inside, your body carries the cost.

This is always the reason behind why I started my “pop culture” YouTube channel and focused on branding, marketing, & PR. It was actually my original career as a mental health counsellor that sparked my interest in how psychology is used within branding & PR. The more I worked within the field my interest slowly crept over to how this information is used at scale to manipulate.

Now, I pull back the curtain on YouTube to show you how it’s done with trending stories. The idea is not to cause more fear but to alleviate it so that you can see the mechanics behind the spin. The Psychological attempts to control perception… and therefore you.

Why “Just Be Happy” Never Worked

The modern happiness industry failed because it framed emotional suffering as an individual self-improvement problem instead of a collective narrative problem.

You were told:

• Regulate your nervous system

• Change your mindset

• Curate your content diet

But no one asked:

• Who sets the emotional tone of the culture?

• Why are certain emotions rewarded while others are pathologized?

• Why does “positivity” so often align with compliance in today’s broader world definition?

You cannot meditate your way out of a manipulative narrative ecosystem without understanding what is often driving the chronic anxiety and fear.

That’s not empowerment. And expecting people to strictly turn off the news for good while staying off of social media isn’t useful, nor empowerment, either.

Empowerment, in my opinion, is understanding the mechanics behind our “reality” and deconstructing them so that we can regain personal power and control over our own minds.

Branding Is Identity Architecture

Here’s the uncomfortable truth:

Branding does not primarily sell products.

It sells identities.

When a brand tells you:

• “This is what success looks like”

• “This is what a good person does”

• “This is what confidence sounds like”

It is shaping your emotional self-concept.

Marketing psychology has long understood that identity-based messaging is more persuasive than feature-based messaging. People don’t buy what aligns with logic — they buy what aligns with who they believe themselves to be.

Psychological branding of identity is also a very powerful way to build tribalism, and therefore loyalty, within a brand. Have you ever noticed that if you question Taylor Swift the Swifites jump in with “you don’t understand no one sees me or understands me like her”.

Yes, I do understand. I understand that is entirely the point of her branding psychology.

PR then reinforces which identities are:

• Protected

• Rewarded

• Amplified

• Erased

Media completes the loop by normalizing, and amplifying, those identities as cultural truth. Trust me, with over 15 years of experience in the field, I can unequivocally tell you that it isn’t necessarily the most talented that succeed. It’s those that understand branding psychology.

If you don’t consciously understand this system, your emotions will be reactive, not sovereign, and you become less likely to question manipulative practices or downright fraud by the companies and personal brands you connect with. I speak about this in a new video on YouTube in regards to Mel Robbins and her newest manipulation around her “new” protein shake, Pure Genius Protein.

Narrative Power Decides What Feels Safe

Safety is not just physical.

It’s narrative.

Narratives determine:

• Which questions are dangerous

• Which emotions are respectable

• Which doubts are framed as moral failure

This is why people often feel anxiety without a clear cause. They are navigating contradictory emotional demands imposed by narrative systems: be authentic, but not disruptive; be informed, but not skeptical; be compassionate, but only in approved directions.

That tension lives in the body.

When the story you’re living inside is incoherent or coercive, the nervous system doesn’t relax — it braces.

Radical Happiness Is Discernment

Happiness, stripped of discernment, becomes a leash.

Real happiness — radical happiness — is not constant positivity. It is the capacity to:

• Think clearly under emotional pressure

• Feel without being manipulated

• Choose without narrative coercion

That requires narrative literacy.

You don’t escape emotional suffering by ignoring power structures within government, public figures, or even your favourite celebrity’s branding & marketing.

You escape it by seeing them clearly.

The Most Free People Are Narrative-Literate

They recognize:

• When a message is persuasion, not truth

• When “positivity” is a PR tactic

• When outrage is being monetized

• When empathy is being weaponized

• When PR moves are meant to manipulate & divert attention

They don’t outsource meaning.

They don’t swallow stories whole.

They don’t confuse influence with authority.

That isn’t cynicism.

It’s discernment.

This Is the Work Now

If you want emotional sovereignty in a world engineered for reaction, you must understand:

• Branding psychology

• Media framing

• PR narrative laundering

• Identity-based persuasion

Not to become manipulative —

but to stop being manipulated.

And, if you are building a personal brand, understanding it so that you can use it ethically.

Because emotional freedom without narrative awareness is fragile.

And radical happiness — real happiness — demands more than vibes.

It demands clarity.

~ ashley

https://www.ashleybrianaeve.com/