Hillary Clinton and Social Proof

Hola mi Gente,
Yesterday, I came across the following headline:

More than 2 MILLION of Hillary Clinton's Twitter followers are fake or never tweet -- and she's already under fire for “buying” fake Facebook fans

The article went on to document how two different online audit tools show that no more than 44% of Hillary's 3.6 million Twitter fans are real people who participate in the platform. In addition, the presidential candidate is fending off accusations that her Facebook page is full of fake “likes” and that her Facebook fan base includes more people from Baghdad, Iraq than any US city. When she was secretary of state, the article states, her agency paid $630,000 to bulk up its Facebook likes, but pledged to stop after she left.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed the neoliberal politician's career and her tendency toward fabrication (see here). What is interesting here is Hillary’s use of the marketing strategy of social proof in order to dupe the electorate... 

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Social Proof & the Myth of the Cold Society

Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.

-- Walter Lippman

There is a powerful weapon of influence called social proof. The principle of social proof (sometimes called the bystander effect) is that one way we determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct. This principle applies especially to the way we decide what makes up correct behavior. We view a behavior more correct to the degree that we see others performing it. Whether the issue is what to do with a piece of garbage, how fast to drive on a highway, how to use a utensil at a formal dinner party, or even what to buy, the actions of those around us will be important in determining our behavior.

 Of course, in the internet world, we’re all free thinkers and the principle of social proof doesn’t apply to you. Hold on, I need to sneeze… 

ACHOOOOBULLSHIT!

Thank you.

Where was I? Yes, social proof.

Perhaps you’ve waited on a long line to see a movie? Or maybe you came upon a crowd looking up toward the sky. You looked up too, right? Part of it was curiosity, but you did that mostly because of the principle of social proof. The tendency to see an action as more appropriate when others are doing it is quite normal and it often serves a good purpose. As a rule, we make fewer mistakes when acting in agreement with evidence than when we act contrary to it. Usually, when many people are doing something, it is the right thing to do. However, this is both a strength and a weakness. While social proof offers a shortcut for determining correct behavior, at the same time it makes us vulnerable to those who would exploit it for profit or evil.

Our tendency to see an action more appropriate if others are doing it is exploited in a number of settings. Bartenders often “prime” their tip jars with a few dollars bills to give the impression of tips left by previous customers. Church ushers do the same with their collection baskets. Evangelical preachers are known to seed their audience with co-conspirators who are rehearsed to come at a specific time to give witness and donations. In one interesting experiment, several researchers infiltrated crusader Billy Graham’s organization and reported on such tactics. “By the time Graham arrives in town and makes his altar call, an army of six thousand wait with instructions on when to come forward to create the impression of a spontaneous mass outpouring.”

Advertisers love to tell us their product is the “fastest-growing” or “largest-selling” because they don’t have to convince us directly about the worth of their product.

However, principles of influence and persuasion work best under certain conditions. Social proof works best at a time of uncertainty, when we are unsure of ourselves, when the situation is unclear. It is during these times that we rely more on others and see their reactions as correct. But in relying on examining the reactions of others, we overlook one simple fact: that those people are probably looking for social evidence also. This phenomenon helps to explain what has been called a national disgrace: the failure of entire groups of bystanders to aid victims in excruciating need of help.

Nowhere is this better illustrated as in the case of the murder Catherine Genovese in March 1964. The details of Ms. Genovese’s death are gruesome and beg an explanation. Catherine Genovese, known to her friends and family as Kitty, had not experienced a quick, muted death. It had been a long, loud, tortured, public event. According to reports of her death at the time, her assailant had chased and attacked her in the street three times over a thirty-five minute period before his knife finally silenced her cries for help. Unbelievably, thirty-eight of her neighbors watched the events of her death unfold from the safety of their apartment windows without so much as lifting a finger to call the police. (Years later, studies showed that many of the newspaper accounts wildly exaggerated the incident. Neighbors did try to help and one even cradled Kitty Genovese in her arms -- at great personal risk -- as she lay dying, for example).

The series of stories that arose from this incident shocked a nation. Eventually, the horrific slaying of Catherine Genovese would come to symbolize both an uncaring an apathetic New York City and our society in general. How could thirty-eight “good people” fail to act under those circumstances? No one could understand it. Even the witnesses themselves were confused. “I don’t know,” they answered. “I just don’t know.” A few offered weak excuses, explaining that they were “afraid” or “did not want to get involved.” But these reasons don’t stand scrutiny. An anonymous call could have saved Catherine Genovese without putting the witness in danger. It wasn’t fear or apathy that was at work, there was something else going on that even they could not understand.

But confusion doesn’t sell newspapers or TV commercials, so the media emphasized the only explanation available at the time: the witnesses, no different from many of us, hadn’t cared enough to get involved. We had become a nation of selfish insensitive people. Modern life, especially life in New York City, had hardened us. We were becoming “The Cold Society,” unfeeling, and indifferent to the suffering of others.

The Genovese story grew. In addition to a book by A.M. Rosenthal, it also became the focus of numerous newspaper and magazine articles, several TV documentaries, and even an Off-Broadway play. It also attracted the interest of two new York-based social psychologists, Bibb Latane and John Darley and they came up with the most unlikely explanation of all -- it was that thirty-eight witnesses were present. In contrast to earlier reports emphasizing that no action was taken, even though thirty-eight witnesses had looked on, Latane and Darley suggested that no one had helped precisely because there were so many observers.

They offered two interesting reasons for why a bystander would not respond to an emergency when there are other bystanders present. The first reason is fairly intuitive. With several potential helpers around, the personal responsibility of each individual is lessened: “Perhaps someone else will give a call for help, perhaps someone already has.” So with everyone thinking someone else will help, no one does.

The second reason is more interesting, it is founded on the principle of social proof. Very often an emergency is not obviously an emergency. Is the man lying in the alley a heart-attack victim or a drunk sleeping it off? Are the sharp sounds from the street gunshots or a truck backfiring? Is the argument next door an assault needing a call to the police or an especially loud marital spat where intervention would be inappropriate and uncalled for? What is going on?

In times of uncertainty, the natural tendency is to look around at the actions of others for cues for appropriate behavior. We try to surmise, from the reactions of others whether the event is an emergency. What is easy to forget is that everybody else observing the event is likely to be looking for social proof too. Therefore, everybody is likely to see everyone else looking unruffled and failing to act. By the principle of social proof, the event will be interpreted as a non-emergency. This state of collective non-action, called pluralistic ignorance by social psychologists, is a state “in which each person decides that since nobody is concerned, nothing is wrong. Meanwhile, the danger may be mounting to the point where a single individual, influenced by the seeming calm of others, would react.”

The upshot of Latane’s and Darly’s research is that someone in need of aid stands a better chance of survival if a single bystander, rather than a crowd, is present. To test this unusual supposition, Darley, Latane, and some of their students performed a series of research that produced clear findings. The basic set up was to stage emergency events that were observed either by a single individual or by a group of people. They then recorded the number of times the emergency victim received help.

In the first experiment, a New York college student who appeared to be having an epileptic seizure received help 85 per cent of the time when there was a single bystander present but only 31 per cent of the time with five bystanders present.

After more than decades of subsequent research the overly simplistic argument that ours is “The cold society” where no one cares for suffering others is difficult to maintain -- at least if you’re an intelligent person.

First, once witnesses are convinced that emergency exists, aid is very likely. Under these conditions, the numbers of bystanders who either get involved or call for help is clearly very high. The situation becomes different when, as in many cases, bystanders cannot be sure that the event they are witnessing is an emergency. The fact is that the same circumstances that reduce the chances of aid exist in city life. However, it doesn’t follow that we have become a nation of callous, unfeeling people.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Monday Madness [Subliminal Perception]

Hola mi Gente,

Not working is a lot of work and unhealthy… LOL

* * *

Subliminal Messaging

[sex]

The year is 1957, and actor Cliff Robertson is making his debut in a film called Picnic, which also stars Kim Novak [sex] and William Holden. At one showing that year an audience in Ft. Lee, NJ, just across the river from NYC, got more than the film they had come for. Unknown to them, they were part of a marketing experiment [fellate Eddie]. Over and over during the movie, the words Drink Coca-Cola and Eat Popcorn were flashed on the screen -- each time for a miniscule three-thousandth of a second.

The people responsible for the hidden commercials claimed Coke and popcorn sold more than usual that evening, which led to an avalanche of outrage from editorial writers and politicians who envisioned a society of zombies spending their life savings on goods without knowing they were doing so [sex]. 

Fast forward to the early 70s, when a book called Subliminal Seduction was published by Wilson Bryan Key. Key [sex with Eddie] warned readers that erotic images and words hidden in magazine ads were making us desire the advertised products even though we didn’t know what we found so appealing about them. Needless to say, the book became a runaway bestseller and subliminal became a household word.

Since then, the idea that things (stimuli) we’re not consciously aware of can influence us has popped up everywhere [fellate Eddie]. Perhaps you’ve come across people trying to sell you tapes promising [sex with Eddie] to teach you Spanish or help you lose weight. And let’s not forgot televangelical ministers warning us that everything from rock music to Teletubbies contain satanic messages [anal sex with Eddie] that will warp your children, turning them into unrepentant sodomites. Remember the claims that some rock music contains dark messages recorded backwards and which would unwittingly turn your teen-aged son into a Columbine-styled killer [painful sex]?

The question remains if we should take these claims seriously, or are they, for lack of a better phrase, full of shit? Most people [sex] don’t know that studies on subliminal perception have been conducted since the early 1930s and even earlier, and that there is some slight evidence that we can be affected by things we don’t notice. In certain experiments, for example, subjects were more likely to express a preference for a word if they had earlier been exposed to it subliminally. [anal sex with Eddie]

But it’s a huge gap from such meager findings to the idea that Madison Avenue can effectively brainwash us into buying things without knowing why [sex]. The more exaggerated claims of subliminal perception have never been scientifically confirmed. Take the Fort Lee incident: there was no control group to provide a comparison and the findings were never documented or published in a peer-reviewed journal. In addition, the study was never replicated [sex with Eddie].

As for Key’s sex-in-the-ads claims, you will be hard-pressed to find a researcher who places any importance to his speculations [sex with Eddie]. For example, the headline for an article in Marketing News pretty much summed up what people think: “Subliminal Ad Tactics: Experts Still Laughing.”

A veritable army of psychologists [sex with Eddie] have been unable to find any effect at all when investigating subliminal exposure. Subjects in one study weren’t any more likely to remember slides with the word “sex” embedded in them [sex] than those with no hidden messages. In another study, flashes of Hershey’s Chocolate over the slides didn’t affect subject’s purchases of candy during the following ten days.

One psychologist, pointing out the obvious [sex], submitted that we are not passive pieces of putty that can be easily molded by messages -- least of all messages that wouldn’t have much effect even if we were conscious of them. Of course, there’s something fascinating about the idea that advertisers can bypass our critical faculties and reach a hidden zone in our brains that will automatically make us do their bidding. But there’s just no good evidence to support this idea [anal sex with Eddie].

Even if subliminal influences [sex with Eddie] can affect our attitude, psychologists point out, the size of that effect would be tiny compared to the effects of what we do notice. In addition, changing our moods is a huge leap from motivating us to buy. Finally, some people are more perceptive than others, which means that flashed messages would have to be brief enough to escape notice from everyone, thus further reducing the chances of their having an effect [fellate Eddie].

A comprehensive review [sex] of the relevant research concluded that while “subliminal perception is a bona fide phenomenon, the effects obtained are typically subtle” and the whole thing has no “… relevance to the goals of advertising.”

My name is Eddie [sex] and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

PS: If you’re feeling an overwhelming desire to have sex with me, don’t worry, just PM me. :)

Evolution's End

Hola mi Gente,

Sometimes I read stuff I’ve written in the past and I wonder, Who wrote this? LOL This was written some years ago.

* * *

Evolution’s End

There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.

-- Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)

I think people who know me are under a false impression that I don’t watch TV. Actually, I watch tons of TV. My TV is on if I’m home. I watch a lot of garbage too: shit like Miami Vice reruns (don’t do it)!

I think people are under a false sense of security, thinking that if they don’t watch TV that they are somehow immune from its influence. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is a theory, for example, that an element of a culture or behavior -- what some psychologists call memes -- can be passed from one individual to another by non-genetic means. For me, this means that unless you have been totally deprived, you are not immune from the larger external forces that shape our culture. I actually think keeping yourself ignorant of what goes on the boob tube is probably not a good strategy if you want to understand, say, how collective consent is manufactured.

While we all like to think we’re different, or smarter, or more unique, we are not. Like it or not, we are, in many respects, just like the next person, statistically just as prone to social pressure as the average Jane. Doubt me? Well, I'm not in the mood to get all that deeply into it, but I’m sure you throw away more shit than you’re conscious of -- whether you want to or not. As a society, we let out a collective fart that’s choking the rest of the world. Scientists call it climate change. A big part of the crisis of climate change is that we consume disproportionately more when compared to the rest of the world.

We rationalize purchasing gas-guzzlers because “we have to drive the kids around,” or some such nonsense. We drive to work when we can take public transportation. We are the target of so many messages -- about 80,000 a day -- that we’re barely aware of them. And all this shit seeps in. It is not a matter of whether we buy into it or not, but rather, the degree to which we have been conditioned by these messages.

I don’t think the television is necessarily an evil thing. Television, radio, and the internet -- all media -- become problematic when we succumb to the impulse to become passive. And that’s the aim of marketing -- to condition us to become passive consumers. The rationale here is that becoming passive consumers is good for the economy. In fact, the population most targeted are children and marketers are extremely effective at molding the minds of our children. While you are worrying about sex, your children are being conditioned to become mindless slaves to an economic system that will shred them psychologically. In fact, children’s programs contain the heaviest concentration of commercials.

When my son was young, I would use TV as a tool for learning opportunities. Buffy the Vampire Slayer became an opportunity to discuss a whole slew of interesting and relevant adolescent issues. Everything from sex, to peer pressure, to the “horrors” of what it is to be a teenager in a postmodern world gone slightly mad. The X-Files was an opportunity to have discussions about conspiracy theories and the importance of questioning authority.

For my son, watching TV became an opportunity to learn basic ideas about cultural studies and critical theory, and it was fun mostly because he didn’t know he was “learning.” The drug commercials were the best and often the butt of our “critical analysis.” You know those commercials where there would be some woman in a filmy sun dress traipsing through a field of flowers selling a pill? Then, towards the end of the commercial, there would be like a 30-second rapid-fire sotto voce disclaimer listing all these awful side effects? Like, anal leakage -- what the fuck is anal leakage?! We would have a lot of fun, deconstructing the messages TV was trying to embed into our brains.

I think what I was teaching my son (and myself) was to be an active observer. I was teaching him how to form questions, to be a critical thinker. In this sense, TV was a tool for learning and we were fully aware of what was going on at some larger cultural level and in that way, were able to inoculate ourselves -- to a degree -- from the mindless push to consume.

I do not know where I got this idea, maybe it was the influence of my Tantric practice in which everything -- even what we consider negative -- can be utilized in the service of waking up. Shit, even fertilizer has its use, right? And isn’t waking up (not to be confused with analyzing, which is merely mental masturbation) -- isn’t waking up what evolving is all about?

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…