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…

Essential Lies

¡Hola mi Gente!

If you want nice, or polite, or anything like that, I am not the person. I make my own mother cry sometimes...

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Essential Lies: Self-Deception

I catch people in lies all the time. In fact, most of my one-to-one interactions are a series of steps walking people back through their self-deceptions. What I help facilitate is a process of deconstructing self-justification, which is a lot different from lying. It’s a tricky proposition, especially when most people are convinced they are justified. It’s almost comical and I get a lot of my humor from such interactions. I remember sitting in a graduate level counseling class and watching film of people saying no with their lips, but actually nodding their yes at the same time!

We all know and hear of the transgressions of public figures caught lying. There was Ronald Reagan, on national TV stating outright he had no prior knowledge of the Iran/ Contra Affair. For those that don’t know, Iran/ Contra was essentially an attempt to bypass the constitution and create a shadow government in order to wage an illegal war.

Old Ronnie lied. On TV.

Henry Kissinger, who’s being sought as a war criminal outside the U. S., famously said, “Mistakes were made,” when questioned about the Vietnam War. Mistakes were made? While we’re at it, where are those Iraqi weapons of mass destruction our young men and women died for? Of course, most people are more familiar with the tempest in a teapot known as the Lewinski Affair and Clinton’s infamous “I did not have sex with that woman” lie.

As human beings, we all share the impulse to justify ourselves and avoid responsibility for any actions that turn out to be harmful, immoral, or just plain stupid. While we all like to point at public figures, most of us will never be in the public spotlight when we lay our own eggs or the skeletons in our closet rattle. Our decisions will most likely not affect the lives of millions of people, but whether on a grand scale or our personal canvas, most of us find it difficult, if not impossible, to say, “I was wrong, I made a terrible mistake.” The higher the emotional, financial, moral stakes -- the harder it is.

It goes deeper than that: Most people, when confronted with evidence to the contrary, do not change their point of view, but justify it even more strongly. If your frame of reference for a table is mistaken and I show up with evidence to show you your life-long frame of reference is not consistent with reality, you will chuck the evidence (reality) and keep the frame. I realize that at this point you’re probably thinking that this is not you, but that’s bullshit. You do it too, because it’s the way we are wired to perceive reality. We create frames of reference -- sort of like maps that help guide us through life. So please, let us dispense with the “That’s not me/I know someone like that/ I used to be like that… ” bullshit inner commentary.

I was at a conference a couple of years ago in which I was presenting irrefutable evidence that mass incarceration actually serves to make us less safe as a society and the DAs and prosecutors in the audience had a collective fit. The more I was able to counter their questions and the more I was able to show how their assumptions were not in alignment with the empirical evidence, the angrier some of them became. One young woman from Mississippi, who had just presented a slide show on how efficiently her office was locking (mostly black) people up, stormed out when I showed where illegal drug activity in her county had actually increased.

The poster boy for clinging to discredited belief is Curious George W. Bush, or Dubya (Texan for "W"), as his fans liked to call him. Dumbya (as I call him) was wrong in his claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. He was wrong in claiming that Saddam was linked to Al Qaeda (though many Americans still believe this shit). He and the rest of the fact-challenged neocon goons were wrong in predicting that Iraqis would be dancing in joyous rapture welcoming the U.S. invasion. He was wrong in predicting that the conflict would be over quickly. He and his incompetent administration was wrong in its gross underestimate of the cost of the war, and most of all, he was famously wrong in his photo-op speech six weeks after the invasion began, when he announced (under a banner reading MISSION ACCOMPLISHED) that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended.”

Whew! How wrong can one person get?!!

Even as late as 2006, with the war going bad and Iraq sliding into civil war and sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies released a report that stated the Iraq invasion had increased the risk of terrorism, Dumbya said to a delegation of journalists, “I’ve never been more convinced that the decisions I made are the right decisions.”

::blank stare::

Bush has to justify the war in Iraq (and the concurrent war in Afghanistan) because he has too much invested in it already -- the blood of thousands of lives is on his hands. Of course, like my attractive but obstinate prosecutor from Mississippi, when proved wrong for his reasons for going to war, he made up new ones: getting rid of a very “bad guy,” fighting “terrists,” promoting peace in the Middle East, “bringing democracy to Iraq, and finishing the task [our troops] gave their lives for.” In other words, we must continue the war because we started the war.

This is deception so powerful that the present conservative in office, president Obama, sees a need to continue the justifications. In fact, Afghanistan is his war and more have died there under his watch than the previous stooge. The frame of reference for war in American is such a powerful metaphor, so wedded to its economic outlook, that many, many Americans cannot even fathom an existence without war.

As a nation, we are so addicted to war that most people reading this, or looking at the shattered body of the Iraqi child above will find a justification for it. And I'm not talking about some loony Pee Farter Beckerhead or Palinite here. I am referring to suburban mothers, to people who consider themselves liberal even.

Bush was not so much a “decider” than he is a self-justifier. Like most politicians, he’s a master at avoiding responsibility and speaking in the passive voice. And while we rightfully look at his behavior with alarm and horror, what he does is no different than what we all have done at one time or another in our lives. We stay in unhappy relationships because, after all, we have invested so much time in making it work. We stay in a job that deadens our spirit and look for reasons to continue staying because we are unable to see the benefits of leaving. We self-righteously create a rift with a friend or relative over some real or imagined slight, yet we see ourselves as the pursuers of peace and righteousness – if only the other side would apologize.

Self-justification is not the same as lying or making excuses. There is a difference between what a guilty man will say to the public to convince them of an untruth (“I am not a crook!”), and the process of persuading himself that he did a good thing. In the latter, he is lying to himself. That is why self-justification is more dangerous and powerful than a regular lie. It allows people to convince themselves that they did the right thing.

If you're wondering how it comes to be that a large swath of the American electorate votes and advocates against it's own economic interests, understanding this psychoneurological mechanism explains a lot. The more ideologically invested one becomes, the stronger the impulse to justify it, regardless of the cost. Scam artists are notorious for being able to exploit this impulse.

Self-justification is the reason that everyone (except the hypocrite) can see through a hypocrite. It allows us to create that separation between our moral lapses and someone else’s. It’s those people out there who have it wrong, not us. That’s why many of you reading this want to comment how much you’re not like this. If you have ever uttered, “There was nothing else I could have done,” or “I was doing the best considering the situation,” or “That bitch got what she deserved,” then you have probably justified some bullshit at one time or another.

None of us can live without making mistakes. But we do have the choice to say, “This is not working out here. This is not making sense.” To err is human, but as humans, we have the choice between covering up, or fessin' up. People are constantly pointing to external factors and that’s just another form of self-justification. People are also constantly saying we should learn from our mistakes, but how can we learn unless we first admit that we made any? How long will it be your mother’s fault? When will it stop being your ex’s fault?

The good news is that by understanding how this mechanism works, we can defeat the wiring. But that’s for another day, another post.

My name is Eddie and I'm in recovery from civilization... 

Monday Myth Busters [Familiarity/ Contempt]

¡Hola! Everybody...
Tomorrow I will be in Albany doing some politicking, so I’ll be out all day. It’s lobbying, but technically, I’m not allowed to lobby in my capacity as a worker in a non-profit organization. So, we call it “advocacy.”

We’re facing huge cuts at a time when people are most in need of our services. Welcome to Korporate Kristianity. You might think you’re only a temporarily embarrassed rich person in waiting, but the facts say otherwise.

BTW, check out my opinion piece over at the online magazine, Subversify (click here). I tackle the nuclear crisis unfolding in Japan.

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-=[ Contemptuous Familiarity ]=-

Familiarity breeds contempt... and children.

-- Mark Twain

It’s a well-worn truth that familiarity breeds contempt... right? Right?

Wrong!

While it’s true enough that a person’s flaws can be more easily discerned the more you come to know them, all things being equal, familiarity by itself is more likely to breed comfort than contempt. That’s a more readable translation of the more researcher Robert Zajonc’s more clinical, “Repeated exposure is a sufficient condition of attitude adjustment.”

Zajonc gave experimental subjects a set of seven-letter Turkish words and, in a similar study, a set of Chinese characters. His subjects had no idea what the words meant, but they consistently said a word meant something nicer if they had seen it repeatedly. Likewise, after being shown yearbook photographs of male strangers, people said they liked the men whose photos had already been shown to them.

Since Zajonc’s studies, conducted in the 1960s, literally hundreds of independent studies have confirmed his findings. A meta-analysis of all these studies taken in the 1980s by another researcher concluded that Zajonc was right. There was one caveat, however: if the same stimulus is presented too often or for too long a time on each occasion, familiarity may breed boredom. This is especially to occur in young children who tend to prefer new words or pictures to those they have seen before.

Even for adults, of course, more encounters with someone or something you find distasteful to begin with aren’t going to change your mind or warm your heart. But where you have no aversion the maxim seems to be true -- as advertisers and political consultants know too well -- that we like things more as we get used to them.

In fact, if you were to follow the conservative talking points on any given day, they use this truth to great effect. Say it enough times and people will cozy to the idea that President Obama is a Muslim/ socialist/ Nigerian/ communist/ illegal alien/ anti-Christ. This is especially true if you’re predisposed to see African Americans or people of color as the “other.”

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

Monday Myth Busters [Beauty is Only Skin Deep]

¡Hola! Everybody...
I’ve been very lazy with writing lately. I’ve been using my laptop at home (I can’t write on those! LOL) and this weekend I finally started unpacking (after almost two months in the new place). My back is only beginning to get back to some semblance of normalcy, so I spent the past weekend painting and I finally started unpacking. First thing I did was unpack my monster Dell desktop.

Whew!

It feels good and I still have literally thousands of books to unpack and arrange... I’m investing in a shelf system that will go great with my decorating scheme and save space to boot. For furniture, I’m getting, yes, IKEA (futon frame, media solutions, dressers)... I’ll take photos and share when I’m finished.

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-=[ Beauty is Only Skin Deep? ]=-

Beauty is only skin deep, and the world is full of thin-skinned people.

-- Richard Armour (1906–1989)

In the early 70s researchers showed that we project various positive characteristics on good-looking people. The study, “What is Beautiful is Good,” literally launched a movement in social psychology and since then, reams of studies have been published on a major self-fulfilling prophecy: Because attractive people are treated as if they have more to offer, they live up to those expectations. Conversely (and sadly), the reverse is true for those not pleasing to look at.

The 1972 study had researchers asking sixty college students to describe people solely on the basis of their photographs. Those whom the researchers took to be the most attractive were rated as socially more desirable were expected to have more prestigious jobs and happier marriages.

I know, I know, you’re probably thinking that surely that’s just the prejudice of the raters, right? It wouldn’t be fair if good-looking people had other things going for them, as well. Well, since when has life been fair? LOL Over the years, researchers have secretly judged the attractiveness of their subjects, measured them on a range of personality variables, and then looked for a relationship for the two. They have rarely been disappointed. Attractive people have turned out to have higher self-esteem, to be happier, less neurotic, and more resistant to peer pressure, than less attractive people. They also have more influence on others; are more valued as friends, colleagues, and lovers; get higher salaries; are dealt with les harshly in court; and are thought by their students to be superior teachers. While not all of these findings have been consistent for males and females, the overall pattern for both sexes is that beauty is definitely more than skin deep.

Even more depressing: Attractiveness is related to the perception (perhaps even the reality) of serious mental disorders. Researchers at the University of Tulsa discovered that students assumed ugly people were more likely than others to be psychologically disturbed. The lead researcher then made a point of telling another group of students that unattractiveness was unrelated to disturbance; he explicitly asked them to disregard this factor. Regardless, they, too, rated unattractive people as more troubled. Another researcher stopped people on the street and asked them to fill out a questionnaire assessing the likelihood that they, themselves, would eventually develop psychological disorders. His findings showed that “increasing attractiveness was related to a decreasing perceived risk of mental illness.”

The problem with these predictions is that they may be right. A study of female psychiatric patients uncovered that they were relatively unattractive compared to other women. It wasn’t that their misfortunes had ruined their looks: Even before they were diagnosed as mentally ill, the less-appealing women had had relationships that were more difficult. And among the patient population, those who were viewed as particularly unattractive were also the ones who had been committed for a longer period of time and had received a more serious diagnosis. Another study of a similar group of patients found them less attractive than their peers even back in high school, based on yearbook photographs.

Of course, all this may happen because appearance affects how we interact with people from the very beginning. Adults are more likely to look at, touch, and hold infants that are deemed “cute,” and this preference for beauty persists. As one researcher from the University of Hawaii put it, “the way we treat attractive versus unattractive people shapes the way they think about themselves, and, as a consequence, the kind of people they become.”

Love,

Eddie

References

For a comprehensive review of the literature see Hatfield, E., & Sprecher, S. (1986). Mirror, mirror. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Hatfield, E., & Rapson, R. L. (2000). Physical attractiveness. In W. E. Craighead & C. B. Nemeroff (Eds.), The Corsini encyclopedia of psychology and behavioral science (Vol. 3, pp. 1203-1205). New York: John Wiley & Sons.