As far as I can tell there is no definition for the term "dark psychology". If I had to guess, I would say that it is something along the lines of; "the influence on people to do things they normally would not do in the first place through exploitation of irrational and unconscious fears". Does anyone else think this is also a fitting description for advertising? (Recently a new website popped up called "darkpsychology.co", but as far as I can tell it is a spam blog. How appropriate.) Quebec's ban on Fast-food advertising reduced fast-food expenditures by 13 percent per week in French-speaking households. Even the price of a product may affect your perceived quality of it.
Woman in particular have been assaulted with ads, informing them of problems they did not know they had until the they were told so:
The gist of the article is that U.S. women were browbeaten into shaving underarm hair by a sustained marketing assault that began in 1915. (Leg hair came later.) The aim of what Hope calls the Great Underarm Campaign was to inform American womanhood of a problem that till then it didn't know it had, namely unsightly underarm hair. Link.
There is a BBC documentary called The Century of The Self which touches upon all of this. It is about Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud's American nephew that; helped tie smoking to the woman's rights movement, increased Betty Croker sales by adding an egg to their instant mix, worked for Woodrow Wilson, and established the idea that people needed objects to express their inner self to others. Simply put, he was able to influence large amounts of people through linking products with the unconscious fears of people.
This is the exploitative foundation that modern advertising has been built on top of.
My biggest fear? Speaking in front of a room full of spiders.
The Internet went out for a few hours today, and with an upset stomach, and nothing to do; I started to wonder about why so many people fear public speaking. Why are so many of us adverse to it? Supposedly seventy-five percent of people experience some sort of anxiety when publicly speaking. Sometimes it happens to me, all of a sudden my sympathetic nervous system kicks in, and I start to get sweaty, and my heart races, and oh jeez.
Evolutionary psychologists suggest that our fears have been hardwired into our brains. We fear heights, spiders, and the dark because our ancestors that didn't, were promptly genetically pruned. Of course the problem with this theory is that there is no way to test it without a time machine.
Can the same be true to public speaking? Would expressing your views to a group put you in as much danger as being somewhere high up, or being attacked by a wild animal? Ostracization could have certainly meant death in certain situations. Then again, many people who do speak out are put in danger (Martin Luther King, John Lennon, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Yitzhak Rabin, Gandai, Larry Flint, Jesus, George Harrison, Alan Berg).
But the concept of public speaking being so dangerous is astounding to me. Perhaps it is the same reason why the judgment of others is so important to us? I don't know... only questions to think about...
Unfortunately, because my degree program in Cognitive Science is in science (instead of the humanities) there isn't any room for an ethics class. There is however room for the mandatory Calculus I and II. I hope that comes in handy, considering statistics was rejected from my final degree proposal. On the other hand I could have taken an ethics course as a general education requirement. Well possibly... after transferring between schools with completely different gneral education requirements, in order to pursue the BS in Cognitive Science; I don't know if I can blame myself.
In late night conversations in smoke filled rooms my friends and I talk about the future, and ethics of Cognitive Science. It is my hope that after I graduate I can do lab-research in the field. Perhaps eye tracking, an ERP lab, machine learning, doing work with games, or some other cognitive psychology laboratory. A question always arises "Why"? Why would one want to continue research in such a field? Usually the interrogator of the question is concerned that technology will eventually lead to humanity's downfall, "the end of the world". I do not necessarily disagree.
I have often been criticized about how I use what I know about how people work in every day situations. When I explained to my friend that if I am in a club, sometimes I will approach a woman with another woman around my arm. The reason for this is building social report, simply put, if this person is invested in me, than there must be a good reason why. My friend told me that I was being sexist and manipulative. I argue that if after approaching someone with a friend, if I can get that person to open up to me, and have a meaningful relationship with them, then there is nothing wrong with what I am doing.
On the other hand, I could just as well take her home for the night. Is this still manipulative? Even after a string of other social engineering techniques? No, pinking up women isn't necessarily Cognitive Science; I would argue it is more social engineering, which I would argue can be a part of Cog Sci. The point I am getting at is that is just like any other form of technology, Cognitive Science could be used for good and bad. Yes computers can provide us with a wealth of information, but they've also proved quite well at collecting off of our personal information, and as much as they bring us together, they drive us farther apart through isolation, etceteria, etceteria.
The question remains, why is it important that we know what human eyes pay most attention to, and for how long, why do we need to know if the sound of a beer bottle opening triggers more brain activity in a alcoholic than an average person, why do we need to have computers that can "think" on their own. Obviously nothing good can come fro technology like this, and will only be exploited more by people like advertisers.
And the reason I give is a personal philosophy. It is that if heaven could ever exist, it would have to be manifested here on Earth. If we are ever going to achieve such a state, we need to understand how we operate, why we do the things we do. We need to understand that we operate on the same brains we had when we were cavemen; and that's why we are aggressive, why we believe in ancient superstitions, why our genitals control actions we make, when the woman in the club sees me approach her with another woman in my arm and recognizes what is happening.
Being able to understand the ways in which the cognitive biases, and facilities we make affect our judgement is a form of transcendence. If man can't understand that, than I believe that he deserves to be pruned from existence. Not necessarily "the end of the world", the end of the human race. The earth is 4.54 billion years old, we're 200,000 years old. Whatever we can cook up I am sure the planet can handle it.
Social proofing is a very powerful tool. There are all sorts of examples of this; another well known (academic) study was conducted by Milgram in 1969 (see source at bottom) where he had people stand around and look up at a window.Forty-five percent of the people on the street stopped if one person was looking up, eighty-five percent of the people on the street stopped if fifteen people were looking up. Social proof has also been used to cure phobias. In a 1967 study, children who were afraid of dogs were more likely to handle a dog themselves after watching another child play with the animal.
So whenever I see mountains of screaming fans I have to wonder if there isn't some social engineering happening. Do you remember that South Park episode where Cartmen goes to Chef for advice about making a boy band?
Cartmen: Chef, God told me I was to start a boy band and make ten million dollars. The problem is, it isn't working. I mean I feel the music burning inside me, but I just can't express it right, you know?
Chef: Well Eric I... I think you're just focusing in on the wrong thing. Boy bands aren't about music, they're created by corporations to make money, they're all based on the Garmlich effect.
Cartmen: What's the Garmlich Effect?
Chef: The law of physics that states if one girl screams for something, it will make other
girls scream and then it grows exponentially until all girls within a five mile radius are screaming.
Cartmen: But then how do boy bands use that?
Chef: All they do is make videos, showing tons and tons of girls screaming for the boy-band. Once you get them screaming you can't stop them, they're crazy. Ex.. except for Liz of course.
Cartmen: Thanks!
Chef: You're welcome! Now go away.
Cartmen: OK!
Chef: And a cucumber down the pants never hurt either!
Cartmen: Cucumber down the pants, got it.
I have to wonder if there is some truth to the fictional Garmlich effect. Have you ever seen the first Backstreet Boys, or The Beatles music video? They're all being chased, or surrounded by by hordes of screaming women! In all fairness N'Sync doesn't get chased until their second video, and there is only one woman. In their first video, they're all dancing together on a moon-base, 238 thousand miles from the closest female.
One cannot help but think that there is an artificial standard being created. I remember hearing about screaming fans being placed up front at Elvis and Frank Sinatra concerts, although I have no source for this. Televangelists place plants in their audiences, why wouldn't music promoters do the same?
Social proofing is a heuristic, a shortcut to mental decisions. "If that worked for them, then the same must also work for me"! I would argue that this is the same behavior that makes men already in a relationship more attractive to other women. "If she's in a happy relationship with him, I can be in a happy relationship with him". Finally we may have an answer to the loaded question "why are all the good men taken"? There are of course other factors involved in this. It is a rule of logic for example, that the less of something there is, the more valuable it is.
Of course, our best defense against social proof is our knowledge of it. The book The Psychology of Influence has a lot more information on how marketers, and other people try to exploit these mental heuristics we are all prone to.I highly suggest this book as further reading material into the subject.
Bandura, A. (1967). The role of modeling processes in personality development. In W. W. Hartup & N. L. Smothergill (Eds.), The young child. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children.
Milgram, S., Bickman, L., Berkowitz, L. (1969). Note on the drawing power of crowds of different size.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 13, 79-82.
The "personal preference of a computer brand" debate has clogged Internet discussions as much as any other pointless debate. "Why The Simspons aren't funny anymore", and "Kirk versus Picard" are arguments almost as old as the Internet itself. Yes, people actually came up with one hundred point lists as to why one fictional space-captain was better than the other. In fact BBS boards existed for specific models of computers, and the operator would kick you if he found out that you had a Commodore on an Amiga board; because obviously Amigas were superior machines in every way.
When I was fifteen I went to CompUSA to buy a copy of OSX 10.3. I bought an iMac G3 with OS8 at a computer fair with the plan to upgrade it, and then turn the computer over for a profit. It ended up being one of the biggest pain in the ass projects I ever attempted. I found the Apple rep, who was talking to a woman with a child. I asked if they had any copies of 10.3 still laying around, because all I saw were boxes for 10.4. The Apple rep snickered and said "Ha! Nobody uses Panther anymore!" The woman rolled her eyes and laughed. As the two people returned to their conversation, smiling, I stood there contemplating the reason why grown adults would result to school yard attempts at ostracization over consumer products. I then realized my mistake wasn't asking the Apple rep for help, but going to CompUSA in the first place.
The point I am trying to get at, isn't that Mac users are assholes (disregarding the two people in CompUSA), but that we are affected every day by consumer marketing, and that the two assholes in CompUSA were just as much implicated in be affected by marketing as you and I are. Nevertheless a specific operating system is required only by the type of work you do. If you're a system admin, you're probably going to use Linux or Unix. If you're a video editor, or graphic designer; you're probably going to use a Mac at work. And for spreadsheets, and everything else there's windows. If you think one computer is better, and all you use it for is checking your e-mail and browsing the Internet, you're a tool, and this post will explain why. And no, using a torrented copy of Final Cut Pro to make Naruto, and Avenged Sevenfold Youtube music videos wont justify your purchase to your anime fan forum.
In 2003, researchers led by Read Montague at Baylor College of Medicine used an old ad campaign as inspiration for a seminal scientific experiment. They decided to have their test subjects take a Pepsi Challenge of sorts, with one key difference: the subjects' brains would be monitored by a functional MRI machine as they completed the taste test.
The results were remarkable, as summed up in this excerpt from a Frontline report by Mary Carmichael: "Without knowing what they were drinking, about half of [the subjects] said they preferred Pepsi. But once Montague told them which samples were Coke, three-fourths said that drink tasted better, and their brain activity changed too. Coke 'lit up' the medial prefrontal cortex — a part of the brain that controls higher thinking. Montague's hunch was that the brain was recalling images and ideas from commercials, and the brand was overriding the actual quality of the product."
In other words, about half of the subjects who said they preferred Pepsi when both drinks were anonymous changed their preference to Coke when the drinks were identified. And when the brands were revealed, the Coke brand actually caused activity in a part of the brain that remained dormant at the mention of Pepsi.
Computer science majors probably
have different concepts attached
to this image than other people.
A brand is a collection of images and ideas representing an economic producer; more specifically, it refers to the concrete symbols such as a name, logo, slogan, and design scheme. Think about the concepts that are tied to the products you own. I decided to make a list of the first six words I thought of when I thought of the words "Microsoft" and "Apple".
Microsoft
Apple
Windows
slick
BSOD
macintosh
MS DOS
IPOD
desktop tower
firewire
Bill Gates
graphics design
Steve Ballmer
Steve Jobs
XP
Apple store
You could of course, do this with any product, and results are going to differ from demographic to demographic, person to person. My personal results up there don't matter, I am just trying to covey the idea that we attach meanings to concepts. Hence why people prefer Coca-Cola, even if Pepsi tastes better. Here is another example of how branding influences us, well in this case influences men:
Although a sample of fifty women and fifty men probably isn't a significant sample size, even after applying the T-test.
The public reaction to the passing of Steve Jobs is an excellent example of how branding and marketing affect us. Newsarticles have gone as far as to compare Steve Jobs to inventors such as Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. It is completely ignorant to make such a statement, and disregards the fact the the invention of the computer was done so on the shoulders of many other people and companies. (The book Accidental Empires is a great history of the invention of the modern computer, and can be found on Amazon for a dollar. ) Although your Facebook feed right now might give you the impression Steve Jobs invented computers, MP3 players, cell phones, and the Internet. But this is what was intended, Steve Job's most important contribution to Apple upon his return was the complete overhaul of Apple marketing.
Don't make fun of Steve Jobs on Facebook
Every classroom I have ever been in, starting with firstgrade, has had an Apple computer sitting in the back of the room; from the Power Macs to the Imacs. Whether or not the computer was utilised was the teacher's preference. Still, the case stands that almost every student in the US would come to equate Apple with education. Apple cut deals with schools everywhere to sell them Macs. Even today Apple offers discounts to college students based off of which colleges they attend.No other computer, or product is as well liked to education.
In German, a play on words can be made between the word Schein and Sein. To appear and to be. It is important to see things how they are, and not how they seem, or how you want them to be. Marketing tries to convince you otherwise.
Schein und Sein
by Wilhelm Busch
Mein Kind, es sind allhier die Dinge,
Gleichwohl, ob große, ob geringe,
Im wesentlichen so verpackt,
Daß man sie nicht wie Nüsse knackt.
Wie wolltest du dich unterwinden,
Kurzweg die Menschen zu ergründen.
Du kennst sie nur von außenwärts.
Du siehst die Weste, nicht das Herz.
Here is my attempt at a translation:
Appearance and Being
by Wilhelm Busch
My child, there is in all things,
No matter how large or how little,
packaged essentially so,
that one cannot crack them like nuts.
How would you undertake,
the short path to fathom the people,
you know them only from the outside.
You see the vest, not the heart.
People will like you more as well as pay attention to you more if you mimic their body language and speech patterns.
There have been a handful of peer-reviewed studies that show subjects perceive others as being more honest and likable when they use verbal and non-verbal mimicry and rapport. The first time I ever heard about this was in a Wired article written by Kevin Poulsen about a study conducted at Standford. The study was conducted in virtual reality, and found that when a virtual person sitting across from the subject mimicked head, and hand movements on a four second delay; not only did the subjects like the virtual person more, they paid more attention to it! What is more concerning about this study is that the presenter was proposing a fictitious new rule that said all students would have to have university identification cards on their person at all times.
The Virtual Reality Experiment at Ohio State
The Wired article by Poulsen describes another study where students liked the picture of a particular presidential candidate (Kerry or Bush) more than the other when their own face was morphed in with one of the candidates. It is interesting considering social psych tells us that we find attractive people more trustworthy. Think of the past presidential elections, has the most attractive candidate not won? Obama and McCain. Bush, Kerry and Gore. Clinton, Bush Sr and Bob Dole.
These studies have also been conducted one-on-on with humans. The Ohio State researchers for the peer reviewed study suggest that everybody actually does this unconsciously. "Matching another person's representational language enhances perceived empathy" says the paper. I know that in the few NLP training videos I have seen, Richard Bandler suggests matching the breathing patterns of your subject.
Another very successful method is called predicate matching. If you don't know what a predicate is, the best way is to do this is to repeat back to the subject the verb phrase of the sentence. If you don't know what that means, you can read a paper Bandler and Grinder published in the eighties. However, their results "weakly supported a claim of enhanced accuracy of understanding on one measure of objective understanding", so take that as you will.
Bandler and Grinder argue that something like predicate matching works because people communicate through different modes of experiencing; they internally represent the world in different ways. People may not understand one another when they use different sensory predicates to relate to similar experiences. If you are more interested in this work, check out the article linked above. Inside you will find all sorts of academic sources which back up their argument.
