The hole needing filling is the problem. — Isaac

Sure, a good part of the problem. But the saturation of society by adsters deepens the hole and offers insidious pseudo-solutions to the hole - what Frankl called the existential vacuum.

So I think mass manipulation sustains the existential vacuum. I don't see a way to tease them apart.

Do you have a source for further reading?

I think their influence is exaggerated. — Isaac

Can you expand on this?

I didn't say they had no part to play. Had transistors not been invented there'd be no televisions and hence no MTV, but we don't blame transistors for the popularity of the flannel shirt. The point was that advertisers neither decided, nor encouraged the trend. They may have helped finance the technology which allowed it, but so did bankers, accountants, HR managers... — Isaac

I might add that adsters do play a role in determining the content of television programming. They have the power to withdraw financial support.

I can't say whether advertisers played this sort of role in the 90s. But certainly a consumeristic outlook has been at the heart of a number of cultural trends inspired by celebrities. They become celebrities, after all, in light of the saleability of their brand.

Do you have a source for further reading? — ZzzoneiroCosm

Well short of reading Milgram ('Obedience to Authority', if you're unsure) - where he states...

ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process — Milgram 1974

... A good article (if you have institutional access) https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.2044-8309.2010.02015.x

For the contrasting position https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0959354314542368

I think their influence is exaggerated. — Isaac

Genuinely interested in a reference or substantiation for this claim.

... A good article (if you have institutional access) — Isaac

Thanks, I do.

It's a ruse to call a society governed by mass manipulation a democracy.

Mass (need I say, nigh-invisible) manipulation: from public relations to motivation research to advertising to political strategy to perception management (military) to ubiquitous mis- and disinformation.

There is nothing democratic about a society informed by ubiquitous "conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses" (Bernays, 1928). — ZzzoneiroCosm

Indeed. Free and fair elections require a well informed electorate.

If you want to discuss this:

The right-wingers say that the "self-serving and devious" are the leftists.
The leftists say that the "self-serving and devious" are the right-wingers.

They also differ in who exactly those "innocent masses" are.

So who is who exactly?
— baker

...you might start a thread in the politics section. — ZzzoneiroCosm

No. I am asking you:

Who are those "innocent masses"?

Who are the "self-serving and devious"?

Your thread topic depends on taking for granted that those categories exist. But it's not clear that they do exist. There is no social consensus about who they are. You can't pinpoint them. So who are they?

I think both concepts, "the innocent masses" and "the self-serving and devious", are artificial constructs intended to serve some ideological purpose.



As for how psychologists have betrayed democracy: By pretending to be morally and ideologically neutral when they're not, and demading from us to act as if this pretense doesn't exist.

this desire to be led — ZzzoneiroCosm

Really, people want to be led? I don't see that.

I assume you accept that the popularity of flannel shirts in the 90s had its origin in the grunge movement given a global platform on MTV. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Flannel shirts have been popular among farmers and other physical workers for pretty much as long as those people could afford them. This precedes grunge.

Advertisers have created a culture of consumerism. — ZzzoneiroCosm

In the spirit of empirical science: How would you go about proving this claim of yours?

I suggest reading Edward Bernays and Ernest Dichter (et al) to get a picture of how a culture of consumerism was intentionally created. They're proud of their work and talk about it more or less openly. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Or maybe they just liked to brag, taking credit for things they didn't do. What else to expect from someone working in or around advertising!

The hole needing filling is the problem.
— Isaac

Sure, a good part of the problem. But the saturation of society by adsters deepens the hole and offers insidious pseudo-solutions to the hole - what Frankl called the existential vacuum.

So I think mass manipulation sustains the existential vacuum. I don't see a way to tease them apart. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Not even if it rained gold coins
would we have our fill
of sensual pleasures.

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/dhp/dhp.14.than.html

This is from a text old more than two thousand years. Or read Ecclesiastes in the Bible.

The existential vacuum and the awareness of it have existed long before modern methods of "mass manipulation".

So I think mass manipulation sustains the existential vacuum. I don't see a way to tease them apart.

And you want to be a psychotherapist??

And you want to be a psychotherapist?? — baker

I can see you have an axe to grind. Not interested. Take care. :smile:

True. Using psychology to manipulate is a betrayal. It exploits something intimate and innocent. — Tate

You don't "manipulate" your car to avoid crashing into a ravine you cannot see and perishing in agony, you maneuver it. You don't "exploit" a child by putting them in the class they will actually be able to gather information from just because their ignorance is "intimate and innocent", you advance them.

Where do you draw the distinction between education and manipulation? A teacher offering snacks to whoever passes their 3rd grade division exam is some sort of fascist tyrant bent on warping the human mind? Eggs and bacon while high in cholesterol and unhealthy fats are - whether fortunately or not - pretty darn good. If you ask Americans if they had to choose one or the other would they prefer a happy life or a long life, what do you think the majority consensuses would be? To promote this through advertisement, science (skewed and incomplete or not), and ease of distribution is - whether foolish or not - democracy in action.

The quotes you mention are simple facts of human nature. Not hidden or "secret" in any way as you are quoting public statements. The human mind is easily manipulated and controlled, especially when you think you know it all, such as a child often does. Informing the public of this fact is something of a social duty and should be rewarded. Don't shoot the messenger.

Genuinely interested in a reference or substantiation for this claim. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Not an easy one to reference. It's my conclusion mainly because of the strength of alternative hypotheses for how we are influenced (and thus leaving only a little left for the advertisers to do).

By way of reference, you might start with Asch and Milgram with their work on peer and authority influences on conformity, then perhaps Erika Richardson on group membership roles and conformity.Tarnow did some work on the mechanism of group conformity in the early part of the millennium, and Martin a few years later expanded on the mechanism showing the role of systemic processing.

Mainly, conformity is the result of numerous influences on our thinking from submission to authority, reversion to mean group beliefs, social hierarchy strategies, even simple prediction error reduction. Advertisers use these influences, but they didn't create them, nor would they be eliminated if advertisers stopped.

What matters, for conformity, is the degree to which each person can see the whole of their society as a functioning unit (reduces submission to authority), the degree to which information is shared (reduces group influence on error reduction) and the egalitarian distribution of status in social hierarchies.

Two points I feel are worth mentioning.

1. We have a duty to educate ourselves, keep ourselves well-informed.

2. The state has a duty educate us and keep us well-informed.

My hunch is we're guilty of dereliction of duty on both counts. How much spoon-feeding can the state sustain? We must keep our end of the bargain.

By way of reference, you might start with Asch and Milgram with their work on peer and authority influences on conformity, then perhaps Erika Richardson on group membership roles and conformity.Tarnow did some work on the mechanism of group conformity in the early part of the millennium, and Martin a few years later expanded on the mechanism showing the role of systemic processing.

Mainly, conformity is the result of numerous influences on our thinking from submission to authority, reversion to mean group beliefs, social hierarchy strategies, even simple prediction error reduction. Advertisers use these influences, but they didn't create them, nor would they be eliminated if advertisers stopped.

What matters, for conformity, is the degree to which each person can see the whole of their society as a functioning unit (reduces submission to authority), the degree to which information is shared (reduces group influence on error reduction) and the egalitarian distribution of status in social hierarchies. — Isaac

:cool: Thanks

Democracy isn't valuable because of voting, most democracies vote between two parties - they are usually pretty much the same. Election promises are ignored, and the government does most of what it does without any public consent. Voters vote on a few important issues, ones they don't really understand. Politicians in power during economic booms they did nothing to create get all the credit, leaders unlucky enough to be elected in tough times get kicked out for no good reason. Democracy accomplishes low levels of corruption relative to other government types, their solid legal institutions can keep the government in check, this is the most valuable aspect of democracy. Democracies without those strong legal institutions are trash, corruption runs rampant and the people suffer. The voter does not keep the government in check, the failure to eliminate corruption says nothing about the voter. They can protest, they can hate their government, they can lose all faith in it, but the corruption stays. Only with solid legal institutions which eliminate corruption and enforce laws that protect the public is democracy good. Your scepticism or failure to be manipulated isn't that important, many democracies have citizens like you, and they are just ignored. This is a problem with the US, people there have been convinced that sceptical thinking is the key to maintaining their democracy but it's not accomplishing anything. Good democracies have good laws and enforce those laws, that is all. Culture and education are just scapegoats for politicians to convince people they are the problem, to avoid meaningful change.

And that's how psychologists betray people.
Clearly, you're interested in staying on the surface of things, pushing your particular ideology.

Hence in order to get away from the ennui of pastimes without exposing themselves to the dangers of intimacy, most people compromise for games when they are available, and these fill the major part of the more interesting hours of social intercourse. That is the social significance of games. — Eric Berne, M. D - Games People Play