Tech & Social Engineering Flashcards
Testimonials
Testimonial consists in having some respected or hated person say that a given idea or program or product or person is good or bad.
Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control
No point building bridges with a world that is out to destroy them.
Groups are bound by: perceived success of group achieving goals. extend to which group goals match individual. Value of group to individual member. liking of members to eachother. external forces.
Shifting of beliefs closer to that of the group. Cult beliefs are simple. Renouncing a belief, after you have committed to it, is renouncing part of your own identity.
HISTRIONIC PERSONALITY DISORDER
The central feature of the histrionic personality disorder is chronic
and excessive attention-seeking behavior. Wherever they are,
whatever they’re doing, histrionic people want to be the center
of attention, so they monopolize the spotlight in most situations.
Of course, most people like attention from time to time, but if
you are never happy unless you are the focal point of every social interaction, then you have histrionic tendencies.
Histrionic people have a very dramatic and lively conversational style. They act like everything they say is very important, and they tell their stories with a great deal of flair, emotion, and exaggeration.
People with histrionic personality disorder also seek attention by being flirtatious and sexually provocative.
Sometimes, new acquaintances find histrionic people’s enthusiasm, energy, and openness charming, but these characteristics wear thin after a while when histrionic people continually monopolize social interactions. In a conversation, people with histrionic personality disorder tend to ignore what other people say and continually
bring the focus back to them.
And when they aren’t at the center of the action, histrionic people may do something dramatic or outlandish to create a scene and get the attention back. After the first few minutes, they’re not very enjoyable to interact with, so others often try to avoid dealing with histrionic people.
Histrionic people don’t seem to realize any of this. They generally think of themselves as sociable, charming, and entertaining. And they tend to think that they’re well liked and that their relationships with other people are closer and more intimate than they really are.
The histrionic personality disorder can be really annoying and socially
disruptive, and it often interferes with the quality of people’s lives,
but it doesn’t have the strong negative effects on other people
that the antisocial and borderline disorders do.
So, the 2% of the population with histrionic personality disorder
usually gets along okay in life, particularly if they are in professions in which their vivaciousness, flamboyance, and exhibitionism don’t seem too out of place.
ATTACHMENT STYLE
People who score high on attachment-related anxiety tend to
think that other people don’t care about them as much as they
would like and that other people aren’t sufficiently responsive
and supportive. People who score on the low end of
this attachment-anxiety dimension feel more secure about
the responsiveness and commitment of their partners and other
people. They’re less anxious about whether other people care
about them.
The second dimension is called attachment-related avoidance,
or just attachment avoidance. People on the high end of this
avoidance dimension prefer not to rely on other people. They feel uncomfortable getting too close to other people, and they have trouble trusting other people and opening up. People on the low end of the avoidance dimension are more comfortable being close to other people; they find it easier to depend on other people and having others depend on them.
Although these 2 dimensions—one defined by low versus high
attachment anxiety and the other defined by low versus high
attachment avoidance—are continuous dimensions that run from
low to high, for convenience we can think of people being either
low or high on each dimension so that when we combine them,
people fall into one of 4 categories:
- Some people are low in both attachment anxiety and in
attachment avoidance. These people generally feel confident
that their partners and other people care about them and
will be there for them when needed, and they’re comfortable
depending on other people and having others depend on them.
These people are generally secure in their close relationships,
so we call them securely attached. - Other people fall high on both the attachment-anxiety dimension (they aren’t certain that people care about them) and on the attachment-avoidance dimension (they don’t like to get too close to other people and don’t want other people depending
too much on them). This isn’t a great combination for satisfying
relationships. - Still other people score low on one dimension but high on the
other. Some people score low on attachment anxiety (they
aren’t worried about whether their partner cares about them),
but they’re high in avoidance (they like to keep their distance).
Those kinds of people can have good relationships, but only if
the other person in the relationship is also high in attachment
avoidance. - The final attachment style involves being high in attachment
anxiety and low in avoidance. These people want to have close
relationships with others, but they don’t think that people care
about them as much as they’d like. These people tend to have
an anxious, dependent sort of relationship style.
How anxious and avoidant people are in their relationships depends on the nature of specific relationships; particular people can make us feel more or less secure. But attachment style is a trait-like variable that people carry with them to some extent.
People with a secure attachment style—those who are low in
attachment anxiety and low in avoidance—tend to be more satisfied in their relationships than the other 3 categories. Their relationships have higher trust and commitment, and they tend to last longer than the relationships of people who are less securely attached. People with a secure style are more likely to seek support from their romantic partner when they’re upset, and they’re more likely to provide support when their partner needs it.
Whether people are secure or insecure in their relationships as an adult partly reflects their experiences as children. Once children have developed expectations about relationships—such as expectations about whether other people will be responsive and supportive— their reactions throughout life are colored by those expectations.
But our attachment style is not etched in stone since childhood.
New relationship experiences can revise our expectations about
other people and our views of relationships. But early childhood
experiences carry a great deal of weight in forming our basic
approach to relationships.
Rationalization
After a false statment make a rationalization:
Cold reader: You were angry at your kids.
Client: Not at all
Client: Oh it must be something you overcame earlier.
Name Calling
NAME CALLING
Name Calling-Giving an idea a bad label is used to make us reject and condemn the idea without examining the evidence.
Bad names have played a tremendously powerful role in the history of the world and in our own individual development. They have ruined reputations, stirred men and women to outstanding accomplishments, sent others to prison cells, and made men mad enough to enter battle and slaughter their fellowmen. They have been and are applied to other people, groups, gangs, tribes, colleges, political parties, neighborhoods, states, sections of the country, nations, and races.
The world has resounded with cries of “Heretic,” “Hun,” “Red,” “Yankee,” “Reb,” “Democrat,” “Republican,” “Revolutionary,” “Nazi,” etc., and their equivalents in all languages. Our personal lives have echoed with such words as “sissy,” “moron,” “bully,” “tramp,” “wayward,” “unscientific,” “unprogressive,” “inhuman,” “grasping,” “easy-going,” and “backward.”
Individuals and groups can be found who bear any one of these labels proudly. Other individuals and groups can just as easily be found who regard any one of these labels as the worst epithet to shout at an enemy.
Practically all primitive tribes call themselves by names that mean “the people” or “the real people.” All outsiders they call “foreigners,” “earth-eaters,” “cannibals,” “ill-speakers,” or some other term they regard as disreputable. The Welsh, for example, called themselves the Cymry, but our present term for the Welsh derives from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning “foreigners” or “jabberers.”
One of the most treacherous things about Name Calling is that bad names, like Glittering Generalities, are omnibus words. They are words that mean different things and have different emotional overtones for different people. When we spot an example of Name Calling, we must ask ourselves these questions:
What does the name mean?
Does the idea in question-the proposal of the propagandist-have a legitimate connection with the real meaning of the name?
Is an idea that serves my best interests and the best interests of society, as I see them, being dismissed through giving it a name I don’t like?
In other words, leaving the name out of consideration, what are the merits of the idea itself?
We must constantly remind ourselves of the danger of omnibus-word reactions. Such reactions, rather than detailed appraisals of a philosophy and its ideals, are what we commonly encounter.
Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control
Fraternal love creates ingroup/outgroup and threat towards that relationship.
If afraid of actins being controlled by another it’s called reactance .
learn about domestic abuse. Brains are bad at detecting longterm cumulative changes if each step of that change is very small. Create dependence. Isolation. If object, apologize or turn charm on and then try again. Change their self image until they no longer see themself as threatening.
Isolation prevents old cogwebs from affecting the formation of newer ones that replace the old ones.
MACHIAVELLIANISM
Although Machiavelli was addressing his recommendations to
political leaders, some people approach everyday life in the way that Machiavelli recommended. People who are high in Machiavellianism live their lives in a highly selfish fashion, guided by their belief that it’s okay to do whatever it takes to achieve their goals. Machiavellians tend to pursue their desires in underhanded, duplicitous, and manipulative ways. Machiavellians report that they more often lie and cheat and that they use charm, flattery, and deceit to get people to do what they want.
They also say that they often don’t intend to honor their agreements
and commitments; they promise to do things to get other people
to do what they want and then ignore their agreements. They also like to guilt people into doing what they want.
Machiavellians aren’t necessarily trying to hurt anybody, and they often use mild manipulation and deception before turning to
pressure and threats. Their goal is to get what they want however
they can, and they don’t worry much about what happens to other people in the process. Not surprisingly, Machiavellians score very low in both agreeableness and conscientiousness
Most people would feel horrible going through life manipulating
people, but Machiavellians are able to do it because they are rather emotionally detached and nonempathic. They also have fewer qualms about behaving unethically. And they have a dismissiveavoidant attachment style, along with a negative view of other people as basically selfish and manipulative.
Like most characteristics, both nature and nurture are involved
in Machiavellian behavior. About 30% of the variability that we
observe in Machiavellianism across people is due to genetic factors. The remaining 70% of the variability is due to an assortment of situational and social factors. Most notably, about 40% of the variability in Machiavellianism can be explained by family variables, including parental effects.
Machiavellian tendencies have
been identified in children as
young as age 10 or 11. One
interesting study showed that
the children of parents who
score high in Machiavellianism
are better liars.
Tragedy + time = laughter.
Tragedy + time = laughter.
CARD STACKING
Card Stacking involves the selection and use of facts or falsehoods, illustrations or distractions, and logical or Illogical statements in order to give the best or the worst possible case for an idea, program, person or product.
What might well be called “monopolistic” Card Stacking is a direct violation of America’s Cracker Barrel Philosophy. Around our traditional cracker barrels, we expect each of our local spokesmen to present his case-to stack the cards-for a given proposal in the best way that he can. But we also insist that other spokesmen around the same cracker barrel speak right up and stack the cards in favor of their alternative proposals. From these conflicting arrangements and interpretations of evidence, we know that some fairly sensible compromise is likely to come.
The dangers of “monopolistic” Card Stacking, of submitting ourselves to a barrage of evidence presented from but one viewpoint, are what prompted an editorial writer for the New York Times to observe on September 1, 1937: “What is truly vicious is not propaganda but a monopoly of it.”
When we are confronted with an effort at Card Stacking, we must remind ourselves to suspend judgment on the propagandist’s proposals until we have answered such questions as these:
Just what is the propagandist trying to “sell” us?
Is this proposal in line with our own best interests and the best interests of society, as we see them?
What are the alternative proposals?
What is the evidence for and against these alternatives?
Brevity Is Levity
If it bores the audience and doesn’t serve your punch line, it has to go!
Emotional Control
BITE Model
Manipulate and narrow the range of feelings – some emotions and/or needs are deemed as evil, wrong or selfish
Teach emotion-stopping techniques to block feelings of homesickness, anger, doubt
Make the person feel that problems are always their own fault, never the leader’s or the group’s fault
Promote feelings of guilt or unworthiness, such as:
a. Identity guilt
b. You are not living up to your potential
c. Your family is deficient
d. Your past is suspect
e. Your affiliations are unwise
f. Your thoughts, feelings, actions are irrelevant or selfish
g. Social guilt
f. Historical guilt
Instill fear, such as fear of:
a. Thinking independently
b. The outside world
c. Enemies
d. Losing one’s salvation
e. Leaving or being shunned by the group
f. Other’s disapproval
f. Historical guilt
Extremes of emotional highs and lows – love bombing and praise one moment and then declaring you are horrible sinner
Ritualistic and sometimes public confession of sins
Phobia indoctrination: inculcating irrational fears about leaving the group or questioning the leader’s authority
a. No happiness or fulfillment possible outside of the group
b. Terrible consequences if you leave: hell, demon possession, incurable diseases, accidents, suicide, insanity, 10,000 reincarnations, etc.
c. Shunning of those who leave; fear of being rejected by friends and family
d. Never a legitimate reason to leave; those who leave are weak, undisciplined, unspiritual, worldly, brainwashed by family or counselor, or seduced by money, sex, or rock and roll
e. Threats of harm to ex-member and family
Age of Propaganda Key Idea #4: Propagandists set us up to side with them and use our emotions to guide our decisions.
You just learned how propagandists use source credibility and misleading messages – now it’s time to take a look at the other two stratagems of influence: prepersuasion and emotions.
The first, prepersuasion, is a way of creating a vulnerable mindset in the target. For instance, the incredible levels of violence depicted on TV don’t reflect the world at large; crimes are ten times less likely to happen in real life than they are on TV.
Nonetheless, politicians work to push the news toward crime stories as a way of building public support for projects like the war on drugs and to distract from economic issues that are a more credible threat to working-class people. Meanwhile, this strategy makes these politicians popular as they implement programs to crack down on drug crime and make neighborhoods “safer.”
Another good example is gun companies. They’re much more likely to sell guns to people when firearms are promoted as a tool for defending yourself against the dangerous world people see depicted in the mass media.
Prepersuasion is powerful tool, but so is the fourth stratagem, emotions. When people are emotional, they often make decisions that will ease their pain without properly considering their actual consequences.
For example, an experiment conducted by Merrill Carlsmith and Alan Gross had certain subjects deliver electric shocks to others sitting in another room when they answered questions incorrectly. Other participants were told to simply press a buzzer when another person gave a wrong answer.
After this exercise, the volunteers who got buzzed or received shocks – who, unbeknownst to those pressing the buttons, weren’t actually getting shocked – asked the people pushing the buttons to make calls to garner support to “Save the Redwood Forest.” The participants who thought that they had been shocking the others were three times more likely to step up and make these calls.
Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments, and experiences in
order to promote learning the group’s ideology or belief system and
group-approved behaviors.
Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments, and experiences in
order to promote learning the group’s ideology or belief system and
group-approved behaviors. Good behavior, demonstrating an
understanding and acceptance of the group’s beliefs, and compliance are
rewarded while questioning, expressing doubts or criticizing are met with
disapproval, redress and possible rejection. If one expresses a question, he
or she is made to feel that there is something inherently wrong with them to
be questioning.
BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER
Borderline personality disorder is so called because in the 1930s
when it was first recognized, some psychiatrists thought that it fell
in between being a neurotic disorder (which involves high anxiety
and negative emotions) and a psychotic disorder (which involves
loss of touch with reality). However, that’s not true, so many experts
are trying to get it renamed.
A better term that more accurately describes the borderline
personality disorder might be “emotion dysregulation disorder” or
“unstable personality disorder” because its central feature involves
strong emotions and rapid mood swings in which the person loses
control. So, at one moment, the person is interacting easily and
happily, and then a moment later, they’ve lost it in a fit of extreme
anger or panic or despair.
The things that trigger these strong emotional outbursts tend to
involve perceiving that other people are being dismissive or rejecting.
People with borderline personality disorder are exceptionally
sensitive to signs of criticism, disrespect, and rejection. And when
they perceive that others are criticizing, disrespecting, or rejecting
them, they overreact, lash out at other people, and sometimes
behave in vengeful ways to get back at the person. Then, when
they calm down, they act more or less as if nothing happened—
until the next incident.
Their reactions are rather paradoxical, though. People with borderline
personality disorder very much want other people to like and accept
them, but their reactions to signs that they are being negatively
evaluated or rejected leads to extreme overreactions that cause
other people to avoid or reject them. They want people to accept
them, but they continually drive people away.
The behavior itself is not all that unusual. Many of us lose it every
now and then over something that really doesn’t matter very
much. But it’s not our typical way of responding to disagreement
or conflict. Only about 1.6% of the population is emotionally
unstable enough to meet the diagnostic criteria for borderline
personality disorder.
People with borderline personality disorder often idealize potential
friends or lovers at first. They insist on spending a lot of time
together and share very intimate information about themselves.
But then, they can switch quickly to devaluing the other person
when they perceive that the other person doesn’t care enough
about them or doesn’t give enough to the relationship or is not
there enough for them.
For those around them—their partners, children, coworkers, friends
(if they have any)—people with borderline personality disorder are
pretty maddening. You never quite know which person is going to
show up on any particular day: the nice one who seems reasonably
normal and accommodating or the vicious one who is out of control.
And even when the person is acting perfectly fine for a while,
other people walk on eggshells worrying about when something
will trigger the borderline person’s next outburst.
NEUROTICISM
The second most important trait of the big five is usually called
neuroticism, but because this word has such negative connotations, many researchers now call it emotional stability.
The central feature of neuroticism (or emotional stability) is the
degree to which people experience negative emotions. People who are higher in neuroticism tend to experience negative emotions more frequently than people who are low in neuroticism, and their negative emotions tend to be more intense and last longer. Some people simply experience unpleasant emotions—such as anxiety, sadness, anger, guilt, and regret—more than other people do. In fact, some researchers call this trait negative emotionality.
Although the defining feature of
neuroticism involves negative
emotionality, people who are
high in neuroticism also display
a general sense of insecurity
and vulnerability. People who
are high in neuroticism are
more afraid of things that
don’t bother other people very
much, and they tend to worry
more about bad things that
might happen in the future. As
they walk through life, they focus on
the possible risks ahead—risks involving
their physical safety, possible failures, public
embarrassments, rejections, and so on.
So, they try to avoid situations that look
risky or threatening.
People who are high in neuroticism also
tend to overreact to ordinary kinds of
hassles and frustrations. They get bent
out of shape more easily than people low
Cold Reading
Examining the Issue
B. Examining the Issue
Every experienced psychic knows that there are seven themes most people want to talk about: Love, health, money, career, travel, education and ambitions.
Sometimes two or more are fused together such as health and travel, or education and professional ambition. But generally speaking these topics are front and center of every reading. At this stage of meeting the customer, the cold reader employs a technique known as fishing. The client is vitally important in this phases of the reading.
He is the psychic’s Rock of Gibraltar because she will imperceptibly extract information from him and use it to build the foundation for her cold read. Without these building blocks for a strong foundation, the client will be powerless to later gain a customer’s confidence and perform a “successful” reading. Every psychic knows the failed cold read lies in the black hole of misinformation or worse, no information at all. The trick here is for the psychic not to appear as if he is interrogating the client or gathering information.
The point of all cold readings is the fabulous mystery of the psychic’s intuition. He has to appear as if he just knows the client without seeming to ply her with questions. This is the skill of the detective in the interrogation room who knows that it’s all more or less a confidence game involving manipulation and subtle cues during which the suspect will continue to make incriminating statements without even realizing it.
Similarly the psychic banks on the client’s willingness to a) find more meaning in a situation than there actually is and b) connect the dots to make sense for themselves what the cold reader brings up, in spite of the fact that all psychics know that anyone can make anything personal to themselves if they are so inclined. The fact that the sitter is, well, sitting there, implies they are favorably disposed to believe intuition over hard science. The psychic knows this.
EXTRAVERSION
From the beginning of the scientific study of personality, everyone
has agreed that the most important trait is extraversion. The trait
of extraversion underlies more of people’s behavior—and more of
the differences that we see among people—than any other trait.
A psychological scientist might say that extraversion accounts for
more variability in human behavior than any other trait. We can
understand more about why people do what they do if we know how
extraverted they are than by knowing about any other characteristic
When we talk about the trait of extraversion, we’re talking about
a dimension that runs from being very low in extraversion at one
end to being very high in extraversion at the other. In everyday
language, we often use the label “introvert” to describe people who
are low in extraversion, but personality researchers generally talk
about low versus high extraversion rather than about introverts
and extraverts.
Partly, that’s to avoid thinking of extraversion and introversion as
if they’re personality types. Most personality characteristics are
continuous traits rather than categorical types, and that’s true of
extraversion. In addition, we usually don’t contrast introverts with
extraverts to avoid the suggestion that introversion is somehow
the opposite of extraversion, which it isn’t. Introverts simply fall
in the lower tail of the normal distribution of extraversion scores.
For example, introverts may like social interactions less than
extraverts do, but they don’t necessarily dislike interacting with other
people at all. And introverts may be less assertive than extraverts
are, but they aren’t necessarily nonassertive or submissive.
Extraversion has a number of interrelated features, but its central
characteristic is sociability. The higher that people score in
extraversion, the more they enjoy interacting with other people.
Compared to people who are low in extraversion, people who are
high in extraversion are more gregarious, enjoy social gatherings
more (including large parties), and seek out opportunities to
interact with other people more often.
When they’re in social situations, people who are high in extraversion are more talkative than people who are low in extraversion are.
People who are high in extraversion are so highly motivated to
interact with other people that when they’re alone for a long time,
they sometimes go on a search just for somebody to talk to.
Although sociability is the key feature of extraversion, people who are low versus high in extraversion also differ in other ways. For example, people who are high in extraversion tend to be more
assertive and dominant than people who are lower in extraversion.
They are also more energetic and active, and they like to stay busier than less extraverted people do.
Past things
Psychic : You had a break up recently
Client: Um…no, I’ve been single for a while
psychic: I must be picking up on some energy from months ago. Your a survivor, whether it’s break ups, family tragedies…you always find the strength to pick yourself up and move on.
Delivery
Get on stage ‘fast’ when host introduces you.
Smile and make eye contact with as many people as you can in the front rows.
Speak loud enough to fill in the room.
Try and get a quick laugh.
Don’t forget to pause.
Top Women Jobs
Teacher
Nurse
Secretaries/Admin
Cashiers
Customer Service
Retail / Sales
Manager
Waitress
Retail manager
–
Hairdresser (#11)
Payroll/HR (#15)
Accounting (#18)
Different parts of the brain
The limbic system: cannot be regulated cognitively. It’s the “honest” brain and a reliable source of information.
Neocortex: the thinking part of your brain. It’s the “lying” brain. Not a good source of reliable or accurate information.
Add local references to your jokes
“But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?” The University of Texas was undefeated and Rice University was winless at that point in the year. The line got a huge laugh.
CONSCIENTIOUSNESS
The fourth member of the big five is the trait of conscientiousness, which reflects the degree to which people are responsible and dependable. Conscientiousness comes down to whether people usually do what they should and whether they try to do it well.
Responsibly doing what one should depends on a number of
separate characteristics, and most of these underlying attributes
are part of conscientiousness. For example, it’s difficult to do
things conscientiously without being organized and orderly, and
conscientious people are more organized than less conscientious
people are.
Conscientiousness also involves industriousness and persistence. Conscientious people work harder because getting things done and doing them well takes effort. And they are more likely to persist when tasks become difficult, boring, or unrewarding.
A final component of conscientious is being able to make yourself do what needs to be done and to be able to resist the urge to do something else instead—particularly if the alternative is more fun than what you’re supposed to do. So, a key feature of conscientiousness is impulse control and a high level of self-discipline. Impulsive people who don’t control themselves well have a pretty hard time being conscientious.
Being consistently conscientious might not always be fun, but it
does have payoffs. For example, conscientious people are healthier and live longer than less conscientious people. Research shows that conscientious people are less likely to smoke, use drugs, abuse alcohol, and become obese, and they’re more likely to exercise, practice safe sex, and drive safely. It’s also related to using smoke alarms in your house, seeing a doctor regularly, and following doctors’ orders when you’re sick.
Cover yourself on misses with contradictions.
“I see that youre have relationship issues but the person has a good heart”. “I see that you’re strong on the surface but fragile deep down”
Cold Reading
A - Getting Acquainted
One thing the psychic knows is that the client is there because he is a believer. But the psychic has to reel the client’s faith in and keep it alive. The first thing that a cold reader must do is create a warm and comfortable rapport with the client. The psychic has entered the no man’s land of gaining trust.
To that end, she must convince the client that the two of them are in this journey together; that the psychic can’t do all the work. One of the first things she might say to her new client is “Throughout the reading there may be a lot of things that make sense to you more so than to me. Please try to connect to what I’m saying while I channel and you will see the relevance to your life.” In other words, we’re in this together, but I’m the pro.
The talented psychic will explain the most important aspects of her trade. She will tell clients, in a warm and convincing voice that she “reads” the energy of the client. That energy is akin to something like the client’s soul. And the true energy of the soul is to be respected. The psychic respects the client.
At this acquaintance stage, the psychic will also need to pre-rationalize the misses she will invariably make in her cold reading. So she might come out and say, perhaps with a sigh signaling her many arduous years of practice, “I would love to say that I can predict the future 100%. But no one is perfect.
Finally, before moving onto the next stage, the psychic will show her appreciation for how difficult it must be to require her services. She will make sure her first-time clients know they are not alone. Everyone of her multitude of customers, she will testify, have come to her with heavy hearts. It’s human nature to go through happy times and difficult times. And it is her job and her calling to be a helping person. Her intuition will make the customer feel better, will give him a course of action, and alleviate the client’s worry, just as she has for the countless others who have come to her beforehand.
It’s always important for the psychic to play dumb in the smartest way possible. Before she moves on, she might say, “throughout this reading, the results will make sense more to you than they do to me.” This tactic of appearing unassuming, modest even, is a subtle way of conveying to the sitter that she doesn’t even have to know you to really know you. She’s that good. But more importantly, she is setting the sitter up to personalize and make meaning out of her insight even though it is so general that pretty much everyone on the planet upon hearing it would think it’s specific to them.
Cold Reading Technique
Both Sides of Story.
This is a description which plays both sides.
You are normally a shy person, but there are times when you act confidently and accomplish a lot.
The subject supposedly is shy and not shy, which violates non-contradiction (you cannot have a property and not have it at the same time). The psychic may detect shyness (or something else) by direct observation and formulate the statement accordingly.
Rewards. Comments about how honest, hard-working, lovable, etc. the subject is will go a long way toward receptiveness.
BITE: Behavior Control
Regulate individual’s physical reality
Dictate where, how, and with whom the member lives and associates or isolates
When, how and with whom the member has sex
Control types of clothing and hairstyles
Regulate diet – food and drink, hunger and/or fasting
Manipulation and deprivation of sleep
Financial exploitation, manipulation or dependence
Restrict leisure, entertainment, vacation time
Major time spent with group indoctrination and rituals and/or self indoctrination including the Internet
Permission required for major decisions
Rewards and punishments used to modify behaviors, both positive and negative
Discourage individualism, encourage group-think
Impose rigid rules and regulations
Punish disobedience by beating, torture, burning, cutting, rape, or tattooing/branding
Threaten harm to family and friends
Force individual to rape or be raped
Encourage and engage in corporal punishment
Instill dependency and obedience
Kidnapping
Beating
Torture
Rape
Separation of Families
Imprisonment
Murder
PERSONALITY DISORDERS
A personality disorder is a rigid and inflexible pattern of behavior
that a person displays across a wide variety of situations and that
leads to ongoing problems and distress in key areas of the person’s
life, particularly work and social relationships.
❖❖The person displays a particular pattern of behavior much of the
time, even when it’s not appropriate for the current situation. In
most cases, the behavior could be quite normal under certain
circumstances, but the problem is that the pattern of behavior
occurs across many situations and over long periods of time,
showing that it’s a stable personality characteristic.
❖❖To qualify as a personality disorder, the pattern of behavior has to
be self-defeating. It has to interfere with aspects of the person’s
life and consistently create problems. Personality disorders
typically compromise the person’s well-being, and they usually
make other people unhappy as well.
❖❖Personality disorders tend to get worse when people are
under stress.
The manual that mental health professionals use to describe and
diagnose psychological problems is called the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The most recent
edition of the DSM recognizes 10 personality disorders, but there
are other problems that some researchers classify as personality
disorders that don’t appear in the official diagnostic manual.
Personality disorders are often classified into 3 broad clusters
that involve dramatic, emotional, and erratic behaviors; behaviors
that reflect excessive anxiety; and eccentric behaviors and
distorted thinking.
This lecture will consider the dramatic, emotional, and erratic cluster,
which includes 4 disorders: the antisocial, borderline, histrionic,
and narcissistic personality disorders. These disorders are grouped
together because they all involve problems with emotion regulation
and impulse control that have negative effects on other people
and on people’s social relationships.
Psychic Shotgunning
Psychic: There is someone at your place of work, someone…jealous, a rival or someone who is kind of a pill to you for no reason. They’re about your age or maybe even a little bit older, and they seem to look at you like you’re competition for work or attention from the boss…
Plain Folks
Plain Folks is the method by which a speaker attempts to convince his audience that he and his ideas are good because they are “of the people,” the “plain folks.”
Thought Control Bite model
Require members to internalize the group’s doctrine as truth
a. Adopting the group’s ‘map of reality’ as reality
b. Instill black and white thinking
c. Decide between good vs. evil
d. Organize people into us vs. them (insiders vs. outsiders)
Change person’s name and identity
Use of loaded language and clichés which constrict knowledge, stop critical thoughts and reduce complexities into platitudinous buzz words
Encourage only ‘good and proper’ thoughts
Hypnotic techniques are used to alter mental states, undermine critical thinking and even to age regress the member
Memories are manipulated and false memories are created
Teaching thought-stopping techniques which shut down reality testing by stopping negative thoughts and allowing only positive thoughts, including:
a. Denial, rationalization, justification, wishful thinking
b. Chanting
c. Meditating
d. Praying
e. Speaking in tongues
f. Singing or humming
Rejection of rational analysis, critical thinking, constructive criticism
Forbid critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy allowed
Labeling alternative belief systems as illegitimate, evil, or not useful
Instill new “map of reality”
DEPENDENT PERSONALITY DISORDER
People differ in how much they need other people’s help or support,
but when an otherwise normal person has a very needy relationship
with just about everybody and can’t seem to function on a daily
basis without help from other people, the person might qualify
for a diagnosis of dependent personality disorder.
People who qualify for a diagnosis
of dependent personality disorder
need—or think they need—constant
help from other people to function
in most major areas of their life.
They even have trouble making
everyday decisions, such as what
to eat for lunch, without advice and
reassurance from other people.
This lack of confidence in their own
judgment and ability also leads them
to have trouble starting projects or doing
things on their own; they’re too afraid that they
won’t know what to do or that they will do it wrong.
People with dependent personality disorder firmly believe that they
are incapable of functioning independently, but they can actually
do okay when they know that someone else is supervising and
watching over them. So, it’s mostly a matter of exceptionally low
self-confidence or self-efficacy rather than being truly incompetent.
People with dependent personality disorder go to great lengths
to get nurturance and support from other people. They usually
behave in ways that will lead others to help them. For example,
they might offer to help other people in unusual or excessive
ways. Their goal is to get the other person to reciprocate by being
available for them.
And they have trouble disagreeing with and standing up to other
people because they’re afraid of losing the person’s approval or
support. So, they’re very nice, helpful, compliant people, but it’s
motivated by a need to keep other people in their corner.
Control the Audience
You have the microphone, you can control the room.
You can control how much the audience speaks.
“Clap if you can hear me.”
The best answer or comeback is worth taking the time to answer.
Don’t go out on a flat note. “I’m going to take a few questions before my conclusion.”
Save a summary slide to close with – three key points. Strong clapping at the end makes a better video.
People are more likely to pay attention if they think you’re going to call on them.
Use the bookend technique – fell a story at the beginning and reference it at the end.
Cold Reading - Gathering information
Getting Information. All these methods obtain information by asking for it. A good performer can disguise this so that the subject will not remember supplying the information. Really!
Asking. What better way to get information than to simply ask for it? This brings up a problem: why is a psychic asking questions?
Indirect Question. It is possible to make the question sound like an insignificant end to a block of patter. You can finish a long statement (line of BS) with something like “… does all this make sense to you?” This will prompt the subject to fill in details. It could also sound like “Do you understand why the cards are telling me this?” Listen carefully.
Delayed Question. This involves getting a bit of key information and storing it in the brain till later. It can then be used in conjunction with some Sherlocking and knowledge of people to weave a bit of analysis that is uncannily accurate.
Sherlocking. This requires being hyper-observant like Conan Doyle’s famous detective Sherlock Holmes. If you are familiar with any Holmes stories, you know that he noticed everything, down to the smallest details that others might miss. It was this power, along with excellent inductive skills, that allowed Holmes to solve those baffling cases. The technique also requires extensive knowledge of what those little details might mean. Observe the subject carefully and formulate a small set of reasonable assumptions about the person (this may take practice). Some of them will be wrong, but if you can think fast this is not serious. Use the assumptions at opportune times.
Yes/No. This one gives you the opportunity to go either way. Consider asking “You don’t like sports do you?” If the subject answers “No, I really don’t care for sports” you can then go on with “I didn’t think so. The cards/planets/etc were saying that.” If the subject says “Yes - I watch them a lot on TV and play some xxx myself” you follow with “Ah yes. I thought so. The cards/planets/etc indicated that you could be a sports fan.” It can’t miss - the reader can go with either a YES or NO answer.
Snow Job. This part of a reading mixes personality statements (remember Barnum) with loads of psychic jargon. The statement/jargon mixture is ended with something like “Is this making sense to you?” Ian Rowland plainly says that, as long as the reader looks/sounds competent and performs well, the actual divinatory system being used (Tarot, tea leaves, palm reading, astrology, etc) really doesn’t matter. That hook at the end will get the response needed. It isn’t even necessary to actually understand the divinatory system. Faking it competently is perfectly satisfactory. You will need to study the psychic jargon so the line of BS will at least sound authentic.
Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control
Simplistic black and white thinking goes hand in hand with brainwashing. Dogamtic. Low education. Stress.
We seek out people and experiences who will help us become who we want to be.
Simplicity is attractive to those who are confused. Projecting simple message is easier than selling a complex argument. Clear, simple vision.
Charisma is found by strong sense of self, impression of single-mindedness, and purpose. Inspire devotion and enthusiasm.
Unbelief is a disease of the heart, according to the sacred text.
If the balance of motivation is in favor of not pausing to reflect, as in Nazi Germany, then an ethereal idea can drive forceful action even when the idea itself is contradicted by personal experiences.
Write Funny
Work in the local reference into your writing.
Write as if you are describing something for a blind person.
Add attitude to your writing. (Crazy, nuts, and weird)
Emphasize exactly what you want people to take away from the talk. Say it multiple times. (1,000 songs in your pocket. People don’t follow what you do, they follow why you do it)
Use Call Backs – reference items that have had a good reaction from the crowd already. Works best when you’ve moved on from the initial joke.
Use current media references.
Write I’m present tense (i.e. I’m walking down the street) More engaging with the audience
Use funny words (underpants is funnier than underwear)
Brevity is levity (as if you were sending a witty email to a friend)
Use the rule of threes. Tell jokes in threes.
Use funny images and videos. (Imgur, Reddit, Pinterest, gifs – their already socially verified)
Sex and Marriage
According to official surveys, married men and women each report having sex about once a week.
Google, however, paints a bleak picture of American sex lives.
“On Google, a top complaint about a marriage is not having sex,” Stephens-Davidowitz writes. “There are 16 times more complaints about a spouse not wanting sex than about a married partner not being willing to talk,” he writes.
“Searches for ‘sexless marriage’ are three and a half times more common than ‘unhappy marriage’ and eight times more common than ‘loveless marriage.’ Even unmarried couples complain somewhat frequently about not having sex. Google searches for ‘sexless relationship’ are second only to searches for ‘abusive relationship.’”
INDIVIDUALISM VERSUS COLLECTIVISM II
All cultures have individualist and collectivist features, as well as
individuals who depart from the cultural norm. But as a whole,
cultures differ markedly in the degree to which they are individualist
or collectivist, and those differences have implications for the
personalities of the people who live or operate within those cultures.
For example, individualist cultures encourage behaviors that are
more extraverted in the sense of being assertive and dominant
and attracting attention to oneself, whereas collectivist cultures
encourage a less extraverted and more introverted style.
People raised in individualist cultures also tend to be higher in
openness than people from collectivist cultures, possibly because
collectivist cultures encourage people to adopt the norms of their
groups and don’t allow as much individual freedom in choosing
what to believe and how to behave.
People from individualist cultures are not as good at taking other
people’s perspectives as people from collectivist cultures are.
It’s not that individualists can’t do it; they just don’t take other
people’s perspectives as automatically or as quickly as people
from collectivist cultures do.
Remote Work
45% of women business leaders say it’s difficult for women to speak up in virtual meetings. (14)
- And 1 in 5 women say they’ve felt ignored or overlooked by colleagues during video calls.
- 3 in 5 female employees say they feel like their prospects of getting a promotion are worse in their new remote work environment.
Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control
Scrub out the poison of reactionary thoughts.
Isolation. Surrounded by believers. Criticism and Self cricitism.
Abstract ideas like freedom can’t be challenged and encourage superiority in believers. Ends justify means. Are bloodstained because they are viewed as more highly than human life.
Mansion said pretend he is father and made love. Free love. Make the people dependent on you for emotional fulfillment.
Barnum Statements
You pride yourself as an independent thinker and do not accept others statements without satisfactory proof.
You have a tendency to be critical of yourself.
AFFECT INTENSITY
Two people may experience the same emotions equally often, but one person’s emotional reactions are consistently stronger than the other person’s are. This personality variable, called affect intensity,
was discovered in the 1980s, when research showed that people
who had the strongest positive moods on good days over several
months also had the strongest negative moods on bad days.
Emotions depend on how people think about things, and this
is also true of how intensely people experience their emotions.
People who are higher in affective intensity tend to personalize
and generalize the things they experience more than people low
in affect intensity do.
One intriguing difference between people who are low and high
in affect intensity involves their career choices: Some careers
seem to attract people with higher versus lower affect intensity.
For example, graduate students who are going into art score
significantly higher in affect intensity than those going into science
careers before they start graduate school.
Affect intensity also has implications for how people react to
advertisements, many of which use emotional appeals to get you
to buy a product or donate to a cause. People who are higher in
affect intensity are more responsive to advertisements that evoke
good or bad emotions than people who are lower in affect intensity.
Research shows that there’s no relationship between affect intensity and happiness overall—probably because happiness reflects the proportion of positive and negative emotions that a person experiences over time. Happy people experience a higher ratio of positive to negative emotions than unhappy people do.
Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control
Ends can justify means, and secondly, people who don’t accept the idea of supremacy can be seen as less than human.
Lecture impressively on subjects that people want to hear. New world order. Send by god to build a utopia.
Join cults for sense of identity and security the cult can provide. Lost and find it difficult to articulate or satisfy their needs. They are idealists, seeking not only spiritual enlightenment but the chance to help other people.
Rejection of established learning and authority.
Groups that are hard to join evoke more commitment, which is why they have fearsome initiation rights.
Getting inside a network
Getting Inside
Okay, so I had by now talked to three or four different people in only a
few hours and was already one giant step closer to getting inside the
company’s computers. But I’d need a couple more pieces before I was
home.
Number one was the phone number for dialing into the Engineering server
from outside. I called GeminiMed again and asked the switchboard
operator for the IT Department, and asked the guy who answered for
somebody who could give me some computer help. He transferred me,
and I put on an act of being confused and kind of stupid about anything
technical. “I’m at home, just bought a new laptop, and I need to set it up o
I can dial in from outside.”
The procedure was obvious but I patiently let him talk me through it until
he got to the dial-in phone number. He gave me the number like it was
just another routine piece of information. Then I made him wait while I
tried it. Perfect.
So now I had passed the hurdle of connecting to the network. I dialed in
and found they were set up with a terminal server that would let a caller
connect to any computer on their internal network. After a bunch of tries
I stumbled across somebody’s computer that had a guest account with no
password required. Some operating systems, when first installed, direct
the user to set up an ID and password, but also provide a guest account.
The user is supposed to set his or her own password for the guest account
or disable it, but most people don’t know about this, or just don’t bother.
This system was probably just set up and the owner hadn’t bothered to
disable the guest account.
Analyzing the Con
For the man we’re calling Craig Cogburne, or anyone like him equally
skilled in the larcenous-but-not-always-illegal arts of social engineering,
the challenge presented here was almost routine. His goal was to locate
and download files stored on a secure corporate computer, protected by a
firewall and all the usual security technologies.
Most of his work was as easy as catching rainwater in a barrel. He began
by posing as somebody from the mail room and furnished an added sense
of urgency by claiming there was a FedEx package waiting to be
delivered. This deception produced the name of the team leader for the
heart-stent engineering group, who was on vacation, but - convenient for
any social engineer trying to steal information - he had helpfully left the
name and phone number of his assistant. Calling her, Craig defused any
suspicions by claiming that he was responding to a request from the team
leader. With the team leader out of town, Michelle had no way to verify
his claim. She accepted it as the truth and had no problem providing a list
of people in the group - for Craig, a necessary and highly prized set of
information.
She didn’t even get suspicious when Craig wanted the list sent by fax
instead of by email, ordinarily more convenient on both ends. Why was
she so gullible? Like many employees, she didn’t want her boss to return
to town and find she had stonewalled a caller who was just trying to do
something the boss had asked him for. Besides, the caller said that the
boss had not just authorized the request, but asked for his assistance. Once
again, here’s an example of someone displaying the strong desire to be a
team player, which makes most people susceptible to deception.
Craig avoided the risk of physically entering the building simply by
having the fax sent to the receptionist, knowing she was likely to be
helpful. Receptionists are, after all, usually chosen for their charming
personalities and their ability to make a good impression. Doing small
favors like receiving a fax and sending it on comes with the receptionist’s
territory, a fact that Craig was able to take advantage of. What she was
ending out happened to be information that might have raised alarm bells
with anyone knowing the value of the information - but how could
receptionist be expected to know which information is benign and which
sensitive?
Using a different style of manipulation, Craig acted confused and naive
to convince the guy in computer operations to provide him with the dial
up access number to the company’s terminal server, the hardware used as
a connection point to other computer systems within the internal network.
MITNICK MESSAGE
Everybody’s first priority at work is to get the job done. Under that
pressure, security practices often take second place and are overlooked or
ignored. Social engineers rely on this when practicing their craft.
Craig was able to connect easily by trying a default password that had
never been changed, one of the glaring, wide-open gaps that exist
throughout many internal networks that rely on firewall security. In fact,
the default passwords for many operating systems, routers, and other
types
of products, including PBXs, are made available on line. Any social
engineer, hacker, or industrial spy, as well as the just plain curious, can
find the list at http://www.phenoelit.de/dpl/dpl.html. (It’s absolutely
incredible
how easy the Internet makes life for those who know where to look. And
now you know, too.)
Cogburne then actually managed to convince a cautious, suspicious
man (“What did you say your last name was? Who’s your supervisor?”)
to
divulge his username and password so that he could access servers used
by
the heart-stent development team. This was like leaving Craig with an
open door to browse the company’s most closely guarded secrets and
download the plans for the new product.
What if Steve Cramer had continued to be suspicious about Craig’s call?
It was unlikely he would do anything about reporting his suspicions until
he showed up at work on Monday morning, which would have been too
late to prevent the attack.
One key to the last part of the ruse: Craig at first made himself sound
lackadaisical and uninterested in Steve’s concerns, then changed his tune
and sounded as if he was trying to help so Steve could get his work done.
Most of the time, if the victim believes you’re trying to help him or do
him
some kind of favor, he will part with confidential information that he
would have otherwise protected carefully.
Age of Propaganda Key Idea #2: Propaganda confuses its message in order to disseminate information without people realizing it.
Unlike persuasion, propaganda doesn’t intend for its targets to have a fair chance of holding onto their own opinions. Instead, it works to catch them off guard, influencing them without them even realizing it.
To do so, propagandists deliver their messages in attractive packages, preventing consumers from focusing on what’s actually being said. This practice is accomplished through positive language and the framing of information in an appealing way in order to distract consumers from contemplating the factuality of the statements.
For instance, consumers are much more likely to buy beef that’s labeled 75 percent lean ground beef, than the same product labeled 25 percent fat. Similarly, gas stations advertise a discount on cash purchases, when customers are actually just avoiding the credit card surcharge.
While persuasion relies on the central route of information transfer, propaganda uses the peripheral route, which relies on a distracted consumer not being able to concentrate on the real message he’s being fed. Just consider advertisers selling a product; the reasons they provide as to why a customer should buy something can rarely stand up to much scrutiny.
To get around this, they flood the customer’s senses with as many things as possible, from music to rapidly changing scenes and loads of color. With so much going on at once, a person watching the commercial can’t actually focus on the quality of the information she’s taking in.
This strategy makes these ads effective, even if people only half-watch commercials during a break from their favorite shows. While they might expect that failing to concentrate on an ad will make them impervious to its message, they’re still just as likely to remember a catchy jingle that reminds them to buy a product the next time they’re at the store. Because of this, a person might pick up one brand over another, without having any rational reason for doing so.
After all, failing to concentrate on listening also means that people aren’t concentrating on not listening. This failure means that all kinds of things get through to their subconscious that they wouldn’t expect.
Build Trust
MITNICK MESSAGE
The sting technique of building trust is one of the most effective social
engineering tactics. You have to think whether you really know the person
you’re talking to. In some rare instances, the person might not be who he
claims to be. Accordingly, we all have to learn to observe, think, and
question authority.
VARIATION ON A THEME: CARD CAPTURE
Building a sense of trust doesn’t necessarily demand a series of phone
calls with the victim, as suggested by the previous story. I recall one
incident I witnessed where five minutes was all it took.
CURIOSITY
Curiosity also seems to promote memory. People remember things
better that they approach with an air of curiosity. People’s level of
curiosity is also somewhat related to how well they do in school
and the kinds of jobs they prefer.
Research suggests that really curious people seem to possess 2
distinct characteristics: They are motivated to seek knowledge
and to have new experiences that they can learn from, and they
have a general openness to novelty and uncertainty.
When you look at it in terms of these 2 distinct characteristics,
people can differ in curiosity either because they differ in the
degree to which they want to explore and understand or because
they differ in their openness to new things, or both. People who
are highest in curiosity are those who are both highly motivated
to find out about a lot of things and not afraid to explore new
experiences, ideas, and places.
This explains why 2 of the personality traits that correlate most
strongly with curiosity are openness and neuroticism. People who
are generally more open to new experiences and ideas and ways
of doing things are significantly more curious than people who
are lower in openness. People who are high in openness are both
more motivated to learn new things and more open to the new
things that they might learn.
AVOIDANT PERSONALITY DISORDER
Everybody experiences social anxiety from time to time when
they become concerned with how they are being perceived and
evaluated by other people. But some people are so consistently
worried about what other people think of them that their anxiety
interferes with their lives on an ongoing basis.
A person with avoidant personality disorder is chronically
preoccupied with being criticized, disapproved of, or rejected
across a wide range of social situations. As a result, people with
avoidant personality disorder are not only
exceptionally anxious, but they also
avoid a wide variety of situations in
which they have to interact with
other people.
Avoidant people sometimes
have satisfying relationships
with family members or a close
friend, but only if they are certain
of being liked and accepted. And
even in their closest relationships,
they tend to be inhibited because
they’re afraid of doing something that
will lead to disapproval.
Underlying their extreme anxiety, inhibition, and avoidance are deep
feelings of inadequacy. People with avoidant personality disorder
see themselves as inept, unappealing, and inferior to other people,
so very low self-esteem is a central component.
People with avoidant personality disorder
have somewhat unhappy and unsatisfying
lives. They can certainly entertain
themselves with their personal interests
and activities and can form connections
with friends or family members, but
their basic needs for acceptance and
belonging are not being met, and they go
through life feeling alienated.
Doctrine over person.
Doctrine over person. Members’ personal experiences are subordinate to the sacred science; members must deny or reinterpret any contrary experiences to fit the group ideology.
Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control
We run less risk of being eaten today, but because of our ability to associate strong emotions with abstract concepts, we can experience a stressful response to events or objects our ancestors may not have understood.
“What I’m feeling must be…” we try to explain and understand our emotions, sometimes incorrectly.
This is why demagogues, cult leaders, advertisers, and brainwashers try to keep their messages as short and simple as possible: by doing so they increase the chance of triggering a fast, automatic response before their target has time to stop and think.
When a new set of beliefs is imposed on a somewhat different preexisting pattern, the success fo the brainwashing will crucially depend on how much stronger than the old cobwebs the new ones are. Isolation reduces voting power of older cogwebs.
Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control
Weak beliefs are therefore subservient to reality, in the sense that if new information comes in which requires them to change, change they will, without much effort on the believer’s part.
It would take a great deal to convince that your opinion built up over years of observation should be revised.
Our strongest beliefs will tend to be simpler than our more weakly-held convictions.
Simpler beliefs are easier to represent and retain in cobwebs, just as headlines are easier to remember than philosophical arguments.
Simplicity makes ideas easier to accept.
BAND WAGON
Band Wagon has as its theme, “Everybody-at least all of us-is doing it”; with it, the propagandist attempts to convince us that all members of a group to which we belong are accepting his program and that we must therefore follow our crowd and “jump on the band wagon.”
The Band Wagon is a means for making us follow the crowd and accept a propagandist’s program as a whole and without examining the evidence for and against it. His theme is: “Everybody’s doing it. Why not you?” His techniques range from those of the street-corner medicine show to those of the vast pageant.
The propagandist hires a hall, rents radio stations, fills a great stadium, marches a million or at least a lot of men in a parade. He employs symbols, colors, music, movement, all the dramatic arts. He gets us to write letters, to send telegrams, to contribute to his “cause.” He appeals to the desire, common to most of us, to “follow the crowd.” Because he wants us to follow the crowd in masses, he directs his appeal to groups held together already by common ties, ties of nationality, religion, race, sex, vocation.
With the aid of all the other Propaganda Devices, all of the artifices of flattery are used to harness the fears and hatreds, prejudices and biases, convictions and ideals common to a group. Thus is emotion made to push and pull us as members of a group onto a Band Wagon.
“Don’t throw away your vote. Vote for our candidate. He’s winning.” Nearly every candidate wins in every election bef ore the votes are in and counted.
What can we do about the Band Wagon? Here are the questions we should certainly ask ourselves and should answer before we succumb to its wiles:
What is this propagandist’s program ?
What is the evidence for and against his program?
Does his program serve or undermine the interests of the group-my group-that he says favors him and his ideas?
No fair use of the Band Wagon Device can suffer from such questioning. And there is never as much of a rush to climb onto the Band Wagon as the propagandist tries to make us think there is.
This search for truth has been vastly stimulated by the spread and preservation of the democratic way of life. Only in a democracy do scientists, artists, technicians, philosophers, and ministers of religious sects have the freedom that permits them to strive for more and more accurate approximations of that eternal earthly goal of man, the truth.
Propaganda
In order to avoid technical language, in order to make our findings more generally useful, the popular terms for these propagandistic devices have been retained here. Considerable experience with them by scientific analysts, business men, teachers, and college and high school students indicates that they have the two necessary qualifications for our purpose: They are workable. Anyone can use them.
To explain fully the uses to which these simple-sounding devices are being put by professional propagandists requires more than a brief definition. But a brief definition can give the gist of each. It is therefore possible and certainly desirable to get the following thumbnail descriptions of each before us.
The chief devices used then in popular argument and by professional propagandists are:
Name Calling-giving an idea a bad label-is used to make us reject and condemn the idea without examining the evidence.
Glittering Generality-associating something with a “virtue word”-is used to make us accept and approve the thing without examining the evidence.
Transfer carries the authority, sanction, and prestige of something respected and revered over to something else in order to make the latter acceptable; or it carries authority, sanction, and disapproval to cause us to reject and disapprove something the propagandist would have us reject and disapprove.
Compliance is rewarded. Dissent is punished and dissaporved of.
Obedience is not blind. They must also believe in the ideological purpose.
“For the good of….”
Dissent and comment is discouraged. Higher ideological goal.
ideological and repressive state apparatus
Focus on detail allows someone to avoid thinking about their human status or consider higher ideals. Prevents feelings of guilt.
NEED FOR COGNITION
Need for cognition refers to the degree to which people enjoy
thinking. Some people derive a great deal of intrinsic enjoyment
from thinking, analyzing, and pondering—just for its own sake.
Other people don’t like thinking; they’ll think when they need to,
but just thinking about things doesn’t sound like their idea of fun.
People who are higher in need for cognition consider more
information and think about it more deeply when they have to make
a decision, whereas people who are lower in need for cognition
think less and often rely on cognitive shortcuts. And, because
they think more deeply, people who are high in need for cognition
remember more details about things they read.
Because they think more deeply about things, people high in
need for cognition are more affected by the quality of arguments.
Because people who are high in need for cognition think about the
evidence more deeply, they recognize good and bad arguments
more easily than people who are low in need for cognition do.
People higher in need for cognition enjoy mental tasks and games
that involve thinking more than those who are low in need for
cognition. And they watch less television, presumably because
television usually doesn’t require as much thinking as other things
they could be doing.
INTELLECTUAL HUMILITY
Intellectual humility involves the degree to which people
recognize that what they believe might be wrong. People who
are high in intellectual humility are more willing to accept the
possibility that their beliefs and attitudes might be incorrect or
unfounded. People who are low in intellectual humility are more
certain that their beliefs and attitudes are correct.
People who are higher in intellectual humility are also more tolerant of people who change their minds. Intellectually humble people know that they would change their own mind if they had new evidence that their old view was wrong, so they accept the possibility that other people might also change their minds.
Some people go beyond simply believing that they are right to
think that they have an obligation to try to correct other people’s
ignorant beliefs. This characteristic is called social vigilantism, and it goes beyond reasonable efforts to educate people in a particular domain to a broad tendency to let everyone know that they’re wrong. So, it’s much more than simply low intellectual humility.
Band Wagoning
Band Wagon has as its theme, “Everybody-at least all of us-is doing it”; with it, the propagandist attempts to convince us that all members of a group to which we belong are accepting his program and that we must therefore follow our crowd and “jump on the band wagon.”
Dispensing of existence.
Dispensing of existence. The group has the prerogative to decide who has the right to exist and who does not. This is usually not literal but means that those in the outside world are not saved, unenlightened, unconscious, and must be converted to the group’s ideology. If they do not join the group or are critical of the group, then they must be rejected by the members. Thus, the outside world loses all credibility. In conjunction, should any member leave the group, he or she must be rejected also.[3]
Moral VALUES
Values are the things that people think are most important across
the various areas of their lives. Many taxonomies of values have
been developed, but the field has now gravitated to a system
of 10 basic values that were identified through the work of
Shalom Schwartz:
1. Power
2. Security (involves the value that people place not only on safety
and security but also on stability, harmony, and order—in their
own lives, in their relationships with other people, and in society
at large)
3. Self-direction (being able to make your own decisions)
4. Hedonism
5. Tradition (having respect for the customs and ideas of your
culture)
6. Achievement
7. Conformity (involves not doing things that might violate social
norms or upset other people)
8. Stimulation, or excitement
9. Benevolence (taking care of people you know personally)
10. Universalism (involves protecting the welfare of all people,
whether you know them or not, as well as caring for animals
and nature)
These 10 values seem to be universal in the sense that you can find
people in every culture who endorse them to varying degrees. These
10 basic values encompass most other moral values that we might
think of, such as honesty, kindness, loyalty, and generosity.
Every person’s values are arranged in a hierarchy of importance,
so 2 different people might make different decisions in exactly
the same situation because their values are in a different order.
A meta-analysis of 60 studies conducted in 13 different countries
looked at the relationships between the 10 basic values and the big
five personality traits. We can dispense with neuroticism because
none of the 10 universal values are related to people’s tendency
to experience negative emotions.
Extraversion correlated with 4 of the 10 values. People who are
high in extraversion value stimulation and excitement more than
people who are low in extraversion. Extraverts also score higher on
values that relate to having power, status, and prestige, and they
also value achievement more than introverts do. Extraverted people
also value hedonism a little more than less extraverted people do.
The trait of agreeableness relates to 2 values, both of which involve
a concern for other people: benevolence and universalism. People
who are higher in agreeableness value both benevolence and
universalism more than less agreeable people do. Agreeableness is
negatively related to the value that people place on power: People
who are higher in agreeableness don’t value having control, power,
and status as much as less agreeable people do.
Conscientious people tend to place a higher value on security
(safety and order). Conscientious people score a little higher on
the degree to which they value conformity—trying not to violate
social norms or upset other people.
People who are higher in openness tend to value self-direction
more than people who are low in openness. People who are higher
in openness also value tradition, conformity, and security less than
people low in openness.
On dumpster diving:
It might be a tactic too low down for James Bond.
Movie goers would much rather watch him outfoxing criminals and bedding beauties than standing knee dip in garbage.
But real life spies are less squeamish when something of value can be hidden among banana peels and coffe grounds.
Barnum Statements
You have a great need for other people to like and admire you.
You’ve a tendency to be critical of yourself.
You have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned to your advantage.
While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them.
Disciplined and self-controlled outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside.
At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing.
You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations.
You pride yourself as an independent thinker and do not accept others’ statements without satisfactory proof.
You’ve found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others.
At times you are extroverted, affable, sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, reserved.
Some of your aspirations tend to be pretty unrealistic.
Security is one of your major goals in life.
The Small statement
This ambiguous and nonspecific statement might be something like “I’m sensing the month of June, here.” If the client appears confused and says, “I can’t think of anything particular about June,” the psychic might respond by saying, “That’s odd because June is coming up very strongly here,” and then switch directions.
But let’s say the client does respond. She says that she got married in June. Picking the month of June was not a random choice for the psychic. She did the research and learned that June is the weddingist month of the year. So after the customer acknowledges, possibly with a tear or two, that her anniversary is in June, the psychic will say, “Yes, I can see that. It was coming through very clearly here.” In short, the psychic will continue to reinforce her hit thereby convincing the sitter of her astounding powers.
At this stage the psychic will expand the client’s statement and develop it to make it stronger, based off of the information gathered from the client. The psychic will use her skills to repeat back the information that the customer has given her by embellishing it and making it seem like she is sensing ever new information. In truth, what the psychic is doing is simply using the repetition of
Lying - Feet and legs
The feet and legs indicate all kinds of things about how we’re feeling. For example, when we’re excited, we often have “happy feet.”
When we don’t want to see or be around someone, we’ll often shift our feet to turn away as a sign of being displeased or wanting to disengage. This is all automatic and unregistered behavior.
A knee clasp and a forward leaning torso indicate that someone is ready to leave a situation.
We often cross our legs when we’re confident and comfortable with someone or a situation (no real threat around). We also tilt our legs towards the person we favor in courtship. Also, women dangling shoes with their toes is a sign of comfort, and so are footsies. Limited foot touching is bad.
When our feet mirror the placement and director of others, they signal that we want to stay where we are.
Barnum Statements
You have a great need for other people to like and admire you.
You have a great deal of unused capacity, which you have not turned to your advantage
Singer 6 conditions for control. (Cults in out midst)
Singer 6 conditions for control. (Cults in out midst)
Women in Tech
The greatest challenge preventing the economic gender gap from closing is women’s under-representation in emerging roles. (9)
- According to the World Economic Forum, only 12% of cloud computing roles are held by women, with 15% in engineering and 26% in data & AI.
Which is a statement that would also apply to most people.
“You’re a person who is prone to bouts of self-examination and have a tendency to be critical of yourself.”
Getting an unlisted number
Want to know someone’s unlisted phone number? A social engineer can
tell you half a dozen ways (and you’ll find some of them described in
other stories in these pages), but probably the simplest scenario is one that
uses a single phone call, like this one.
Number, Please
The attacker dialed the private phone company number for the MLAC, the
Mechanized Line Assignment Center. To the woman who answered, he
said:
“Hey, this is Paul Anthony. I’m a cable splicer. Listen, a terminal box out
here got fried in a fire. Cops think some creep tried to burn his own house
down for the insurance. They got me out here alone trying to rewire this
entire two hundred-pair terminal. I could really use some help right now.
What facilities should be working at 6723 South Main?
In other parts of the phone company, the person called would know that
reverse lookup information on non pub (non published) numbers is
supposed to be given out only to authorized phone company MLAC is
supposed to be known only to company employees. And while they’d
never give out information to the public, who would want to refuse a little
help to a company man coping with that heavy-duty assignment?. She
feels sorry for him, she’s had bad days on the job herself, and she’ll
bend the rules a little to help out a fellow employee with a problem. She
gives him the cable and pairs and each working number assigned to the
address.
TACTICS OF SOCIAL INFLUENCE
In all of our relationships, we often want to influence the other person to do something that we want them to do, and they sometimes try to influence us, too. Sometimes, the issue is a momentous, life-changing one, but usually, they’re pretty mundane. Either way, life is filled with efforts to get other people to do what we want them to do.
People use different tactics for getting other people to do what
they want, depending on the relationship and the situation, but
we each have some preferred tactics for influencing other people. Part of your interpersonal style—how you generally interact with other people—involves the tactics that you tend to use when you want to persuade and influence them. And the quality of your close relationships depends to an extent on which tactics you tend to use.
Studies that have carefully examined the tactics that people use to get what they want have identified several categories: Sometimes we take a rational approach to influence other people, giving reasons and explanations for why the other person should do what we want them to. At other times, we offer to reciprocate or to reward them. Or, we might try to use personal charm or try to convince the other person that they’ll like whatever it is we want them to do. At other times, we suggest that it’s the other person’s obligation or responsibility to do whatever it is that we want or that the person should agree to what we want because it’s what most other people would do.
Those all are reasonably up-front tactics to get others to do as
we wish, but sometimes people use less positive approaches.
Sometimes people use coercion or threats, put the other person
down, or sulk or whine or give the other person the silent treatment until they get their way.
People use somewhat different tactics in different relationships.
But there’s a good deal of consistency in the tactics each of us
tends to use across our different relationships. And the tactics that each of us use most frequently relate to our personality. People with different traits tend to use different tactics to influence other people.
Some people consistently use reason as an influence tactic across various relationships more than other people do. But if you usually don’t use reason as a tactic in one relationship, you probably don’t use it much in other relationships either.
People who prefer to use rational social influence tactics
tend to be people who score higher in conscientiousness and
openness. People who prefer to use the more negative influence
tactics, such as coercion and the silent treatment, tend to be low
in agreeableness. People who whine, pout, and throw tantrums to
get what they want tend to be higher in neuroticism.
THE BIG FIVE TRAITS AND SELF-REGULATION
The big five trait that’s most consistently linked to self-regulation is conscientiousness. In fact, research has shown that people higher in conscientiousness are better at self-control by inhibition, selfcontrol by initiation, and self-control by continuation than less conscientious people are.
Neuroticism is also related to self-control, but the relationship is complex. On one hand, people who are high in neuroticism tend to be inhibited and even overcontrolled at times; they put a lot of effort into self-regulation. But their highly negative emotions
can also interfere with self-regulation, and they can struggle with
self-control by inhibition when they’re upset.
Agreeableness also relates to self-regulation. Being a highly
agreeable person partly involves controlling your negative reactions to other people, such as biting your tongue and letting other people’s annoying behavior slide. People who don’t self-regulate as well have more trouble controlling these impulses, so they can end up behaving disagreeably when they have problems with other people. Not surprisingly, agreeableness is related most strongly to self-control by inhibition.
Extraversion also tends to be related to self-regulation, but
somewhat more weakly. People higher in extraversion tend to
be more outgoing, spontaneous, and uninhibited than people
low in extraversion. Those characteristics make extraverts better
at self-control by initiation, but those same characteristics can
make extraverts a little worse at self-control by inhibition. They
sometimes respond impulsively and spontaneously, which means
they sometimes don’t regulate as well. In the same way, people low in extraversion are better at self-control by inhibition but not as good at self-control by initiation.
Openness isn’t related to self-regulation.
Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control
Closer new beliefs are to old ones or less thought required, the easier the jump. You know what they’re thinking like copywriting.
Weaker cobwebs will change. Strongers will explain away new evidence or challenging information.
Dogmatic and creative people are polar opposites.
Emotions are shortcuts telling us how to behave.
Emotions flood the brain, whereas thoughts don’t. It can cause the feelings evoked by a word or phrase to be associated with another.
A good influence technician wants to change the minds of others. Great need to control the environment.
Single clear identifiable message.
Barnum Statments
“You’re somebody who tends to keep people a little bit at bay or at arms length, but when you allow people into your inner sanctum and when they become your close friends, and if they betray you then that really hurts.”
This doesn’t actually mean anything other than you are saying you’re close to people you’re close to. This could apply to almost everyone.
Using Authority
Scott’s Story
“Scott Abrams.”
“Scott, this is Christopher Dalbridge. I just got off the phone with Mr.
Biggley, and he’s more than a little unhappy. He says he sent a note ten
days ago that you people were to get copies of all your market penetration
research over to us for analysis. We never got a thing.”
“Market penetration research? Nobody said anything to me about it.
What department are you in?”
“We’re a consulting firm he hired, and we’re already behind schedule.”
“Listen, I’m just on my way to a meeting. Let me get your phone number
and . . .”
The attacker now sounded just short of truly frustrated: “Is that what
you want me to tell Mr. Biggley?! Listen, he expects our analysis by
tomorrow morning and we have to work on it tonight. Now, do you want
me to tell him we couldn’t do it ‘cause we couldn’t get the report from you,
or do you want to tell him that yourself?.”
An angry CEO can ruin your week. The target is likely to decide that
maybe this is something he better take care of before he goes into that
meeting. Once again, the social engineer has pressed the right button to
get the response he wanted.
Analyzing the Con
The ruse of intimidation by referencing authority works especially well if
the other person is at a fairly low level in the company. The use of an
important person’s name not only overcomes normal reluctance or
suspicion, but often makes the person eager to please; the natural instinct
of wanting to be helpful is multiplied when you think that the person
you’re helping is important or influential.
The social engineer knows, though, that it’s best when running this
particular deceit to use the name of someone at a higher level than the
person’s own boss. And this gambit is tricky to use within a small
organization: The attacker doesn’t want his victim making a chance
When lying
People restrict arm and leg movements when lying. It’s indicative of self-restraint and caution, not necessarily deception. Withdrawing feet under a chair is a similar cue.
Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control
Group membership means that person is not alone and they are not responsible.
If living with people who don’t show disapproval, it creates diffusion of responsibility. It would get them social credit in the group vs vague bad benefit in society.
Primacy of doctrine over person.
brainwashing is billed as treating a sick mind
“Brought you here to cure you. To make you sane. Not interested in overt thought. Just the act. Sick people getting treatment. Must repent for wrongdoings.
Top Women Porn Categories
Lesbian
Popular with women
Japanese
Threesome
Ebony
Amateur
According to Psychology Today, women’s perceptions of the performers’ enjoyment of sex during porn had implications for their own enjoyment and arousal during masturbation. For example: if a woman watched a sex scene that was very obviously fake and sensed that the actors themselves weren’t having a good time, she would be less likely to feel pleasure and sexual enjoyment herself.
As a woman who watches porn, I can totally agree with this statement.
In fact, this may be one of the reasons women enjoy searching for “amateur porn” or “threesomes” or “lesbian porn” - because these genres are more well-known for their authenticity.
TESTIMONIAL
TESTIMONIAL
Testimonial consists in having some respected or hated person say that a given idea or program or product or person is good or bad.
“The Times said … ,” “John L. Lewis said … ,” “Herbert Hoover said … ,” “The President said …,” “My doctor said … ,” or “Our minister said … .” Some of these Testimonials may merely give greater emphasis to a legitimate and accurate idea, a fair use of the device others, however, may represent the sugar-coating of a distortion, a falsehood, a misunderstood notion, an anti-social suggestion. The rest of such sentences may, of course, have given the impression that “So-and-so, a bad man, advocates such-and-such an idea, and therefore the idea is bad,” or that “So-and-so, a good man, advocates such-and-such an idea, and therefore the idea is good.”
In short, Testimonial is the fourth device used by skillful and dangerous propagandists to convince us of an idea before we become critical and examine the evidence in the case. It is also the fourth device-in our list of seven-used by fair propagandists to interest us in a useful idea so that we will examine the evidence and may eventually accept the proposal.
To beat bad propagandists at their game or to prove to ourselves that the propagandas we like are really as good as they sound to us, we will all do well to ask ourselves the following questions regarding each Testimonial we hear:
Who or what is quoted in the Testimonial?
Why should we regard this person (or organization or publication or whatnot) as having expert knowledge or trustworthy information or reliable opinion on the subject in question?
Above all, what does the idea amount to on its own merits, without the benefit of the Testimonial?
There are three ways in which the Testimonial Device may be utilized unfairly. These three ways are:
1. The use of untrustworthy sources.
2. The distortion of facts or opinions contained in and attributed to trustworthy sources.
3. The alleged quotation of facts or opinions from a reputable source that do not come from that source.
Women in School
Women lead the way in studying medicine, dentistry, agriculture, law, education and communication. (10)
- In contrast, they make up smaller student populations in computer science, engineering and technology. Business and administrative studies shows almost an even split.
Loading the Language.
Loading the Language. The group interprets or uses words and phrases in new ways so that often the outside world does not understand. This jargon consists of thought-terminating clichés, which serve to alter members’ thought processes to conform to the group’s way of thinking.
Keep the person unaware of what is going on and how she or he is
being changed a step at a time.
Keep the person unaware of what is going on and how she or he is
being changed a step at a time. Potential new members are led, step by
step, through a behavioral-change program without being aware of the final
agenda or full content of the group. The goal may be to make them
deployable agents for the leadership, to get them to buy more courses, or
get them to make a deeper commitment, depending on the leader’s aim and
desires.
Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control
High levels of physical activity are used during training ,independent thought is discouraged and personal freedom is restricted.
Encourage low-level thinking, which is a very concrete, narrow, rigid way of thinking, with he focus not he here and now, on the details of what one is doing. Focusing on low level details makes it easier to pull a trigger.
The primacy of doctrine over person as individual autonomy is suppressed for the good of the system the sacred science of ideology, accepted without question.
Bourke notes that love for one’s comrades was an excellent motivation, ‘widely regarded as the strongest incentive for murderous aggression against a foe identified as threatening that relationship.’
Clearly identified external enemy provides powerful motivations and justifications for killing.
God: He pulls the strings, he loves you, he has your best interest at heart. Being omnipresence, he knows what’s good for you, a lot better than you do, so why worry.
AUTHENTICITY AND PERSONALITY
Maybe we’ve been thinking about the topic completely wrong
in the sense that our notion of authenticity isn’t compatible with
the way that personality actually works. Perhaps, contrary to how
it seems, people are actually always authentic. In other words,
maybe it makes no sense to think that people could ever behave
incongruently with aspects of their personality, motives, values,
and beliefs.
Almost all human behavior is goal-directed—that is, most of your
behavior is intended to achieve some goal or fulfill some motive.
Sometimes the goal is conscious, and often the goal is not conscious.
But it doesn’t make much sense to say that you did something
for no reason—that your behavior wasn’t motivated. You may
not know why you did what you did, but there was some reason,
motive, or goal.
Sometimes the goals that are active and operational for us at
a given moment are compatible with each other. But sometimes
we have goals that are incompatible. One goal is leading
us toward one action, and the other goal is leading us toward
a different action—maybe even one that’s incompatible with the
first one.
But they’re both genuine goals, and whichever one you choose,
you’re acting consistently with one genuine goal and inconsistently
with the other genuine goal.
So, when we do things that we don’t want to do—or think we
shouldn’t do—those behaviors are not inauthentic. They’re simply
motivated by goals that are incompatible with other goals or with
our vision of the person we want to be or think we should be.
People can’t help but to behave congruently with their inner
beliefs, motives, values, and dispositions. So, all behavior, even if
it’s inconsistent or duplicitous, would seem to be authentic.
AGREEABLENESS
Once we move beyond the traits of extraversion and neuroticism,
the third most important trait is agreeableness, which involves
the degree to which people generally have a positive or negative
orientation toward other people.
At the low end of the agreeableness dimension are people who
simply aren’t very nice. They are often unpleasant—even to the
point of being antagonistic and hostile at times—and they tend
to be inconsiderate and critical, even callous. At the high end of
the agreeableness continuum are people who tend to be pleasant,
kind, sympathetic, and helpful.
Like most traits, agreeableness is normally distributed, so most
people fall in the middle, with a mixture of positive and negative
interpersonal characteristics. We can be very nice at times, but
we can also be somewhat disagreeable.
Agreeable people tend to have a more positive and optimistic
view of human nature. They tend to believe that most people are
basically honest and decent, so they trust other people more.
People low in agreeableness have less positive views of other
people, so they’re less trusting.
When they experience conflicts with other people, highly
agreeable people try to resolve the conf l ict in ways
that are acceptable to everyone involved. So, agreeable
people value negotiation more highly, and they are averse
to using power or force to get other people to do what they
want. Along the same lines, agreeable people are generally
more cooperative and less competitive in their dealings with
other people.
Agreeable people are more helpful than less agreeable people
are, whether we are talking about helping family members,
friends, or complete strangers. Highly agreeable people are even
more likely to donate their money and time when other people
are in need.
Affiliation motivation
Affiliation motivation involves the degree to which people desire to be with and interact with other people. People differ a great deal in how much they enjoy affiliating with others. You probably know some people who like to be with other people as often and as much as they possibly can. They not only enjoy social interactions, but they become unhappy when they can’t have the amount of social contact that they would like.
And you probably know other people who are motivated to be
with other people much less often. It’s not that they necessarily
dislike other people; they simply are not as drawn to interacting
with other people just for the sake of interaction. They’re content
to spend much more time by themselves. Because personality
differences in affiliation motivation are normally distributed, most
people are somewhere in the middle.
On first glance, affiliation
motivation might seem like
extraversion. But affiliation
motivation is about the
degree to which people are
motivated to affiliate and
not the degree to which
they actually interact with
other people, which would
describe extraversion.
People high in affiliation
motivation do tend to be
somewhat extraverted, but
many people are highly
motivated to affiliate yet
hold back from interacting
with others because they
lack confidence or are
afraid of being rejected.
In general, people who are higher in affiliation spend more time
interacting with and communicating with other people. They tend to have more social interactions in a given day, and their interactions tend to last longer. They’re also more likely to visit friends, call people on the phone, and send letters, emails, and text messages than people who are lower in affiliation motivation.
When they are by themselves, people higher in affiliation motivation are more likely to wish that other people were around. In fact, after a period of solitude, people high in affiliation motivation may go on a search to find someone to interact with. Even shy people would like to be with other people but are often reluctant to seek out
other people; it’s particularly distressing to be shy if you’re high
in affiliation motivation.
Because people high in affiliation motivation are motivated to
interact with and form social connections with other people, they
want other people to want to interact with and form connections
with them. They can’t fulfill their desire for affiliation if other
people don’t want to interact with them. So, they tend to be highly
sensitive to other people’s reactions and concerned with what
other people think of them.
People low in affiliation motivation are not indifferent to how they are viewed by others; they are simply less concerned because they aren’t as motivated to interact with other people anyway.
Because they value social interactions so much, people higher in affiliation tend to behave in ways that will lead other people to
want to interact with them. They’re more agreeable, and they’re
more willing to go along with what other people want to do. They
prefer to avoid situations in which they must compete with other
people, presumably because competition often makes interactions
with other people more distant and tense.
At very high levels, affiliation motivation tends to be associated
with social insecurity and dependency. People who are very highly
motivated to affiliate with others sometimes seem a bit too clingy
and dependent. They need people too much.
Start With A Story
Have a hero / protagonist.
Describe what your hero is up against.
Build in a specific transcending emotion.
Include a clear lesson or transformation.
Add twists and turns to the story.
Have a clear incident that makes the story
really take off.
Know where you want to end up (the punch
line) from the outset.
Quickly build in a hook.
When does a propaganda conform to democratic principles?
When does a propaganda conform to democratic principles? It conforms when it tends to preserve and extend democracy; it is antagonistic when it undermines or destroys democracy.
“What is truly vicious,” observed the New York Times in an editorial on September 1, 1937, “is not propaganda but a monopoly of it.” Any propaganda or act that tends to reduce our freedom in discussing important issues-that tends to promote a monopoly of propaganda-is antidemocratic.
How broadly should we define democracy? Democracy has the four following aspects, set forth or definitely implied in the Constitution and the Federal statutes:
1. Political-Freedom to discuss fully and effectively and to vote on public issues.
2. Economic-Freedom to work and to participate in organizations and discussions to promote better working standards and higher living conditions.
3. Social-Freedom from oppression based on theories of superiority or inferiority of group, class, or race.
4. Religious-Freedom of worship, with separation of church and state.
With all such general freedoms and the specific freedoms implied by them are associated definite responsibilities. Thus, with freedom of the press goes the responsibility for accuracy in news and honesty and representativeness in editorials.
In short, democracy is the one political, economic, and social philosophy which permits the free expression and development of the individual in a culture.
