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.
NEED FOR COGNITIVE CLOSURE
Another personality characteristic
that’s negatively related to curiosity
involves the degree to which people
tolerate ambiguity. Some people
tolerate ambiguity very well;
they don’t mind the complexity,
uncertainty, and shades of gray in
life. Other people don’t. They want
to be certain about things, and
ambiguity is distressing to them.
They want clear, concrete answers
to questions.
People’s tolerance for ambiguity is related to the degree to which they want to reach conclusions and make decisions quickly. People who are high in tolerance for ambiguity don’t mind not having answers or not making final decisions, and they may even prefer to let things remain undecided as long as possible before reaching closure.
In contrast, people who have a low tolerance for ambiguity want answers immediately. They may make decisions quickly, sometimes even before they have enough information.
Most people are somewhere in the middle: They hold out for enough information to make good decisions but don’t like to wait too long before reaching a resolution.
This characteristic is sometimes called the need for cognitive
closure, which refers to making a decision quickly and then sticking with it. Having a high need for cognitive closure involves both an urgency to make decisions quickly and a reluctance to reconsider decisions that you’ve already made. For people who have a high need for cognitive closure, it’s better to decide and close the issue rather than wait in a state of uncertainty.
Many decisions in life are made in groups, and people who
are low versus high in need for cognitive closure differ in
how they want group discussions to go. Group members who
are high in need for cognitive closure want the group to reach
decisions as quickly as possible, but those who are low in need
for closure are happy to talk things out in great detail, and they
might not be bothered if the meeting ends without the group
making a decision.
Group members who are high in need for cognitive closure not only want the group to reach a decision quickly, but they want there to be consensus. They even prefer different kinds of group leaders. Members with a need for cognitive closure prefer directive, and even autocratic, leaders—who make the decisions themselves and then tell the group what to do—whereas members low in need for closure prefer democratic leaders, who let the group talk about things and then decide.
Even though people who are high in need for closure make their decisions and choices more quickly and make them on the basis of less information than people who are low in need for closure, people high in need for closure are more confident that their conclusions and decisions are correct.
People who consider issues in less detail may feel more confident because they’ve exposed themselves to less contrary information. In many cases, the more information you consider, the more cloudy and uncertain the picture becomes. So, considering less information may make you feel more confident that you are right. In addition, people who dislike ambiguity may talk themselves into feeling more confident.
Information Control - Bite model
Deception:
a. Deliberately withhold information
b. Distort information to make it more acceptable
c. Systematically lie to the cult member
Minimize or discourage access to non-cult sources of information, including:
a. Internet, TV, radio, books, articles, newspapers, magazines, media
b. Critical information
c. Former members
d. Keep members busy so they don’t have time to think and investigate
e. Control through cell phone with texting, calls, internet tracking
Compartmentalize information into Outsider vs. Insider doctrines
a. Ensure that information is not freely accessible
b. Control information at different levels and missions within group
c. Allow only leadership to decide who needs to know what and when
Encourage spying on other members
a. Impose a buddy system to monitor and control member
b. Report deviant thoughts, feelings and actions to leadership
c. Ensure that individual behavior is monitored by group
Extensive use of cult-generated information and propaganda, including:
a. Newsletters, magazines, journals, audiotapes, videotapes, YouTube, movies and other media
b. Misquoting statements or using them out of context from non-cult sources
Unethical use of confession
a. Information about sins used to disrupt and/or dissolve identity boundaries
b. Withholding forgiveness or absolution
c. Manipulation of memory, possible false memories
Cold Reading
Make bold statements as facts
Psychic is paying attention. Go with your gut. Say what you feel about them.
Start with obvious and get more specific.
As long as their head is nodding keep going. When they stop nodding, pull back.
Women Hold More Jobs
Women now hold more jobs than men in the US workforce. (7)
- At the turn of 2020, women held 50.04% of positions in the United States. That’s a difference of 109,000 in real terms.
Cultural Values II
A third dimension of cultural values is usually called masculinityfemininity.
At the high end of this dimension—the so-called masculine
end—are cultures that emphasize ambition, achievement, success,
competition, and acquiring wealth. At the low end of this dimension—
the so-called feminine end—are cultures that emphasize caring,
cooperation, nurturance, and valuing the quality of life.
A better name for this dimension might be agentic versus communal
orientation. Cultures that value an agentic orientation stress getting
things done, succeeding, and focusing on oneself, including focusing
on making money. Cultures that value a communal orientation
emphasize helping other people and fostering good relationships.
Most industrialized countries, including the United States, lean
toward the agentic, achievement-oriented side of this dimension.
After all, becoming an industrialized country requires people to
generally value achievement, success, and making money. Japan
scores highest in terms of valuing this agentic orientation.
The 4 countries that emphasize the communal, supportive orientation
the most in the world, by far, are the Scandinavian countries: Finland,
Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. Costa Rica and Portugal are also
relatively communal, along with some countries in central Africa.
People in agentic, achievement-oriented, so-called masculine
cultures score higher in neuroticism than people in cultures that
value a communal orientation. People in agentic cultures are
notably more likely to be unhappy, distressed, angry, upset, and
stressed out than those in communal cultures.
People in agentic cultures also score higher in openness. It’s
not completely clear why, but it might be that people who value
achievement and success have to be willing to be open and
flexible in their beliefs and behaviors to succeed. Success requires
novelty and innovation, which are valued more by people high
in openness.
Women and Rough Sex
Even more interesting than who is having sex, but how. Inquisitor reports: “Women also show a strong preference for sado-maschistic adult video viewing, with the terms ‘rough sex’ and ‘bondage’ both appearing in the top 16 search terms for women, but not for men.” I’m not shocked that these are popular search topics for women, but I wouldn’t have guessed that it was that much more popular for women than for men.
Practice
Videotape yourself and critique yourself.
Use your hands.
Revenge on Ex BF
I was ready to leave, anyway, I just hadn’t decided when. But nobody
likes to feel rejected. So it was just a question of, what could I do to let
him know what a jerk he was?
It didn’t take long to figure out. There had to be another girl, otherwise he
wouldn’t of sent me packing in such a hurry. So I’d just wait a bit and then
start calling him late in the evening. You know, around the time they
would least want to be called.
I waited till the next weekend and called around 11 o’clock on Saturday
night. Only he had changed his phone number. And the new number was
unlisted. That just shows what kind of SOB the guy was.
It wasn’t that big of a setback. I started rummaging through the papers I
had managed to take home just before I left my job at the phone company.
And there it was–I had saved a repair ticket from once when there was a
problem with the telephone line at Doug’s, and the printout listed the cable and pair for his phone. See, you can change your phone number
all you want, but you still have the same pair of copper wires running
from your house to the telephone company switching office, called the Central
Office, or CO.
The set of copper wires from every house and apartment
is identified by these numbers, called the cable and pair. And if you know
how the phone company does things, which I do, knowing the target’s
cable and pair is all you need to find out the phone number.
I had a list giving all the COs in the city, with their addresses and phone
numbers. I looked up the number for the CO in the neighborhood where
I used to live with Doug the jerk, and called, but naturally nobody was
there.
Where’s the switchman when you really need him? Took me all of
about twenty seconds to come up with a plan. I started calling around to
the other COs and finally located a guy. But he was miles away and he
was probably sitting there with his feet up. I knew he wouldn’t want to do
what I needed. I was ready with my plan.
“This is Linda, Repair Center,” I said. “We have an emergency. Service
for a paramedic unit has gone down. We have a field tech trying to
restore service but he can’t find the problem.
We need you to drive over to the
Webster CO immediately and see if we have dial tone leaving the central
office.”
And then I told him, ‘I’ll call you when you get there,” because of
course I couldn’t have him calling the Repair Center and asking for me.
I knew he wouldn’t want to leave the comfort of the central office to
bundle up and go scrape ice off his windshield and drive through the
slush
late at night. But it was an emergency, so he couldn’t exactly say he was
too busy.
When I reached him forty-five minutes later at the Webster CO, I told
him to check cable 29 pair 2481, and he walked over to the flame and
checked and said, Yes, there was dial tone. Which of course I already knew.
So then I said, “Okay, I need you to do an LV,” which means line
verification,
which is asking him to identify the phone number. He does this
by dialing a special number that reads back the number he called from.
He doesn’t know anything about if it’s an unlisted number or that it’s just
been changed, so he did what I asked and I heard the number being
announced over his lineman’s test set. Beautiful. The whole thing had
worked like a charm.
I told him, “Well, the problem must be out in the field,” like I knew the
,,umber all along. I thanked him and told him we’d keep working on it,
and said good night.
Being Helpful
A Helpful Call
The caller wanted to know Who’s in charge of computers there? and the
telephone operator put him through to the tech support guy, Paul Ahearn.
The caller identified himself as “Edward, with SeerWare, your database
vendor. Apparently a bunch of our customers didn’t get the email about
our emergency update, so we’re calling a few for a quality control check
to see whether there was a problem installing the patch. Have you
installed the update yet?”
Paul said he was pretty sure he hadn’t seen anything like that.
Edward said, “Well, it could cause intermittent catastrophic loss of data,
so we recommend you get it installed as soon as possible.” Yes, that was
something he certainly wanted to do, Paul said. “Okay,” the caller
responded. “We can send you a tape or CD with the patch, and I want to
tell you, it’s really critical–two companies already lost several days of
data. So you really should get this installed as soon as it arrives, before it
happens to your company.”
“Can’t I download it from your Web site?” Paul wanted to know.
“It should be available soon–the tech team has been putting out all these
fires. If you want, we can have our customer support center install it for
you, remotely. We can either dial up or use Telnet to connect to the
system, if you can support that.”
“We don’t allow Telnet, especially from the Internet–it’s not secure,” Paul
answered. “If you can use SSH, that’d be okay,” he said, naming a product
that provides secure file transfers.
“Yeah. We have SSH. So what’s the IP address?”
Paul gave him the IP address, and when Andrew asked, “and what
username and password can I use,” Paul gave him those, as well.
Analyzing the Con
Of course that phone call might really have come from the database
manufacturer. But then the story wouldn’t belong in this book.
The social engineer here influenced the victim by creating a sense of fear
that critical data might be lost, and offered an immediate solution that
would resolve the problem.
Also, when a social engineer targets someone who knows the value of the
information, he needs to come up with very convincing and persuasive
arguments for giving remote access. Sometimes he needs to add the
element of urgency so the victim is distracted by the need to rush, and
complies before he has had a chance to give much thought to the request.
GUILT AND SHAME
Guilt-prone people also tend to take greater responsibility for their actions. Shame-prone people show a paradoxical pattern in which behaving badly leads them to focus on what a bad and worthless person they are, yet they tend to become angry and blame other people as well. This might be a way for shame-prone people to deal with their negative views of themselves.
Research has shown that people who are highly prone to guilt are less likely to engage in immoral and illegal actions than those who are less guilt-prone. But the tendency to experience shame is not related to more moral behavior: Shame-prone people don’t behave any better than people who are not shame-prone.
The tendency to experience shame is also associated with a number of undesirable psychological symptoms. Shame-prone people tend to have lower self-esteem, be more depressed and anxious, and experience more stress. The tendency to experience guilt isn’t consistently linked with these kinds of problems. So, being high in guilt-proneness is less problematic than being high in shame-proneness.
Credibility = Trust
Tapping into the System
The principle of using such information to dupe someone in the
government or a business setting is the same: Because a social engineer
knows how to access specific databases or applications, or knows the
names of a company’s computer servers, or the like, he gains credibility.
Credibility leads to trust.
Once a social engineer has such codes, getting the information he needs
is an easy process. In this example, he might begin by calling a clerk in a
local state police Teletype office, and asking a question about one of the
codes in the manual - for example, the offense code. He might say
something like,
“When I do an OFF inquiry in the NCIC, I’m getting a
“System is down’ error. Are you getting the same thing when you do an
OFF? Would you try it for me?” Or maybe he’d say he was trying to look
up a wpf - police talk for a wanted person’s file.
The Teletype clerk on the other end of the phone would pick up the cue
that the caller was familiar with the operating procedures and the
commands to query the NCIC database. Who else other than someone
trained in using NCIC would know these procedures?
After the clerk has confirmed that her system is working okay, the
conversation
might go something like this:
“I could use a little help.” “What’re you looking for?”
“I need you to do an OFF command on Reardon, Martin. DOB
10118/66.”
“What’s the sosh?” (Law enforcement people sometimes refer to the
social security number as the sosh.)
“700-14-7435.”
After looking for the listing, she might come back with something like,
“He’s got a 2602.”
The attacker would only have to look at the NCIC on line to find the
meaning of the number: The man has a case of swindling on his record.
Analyzing the Con
An accomplished social engineer wouldn’t stop for a minute to ponder
ways of breaking into the NCIC database. Why should he, when a simple call to his local police department, and some smooth talking so he sounds convincingly like an insider, is all it takes to get the information he wants?
And the next time, he just calls a different police agency and uses the
same pretext.
Storming the Fortress
Danny began by doing his homework. Before long he had managed to put
together enough pieces to masquerade as a real employee. He had an
employee’s name, department, phone number, and employee number, as
well as the manager’s name and phone number.
Now was the calm before the storm. Literally. Going by the plan he had
worked out, Danny needed one more thing before he could take the next
step, and it was something he had no control over: He needed a snowstorm. Danny needed a little help from Mother Nature in the form of to wait. On Friday night, a storm arrived. What had begun as snow
quickly turned to freezing rain so that, by morning, the roads were coated
with a slick, dangerous sheet of ice. For Danny, this was a perfect
opportunity.
He telephoned the plant, asked for-the computer room and reached one of
the worker bees of IT, a computer operator who announced himself as
Roger Kowalski.
Giving the name of the real employee he had obtained, Danny said, “This
is Bob Billings. I work in the Secure Communications Group. I’m at home
right now and I can’t drive in because of the storm. And the problem is
that I need to access my workstation and the server from home, and I left
my Secure ID in my desk. Can you go fetch it for me? Or can somebody?
And then read off my code when I need to get in? Because my team has a
critical deadline and there’s no way I can get my work done. And there’s
no way I can get to the office–the roads are much too dangerous up my
way.
The computer operator said, “I can’t leave the Computer Center.” Danny
jumped right in: “Do you have a Secure ID yourself?.”
“There’s one here in the Computer Center,” he said. “We keep one for the
operators in case of an emergency.”
“Listen,” Danny said. “Can you do me a big favor? When I need to dial
into the network, can you let me borrow your Secure ID? Just until it’s
safe to drive in.”
“Who are you again?” Kowalski asked.
“Who do you work for.
“For Ed Trenton.”
“Oh, yeah, I know him.”
When he’s liable to be faced with tough sledding, a good social engineer
does more than the usual amount of research. “I’m on the second floor,”
Danny went on. “Next to Roy Tucker.”
He knew that name, as well. Danny went back to work on him. “It’d be
much easier just to go to my desk and fetch my Secure ID for me.”
Danny was pretty certain the guy would not buy into this. First of all, he
would not want to leave in the middle of his shift to go traipsing down
corridors and up staircases to some distant part of the building. He would
also not want to have to paw through someone else’s desk, violating
somebody’s personal space. No, it was a safe bet he wouldn’t want to do
that.
CREDITCHEX
For a long time, the British put up with a very stuffy banking system. As
an ordinary, upstanding citizen, you couldn’t walk in off the street and
open a bank account. No, the bank wouldn’t consider accepting you as a
customer unless some person already well established as a customer
provided you with a letter of recommendation.
Quite a difference, of course, in the seemingly egalitarian banking
world of today. And our modern ease of doing business is nowhere more
in evidence than in friendly, democratic America, where almost anyone
can walk into a bank and easily open a checking account, right? Well, not
exactly. The truth is that banks understandably have a natural reluctance
to open. an account for somebody who just might have a history of
writing bad checks–that would be about as welcome as a rap sheet of
bank robbery or embezzlement charges. So it’s standard practice at many
banks to get a quick thumbs-up or thumbs-down on a prospective new
customer.
One of the major companies that banks contract with for this information
is an outfit we’ll call CreditChex. They provide a valuable service to their
clients, but like many companies, can also unknowingly provide a handy
service to knowing social engineers.
The First Call: Kim Andrews
“National Bank, this is Kim. Did you want to open an account today?”
“Hi, Kim. I have a question for you. Do you guys use CreditChex?”
“Yes.”
“When you phone in to CreditChex, what do you call the number you give
them–is it a ‘Merchant ID’?”
A pause; she was weighing the question, wondering what this was about
and whether she should answer.
The caller quickly continued without missing a beat:
“Because, Kim, I’m working on a book. It deals with private
investigations.”
“Yes,” she said, answering the question with new confidence, pleased to
be helping a writer.
“So it’s called a Merchant ID, right?”
“Uh huh.”
“Okay, great. Because I wanted to male sure I had the lingo right. For the
book. Thanks for your help. Good-bye, Kim.”
The Second Call: Chris Talbert
“National Bank, New Accounts, this is Chris.”
“Hi, Chris. This is Alex,” the caller said. “I’m a customer service rep
with CreditChex. We’re doing a survey to improve our services. Can you
spare me a couple of minutes?”
She was glad to, and the caller went on:
“Okay - what are the hours your branch is open for business?” She
answered, and continued answering his string of questions.
“How many employees at your branch use our service?”
“How often do you call us with an inquiry?”
“Which of our 800-numbers have we assigned you for calling us?”
“Have our representatives always been courteous?”
“How’s our response time?”
“How long have you been with the bank?”
“What Merchant ID are you currently using?”
“Have you ever found any inaccuracies with the information we’ve
provided you?”
“If you had any suggestions for improving our service, what would they
be?”
And:
“Would you be willing to fill out periodic questionnaires if we send them
to your branch?”
She agreed, they chatted a bit, the caller rang off, and Chris went back to
work.
The Third Call: Henry McKinsey
“CreditChex, this is Henry McKinsey, how can I help you?”
The caller said he was from National Bank. He gave the proper Merchant
ID and then gave the name and social security number of the person he
was looking for information on. Henry asked for the birth date, and the
caller gave that, too.
After a few moments, Henry read the listing from his computer screen.
“Wells Fargo reported NSF in 1998, one time, amount of $2,066.” NSF –
non sufficient funds - is the familiar banking lingo for checks that have
been written when there isn’t enough money in the account to cover them.
“Any activities since then?”
“No activities.”
“Have there been any other inquiries?”
“Let’s see. Okay, two of them, both last month. Third United Credit Union
of Chicago.” He stumbled over the next name, Schenectady Mutual
Investments, and had to spell it. “That’s in New York State,” he added.
Torso (Hips, abs, chest, and shoulders)
Leaning away or turning slightly is an unconscious reaction to discomfort.
Your central (front side) leans into the thing it likes and away from what it dislikes.
Protecting your torso is a signal of discomfort.
Digestion is disrupted when you are uncomfortable.
Bowing slightly is a sign of deference and humility, often cultural and for the elderly.
SCHIZOID PERSONALITY DISORDER
People with schizoid personality disorder seem to have little need
for other people. They don’t care much about social connections,
so they’re rather detached from normal social relationships.
Despite its name, schizoid personality disorder doesn’t actually
resemble schizophrenia very much. Schizophrenia is one of the most
serious psychological problems that involves profound disturbances
in thought and emotion and that typically includes psychotic
symptoms, such as hearing voices, experiencing hallucinations,
or having delusional thoughts.
Instead, schizoid personality disorder is a pervasive pattern of
detachment from social relationships. A schizoid person doesn’t
appear to desire or enjoy close relationships with other people—not
even family members.
People generally enjoy interacting with other people and regard
their social relationships as important. Even people who are very
introverted are motivated to interact and have close relationships,
just not as much as extraverts do.
But people with schizoid personality disorder seem to lack this basic
human motive. They simply don’t care about having relationships
with other people. They don’t even seem to care whether people
like them, and they seem rather indifferent to both compliments
and criticisms.
So, not surprisingly, they almost always choose do to things by
themselves and live pretty solitary lives. They usually don’t have
any close friends or confidants, except maybe relatives. And they
seem to have little, if any, interest in sexual relationships.
This pattern of social disconnection and isolation is usually
accompanied by flat emotions. They don’t take much pleasure
in any activities, but they aren’t upset by very much either. It’s
as if they’re detached emotionally from their own lives. So, they
usually display a bland exterior and come across as aloof and
maybe self-absorbed.
Interactions with schizoid people are usually pretty awkward. You
not only get the clear sense that they don’t care about interacting
with you, but their lack of ordinary emotional reactions is unsettling.
They don’t reciprocate other people’s gestures or facial expressions;
they don’t necessarily wave back when you wave or smile when you
smile. More generally, they don’t respond appropriately to social
cues, so they seem socially inept, awkward, and self-absorbed.
These social skill problems can create difficulties for their work
life, given that most people have to work with other people. But
people with schizoid personality disorder may do just fine if they
can work under conditions of social isolation.
OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE PERSONALITY DISORDER
There are 2 psychological problems that have the term “obsessivecompulsive”
in their name: obsessive-compulsive personality
disorder, which is addressed in this lecture, and obsessive-compulsive
disorder (OCD), which is characterized by the presence of true
obsessions and/or compulsions.
Obsessions are recurring and persistent thoughts that are intrusive
and unwanted. Compulsions are repetitive behaviors, or sometimes
repetitive mental actions, that a person feels that he or she has
to perform. Obsessions and compulsions are not tied to normal
activities, and they usually create a great deal of stress for the
person. But the person with OCD is helpless to stop their unusual,
repetitive thoughts or behaviors.
Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder is an obsessive
preoccupation with order, perfection, and self-control. In many
ways, it’s like being exceptionally high in conscientiousness, all the
time—even when it doesn’t matter and even when one’s attention
to detail is dysfunctional.
People who qualify for a diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive
personality disorder are preoccupied with organizing the details
of their life. And they become quite uncomfortable when things
are not organized and orderly
Many people have to-do lists and planners to help keep track of
important tasks, but people with obsessive-compulsive personality
disorder organize their lives in ways that don’t matter much. They
worry about trivial details and plans. And sometimes, the process
of planning and organizing becomes as important as the activities
that they’re trying to plan and organize.
Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder is also associated with
perfectionism. Doing things well is important, but compulsive
perfectionism differs from functional perfectionism in 2 ways:
Compulsive perfectionists worry about getting things perfect in
areas in which perfection isn’t needed, and compulsive perfectionism
can interfere with getting many things done because the person
won’t finish a task until it’s absolutely perfect.
Obsessive-compulsive traits in moderation may be very adaptive,
particularly in situations that reward high performance. So,
people with this disorder often do a great job on things. But
when people overdo it and try to be organized, conscientious,
and perfect with everything they do, even when it doesn’t matter
and even when it interferes with their life, these characteristics
can become maladaptive.
Cold Reading
C- Making a Prediction/Diagnosis
After all the prep work, the slicing and dicing, the managing and the molding, the psychic must bring it home. The bases are loaded and she’s up at bat. It’s now time to swing into the prediction or the intuitive “diagnosis” aspect of the cold read. Surgery is over. The patient is waiting for the news.
She is always hopeful and positive to the client. Why else would anyone go to a psychic but for hope? A good therapist would make you work too hard and a medical doctor might have performed a successful operation but will also make sure you know the multiplicity of deleterious side effects, possible bad outcomes and days of torment ahead for the patient following that tonsillectomy.
Here the trick is to turn a bad situation into a positive one. It’s the psychic’s way of bowing down to the goddess of old adages: “Every dark cloud has a silver lining.” So she might say something like “your bankruptcy will be a stressor on your finances for a while, but a new, exciting job is just around the corner.” Notice that she doesn’t say, “You will find a bag of money that will go unclaimed.” The psychic knows all about keeping it real. To any rational person the awesome stroke of good luck she is predicting will raise the banner of skepticism.
People understand that no one, not even a psychic, can promise such speedy results. Something like this prediction would have the opposite effect of lightening the load on the client’s shoulders. It would probably get them started on the road to refund. Whether or not it seems true, people want to work a little for positive outcomes. They may believe in the probability for a good future after having to work at it for awhile, but they won’t believe in magical thinking.
What clients are responding to is the hope the psychic had given them, not the truth of the outcomes. Finally, what most people want is to be comforted, to know that their love lives will heal, their finances will sort out, their children will be safe on their trip to Africa. They want to be told everything will be all right. We are all looking for that assurance because, face it, life is a bumpy road and sometimes the tires are flat.
Usually what the psychic sees in t every day problems versus potential future problems is yet more opportunity. They will give their client a reality check answer. “Yes, I see that it is possible the IRS will audit you.” But that yes is the gateway to positive outcomes and a happy client. “At the same time, you will use you experience to understand your tax liability, and make a small fortune in a new business enterprise.”
Be careful from whom you receive help
The “let me help you guy” is the most dangerous one of all. It is classic con-approach and tactic used take advantage of the weakest link. From time to time, some member of your organization may cause an issue on purpose; resolve it for you and ask something in return – like information.
Sacred Science.
Sacred Science. The group’s doctrine or ideology is considered to be the ultimate Truth, beyond all questioning or dispute. Truth is not to be found outside the group. The leader, as the spokesperson for God or all humanity, is likewise above criticism.
Let me help you - Con
“Let Me Help You”
We’re all grateful when we’re plagued by a problem and somebody with
the knowledge, skill, and willingness comes along offering to lend us a
hand. The social engineer understands that, and knows how to take
advantage of it.
He also knows how to cause a problem for you.., then make you grateful
when he resolves the problem.., and finally play on your gratitude to
extract some information or a small favor from you that will leave your
company (or maybe you, individually) very much worse off for the
encounter. And you may never even know you’ve lost something of value.
Here are some typical ways that social engineers step forward to “help.”
THE NETWORK OUTAGE
Day/Time: Monday, February 12, 3:25 p.m.
Place: Offices of Starboard Shipbuilding
The First Call: Tom Delay
“Tom DeLay, Bookkeeping.”
“Hey, Tom, this is Eddie Martin from the Help Desk. We’re trying to
troubleshoot a computer networking problem. Do you know if anyone in
your group has been having trouble staying on line?”
“Uh, not that I know of.”
“And you’re not having any problems yourself.”
“No, seems fine.”
“Okay, that’s good. Listen, we’re calling people who might be affected
‘cause itLs important you let us know right away if you lose your network
connection.”
“That doesn’t sound good. You think it might happen?”
“We hope not, but you’ll call if it does, right?”
“You better believe it.”
“Listen, sounds like having your network connection go down would be a
problem for you…”
“You bet it would.”
“… so while we’re working on this, let me give you my cell phone
number. Then you can reach me directly if you need to.”
“That’d be great. Go ahead.”
“It’s 555 867 5309.”
“555 867 5309. Got it. Hey, thanks. What was your name again?”
“It’s Eddie. Listen, one other thing–I need to check which port your
computer is connected to. Take a look on your computer and see if there’s
a sticker somewhere that says something like ‘Port Number’.”
“Hang on No, don’t see anything like that.”
“Okay, then in the back of the computer, can you recognize the network
cable.”
“Yeah.”
“Trace it back to where it’s plugged in. See if there’s a label on the jack it’s
plugged into.”
“Hold on a second. Yeah, wait a minute - I have to squat down here so I
can get close enough to read it. Okay - it says Port 6 dash 47.”
“Good - that’s what we had you down as, just making sure.”
The Second Call: The IT Guy
Two days later, a call came through to the same company’s Network
Operations Center.
“Hi, this is Bob; I’m in Tom DeLay’s office in Bookkeeping. We’re trying
to troubleshoot a cabling problem. I need you to disable Port 6-47.”
The IT guy said it would be done in just a few minutes, and to let them
know when he was ready to have it enabled.
The Third Call: Getting Help from the Enemy
About an hour later, the guy who called himself Eddie Martin was
shopping at Circuit City when his cell phone rang. He checked the caller
ID, saw the call was from the shipbuilding company, and hurried to a
quiet spot before answering.
“Help Desk, Eddie.”
“Oh, hey, Eddie. You’ve got an echo, where are you?”
“I’m, uh, in a cabling closet. Who’s this?
“It’s Tom DeLay. Boy, am I glad I got ahold of you. Maybe you
remember you called me the other day? My network connection just went
down like you said it might, and I’m a little panicky here.”
“Yeah, we’ve got a bunch of people down right now. We should have it
taken care of by the end of the day. That okay?”
“NO! Damn, I’ll get way behind if I’m down that long. What’s the best you
can do for me?”
“How pressed are you?”
“I could do some other things for right now. Any chance you could take
care of it in half an hour?”
“HALF AN HOUR! You don’t want much. Well, look, I’ll drop what I’m
doing and see if I can tackle it for you.”
“Hey, I really appreciate that, Eddie.”
The Fourth Call: Gotcha!
Forty-five minutes later…
“Tom? It’s Eddie. Go ahead and try your network connection.”
After a couple of moments:
“Oh, good, it’s working. That’s just great.”
“Good, glad I could take care of it for you.”
“Yeah, thanks a lot.”
“Listen, if you want to make sure your connection doesn’t go down again,
there’s some software you oughta be running. Just take a couple of
minutes.”
“Now’s not the best time.”
“I understand… It could save us both big headaches the next time this
network problem happens
“Well . . . if it’s only a few minutes.”
“Here’s what you do…”
Eddie then took Tom through the steps of downloading a small
application from a Web site. After the program had downloaded, Eddie
told Tom to double-click on it. He tried, but reported:
“It’s not working. It’s not doing anything.”
“Oh, what a pain. Something must be wrong with the program. Let’s just
get rid of it, we can try again another time.” And he talked Tom through
the steps of deleting the program so it couldn’t be recovered.
Total elapsed time, twelve minutes.
Control the weakest link
The Human Factor is the greatest culprit as Kevin D. Mitnick once declared. What is easier than pretending to be someone else and asking for valuable information. Only by using this method you can get access to thousands of classified files because the “Human Element” is still is the weakest organization link out there.
Age of Propaganda Key Idea #6: Our need to rationalize our behavior and be socially accepted are turned against us by propagandists.
Humans are naturally social and rational creatures, and propagandists know just how to take full advantage of this. The reality of human tendencies can often trap people in a vicious cycle, as we’re likely to prolong bad decisions as a means of rationalizing our behavior and saving face.
Take smokers, who are huge rationalizers. Lots of people who attempt to give up smoking end up failing because they come up with infinite reasons why they should continue their unhealthy habit. These people tell themselves they have to smoke because all their friends do, or that they’d rather live a short and happy life than a long, miserable one.
Because of all the work smokers do to convince themselves to keep puffing away, the work of the tobacco companies becomes much easier. All big tobacco has to do is make sure people get hooked, and the customers take it from there.
But propagandists also take full advantage of the social character of humans by using something called the granfalloon technique, a way of grouping people together while excluding others to produce a sense of camaraderie for some – and isolation for others. A prominent example of this strategy comes from the US radio personality Rush Limbaugh.
This icon of conservative talk radio is well known for his extremist Republican views and is a master of the granfalloon. He calls his supporters dittoheads, referring to the fact that they agree with everything that comes out of his mouth, and contrasts them with other outside groups that he insults and berates.
For instance, he calls liberals stupid and claims that essentially all racial minorities are criminals. To avoid being assigned an undesirable label, the dittoheads become proud members of their group, viciously defending it against all attacks.
This group identity, just like rationalization, plays on the human fear of loneliness and the terror of being wrong to make people do and think whatever Limbaugh wants.
ANTISOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER
Antisocial personality disorder refers to what used to be called
psychopathic or sociopathic personalities. At the broadest level,
people with antisocial personality disorder regularly disregard and violate the well-being and rights of other people. This disorder is characterized by unemotional callousness and impulsive antisocial
motives:
- People with antisocial personality disorder are rather coldhearted
people; they simply don’t care about other people’s
well-being. They show very little empathy for other people, and
they rarely feel guilty when they hurt somebody. They often
don’t consider the impact of their behavior on other people,
and they really don’t care if they happen to do things that hurt
or disadvantage someone else. - When they get the urge to do something that’s mean, illegal,
or aggressive, they impulsively do it, without much regard for
rules, norms, or laws. So, they lie, steal, and cheat more than
most people do.
In their dealings with other people, people with antisocial personality disorder tend to be pretty irresponsible and undependable. They’re the kind of people who don’t follow through on what they say they’re going to do, and they certainly don’t apologize if their irresponsibility screws you over. They’re usually a bit indifferent and detached emotionally, with an edge of intolerance and impatience
with other people.
People who act this way usually feel okay about their behavior. In fact, they usually see themselves as free and autonomous people who are not foolish enough to go along with a bunch of silly rules and laws when they don’t want to, and they think that the rest of us are dupes for following the rules.
People with antisocial personality disorder consistently score very low in agreeableness; they’re cold, unfriendly, and unkind people. They’re also very low in conscientiousness; they aren’t responsible, dependable, or organized.
They’re also very low in neuroticism. That normally is a good thing,
but a certain amount of negative emotion helps keep our behavior
in line. People who are very low in neuroticism don’t worry much
about things, and not feeling much anxiety, guilt, fear, or remorse
allows antisocial people not to feel bad about the things they do.
Finally, they score very low on the trait of honesty-humility. People
who are low on this trait are very selfish. In fact, some of the items
on the scale that measures honesty-humility look like indicators
of psychopathy or antisocial personality.
Fortunately, people with full-blown antisocial personality disorder are relatively rare. The best estimate is that only about 1 out of 100 people would meet the diagnostic criteria for antisocial personality disorder. Of course, many other people show subclinical signs of being antisocial. Whether they meet formal diagnostic criteria or not, you want to avoid people with antisocial personalities.
Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control
What we associate as brain washing is also called re-education or thought reform. It came from Mao’s opponents.
The victim not only perceives any such challenge as hostile but refuses to engage in rational debate; the new beliefs are considered scared and beyond the reach of reason.
Fear. Grief. Loneliness. The central roles of emotion and coercion are clear.
Control the person’s social and/or physical environment; especially
control the person’s time.
Control the person’s social and/or physical environment; especially
control the person’s time. Through various methods, newer members are
kept busy and led to think about the group and its content during as much of
their waking time as possible.
Fishing - Cold reading
Fishing can feel similar to shotgunning but is more methodical and slow but still revolves around reading the victim. Sylvia Browne made a lot of use of fishing. Fishing starts by taking an educated guess about situations in your victim’s life. How old are they?
Are they likely to be going through a transition such as graduating college or retirement? Are they old enough to have parents or grandparents that have died? Do they have a wedding ring on? With a few basic observations the “reader” can move in slowly and drop some bait such as “I see someone behind you, an older person who has passed on, your father maybe?” The reader waits and sees the response.
The victim will almost never sit there in silence, but will reveal some information. If the victim appears hesitant the fisher will quickly move on using the shotgun technique till they hit on something. Once something is hit on, the fisher can use common statistical information to really appear to be psychic, such as the fact that most people die involving something in their chest or gut or throat.
“He is pointing towards his chest, maybe stomach or throat even, did he die of some complications involving any of those regions?” Whenever the victim gives information, the fisher will respond as if he knew it all along. For example if the victim had said “yes, he died of a heart attack” the fisher will say “oh yes, he is pointing at his heart.”
Getting a phone test number
Loop-Around Deception
Every year the phone company publishes a volume called the Test
Number Directory (or at least they used to, and because I am still on
supervised release, I’m not going to ask if they still do).
This document
was highly prized by phone phreaks because it was packed with a list of
all the closely guarded phone numbers used by company craftsmen,
technicians, a others for things like trunk testing or checking numbers that
always ring busy.
One of these test numbers, known in the lingo as a loop-around, was
particularly useful. Phone phreaks used it as a way to find other phone
phreaks to chat with, at no cost to them. Phone phreaks also used it a way
to create a call back number to give to, say, a bank. A social engineer
would tell somebody at the bank the phone number to call to reach at his
office. When the bank called back to the test number (loop-around) the
phone phreak would be able to receive the call, yet he had the protection
of having used a phone number that could not be traced back to him.
A Test Number Directory provided a lot of neat information that could be
used by any information-hungry, testosteroned, phone phreak. So when
the new directories were published each year, they were coveted by a lot
of youngsters whose hobby was exploring the telephone network.
Stage A – Getting Acquainted Techniques
Stage A – Getting Acquainted Techniques The empathic intuitive’s very first step is to establish a connection with the client that is warm, flattering and trusting.
For this psychic, a warm greeting is compulsory. She will be gentle and sympathetic from the start. Then she will guess the reason for the sitter’s visit. She already knows that most people visit a psychic for relationship or career issues, and quite often because they want to commune with a loved one who has passed. She will rely on statistics and make a guess about the reasons for the visit. But instead of choosing one reason (this would never work because the odds of getting it right are stacked against her) she will say, “I sense you’re here to talk about relationships or your job. But I’m also sensing some grief.”
Notice how she won’t say, “I’m sensing that you’ve lost a loved one.” She would never nail it that closely because that would be statistical suicide. Specificity is the psychic’s chicken pox. She will stay away from it at all costs. But she knows that “grief” is a general emotion. It isn’t always about the loss of a loved one. Grief enters into many situations: A shaky or dissolving relationship, a lost job, a missing pet. So she isn’t wrong. In fact, throwing the G-word into the mix makes her more right – she knows that most folks are coming to her because life’s bowl of cherries have currently spoiled.
The client will be amazed. Yes! This is exactly what he’s come for. And if it’s just the job issue, then that’s what he will have heard the psychic say. The psychic knows that people will hear what they need to hear and discard the rest. They will believe what they need to believe. They will construe the words to fit their life. And most importantly this reasoning and acceptance will take one millisecond for the client’s brain to arrive at it.
Having now established her astonishing gift, the intuitive psychic will use the very same strategy to deepen the session. The “general statement” strategy, for lack of a better word, will almost always work. Again, what the psychic knows is that the client will personalize an otherwise wide-ranging, practically universal statement. In other words this customer will ignore the obvious generality of the statement and be amazed at how precisely it applies to him alone.
Basic Social Engineering
Analyzing the Con
Peter’s phone call to the marketing company represented the most basic
form of social engineering–a simple attempt that needed little preparation,
worked on the first attempt, and took only a few minutes to bring off.
Even better, Mary, the victim, had no reason to think that any sort of trick
or ruse had been played on her, no reason to file a report or raise a ruckus.
The scheme worked through Peter’s use of three social engineering tactics.
First he got Mary’s initial cooperation by generating fear–making her
think that her computer might not be usable. Then he took the time to
have her open two of her applications so she could be sure they were
working okay, strengthening the rapport between the two of them, a sense
of being allies. Finally, he got her further cooperation for the essential part
of his task by playing on her gratitude for the help he had provided in
making sure her computer was okay.
By telling her she shouldn’t ever reveal her password, should not reveal it
even to him, Peter did a thorough but subtle job of convincing her that he
was concerned about the security of her company’s files. This boosted her
confidence that he must be legitimate because he was protecting her and
the company.
Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control
Better fitting cobwebs are more acceptable because they provoke less thought and are hence less effortul. Leader said what they were thinking.
Being saved from death is a more effective weapon than being threatened with it.
Relying on emotions can mislead us. Their function as short cuts to action can weight decisions in favor of short-term indulgence rather than a greater but more long-term benefit. Feelings linger where thoughts do not. The feelings of one thought can be associated with another for the reason.
By arousing some kind of negative feeling in the target, guilt, fear, cognitive dissonance of some kind, they can then present the behavior they want to evoke as the way to get rid of all this emotional pressure. They know that stressed people are likely to react reflexively, using stereotyped thinking, than if they are given time and leisure to consider their situation.
Talk of freedom is easy to find in the sayings of dictators. Use personal choice illusion and may I take a moment of your time to make person feel like they are in control, when they aren’t.
DISPOSITIONAL EMPATHY
An important determinant of successful relationships is the degree to which people in a relationship are attuned to what each other is thinking and feeling. We all want our relationship partners to understand us—to understand our goals, reasons for doing things, emotions, preferences, and pet peeves. In a word, we want our partners to be empathic.
Yet people differ in empathy, and these differences are related
both to people’s behavior and to the quality of their social
relationships.
Researchers distinguish 3 aspects of empathy:
1. Cognitive empathy involves understanding what other people
are thinking—the ability to take another person’s perspective.
2. Emotional empathy involves understanding what other people
are feeling and sometimes even feeling it ourselves.
3. Empathic concern involves feeling tenderness, sympathy, or
compassion for someone who is distressed and wanting to
make them feel better.
Most of the time, cognitive empathy, emotional empathy,
and empathic concern go together. For our purposes, we’ll
group these things together and refer to differences in how
attuned people are to other people’s thoughts and emotions as
dispositional empathy.
The relationship partners of people who are higher in dispositional empathy report being more satisfied with their relationships than the partners of people who are lower in empathy. But people high in dispositional empathy are themselves more satisfied with their relationships as well.
Interestingly, both partners in a relationship benefit if even just
one of them is reasonably empathic. People who are higher in
dispositional empathy also meet their partner’s emotional needs
better than people who are less empathic.
Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control
Children raised by harsh parents like to submit to authority representing the parents and exert authority over others.
Highly authoritarian individuals tend to score highly on ratings of dogmatism and prejudice, but also regardless of secular or religious ideology.
Ordinary people just doing their jobs can become agents in a destructive process. Agentic vs autonomous.
Person joining a hierarchy or authority system view themselves as acting out as an agent for executing the wishes of another person, not their own wants. “not my department.”
TRAFFIC COURT
Probably everyone who has ever been given a speeding ticket has
daydreamed about some way of beating it. Not by going to traffic school,
or simply paying the fine, or taking a chance on trying to convince the
judge about some technicality like how long it has been since the policecar speedometer or the radar gun was checked. No, the sweetest scenario
would be beating the ticket by outsmarting the system.
The Con
Although I would not recommend trying this method of beating a traffic
ticket (as the saying goes, don’t try this at home) still, this is a good
example of how the art of deception can be used to help the social
engineer.
Let’s call this traffic violater Paul Durea.
First Steps
“LAPD, Hollenbeck Division.”
“Hi, I’d like to talk to the Subpoena Control.”
“I’m the subpoena clerk.”
“Fine. This is Attorney John Leland, of Meecham, Meecham, and Talbott.
I need to subpoena an officer on a case.”
“Okay, which officer?”
“Do you have Officer Kendall in your division?”
“What’s his serial number?”
“21349.”
“Yes. When do you need him?”
“Some time next month, but I need to subpoena several other witnesses on
the case and then tell the court what days will work for us. Are there any
days next month Officer Kendall won’t be available?”
“Let’s see… He has vacation days on the 20th through the 23rd, and he has
training days on the 8th and 16th.”
“Thanks. That’s all I need right now. I’ll call you back when the court date
is set.”
Municipal Court, Clerk’s Counter
Paul: “I’d like to schedule a court date on this traffic ticket.”
Clerk: “Okay. I can give you the 26th of next month.”
“Well, I’d like to schedule an arraignment.”
“You want an arraignment on a traffic ticket?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. We can set the arraignment tomorrow in the morning or afternoon.
What would you like?”
“Afternoon.”
“Arraignment is tomorrow at 1:30 P.M. in Courtroom Six.” “Thanks. I’ll
be there.”
Municipal Court, Courtroom Six
Date: Thursday, 1:45 P.M.
Clerk: “Mr. Durea, please approach the bench.”
Judge: “Mr. Durea, do you understand the rights that have been explained
to you this afternoon?”
Paul: “Yes, your honor.”
Judge: “Do you want to take the opportunity to attend traffic school?
Your case will be dismissed after successful completion of an eight-hour
course. I’ve checked your record and you are presently eligible.”
Paul: “No, your honor. I respectfully request that the case be set for trial.
One more thing, your honor, I’ll be travelling out of the country, but I’m
available on the 8th or 9th. Would it be possible to set my case for trial on
either of those days? I’m leaving on a business trip for Europe tomorrow,
and I return in four weeks.”
Judge: “Very well. Trial is set for June 8th, 8:30 A.M., Courtroom Four.”
Paul: “Thank you, your honor.”
Municipal Court, Courtroom Four
Paul arrived at court early on the 8th. When the judge came in, the clerk
gave him a list of the cases for which the officers had not appeared. The
judge called the defendants, including Paul, and told them their cases
were dismissed.
Analyzing the Con
When an officer writes a ticket, he signs it with his name and his badge
number (or whatever his personal number is called in his agency). Finding
his station is a piece of cake. A call to directory assistance with the name
of the law enforcement agency shown on the citation (highway patrol,
county sheriff, or whatever) is enough to get a foot in the door. Once the
agency is contacted, they can refer the caller to the correct telephone
number for the subpoena clerk serving the geographical area where the
traffic stop was made.
Law enforcement officers are subpoenaed for court appearances with
regularity; it comes with the territory. When a district attorney or a
defense lawyer needs an officer to testify, if he knows how the system
works, he first checks to make sure the officer will be available. That’s
easy to do; it just takes a call to the subpoena clerk for that agency.
Usually in those conversations, the attorney asks if the officer in question
will be available on such-and-such a date. For this ruse, Paul needed a bit
of tact; he had to offer a plausible reason why the clerk should tell him
what dates the officer would not be available.
When he first went to the court building, why didn’t Paul simply tell the
court clerk what date he wanted? Easy–from what I understand, trafficcourt clerks in most places don’t allow members of the public to select
court dates. If a date the clerk suggests doesn’t work for the person, she’ll
offer an alternative or two, but that’s as far as she will bend. On the other
hand, anyone who is willing to take the extra time of showing up for an
arraignment is likely to have better luck.
Paul knew he was entitled to ask for an arraignment. And he knew the
judges are often willing to accommodate a request for a specific date. He carefully asked for dates that coincided with the officer’s training days,
knowing that in his state, officer training takes precedence over an
appearance in traffic court.
Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control
Milgram study – two thirds of subjects were fully obedient.
Person entering the authority system no longer view themselves as acting out of their own purposes but rather come to seem themself as an agent for executing the wishes of the other person.
Milgram observes that if we are to obey, we must regard the authority as legitimate and relevant. These are context-dependent. A military person can order them to perform a highly dangerous action, but not embrace girlfriend. Authority will only be accepted if the overarching ideological justification is also accepted.
Milgram says agent puts value on discipline, duty, loyalty and competence. Responsibility is diffused through the hierarchy and organizations split the components of morally dubious actions between individuals. Don’t give them the full picture.
Kiasmus makes things sounds mystical
Kiasmus makes things sounds mystical
Social Engineers
A person gets out of a speeding ticket by fooling the police into revealing a time when the arresting officer will be out of town, and then requesting a court date coinciding with that time.
The social engineer gains access to the company’s system, guarded by a password that changes daily, by waiting for a snowstorm and then calling the network center posing as a snowed-in employee who wants to work from home, tricking the operator into revealing today’s password and access through duplicity.
]
A con-artist gains proprietary information about a start-up company by waiting until the CEO is out of town, and then showing up at the company headquarters pretending to be a close friend and business associate of the CEO.
Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control
The more valuable the group to us, the more likely we are to behave as if the group is equivalent to our self, assuming that rewards or dangers to the group benefit or threaten us.
Commitment of their life.
Aggression towards any outsider who is perceived as a threat.
Prospective victims are not real humans, and you are not individually responsible for the murders.
Once a group exceeds 150 members, it’s hard to control from peer pressure alone, meaning that you need a hierarchy.
When investing passionate opinions, one often finds a fear in their roots.
Where advertising seeks to make us good consumers, education seeks to make us good citizens. Education doesn’t promise happiness explicitly. Yet it aims to deliver more earnings power, and therefore more access to the consumer playground.
People justify coercion from the medical model of being beneficial to the patient. Cure or health. Repentance of sin.
Battle fought by the healer/brainwasher against the enemy forces (rival ideology) which have taken over or corrupted the patient/victim.
We do not merely destroy our enemies. We change them.
Not only did highly authoritarian individuals tend to score highly on ratings of dogmatism and prejudice, but they also did so whatever their secular or religious ideology.
Self talk is important
SELF-EFFICACY
SELF-COMPASSION
Frame questions as statements
“Its not the first time thats happened, right?”
“There are times when you are the life and sole of the party and an extrovert, but at other times you tend to be introverted and quite reserved.”
There are many people who would also relate to this statement too, as most people can portray two sides of a trait depending on their mood or circumstances.
In fact the above statement is what’s referred to as a ‘Rainbow Ruse,’ see below. A Rainbow Ruse is a statement that includes both sides of a personality trait.
Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control
We see ourselves as others see us. Telling someone they are useless at their job reduces their performance.
We often think things extraordinary when we do not understand the process that made them.
Violence is a response to an ego threat.
The stronger and better the schema, the more it contributes to our overall sense of self. The strength of weak schema connections are low, easily changed, and a change to such schema would not make us or our friends feel that we have become a different person.
Taking evaluation of a metaphor as valid affects the real perception of behavior of that thing.
ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION
Achievement motivation is the motive to be competent
and to perform at a high level, whether that is with regard to
professional success, doing well in school, or being a successful
athlete. You can think of achievement motivation as the priority
that people place on achievement relative to other motives that
they might have.
Researchers have designed some pretty good measures
of achievement motivation over the years. Some of these
measures are self-report questionnaires with rather straightforward
Other measures of achievement motivation are projective tests, in which people are asked to tell a story about an ambiguous picture in which it’s not clear what’s actually happening in the scene .Different people will tell stories with different themes. People who are high in achievement motivation tend to tell more stories
with themes about achievement and success than people low in
achievement motivation.
These projective tests also show us that people who are higher
in achievement motivation tend to “see” achievement themes
in ordinary daily events. As they go through life, they’re more
likely to see the world in terms of achievement. So, people low
versus high in achievement motivation actually see the world
somewhat differently.
Like most traits, achievement motivation is normally distributed.
Most people are moderate in achievement motivation: Achievement
is important to them at times, but they balance their desire to
achieve against other things in life, such as their family, social life,
leisure activities, and health.
At the high end of the distribution, though, some people put such an exceptionally high value on achievement that it usually trumps other motives and goals. At the low end
are people who generally don’t care
how well they do or how successful
they are. Other things are more important.
People high in achievement
motivation have a more
energetic approach to their
work, whether it’s their job,
schoolwork, or practicing
some skill they want to learn.
They’re hard workers, and
they tend to stay on whatever
task they’re doing longer
than people who are lower in
achievement motivation.
questions that tap into the importance that a person places
on achievement.
Comedy Writing Secrets (PAP)
Preparation (situation setup)
Anticipation (can often be achieved with just a timely pause)
Punch line (pay off)
Setup and punch line.
That twist or element of surprise is key. The punch line is the big key.
P – Preparation (setup)
A – Anticipation (timely pause)
P – Punchline (joke payoff)
Place the impact word at the end of the sentence.
Knowing where the laugh line helps with delivery and pausing.
Write down all the funny jokes and moments you can per day.
Rehearsed Spontaneity
Comedians practice 22 hours for every 1 minute of stage presence. Ironically, comedians practice a lot until they start sounding spontaneous.
AUTHORITARIANISM
At its core, the trait of authoritarianism involves a particular set of beliefs and attitudes. In everyday language, people sometimes use the word “authoritarian” to refer to people who are domineering and strict or who emphasize absolute obedience to authority, such as a harsh parent or a dictator. That’s not quite what the authoritarian personality involves, although there is a connection.
As a personality characteristic, authoritarianism involves a set or syndrome of attributes, none of which by itself would be considered authoritarianism. The 3 primary characteristics of the authoritarian personality are rigid adherence to traditional attitudes and values, prejudice toward a broad assortment of groups, and a preference for strong political leaders who will crack down on people who don’t conform to one’s own traditional attitudes and values.
The characteristic that seems most central to authoritarianism
involves rigid adherence to conventional, mainline, usually
middle-class attitudes and values. People who score high in
authoritarianism believe that their own conventional beliefs, values, and lifestyles are the only right ones and that people who don’t share their cultural beliefs and values and who don’t live like they do are wrong, if not somehow evil.
Authoritarianism is also associated with fervent patriotism—the kind of patriotism that recoils at any suggestion that one’s own country isn’t the best in the world. Authoritarians tend not to tolerate any criticisms of their country.
People high in authoritarianism also tend to endorse more traditional sex roles. For example, people who score higher on authoritarianism are more likely to say that they like being a traditional male or female. Authoritarian men and women also support more traditional roles for men and women.
Authoritarianism is also related to the characteristics that
heterosexual men and women find attractive in members of the other sex. Authoritarian women are more attracted to more conventionally masculine men, and authoritarian men are more attracted to more conventionally feminine women.
Authoritarianism correlates with conservative values in general;
traditional values are associated with conservative political attitudes.
Of course, we all have values that are important to us, and most
of us wish that other people would see things the way that we
do. But people who are high in authoritarianism have particularly
negative views of people who don’t share their values. This is the
prejudiced component of authoritarianism.
People who score high in authoritarianism tend to be prejudiced toward a broad range of racial and ethnic groups as well as toward atheists, members of nonmainstream religions, homosexuals, drug users, homeless people, and people with liberal attitudes. The common theme here is a distrust and dislike of people who don’t share their cultural attitudes and values.
Age of Propaganda Key Idea #1: Persuasion is built on rational thought and the weighing of different perspectives.
People are constantly trying to sway others’ decisions in one direction or another. But this isn’t always as nefarious as it sounds; by using persuasive techniques to influence decision making, these people are offering us the opportunity to make informed choices grounded in facts.
Such persuaders intend to offer people enough information on the issue at hand to allow them to make a rational choice. A typical persuasion technique is to state both an argument and a counterargument, only to immediately disprove the counterargument based on facts to support one’s case.
In this way, persuasion is often a result of long discussions in which one person’s opinion actively transforms as a result of another person making a stronger case for his perspective. It’s clear to the persuaded person that his opinion has been changed and he’s comfortable with that.
This manner of argumentation is based on the central route of information processing, which transfers information through detailed argumentation and is crucial to successful persuasion.
People who are persuaded centrally are ready to receive information-dense messages. They’re not interested in any old information, but would rather take their time weighing the strengths and weaknesses of different positions.
Because of this focus, such people are fully concentrated on the message they’re discussing, and they thus devote all their mental faculties to understanding the message, as well as their own opinions on the issue. When arguments are made in this way, people are capable of making educated decisions by assessing information from different sources.
However, not all arguments are made in such a straightforward way. In the following book summarys, you’ll learn about another widely used technique of persuasion that’s not nearly as fair; it’s called propaganda and you can find it just about everywhere you look.
BELIEFS ABOUT HUMAN NATURE
Of course, people vary a great deal. But each of us has assumptions about what people are like in general—what most people are like. Your philosophy of human nature is important because your assumptions about human nature influence how you interact with people.
For example, whether people have generally positive or generally negative views of other people is related to how much they tend to trust other people: The more positively you view human nature, the more trusting you are.
And the more positive people’s views of human nature are in
general, the more positively they evaluate specific other people.
Our general assumptions about human beings color our judgments of specific people.
In addition, people whose beliefs about human nature are more positive interact with other people in a more positive, open, and agreeable way than people with generally negative views do.
People who believe that human beings are generally altruistic and trustworthy treat other people differently than people with less favorable beliefs about human goodness.
Social Insecurity
Incredibly, the Social Security Administration has posted a copy of their
entire Program Operations Manual on the Web, crammed with
information that’s useful for their people, but also incredibly valuable to
social engineers. It contains abbreviations, lingo, and instructions for how
to request what you want, as described in this story.
Want to learn more inside information about the Social Security
Administration? Just search on Google or enter the following address into
your browser: http://policy.ssa.gov/poms.nsf/. Unless the agency has
already read this story and removed the manual by the time you read this,
you’ll find on-line instructions that even give detailed information on what
data an SSA clerk is allowed to give to the law enforcement community.
In practical terms, that community includes any social engineer who can
convince an SSA clerk that he is from a law enforcement organization. The attacker could not have been successful in obtaining this information
from one of the clerks who handles phone calls from the general public.
The kind of attack Keith used only works when the person on the
receiving end of the call is someone whose phone number is unavailable
to the public, and who therefore has the expectation that anyone calling
must be somebody on the inside–another example of speakeasy security’.
The elements that helped this attack to work included:
Knowing the phone number to the Mod.
Knowing the terminology they used–numident, alphadent, and DEQY.
Pretending to be from the Office of the Inspector General, which every
federal government employee knows as a government-wide investigative
agency with broad powers. This gives the attacker an aura of authority.
One interesting sidelight: Social engineers seem to know how to make
requests so that hardly anyone ever thinks, “Why are you calling me.’-
even when, logically; it would have made more sense if the call had gone
to some other person in some completely different department. Perhaps it
simply offers such a break in the monotony of the daily grind to help the
caller that the victim discounts how unusual the call seems.
Finally, the attacker in this incident, not satisfied with getting the
information just for the case at hand, wanted to establish a contact he
could call on regularly. He might otherwise have been able to use a
common ploy for the sympathy attack–“I spilled coffee on my keyboard.”
That was no good here, though, because a keyboard can be replaced in a day. Hence he used the story about somebody else using his computer, which he could reasonably string out for weeks: “Yep, I thought he’d have his
own computer yesterday, but one came in and another guy pulled some
kind of deal and got it instead. So this joker is still showing up in my
cubicle.” And so on. Poor me, I need help. Works like a charm.
Deprogramming
Get report trust. Avoid all or nothing and ad hominem.
Ask what attracted you to Trump In the first place.
Give me your point of view. Now ask to share yours. Avoid triggering thought stopping. Don’t make critical remarks. Take deep breathes.
Try a role switching excircese. Switch roles and pretend to be them. Ask them to help you see the world as they do. Do it until they think you’ve nailed it. No ask if they are willing to do the same thing for you.
Stop their phobias
Talk about how OTHER people believe stupid things (aka Jehovah’s witnesses not accepting blood transfusion)
Lying - Hands and Fingers
We communicate ideas and emotions with hands.
Good speakers use their hands to enthrall an audience; hiding hands is a suspicious activity so don’t do that (withdrawn, sneaky, and deceptive).
Decreases in touch signify relationship problems.
Don’t finger point, no one likes it, and it distracts attention from your message.
Nail-biting signals nervousness or insecurity.
Thumbs up is good. Duh.
Thumbs in pocket with fingers out = unsure of yourself (low status or confidence typically with men).
Genital framing: thumbs near zipper to pull pants up or just hang (expressing sexuality).
Liars move their bodies left, when you’re telling the truth you do everything you can to get people to believe you.
Barnum Effect phrases
There are standard Barnum Effect phrases such as: You want a particular amount of change and variety When confronted with restrictions and obstructions you feel upset and fearful. You are a rational person, priding yourself on sufficient evidence rather than blind, random statements. Your independent thinking has been both a boon and a challenge for you in your personal and professional life.
Above all else, you desire security. While you do have a few character weaknesses, your positive qualities more than compensate for them. Sometimes you question whether you made the right decision or not. You know how to be a good friend, but at times you wish you were more popular and at ease in your interpersonal relationships. You are frequently extroverted, approachable and sociable
Mystical Manipulation.
Mystical Manipulation. The group manipulates experiences that appear spontaneous to demonstrate divine authority, spiritual advancement, or some exceptional talent or insight that sets the leader and/or group apart from humanity, and that allows a reinterpretation of historical events, scripture, and other experiences. Coincidences and happenstance oddities are interpreted as omens or prophecies.
Cold Reading - Facts
Facts.
Here you will try for details about the subject by using demographics and statistics or descriptions that apply to LOTS of people. These items are obtained both via study and experience.
Special Thing or Event. This shot is based on a near-certainty. It is almost guaranteed to succeed. You have an electronic dingbat which quit working years ago. It’s still lying around your house, but you somehow never got it repaired. In this era, who doesn’t have such a defunct gadget lying around?
WAG (Wild-Ass Guess). The reader will take a wild shot, such as “Who died in a crash?” Other guesses will have multiple parts and be non-specific enough that someone is likely to make them fit. When a reaction is obtained, you go with the information the subject provides.
Not-so-WAG. This is a guess which is based on some knowledge of what is quite likely. If you are looking at someone who is obviously sixty-ish in age, the guess “Your father has passed” is usually safe. Fast thinking will be required in the few cases where Dad is still around.
Seasonal Guess. There are many activities that are associated with the calendar. Calendar as used here refers to more than just the 12-month wall calendar; it includes financial, religious, sports, and other calendars. Knowledge of these calendars allows guesses tied to the current date.
Cultural Guess. This technique requires detailed knowledge of current pop culture, fads, trends, etc. Such knowledge, coupled with a little Sherlocking (see below), can produce some astoundingly “accurate” statements.
Doubt / Evaluate
DOUBT that your opinions are “your very own.” They usually aren’t. Our opinions, even with respect to today’s propagandas, have been largely determined for us by inheritance and environment. We are born white or black, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or “pagan”; rich or poor; in the North or East, South or West; on a farm or in a city. Our beliefs and actions mirror the conditioning influences of home and neighborhood, church and school, vocation and political party, friends and associates. We resemble others with similar inheritance and environment and are bound to them by ties of common experience. We tend to respond favorably to their opinions and propagandas because they are “our kind of people.” We tend to distrust the opinions of those who differ from us in inheritance and environment. Only drastic changes in our life conditions, with new and different experiences, associations, and influences, can offset or cancel out the effect of inheritance and long years of environment.
EVALUATE, therefore, with the greatest care, your own propagandas. We must learn clearly why we act and believe as we do with respect to various conflicts and issues-political, economic, social, and religious. Do we believe and act as we do because our fathers were strong Republicans or lifelong Democrats, because our fathers were members of labor unions or were employers who fought labor unions; because we are Methodists, Seventh Day Adventists, Catholics, or Jews? This is very important.
NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER
The central feature of the narcissistic personality disorder is an
excessive sense of superiority and self-importance. Narcissists
overestimate their positive characteristics and see themselves as
special—and not just in a particular domain. They think that they
are special as people.
Even worse, people who think that they are better than
everybody else also think that they are entitled to be treated
special. In particular domains, that might be true. If you’re the
best athlete on the team, maybe you deserve some extra respect
and playing time. But if you think you are special as a person,
then you walk through life expecting people to treat you special
all of the time. And that kind of entitlement often disadvantages
other people.
In fact, people who show signs of narcissistic personality disorder
tend to disregard other people’s views and rights. And narcissists
tend not to feel bad about this inequity because they tend to be
low in empathy. They don’t care that their self-centeredness and
sense of entitlement hurt other people.
When you first meet narcissists, they often make a very good
first impression. They’re often charming and confident, and they
usually have good social skills. But it doesn’t take people too long
to realize that narcissists are full of themselves, have a sense of
entitlement, and treat others as just an audience for their own
self-aggrandizing show.
By and large, narcissists come across as calm and confident people. In fact, they are so confident that they often seem indifferent to whether other people like them or not. They’re often very nonchalant, even when things aren’t going well.
But now and then, when the façade crumbles and they feel
that they’re under attack, they sometimes exhibit what’s
known as narcissistic rage: They lose it and overreact, and they
might even seek revenge on people who put them down.
In the mind of narcissists, other people should consistently approve of, adore, and agree with them. Much of the time, narcissists can dismiss any negative reactions they get by simply concluding that other people are stupid or envious or just losers whose opinions don’t count anyway.
But now and then, those defenses break down, and the narcissist becomes enraged by the unfairness of other people’s indifference, disrespect, or criticism. We all get angry when we don’t think we get what we deserve, but narcissists get angry when they don’t get the adoration, respect, and deference that they think someone as special as they are should get.
INDIVIDUALISM VERSUS COLLECTIVISM
Comparing the personalities of people from different cultures
presents a number of challenges. Most notably, when the people in
the cultures being studied speak different languages, it’s difficult
to be certain that the translations of the measures being used
are equivalent. Typically, researchers translate a measure from
one language to another and then translate it back to the original
language to be sure that the words mean the same thing in both
directions. This often requires several efforts, back and forth,
before they get it right.
But even then, exactly the same word or phrase may have different
connotations in different cultures, which may affect how people
answer the question. And sometimes questions on a personality
measure contain concepts or situations that don’t even make sense
in another culture.
The other big challenge for researchers has been identifying the
characteristics of cultures that affect personality. Cultures differ in
many ways—some quite important and some very trivial. And it’s
been a challenge to identify and measure the aspects of culture
that might have psychological consequences.
To do this, researchers have tried to identify the basic dimensions on
which cultures differ from each other. Just as we can describe people’s
personal characteristics in terms of basic personality dimensions,
we can also describe the characteristics of cultures along
basic dimensions.
Cultures differ along many dimensions, but the one that has attracted
the most research attention is individualism versus collectivism.
One of the big challenges of life involves managing the tension
between looking out for yourself versus looking out for other
people. But there’s no clear answer to the question of how you
should balance your focus on yourself as an individual with your
focus on the other people in your life.
Cultures differ in their beliefs about how people should balance this
tension between self and other, and those differences are captured
by a dimension that has individualism at one end and collectivism at the other end. Individualist cultures give greater priority to
the individual, and collectivist cultures give higher priority to the
collective, or the group.
Individualist cultures are based on the idea that each person’s
life ultimately belongs to that person, so people have a right to
select their own beliefs and values and can live almost any way
they please. Collectivist cultures are based on the belief that
a person’s life belongs mostly to a group or society, so people
often have to sacrifice their personal goals and interests for the
benefit of the group.
The most individualist countries tend to be the most
Westernized; the United States, Australia, Canada, Great
Britain, and the Netherlands top the list.
It’s common for people from Western cultures to assume
that the most collectivist cultures are countries in East Asia,
such as Japan, but in fact, the most collectivist countries
are places such as Ecuador, Peru, Columbia, and Venezuela.
Pakistan is also on that list.
Japan actually falls in the middle of the individualistcollectivist
continuum, along with countries such as
Spain, India, Israel, and Austria. They’re the most balanced
between individualism and collectivism.
60/40 Split Barnum
At times you are extroverted, sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, reserved.
While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them.
OPENNESS
The fifth and final trait of the big five is openness, which is sometimes called openness to experience. The term “openness” as it applies to this trait should be interpreted as something like receptivity, as in the sense of being “open” to trying a new experience or being receptive to a new idea.
The trait of openness involves the degree
to which people are generally open or
receptive to all kinds of things. We’re
not talking about interpersonal
openness—being open in how
Because openness is normally distributed,
most people show a mixture of these
characteristics: They like a certain amount of
novelty but not too much, will try new things
now and then, are dogmatic about some of
their beliefs but open about others, and so
on. But many people fall toward one extreme
or the other, and your reaction to the
descriptions of these extremes should tell
you which way you lean: Open people admire
openness, while less open people find high
openness a little troubling.
Research shows that people tend to gravitate
into friendships and romantic relationships
with people who have roughly the same
level of openness as they do. This effect is
not strong compared to many other things
that bring people together, but it is there.
Openness seems to be beneficial in people’s
relationships. Because openness involves
a willingness to consider that one might be
wrong and being open to other views, people
who are more open tolerate differences of
opinion better than those who are less open.
So, open people have fewer conflicts with
other people than less open people do.
Studies have also shown that people who are
high in openness, like those who are high in
agreeableness, are less likely to be prejudiced
than people low in openness. This is because
they are more open to different cultures,
belief systems, ideas, and kinds of people.
Open people tend to report that their
relationships with other people are more
satisfying. They tend to get along with
people better, and other people tend to like
them more.
you interact with other people—
but rather an intellectual and
experiential openness or receptivity
to new things.
People who score high in openness
are more intellectually curious and
imaginative than people who score low,
which reflects an openness to new ideas.
Open people are less dogmatic and more
intellectually humble. They hold their beliefs less strongly, and
they’re open to considering new ideas and thinking about the
world in new ways. They also enjoy trying new things.
They’re also more flexible in their behavior. They’re willing to try
new ways of doing things, and they’re less concerned about doing
things a certain way just because we’ve always done them that
way. As a result of being open to new ideas, experiences, and ways of doing things, people who are high in openness live somewhat less traditional and conventional lives. They don’t feel a strong need to conform to social expectations.
People who are low in openness show less of each of these
tendencies. They are less inherently curious, are more certain
that their personal beliefs are correct, usually don’t like to try new
things just for the sake of having a new experience, tend to be more conventional, and tend to be more set in their ways.
Dumpster Diving
Dumpster diving is a term that describes pawing through a target’s
garbage in search of valuable information. The amount of information you can learn about a target is astounding.
Most people don’t give much thought to what they’re discarding at home:
phone bills, credit card statements, medical prescription bottles, bank
statements, work-related materials, and so much more.
At work, employees must be made aware that people do look through
trash to obtain information that may benefit them.
During my high school years, I used to go digging through the trash
behind the local phone company buildings–often alone but occasionally
with friends who shared an interest in learning more about the telephone
company. Once you became a seasoned Dumpster diver, you learn a few
tricks, such as how to make special efforts to avoid the bags from the
restrooms, and the necessity of wearing gloves.
Dumpster diving isn’t enjoyable, but the payoff was extraordinary–
internal company telephone directories, computer manuals, employee
lists, discarded printouts showing how to program switching equipment,
and more–all there for the taking.
I’d schedule visits for nights when new manuals were being issued,
because the trash containers would have plenty of old ones, thoughtlessly
thrown away.
And I’d go at other odd times as well, looking for any
memos, letters, reports, and so forth, that might offer some interesting
gems of information.
On arriving I’d find some cardboard boxes, pull them out and set them
aside. If anyone challenged me, which happened now and then, I’d say
that a friend was moving and I was just looking for boxes to help him
pack. The guard never noticed all the documents I had put in the boxes to take home. In some cases, he’d tell me to get lost, so I’d just move to
another phone company central office.
Cold Reading - Predictions
Various Predictions. Wouldn’t it be nice if fortune-tellers could really predict the future. Well, there are ways to do it, although psychic abilities are not required for the job.
Things will Get Better. This wonderful type of prediction can be applied to almost any part of life; think of relationships, financial matters, job prospects, social status, etc.
“I can see in the cards that your job, while satisfactory, does not utilize your full potential. It looks like this situation will change for the better in the near future.”
You can’t lose:
The prediction can’t be verified at the time of the reading.
If it does not come to pass it will be forgotten.
If, by chance, it does work out, the subject will be amazed at your ability to see the future. Maybe a repeat customer.
Even Chance Prediction. There are many events and things in life which really do have 50/50 chances. Your child will be a boy or a girl (let us know if anything else comes out). Your stock will go up or down. Your favorite team will or won’t win the championship. Statistically, half of such predictions (guesses!) will be right. The subjects will forget the wrong guesses.
Long Shots. Based upon something observed or suspected, you may make a really off-the-wall prediction. Most of the time these will be wrong and the client will forget. If, however, the prediction is realized, the subject will be astonished and will tell their friends how well you saw into the future. Great PR and very good for business.
Unverifiable Prediction. This is a very interesting tactic. The prediction is carefully worded so that it cannot be verified. Also - notice the vagueness.
The Silent Install
SILENT INSTALL A method of installing a software application
without the computer user or operator being aware that such a action is
taking place.
The first day they were supposed to be gone he placed a pretext urgent
call just to make sure, and was told by a receptionist that “Mr. Vittaro is
not in the office and neither is his secretary. Neither of them is expected
any time today or tomorrow or the next day.”
His very first try at conning a junior employee into taking part in his
scheme was successful, and she didn’t seem to blink an eye at being told
to help him by downloading a “manuscript,” which was actually a
popular, commercially available spyware program that the attacker had
modified for a silent install. Using this method, the installation would not
be detected by any antivirus software. For some strange reason, antivirus
manufacturers do not market products that will detect commercially
available spyware.
Immediately after the young woman had loaded the software onto
Vittaro’s computer, Kurt went back up to the Geocities site and replaced
the doc.exe file with a book manuscript he found on the Internet. Just in
case anyone stumbled on the ruse and returned to the site to investigate
what had taken place, all they’d find would be an innocuous, amateurish,
un-publishable book manuscript.
Once the program had been installed and the computer rebooted, it was
set to immediately become active. Ron Vittaro would return to town in a
few days, start to work, and the spyware would begin forwarding all the
keystrokes typed on his computer, including all outgoing emails and
screen shots showing what was displayed on his screen at that moment. It
would all be sent at regular intervals to a free email service provider in the
Ukraine.
Within a few days after Vittaro’s return, Kurt was plowing through the log
files piling up in his Ukrainian mailbox and before long had located
confidential emails that indicated just how far Millard-Fenton Publishing
was willing to go in making a deal with the author. Armed with that
knowledge, it was easy for the author’s agent to negotiate much better
terms than originally offered, without ever running the risk of losing the deal altogether. Which, of course, meant a bigger commission for the
agent.
Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control
Robert lifton’s milieu control.
Sever criticism of anything that is said. Surround with compliant believers. Torrent of questions and accusations.
Psychological pressure to confess any bad thoughts.
Get the person to write letter confessing and get them to turn new prisoners. Photographed and recorded showing commitment.
He is part of a gigantic effort to control history itself because the party is infallable. To change one’s mind or even one’s policy is a confession of weakness (1984). Newspeak means that the idea without the words to express certain concepts, the concepts themselves will fade and die.
Every aspect of behavior open to criticism by other students, and self-criticism, one of the key aspects of thought reform, was insistently encouraged. Privacy is non-existent. Lectures go on for hours. Surrender must be of own free will.
Women and Porn
They’ve also broken down searches by age group. Women ages 18 to 24 are 81% more likely to search for “hentai,” while women age 45 to 54 are 39% more likely to search “mature.”
WHAT THE SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION KNOWS
ABOUT YOU
We like to think that government agencies with les on us keep the
information safely locked away from people without an authentic need to
know. The reality is that even the federal government isn’t as immune to
penetration as we would like to imagine.
May Linn’s Phone Call
Place: A regional office of the Social Security Administration
Time: 1 0:1 8 A.M., Thursday morning
“Mod Three. This is May Linn Wang.”
The voice on the other end of the phone sounded apologetic, almost timid.
“Ms. Wang, this is Arthur Arondale, in the Office of the Inspector
General. Can I call you ‘May’?
“It’s ‘May Linn’,” she said.
“Well, it’s like this, May Linn. We’ve got a new guy in here who there’s
no computer for yet, and right now he’s got a priority project and he’s
using mine. We’re the government of the United States, for cryin’ out
loud, and they say they don’t have enough money in the budget to buy a
computer for this guy to use. And now my boss thinks I’m falling behind
and doesn’t want to hear any excuses, you know?”
“I know what you mean, all right.”
“Can you help me with a quick inquiry on MCS?” he asked, using the
name of the computer system for looking up taxpayer information.
“Sure, what’cha need?”
“The first thing I need you to do is an alphadent on Joseph Johnson, DOB
7/4/69.” (Alphadent means to have the computer search for an account
alphabetically by taxpayer name, further identified by date of birth.)
After a brief pause, she asked:
“What do you need to know?”
“What’s his account number?” he said, using the insider’s
shorthand for the social security number. She read it off.
“Okay, I need you to do a numident on that account number,”
the caller said.
That was a request for her to read off the basic taxpayer data,
and May Linn responded by giving the taxpayer’s place of
birth, mother’s maiden name, and father’s name. The caller
listened patiently while she also gave him the month and year
the card was issued, and the district office it was issued by.
He next asked for a DEQY. (Pronounced “DECK-wee,” it’s short
for “detailed earnings query.”)
The DEQY request brought the response, “For what year?”
The caller replied, “Year 2001 .”
May Linn said, “The amount was $190,286, the payer was Johnson
MicroTech.”
“Any other wages?”
“No.”
“Thanks,” he said. “You’ve been very kind.”
Then he tried to arrange to call her whenever he needed information and
couldn’t get to his computer, again using the favorite trick of social
engineers of always trying to establish a connection so that he can keep
going back to the same person, avoiding the nuisance of having to find a
new mark each
time.
“Not next week,” she told him, because she was going to Kentucky for her
sister’s wedding.’ Any other time, she’d do whatever she could. When she put the phone down, May Linn felt good that she had been able to offer a little help to a fellow unappreciated
public servant.
KEITH THE PI
Keith figured his starting point would be the Social Security
Administration, targeting their files on Johnson, which would be packed
with highly useful information for a situation like this. Armed with their
info, Keith could pretend to be the target and get the banks, brokerage
firms, and offshore institutions to tell him everything.
His first phone call was to a local district office, using the same 800
number that any member of the public uses, the number listed in the local phone book. When a clerk came on the line, Keith asked to be connected
to someone in Claims. Another wait, and then a voice. Now Keith shifted
gears; “Hi,” he began. “This is Gregory Adams, District Office 329.
Listen, I’m trying to reach a claims adjuster that handles an account
number that ends in 6363, and the number I have goes to a fax machine.”
“That’s Mod 2,” the man said. He looked up the number and gave it to
Keith.
Next he called Mod 2. When May Linn answered, he switched hats and
went through the routine about being from the Office of the Inspector
General, and the problem about somebody else having to use his
computer. She gave him the information he was looking for, and agreed to
do whatever she could when he needed help in the future.
Analyzing the Con
What made this approach effective was the play on the employee’s
sympathy with the story about someone else using his computer and “my
boss is not happy with me.” People don’t show their emotions at work
very often; when they do, it can roll right over someone else’s ordinary
defenses against social engineering attacks. The emotional ploy of “I’m in
trouble, won’t you help me?” was all it took to win the day.
Getting an employee number
Peter Abel’s Phone Call
“Hi,” the voice at the other end of the line says. “This is Tom at Parkhurst
Travel. Your tickets to San Francisco are ready. Do you want us to deliver
them, or do you want to pick them up?”
“San Francisco?” Peter says. “I’m not going to San Francisco.” “Is this
Peter Abels?”
“Yes, but I don’t have any trips coming up.”
“Well,” the caller says with a friendly laugh, “you sure you don’t want to
go to San Francisco?”
“If you think you can talk my boss into it…” Peter says, playing along
with the friendly conversation.
“Sounds like a mix-up,” the caller says. “On our system, we book travel
arrangements under the employee number. Maybe somebody used the
wrong number. What’s your employee number?”
Peter obligingly recites his number. And why not? It goes on just about
every personnel form he fills out, lots of people in the company have
access to it - human resources, payroll, and, obviously, the outside travel
agency. No one treats an employee number like some sort of secret. What
difference could it make?
The answer isn’t hard to figure out. Two or three pieces of information
might be all it takes to mount an effective impersonation - the social
engineer cloaking himself in someone else’s identity. Get hold of an
employee’s name, his phone number, his employee number–and maybe,
for good measure, his manager’s name and phone number–and a halfwaycompetent social engineer is equipped with most of what he’s likely to
need to sound authentic to the next target he calls.
If someone who said he was from another department in your company
had called yesterday, given a plausible reason, and asked for your
employee number, would you have had any reluctance in giving it to him?
And by the way, what is your social security number?
Information such as an employee number, by itself, should not be used as
any sort of authentication. Every employee must be trained to verify not
just the identity of a requestor, but also the requestor’s need to know.
In your security training, consider teaching employees this approach:
Whenever asked a question or asked for a favor by a stranger, learn first
to politely decline until the request can be verified. Then - before giving
in to the natural desire to be Mr. or Ms. Helpful - follow company policies
and procedures with respect to verification and disclosure of non public
information. This style may go against our natural tendency to help
others, but a little healthy paranoia may be necessary to avoid being the
social engineer’s next dupe.
Cold Reading
- The psychic claims to be in communication with the dead, but the messages that come in are vague. Isn’t it funny that the messages are vague at first? Surely the dead would just come out with their statement clearly from the beginning. Psychics never give a good reason for this though.
- The reading will begin with a name or even just a letter. The psychic will say “I’m getting an Anna or maybe an Anne, does that make sense to anyone in the audience?”, then each person in the audience tries to think of someone they know with the name Anna, Anne or Annie. Because they want to contact a dead relative, they will search for a dead relative called Anne or Anna. It’s a very common name. Surely someone in the audience will say yes because they have a dead relative or someone else called Anna. So immediately the psychic has got a ‘hit’. Then the psychic continues by making more general statements and letting the person explain how they make sense.
- The psychic will use negative statements. For example, “This person didn’t have an accident involving water, did he?”. Negative statements like this are effective because both a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ answer will look like a success, or a ‘hit’. For example, “She didn’t have an accident with water did she?” – ‘No.’ No, I didn’t think so. Or “Yes she did”. Ah, that’s what she’s saying to me.
- The psychic puts the emphasis on the person being read. So if the psychic says something like “I’m getting something about a dog, or a pet” and the person says “No” then the psychic may say “Well, I’m definitely getting something about a dog, can you work harder?” or “Well, it’s definitely a dog so I want you to go away and really think about what that means” and then the person is responsible for finding a connection to a dog.
- The psychic uses the information from the subject to change the message. E.g. “I’m getting something about a dog” -No, we didn’t have a dog. “Well, it’s a pet maybe a dog or a cat, an animal of some kind in the family”, -Yes my grandfather used to have chickens, “Ah yes that’s it, it was chickens! Well he says he’s still happy with his chickens, and he wants you to know that even now he enjoys his chickens”.
Females and group sex
Females were also way more likely to search for threesome and group sex. In fact “women searched for the category ‘Gangbang’ 80 percent more often than men, and the term ‘Threesome’ 75 percent more often.”
This isn’t news to Erika Lust, creator of the feminist porn movement, who has been crowdsourcing and asking women to come up with porn ideas in her latest project, XConfession. Salon reports “At XConfessions, Lust has a unique vantage point into what women find sexy, and is both shaping and being shaped by these ideas. The most popular themes are infidelity, group sex and ‘the third person,’ where a partner invites others to enjoy their significant other.” Lust uses these ideas when making her porn, which manages to have a feminist slant without being overly romantic.
She tells Salon “Just because I am making female-led porn with a feminist mindset doesn’t mean that all the sex has to be white satin sheets and roses. Women like the sex just as dirty as men.” Amen to that, sister
Downshifting
- 1 in 4 women are considering leaving the workforce or downshifting their careers because of COVID-19. (1)
- Researchers warn that US companies are at risk of losing up to 2 million women. In September alone, 865,000 women left the workforce.
3 in 4 of those women considering leaving the workforce (or working at reduced capacity) cite burnout as the main reason. (1) - Women with children were three times more likely as fathers to be responsible for a majority of the housework and childcare during the pandemic.
- Coupled with stress from their jobs, the pandemic itself and precarious working situations, this is leading to more cases of burnout.
CULTURAL VALUES AND PERSONALITY
Values are one route by which cultures influence people’s
personalities. For example, a culture that values toughness and
aggression will presumably have a higher proportion of tough,
aggressive people than a culture that values being gentle and kind.
In helping people prioritize what’s important, a culture’s values
change how people tend to behave.
Given the large number and diversity of values around the world,
researchers have looked for broad themes in the values that
cultures promote. A leader in this area has been Geert Hofstede,
who has studied the basic dimensions of cultural values across
more than 50 countries.
Hofstede’s research identifies 4 basic dimensions of values on
which cultures differ and, thus, dimensions that might affect the
personalities of the people in a given culture. Not surprisingly, one
of the values that he identified is the value placed on individualism
versus collectivism.
A second value that he identified is called power distance, which
refers to the degree to which people should recognize and accept
an uneven distribution of power among people. At one end of this
value dimension are cultures that are very hierarchical—cultures
in which people generally relate to one another in terms of their
relative status and power and in which everyone accepts where
they are in the hierarchy and the hierarchical status quo. Middle
Eastern countries are particularly high in power distance, as are
countries with a caste system, such as India.
At the other end of the power distance dimension are cultures
in which people generally interact with one another as equals
and hierarchies are used only when necessary, such as in the
military. Countries with the lowest power distance include New
Zealand, Austria, Israel, Ireland, and the Scandinavian countries.
The United States is also relatively low in power distance—in
the bottom quarter of countries—but it’s not as low as you might
expect for a country founded on the idea that all people are
created equal.
In most status hierarchies, there are many more people toward the
bottom of the hierarchy than there are at the top. As a result, most
people in high-power-distance cultures have low status and power.
And research shows that most people in a high-power-distance
culture are socialized to be subservient—to follow the rules and
stay in their place.
People from cultures that are high in power distance also tend to
score higher in conscientiousness. They follow the rules and do
what they’re supposed to—that is, they do what people higher up
the hierarchy tell them to do.
Is my husband gay? is a surprisingly common search.
These searches also show that men may be the ones holding back, as “there are twice as many complaints that a boyfriend won’t have sex than that a girlfriend won’t have sex.”
Connected or not are the findings that women often question their partner’s sexual orientation; “Is my husband gay?” is a “surprisingly common search.”
“‘Gay’ is 10 percent more likely to complete searches that begin with ‘Is my husband . . . ’ than the second-place word, ‘cheating.’ It is eight times more common than ‘an alcoholic’ and 10 times more common than ‘depressed.’”
Google searches not only help us see another side of relationships but also help cut through the lies we tell on social media, as they starkly undermine the rosy pictures we paint on Facebook.
Stephens-Davidowitz notes that the top five terms women use to describe their husbands on social media are “the best,” “my best friend,” “amazing,” “the greatest” and “so cute.” When they search anonymously, however, typing “my husband is . . .” into a search box, the top five results are “gay,” “a jerk,” “amazing,” “annoying” and “mean.”
And if searches reveal the depressing reality of how people feel about their mates, their attitudes toward their children are no better.
When people contemplate reproducing, they worry about possible regret if they don’t, as “people are seven times more likely to ask Google whether they will regret not having children than whether they will regret having children.”
Once those kids are born, however, the sentiment undergoes a rapid reversal, as “adults with children are 3.6 times more likely to tell Google they regret their decision than are adults without children.”
- Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments and experiences in
such a way as to inhibit behavior that reflects the person’s former
social identity.
- Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments and experiences in
such a way as to inhibit behavior that reflects the person’s former
social identity. Manipulation of experiences can be accomplished through
various methods of trance induction, including leaders using such techniques
as paced speaking patterns, guided imagery, chanting, long prayer sessions
or lectures, and lengthy meditation sessions.
Thought-terminating cliché
hought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism popularized the term “thought-terminating cliché”. This refers to a cliché that is a commonly used phrase, or folk wisdom, sometimes used to quell cognitive dissonance. Though the clichéd phrase in and of itself may be valid in certain contexts, its application as a means of dismissing dissent or justifying fallacious logic is what makes it thought-terminating.
Examples include “Everything happens for a reason”, “Why? Because I said so” (Bare assertion fallacy), “I’m the parent, that’s why” (Appeal to authority), “To each his own”, “It’s a matter of opinion!”, “You only live once” (YOLO), and “We will have to agree to disagree”.
Lifton said:[4][5]
The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.
In George Orwell’s 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the fictional constructed language Newspeak is designed to eliminate the ability to express unorthodox thoughts. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World society uses thought-terminating clichés in a more conventional manner, most notably regarding the drug soma as well as modified versions of real-life platitudes, such as “A doctor a day keeps the jim-jams away”.
In her 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt described Adolf Eichmann as a pseudo-intellectual who used clichés and platitudes to justify his actions and the role he played in the Jewish genocide of World War II. For her, these phrases are symptomatic of an absence of thought. She wrote “When confronted with situations for which such routine procedures did not exist, he [Eichmann] was helpless, and his cliché-ridden language produced on the stand, as it had evidently done in his official life, a kind of macabre comedy.
Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality, that is, against the claim on our thinking attention that all events and facts make by their existence.”[6]
Start Strong
Your first 30 seconds should be strong and have your second-best joke. Get a quick laugh to start strong. Tell them who you are, what your passion is, and why they should be passionate about what you like.
Go out with a bang – put your best joke last.
Introduce yourself to as many people as you can before you speak.
AFFECTIVITY
The most basic emotional differences among people reflect 2 traits that are called positive affectivity and negative affectivity, which are the general tendencies to experience positive and negative emotions.
People naturally assume that if a person tends to experience positive emotions a lot, then he or she probably doesn’t experience many negative emotions, and vice versa. But this is not true. In fact, the traits of positive affectivity and negative affectivity are virtually unrelated to each other. How much you feel good is not inversely
related to how much you feel bad. Positive affectivity and negative
affectivity are relatively independent traits.
Why wouldn’t the tendency to experience positive and negative
emotions be inversely related to each other? Most people reason that if people aren’t in a positive state, then they must be in a negative state. And, if that’s true, then the more you feel good, the less you should feel bad. But, in fact, most of the time we aren’t in any emotional state—we aren’t feeling anything, good or bad. Feeling more positive doesn’t necessarily mean feeling less negative.
In addition, people often assume that we have one big brain system that controls all of our emotions, positive and negative. But positive and negative emotions are, to an extent, managed by different parts of the brain, and they operate somewhat separately.
You have certainly had times in which you experienced both
positive and negative emotions at the same time. You can be both
happy and sad about something because it has both positive and
negative consequences. You might eagerly want something to
happen (a positive emotion) but also be anxious about it (a negativemotion). So, the degree to which people experience positive emotions isn’t very strongly related to the degree to which they experience negative emotions.
Keeping Up with the Joneses
In Silicon Valley there is a certain global company that shall be nameless.
The scattered sales offices and other field installations around the world
are all connected to that company’s headquarters over a WAN, a wide area
network. The intruder, a smart, feisty guy named Brian Atterby, knew
it was almost always easier to break into a network at one of the remote
sites where security is practically guaranteed to be more lax than at
headquarters.
The intruder phoned the Chicago office and asked to speak with Mr Jones.
The receptionist asked if he knew Mr. Jones’s first name; he answered, “I had it here, I’m looking for it. How many Joneses do you
have?” She said, “Three. Which department would he be in?”
He said, “If you read me the names, maybe I’ll recognize it.” So she did:
“Barry, Joseph, and Gordon.”
“Joe. I’m pretty sure that was it,” he said. “And he was in . . . which
department?”
“Business Development.”
“Fine. Can you connect me, please?”
She put the call through. When Jones answered, the attacker said, “Mr.
Jones? Hi, this is Tony in Payroll. We just put through your request to
have your paycheck deposited directly to your credit union account.”
“WHAT???!!! You’ve got to be kidding. I didn’t make any request like
that. I don’t even have an account at a credit union.”
“Oh, damn, I already put it through.”
Jones was more than a little upset at the idea that his paycheck might be
going to someone else’s account, and he was beginning to think the guy
on the other end of the phone must be a little slow. Before he could even
reply, the attacker said, “I better see what happened. Payroll changes are
entered by employee number. What’s your employee number?”
Jones gave the number. The caller said, “No, you’re right, the request
wasn’t from you, then.” They get more stupid every year, Jones thought.
“Look, I’ll see it’s taken care of. I’ll put in a correction right now. So
don’t worry - you’ll get your next paycheck okay,” the guy said
reassuringly.
A Business Trip
Not long after, the system administrator in the company’s Austin, Texas,
sales office received a phone call. “This is Joseph Jones,” the caller
announced. “I’m in Business Development at corporate. I’ll be in to, for
the week, at the Driskill Hotel. I’d like to have you set me up with a
temporary account so I can access my email without making a long
distance call.”
“Let me get that name again, and give me your employee number,” the
sys admin said. The false Jones gave the number and went on, “Do you
have any high speed dial-up numbers.
“Hold on, buddy. I gotta verify you in the database.” After a bit, he said,
“Okay, Joe. Tell me, what’s your building number?” The attacker had
done his homework and had the answer ready
Women and Porn
One finding that “will disturb many readers,” according to Stephens-Davidowitz, concerns the sort of porn women want, based on search terms typed into PornHub.
“Fully 25 percent of female searches for straight porn emphasize the pain and/or humiliation of the woman,” he writes, citing search terms inappropriate to reiterate here, but featuring words like “painful,” “extreme” and “brutal,” and often focused on nonconsensual sex (depictions of which, he emphasizes, are not permitted on that site).
“Search rates for all these terms are at least twice as common among women as among men.”
The PornHub data revealed another disconcerting fact about American sexuality — that we seem to be going through a disturbing incest phase.
“A shocking number of people visiting mainstream porn sites are looking for portrayals of incest,” Stephens-Davidowitz writes, noting that 16 of the top 100 searches from men seek “incest-themed videos.” The number is fewer for women but still an unnerving nine out of every 100.
THE PROMOTION SEEKER
Late in the morning of a pleasant autumn day, Peter Milton walked into
the lobby of the Denver regional offices of Honorable Auto Parts, a
national parts wholesaler for the automobile aftermarket. He waited at the
reception desk while the young lady signed in a visitor, gave driving
directions to a caller, and dealt with the UPS man, all more or less at the
same time.
“So how did you learn to do so many things at once?” Pete said when she
had time to help him. She smiled, obviously pleased he had noticed. He
was from Marketing in the Dallas office, he told her, and said that Mike
Talbott from Atlanta field sales was going to be meeting him. “We have a
client to visit together this afternoon,” he explained. I’ll just wait here in
the lobby.”
“Marketing.” She said the word almost wistfully, and Pete smiled at her,
waiting to hear what was coming. “If I could go to college, that’s what I’d
take,” she said. “I’d love to work in Marketing.”
He smiled again. “Kaila,” he said, reading her name off the sign on the
counter, “We have a lady in the Dallas office who was a secretary. She
got herself moved over to Marketing. That was three years ago, and now
she’s an assistant marketing manager, making twice what she was.”
Kaila looked starry-eyed. He went on, “Can you use a computer?” “Sure,”
she said.
“How would you like me to put your name in for a secretary’s job in
Marketing.
She beamed. “For that I’d even move to Dallas.”
“You’re going to love Dallas,” he said. “I can’t promise an opening right
away, but I’ll see what I can do.”
She thought that this nice man in the suit and tie and with the neatly
trimmed, well-combed hair might make a big difference in her working
life.
Pete sat down across the lobby, opened his laptop, and started getting
some work done. After ten or fifteen minutes, he stepped back up to the
counter. “Listen,” he said, “it looks like Mike must’ve been held up. Is there a conference room where I could sit and check my emails while I’m
waiting?”
Kaila called the man who coordinated the conference room scheduling
and arranged for Pete to use one that wasn’t booked. Following a pattern
picked up from Silicon Valley companies (Apple was probably the first to do this) some of the conference rooms were named after cartoon
characters, others after restaurant chains or movie stars or comic book
heroes. He was told to look for the Minnie Mouse room. She had him sign
in, and gave him directions to find Minnie Mouse.
He located the room, settled in, and connected his laptop to the Ethernet
port.
Do you get the picture yet?
Right–the intruder had connected to the network behind the corporate
firewall.
MITNICK MESSAGE
Train your people not to judge a book solely by its cover–just because
someone is well-dressed and well-groomed he shouldn’t be any more
believable.
In an earlier phone call pretexting as a support person from their computer
supplier, he had put on a song-and-dance act. “Your company has
purchased a two-year support plan and we’re putting you in the database
so we can know when a software program you’re using has come out with
a patch or a new updated version. So I need to have you tell me what applications you’re using.” The response gave him a list of programs, and
an accountant friend identified the one called MAS 90 as the target–the
program that would hold their list of vendors and the discount and
payment terms for each.
With that key knowledge, he next used a software program to identifiy,”
all the working hosts on the network, and it didn’t take him long to locate
the correct server used by the Accounting department. From the arsenal of
hacker tools on his laptop, he launched one program and used it to
identify all of the authorized users on the target server. With another, he
then ran a list of commonly used passwords, such as “blank,” and
“password” itself. “Password” worked. No surprise there. People just lose
all creativity when it comes to choosing passwords.
Only six minutes gone, and the game was half over. He was in.
Another three minutes to very carefully add his new company, address,
phone number, and contact name to the list of customers. And then for the
crucial entry, the one that would make all the difference, the entry that
said all items were to be sold to him at 1 percent over Honorable Auto
Parts’ cost.
In slightly under ten minutes, he was done. He stopped long enough to tell
Kaila thanks, he was through checking his emails. And he had reached
Mike Talbot, change of plans, he was on the way to a meeting at a client’s
office. And he wouldn’t forget about recommending her for that job in
Marketing, either.
Analyzing the Con
The intruder who called himself Peter Milton used two psychological
subversion techniques–one planned, the other improvised on the spur of
the moment.
He dressed like a management worker earning good money. Suit and tie,
hair carefully styled–these seem like small details, but they make an
impression. I discovered this myself, inadvertently. In a short time as a
programmer at GTE California–a major telephone company no longer in
existence–I discovered that if I came in one day without a badge, neatly dressed but casual–say, sports shirt, chinos, and Dockers–I’d be
stopped and questioned. Where’s your badge, who are you, where do you
work? Another day I’d arrive, still without a badge but in a suit and tie,
looking very corporate. I’d use a variation of the age-old piggybacking
technique, blending in with a crowd of people as they walk into a building
or a secure entrance. I would latch onto some people as they approached
the main entrance, and walk in chatting with the crowd as if I was one of
them. I walked past, and even if the guards noticed I was badge-less, they
wouldn’t bother me because I looked like management and I was with
people who were wearing badges.
From this experience, I recognized how predictable the behavior of
security guards is. Like the rest of us, they were making judgments based
on appearances–a serious vulnerability that social engineers learn to take
advantage of.
The attacker’s second psychological weapon came into play when he
noticed the unusual effort that the receptionist was making. Handling
several things at once, she didn’t get testy but managed to make everyone
feel they had her full attention. He took this as the mark of someone
interested in getting ahead, in proving herself. And then when he claimed
to work in the Marketing department, he watched to see her reaction,
looking for clues to indicate if he was establishing a rapport with her. He
was. To the attacker, this added up to someone he could manipulate
through a promise of trying to help her move into a better job. (Of course,
if she had said she wanted to go into the Accounting department, he
would have claimed he had contacts for getting her a job there, instead.) Intruders are also fond of another psychological weapon used in this
story: building trust with a two-stage attack. He first used that chatty
conversation about the job in Marketing, and he also used “namedropping”–giving the name of another employee–a real person,
incidentally, just as the name he himself used was the name of a real
employee.
He could have followed up the opening conversation right away with a
request to get into a conference room. But instead he sat down for a while
and pretended to work, supposedly waiting for his associate, another way
of allaying any possible suspicions because an intruder wouldn’t hang
around. He didn’t hang around for very long, though; social engineers
Milieu Control.
Milieu Control. The group or its leaders controls information and communication both within the environment and, ultimately, within the individual, resulting in a significant degree of isolation from society at large.
Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control
Without the dream, the desire will remain unfocused. Without the desire, the dream can have no venom.
Brainwasher would prefer the target population to be isolated. If not possible, make them feel isolated by playing up danger from external threats. A clearly labeled enemy is always handy. Keep the masses stressed, busy, or both, as this will reduce the likelihood of stop-and-think objections.
Make doctrines simple and memorable. Avoid impression of uncertainty. Single-minded confidence. Present things as new, unique, and different.
People can be persuaded to give up objective freedoms and hand over control of their lives to others in return for apparent freedoms – in other words, as long as they are aware of the freedoms they are gaining and either contemptuous or unaware of the freedoms they are giving up.
Cops and the DMV
COPS AS DUPES
For a shady private investigator or social engineer, there are frequent
occasions when it would be handy to know someone’s driver’s license
number–for example, if you want to assume another person’s identity in
order to obtain information about her bank balances.
Short of lifting the person’s wallet or peering over her shoulder at an
opportune moment, finding out the driver’s license number ought to be
next to impossible. But for anyone with even modest social engineering
skills, it’s hardly a challenge.
One particular social engineer–Eric Mantini, I’ll call him, needed to get
driver’s license and vehicle registration numbers on a regular basis. Eric
figured it was unnecessarily increasing his risk to call the Department of
Motor Vehicles (DMV) and go through the same ruse time after time
whenever he needed that information. He wondered whether there wasn’t
some way to simplify the process.
Probably no one had ever thought of it before, but he figured out a way
to get the information in a blink, whenever he wanted it. He did it by
taking advantage of a service provided by his state’s Department of Motor
Vehicles.
Many state DMVs (or whatever the department may be called in
your state) make otherwise-privileged information about citizens available
to insurance firms, private investigators, and certain other groups that the
state legislature has deemed entitled to share it for the good of commerce
and the society at large.
The DMV, of course, has appropriate limitations on which types of data
will be given out. The insurance industry can get certain types of
information from the files, but not others. A different set of limitations
applies to PIs, and so on.
For law enforcement officers, a different rule generally applies: The DMV
will supply any information in the records to any sworn peace officer who
properly identifies himself. In the state Eric then lived in, the required
identification was a Requestor Code issued by the DMV, along with the
officer’s driver’s license number. The DMV employee would always
verify by matching the officer’s name against his driver’s license number
and one other piece of information–usually date of birth– before giving
out any information.
What social engineer Eric wanted to do was nothing less than cloak
himself in the identity of a law enforcement officer.
How did he manage that? By running a reverse sting on the cops!
A Call to DMV
Shortly before 8 o’clock that morning, the cell phone rang. This part was
the best, the most delicious. Here was Eric, the social engineer, talking to
a cop, someone with the authority to come and arrest him, or get a search
warrant and conduct a raid to collect evidence against him.
And not just one cop would call, but a string of them, one after another.
On one occasion, Eric was sitting in a restaurant having lunch with
friends, fielding a call every five minutes or so, writing the information on
a paper napkin using a borrowed pen. HE still finds this hilarious.
But talking to police officers doesn’t faze a good social engineer in the
least. In fact, the thrill of deceiving these law enforcement agencies
probably added to Eric s enjoyment of the act.
According to Eric, the calls went something like this:
“DMV, may I help you?”
“This is Detective Andrew Cole.”
“Hi, detective. What can I do for you today?”
“I need a Soundex on driver’s license 005602789,” he might say, using the
term familiar in law enforcement to ask for a photo–useful, for example,
when officers are going out to arrest a suspect and want to know what he
looks like.
“Sure, let me bring up the record,” Eric would say. “And, Detective Cole,
what’s your agency?”
“Jefferson County.” And then Eric would ask the hot questions:
“Detective, what’s your requestor code?
What’s your driver’s license number. “What’s your date of birth”
The caller would give his personal identifying information. Eric would go
through some pretense of verifying the information, and then tell the
caller that the identifying information had been confirmed, and ask for the
details of what the caller wanted to find out from the DMV. He’d pretend
to start looking up the name, with the caller able to hear the clicking of
the keys, and then say something like, “Oh, damn, my computer just
went down again. Sorry, detective, my computer has been on the blink,
all week. Would you mind calling back and getting another clerk to help
you?”
This way he’d end the call tying up the loose ends without arousing any
suspicion about why he wasn’t able to assist the officer with his request.
Meanwhile Eric had a stolen identity–details he could use to obtain
confidential DMV information whenever he needed to.
After taking calls for a few hours and obtaining dozens of requestor
codes, Eric dialed into the switch and deactivated the call forwarding.
For months after that, he’d carry on the assignments jobbed out to him by
legitimate PI firms that didn’t want to know how he was getting his
information. Whenever he needed to, he’d dial back into the switch, turn
on call forwarding, and gather another stack of police officer credentials.
Analyzing the Con
Let’s run a playback on the ruses Eric pulled on a series of people to make
this deceit work. In the first successful step, he got a sheriff’s deputy in a
Teletype room to give out a confidential DMV phone number to a complete stranger, accepting the man as a deputy without requesting any
verification.
Then someone at the state Telecom Department did the same thing,
accepting Eric’s claim that he was with an equipment manufacturer, and
providing the stranger with a phone number for dialing into the telephone
switch serving the DMV.
Eric was able to get into the switch in large measure because of weak
security practices on the part of the switch manufacturer in using the same
account name on all their switches. That carelessness made it a walk in
the park for the social engineer to guess the password, knowing once
again that switch technicians, just like almost everybody else, choose
passwords that will be a cinch for them to remember.
With access to the switch, he set up call forwarding from one of the DMV
phone lines for law enforcement to his own cell phone.
And then, the capper and most blatant part, he conned one law
enforcement officer after another into revealing not only their requestor
codes but their own personal identifying information, giving Eric the
ability to impersonate them.
While there was certainly technical knowledge required to pull off this
stunt, it could not have worked without the help of a series of people who
had no clue that they were talking to an imposter.
This story was another illustration of the phenomenon of why people don’t
ask “Why me?” Why would the Teletype officer give this information to
some sheriff’s deputy he didn’t know–or, in this case, a stranger passing
himself off as a sheriff’s deputy–instead of suggesting he get the
information from a fellow deputy or his own sergeant? Again, the only
answer I can offer is that people rarely ask this question. It doesn’t occur
to them to ask? They don’t want to sound challenging and unhelpful?
Maybe. Any further explanation would just be guesswork. But social
engineers don’t care why; they only care that this little fact makes it easy
to get information that otherwise might be a challenge to obtain.
Age of Propaganda Key Idea #8: Cults use propagandistic techniques to gain members.
People tend to think that cults brainwash people through some sort of witchcraft, but the fact of the matter is that cults use exactly the same techniques as any other propagandistic group – just with different names.
For cults, the name of the game is reciprocity, distraction and self-sell. The first of these, reciprocity, is a powerful tool since humans are inclined to reciprocate acts of kindness they’re shown, even something as small as the gift of a flower, which Hare Krishnas hand out to entice new devotees. Such gifts increase your likelihood of engaging with such people, as you feel like you owe them something.
Then, once you agree to give a cult the time of day, they use point number two: distraction to obscure their true intentions. To do so, they might encourage you to join in some light-hearted singing that takes the focus off the message, or constantly stay by your side, never giving you time alone to consider what’s happening.
Once a new recruit is securely hooked in this way, they’re encouraged to go find other potential followers using the same values and benefits of joining, over and over again. This is point number three, the self-sell, which serves a second function of cementing the cult mindset in the new devotee.
Another strategy employed by cults is to isolate their members from outside influences while promoting complete dependence on the cult’s leader. Followers are discouraged or forbidden from seeing family members and anybody else that might turn them away from the cult. In a great example of the granfalloon technique, they’re even taught to see outsiders as evil, and think of themselves as enlightened.
To accomplish this, cult leaders tend to be charismatic communicators who can list off multiple reasons for their superiority and come up with plenty of explanations as to why people should be devoted to them.
In the end, members find themselves trapped in a rationalization spiral that produces more and more extreme actions to justify their decisions. Such entrapment can even result in death, as in the case of the mass suicide pacts engaged in by the members of some cults.
Put forth a closed system of logic and an authoritarian structure that
permits no feedback and refuses to be modified except by leadership
approval or executive order. The group has a top-down, pyramid
structure. The leaders must have verbal ways of never losing.
(Singer, 1995)
Put forth a closed system of logic and an authoritarian structure that
permits no feedback and refuses to be modified except by leadership
approval or executive order. The group has a top-down, pyramid
structure. The leaders must have verbal ways of never losing.
(Singer, 1995)
Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control
Being highly creative is not enough. Must be single-minded in attracting others. Totalistic thinking.
Infectious disease in your heart. Remove the source of the infection.
When strong motives for believing ethereal idea, cobweb distorts the cognitive landscape, a warping effect similar to a black hole in space time. Filters any incoming stimuli, new information is interpreted in support of the ethereal idea. The stronger the cobwebs the more it affects how the world is perceived. Action may be taken to suppress contradictory evidence .
A charismatic leader who believes wholeheartedly in doctrine has better chance of convincing others than a leader who thinks through every detail and dwells on snags and complications.
Truth. Justice. Tolerance. Freedom.
Unity is strength.
Emphasizes what have in common with audience. Be likeable, humorous. No uncertainty. Single-minded. Publicity. Get people talking. Respective authorities refer to ideas as normal.
Present as new and different, but also need to baby step someone towards the ultimate goal.
From Sex to Superconsciousness – soho
celebratory vs ascetic lifestyle
music might inhibit cognitions that reduce cognitive dissonance
Lying - Arms
Behind the back: superiority and don’t come close to me.
Arms can be blockers, “keeping someone at arm’s length” has real meaning.
Arms can be used to mark territory.
Dominant people splay or arms.
Hooding: hands interlocked behind head: confident and dominant.
Wealth is often shown on arms, or muscles, or tattoos, or smooth vs tanned elbows – observe arms to learn about people.
Giving hugs freely shows care without words; approach a new person, loose arms, open palms, with ventral side exposed.
Using Sympathy, Guilt, and Intimidation
As discussed in Chapter 15, a social engineer uses the psychology of
influence to lead his target to comply with his request. Skilled social
engineers are very adept at developing a ruse that stimulates emotions,
such as fear, excitement, or guilt. They do this by using psychological
triggers–automatic mechanisms that lead people to respond to requests
without in-depth analysis of all the available information.
We all want to avoid difficult situations for ourselves and others. Based
on this positive impulse, the attacker can play on a person’s sympathy,
make his victim feel guilty, or use intimidation as a weapon.
Here are some graduate-school lessons in popular tactics that play on the
emotions.
A VISIT TO THE STUDIO
Have you ever noticed how some people can walk up to the guard at the
door of, say, a hotel ballroom where some meeting, private party, or booklaunching function is under way, and just walk past that person without
being asked for his ticket or pass?
In much the same way, a social engineer can talk his way into places that
you would not have thought possible - as the following story about the
movie industry makes clear.
The Phone Call
“Ron Hillyard’s office, this is Dorothy.”
“Dorothy, hi. My name is Kyle Bellamy. I’ve just come on board to work
in Animation Development on Brian Glassman’s staff. You folks sure do
things different over here.”
“I guess. I never worked on any other movie lot so I don’t really know.
What can I do for you?”
“To tell you the truth, I’m feeling sort of stupid. I’ve got a writer coming
over this afternoon for a pitch session and I don’t know who I’m supposed
to talk to about getting him onto the lot. The people over here in Brian’s
office are really nice but I hate to keep bothering them, how do I do this,
how do I do that. It’s like I just started junior high and can’t find my way
to the bathroom. You know what I mean?”
Dorothy laughed.
“You want to talk to Security. Dial 7, and then 6138. If you
get Lauren, tell her Dorothy said she should take good
care of you.”
“Thanks, Dorothy. And if I can’t find the men’s room, I may call you
back!”
They chuckled together over the idea, and hung up.
David Harold’s Story
I love the movies and when I moved to Los Angeles, I thought I’d get to
meet all kinds of people in the movie business and they’d take me along
to parties and have me over to lunch at the studios. Well, I was there for
a year, I was turning twenty-six years old, and the closest I got was going
on the Universal Studios tour with all the nice people from Phoenix and
Cleveland. So finally it got to the point where I figured, if they won’t
invite me in, I’ll invite myself. Which is what I did.
I bought a copy of the Los Angeles Times and read the entertainment
column
for a couple of days, and wrote down the names of some producers
at different studios. I decided I’d try hitting on one of the big studios first.
So I called the switchboard and asked for the office of this producer I had read about in the paper. The secretary that answered sounded like the
motherly type, so I figured I had gotten lucky; if it was some young girl
who was just there hoping she’d be discovered, she probably wouldn’t
have given me the time of day.
But this Dorothy, she sounded like somebody that would take in a stray
kitten, somebody who’d feel sorry for the new kid that was feeling a little
overwhelmed on the new job. And I sure got just the right touch with her.
It’s not every day you try to trick somebody and they give you even more
than you asked for. Out of pity, she not only gave me the name of one of
the people in Security, but said I should tell the lady that Dorothy wanted
her to help me.
Of course I had planned to use Dorothy’s name anyway. This made it even
better. Lauren opened right up and never even bothered to look up the
name I gave to see if it was really in the employee database.
When I drove up to the gate that afternoon, they not only had my name on
the visitor’s list, they even had a parking space for me. I had a late lunch
at the commissary, and wandered the lot until the end of the day. I even
sneaked into a couple of sound stages and watched them shooting movies.
Didn’t leave till 7 o’clock. It was one of my most exciting days ever
Everybody was a new employee once. We all have memories of what that
first day was like, especially when we were young and inexperienced. So
when a new employee asks for help, he can expect that many people–
especially entry-level people–will remember their own new-kid on-theblock feelings and go out of their way to lend a hand. The social engineer
knows this, and he understands that he can use it to play on the
sympathies of his victims.
We make it too easy for outsiders to con their way into our company
plants and offices. Even with guards at entrances and sign-in procedures
for anyone who isn’t an employee, any one of several variations on the
ruse used in this story will allow an intruder to obtain a visitor’s badge and
walk right in. And if your company requires that visitors be escorted?
That’s a good rule, but it’s only effective if your employees are truly
conscientious about stopping anyone with or without a visitor’s badge
who is on his own, and questioning him. And then, if the answers aren’t
satisfactory, your employees have to be willing to contact security.
Making it too easy for outsiders to talk their way into your facilities
endangers your company’s sensitive information. In today’s climate, with
the threat of terrorist attacks hanging over our society, it’s more than just
information that could be at risk.
Good Social Engineers Are Charmers
Social Engineers Techniques
The author says that social engineers use well-known influencing techniques and reference Robert Cialdini’s seminal work Influence.
Here are some more social engineer techniques:
Cushion the important question between inconsequential ones
Use personal question (ie.: how long you’ve been with the company) to gauge his reaction (if he answers normally: great sign)
Use the lingo to sound like an insider
Ask something too big so they must refuse you and propose you the alternative you wanted all along: it will inspire trust (ie.: “can you go fetch my colleague badge in the next building, it’s in his drawer”)
Note: the word “fetch” is on purpose to make it more unlikely he’ll want to comply
Take advantage of new people who are clueless and have less courage of pushing back
Use intimidation with the ruse of authority by mentioning a boss’ boss or the CEO (works especially well with lower level employees)
Piggyback and most employees won’t challenge you. You can carry a few big boxes and pretend you can’t access your badge or open the door by yourself if you need an excuse
Pacifying behaviors
We use pacifying behaviors to calm ourselves. Chewing gum, touching our necks, and touching our beards may help us calm down if we feel uncomfortable.
A few behaviors that indicate stress – whistling, talking to ourselves, excessive yawning, leg clenching, sliding your hands down your knee.
Males will often put a finger between their shirt collar and neck (providing ventilation), or cross their arms and rum against shoulders as a pacifying behavior.
If you notice someone using a pacifying behavior that deviates from their baseline, you can ask them what caused them to make the gesture. Or, you could just note that the person is in a stressful state and change your approach to being with them.
Frame Your Story With 3-Act
Setup
Confrontation
Resolution
Flattery
Basically the psychic is saying that this type of true honesty and kindness that the client exhibits is practically unattainable for regular people, and jealousy will drive others to hurt you.
The psychic might add, “This isn’t fair, but it wouldn’t happen to you if you weren’t also a strong and capable woman.” The client will nod thoughtfully, and the positive prediction about her future will then follow.
Psychic: You are normally comfortable making tough decisions, aren’t you? No one – but especially a woman working in a man’s world – reaches the point where two employers are basically vying for her without having impressive strength of mind and will.
Assertation, Behold, Concern
ASCERTAIN the conflict element in the propaganda you are analyzing. All propaganda contains a conflict element in some form or other-either as cause, or as effect, or as both cause and effect.
BEHOLD your own reaction to this conflict element. It is always necessary to know and to take into consideration our own opinions with regard to a conflict situation about which we feel strongly, on which we are prone to take sides. This information permits us to become more objective in our analysis.
CONCERN yourself with today’s propagandas associated with today’s conflicts. These are the ones that affect directly our income, business, working conditions, health, education, and religious, political, and social responsibilities. It is all too easy to analyze some old example of propaganda, now having little relation to vital issues.
Freeze, fight, or flight?
Our bodies naturally freeze, fight, or flight in different situations. This is a natural survival mechanism that allows us to compensate for the power advantage of larger predators or potential dangers to our survival. These reactions are primarily driven by the limbic brain, which helps us process information and react.
Freeze: We freeze if we feel threatened or exposed by physical, visual, or oral threats.
Flight: This manifests in distancing yourself. Turning your body, closing your eyes, rubbing your eyes, putting hands on the face, turning your feet away.
Fight: verbal arguments or physical encounters. You will puff out your chest and eyes.
The limbic brain also remembers hurtful or pleasurable comments and experiences. For example, it helps us feel euphoria when seeing an old friend.
A women who wanted to steal an employee directory
Analyzing the Con
In this social engineering attack, Didi started by getting phone numbers
for three departments in the target company. This was easy, because the
numbers she was asking for were no secret, especially to employees. A
social engineer learns to sound like an insider, and Didi was skilled at this game. One of the phone numbers led her to a cost center number, which
she then used to obtain a copy of the firm’s employee directory.
The main tools she needed: sounding friendly, using some corporate
lingo, and, with the last victim, throwing in a little verbal eyelash-batting.
And one more tool, an essential element not easily acquired - the
manipulative skills of the social engineer, refined through extensive
practice and the unwritten lessons of bygone generations of confidence
men
Confession. The group defines sins that members should confess either to a personal monitor or publicly to the group. There is no confidentiality; the leaders discuss and exploit members’ “sins,” “attitudes,” and “faults”.
Confession. The group defines sins that members should confess either to a personal monitor or publicly to the group. There is no confidentiality; the leaders discuss and exploit members’ “sins,” “attitudes,” and “faults”.
Remember the Rule of 3
Guys, sincere apologies. We’re in a conference on humor and maybe we went too far.
Feeding you Mexican food, giving you free alcohol, and hiding the toilet paper.
Not funny guys, not funny at all.
Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control
Express goodness in a cynically hostile society. Endowed with establishment disapproval. Radical and novel.
A sense of paranoia is cohesive. Also, rejection of established learning and authority (they won’t like).
Demonization of anything beyond cult and even justifying violence.
Utopian credo states that the present is unimportant compared with the future. Utopian thinking. Starting the revolution that will bring about the coming apocalypse.
Membership benefit ratio. Cults occupy more of time and energy than everyday groups. They take over the person’s cognitive landscape.
Age of Propaganda Key Idea #5: The entertainment value of the mass media increases our vulnerability to propaganda.
It’s no secret that the modern world is a message-rich environment. Every day we’re told all kinds of different things, but few of these messages come with many details or explanations.
Such an overload of generalized information only further increases our predisposition toward laziness and exacerbates our failure to properly consider what we’re seeing and hearing. In this climate, many people become addicted to entertainment, an addiction that the mass media is perfectly positioned to cater to.
In fact, we’re so used to being entertained that even the news has become a form of entertainment. The more “boring” news stories, ones that go into detail about political policy or economic processes, are swept aside for more exciting reports on terrorism, murder and the extramarital affairs of public figures.
Because of the overload of senseless entertainment we experience, most people are out of practice when it comes to hearing and dissecting detailed arguments. Not only that, most of us, when faced with serious news coverage, would rather switch channels than deal with an often troubling reality.
Since most people won’t watch or read things that demand any mental effort, the messages we receive are grossly oversimplified. For instance, political messages get cut down to sound bites – bits of language that sound powerful, but lack any real purpose or meaning.
The general failure of the public to sit and listen to explanations means that politicians are rarely forced to explain, in any sufficient detail, just what these chopped up messages mean and how they intend to put their ideas into action. Just consider former US president Richard Nixon: over the course of his 1968 campaign for president, he said that he would win “honorable peace” through the Vietnam War.
But what exactly does that mean?
An “honorable peace” could be all manner of things depending on who you ask, and Nixon never had to elaborate on his vision. As a result, two people with completely different ideologies and interpretations of Nixon’s message might have voted for him, as they both thought he was speaking on the behalf of each.
NEGATIVE AFFECTIVITY
People who are high in negative affectivity tend to experience
more unpleasant emotional states than people who are low in
negative affectivity. Negative affectivity can be viewed as the
emotional component of the broader trait of neuroticism, which
involves other features, such as a sense of vulnerability, pessimism, and self-consciousness that are not part of the conceptualization of negative affectivity.
People who are high in negative affectivity not only experience
negative emotions more often, but their emotional reactions are
also stronger. So, upsetting events have a greater impact on people who are high in negative affectivity.
Furthermore, the pervasive negative affect of people high in negative affectivity taints their judgments of other things. People high in negative affectivity tend to be less happy with their jobs, their friends, and even their marriages. They report less satisfaction with their lives overall than people who are lower in negative affectivity.
Negative affectivity is a pretty stable trait, even
over long periods of time. One study showed
that people who were high in negative affectivity
as young adults were likely to remain high on the
characteristic 20 years later. Even more striking,
negative affectivity measured in adolescence
predicted how satisfied people were with their
jobs more than 30 years later.
Negative affectivity has a strong genetic basis.
Presumably, some people’s brains are simply
wired in a way that makes negative emotions
more likely.
Wherever you fall on negative affectivity—low,
medium, or high—it’s not going to change
a great deal without some work on your part.
It can change, but it takes intentional effort
Age of Propaganda Key Idea #7: War makes great use of propaganda.
One specific use for the tools of propaganda is war. In fact, some of the biggest beneficiaries of propaganda are politicians who use misleading information to build public support for brutal military campaigns. They rely on public backing to maintain societal stability and convince soldiers to go into battle.
War is thus a great example of how propaganda, rationalization and fear work in tandem to influence the public. For instance, the US invasion of Iraq was sold to the American people as a necessary, rational action to depose Saddam Hussein, a Hitler-like dictator.
Naturally, this message engendered fear that, if the United States didn’t invade, Hussein would eventually pose a direct threat to the country. Beyond that, the public was manipulated into seeing itself as supporting the Iraqi people by freeing them of this menace.
Such tactics were used to brush aside thousands of Iraqi civilian casualties and quash criticism of US military action. Americans were so terrified that they rationalized any decision that diminished their fear and actually thought the United States was helping Iraqis by killing them.
When it comes to granfallooning, which defines a clear enemy and strengthens the public resolve to fight it, there’s perhaps no better example than the Nazis. They used this technique against Jews during World War II by describing them as rich money-grabbers.
By comparing the blonde hair and blue eyes of Aryans to the stereotypes of dark hair and big noses used to characterize Jews, the Nazis made it easy to pick out, and pick on, the elements of society that they deemed undesirable.
Finally, the Vietnam War is another perfect example of extreme rationalization. This catastrophe cost thousands of American lives, mostly because pulling out of the war would have implied the US military admitting that it had been wrong. As a result, the strongest military power on earth acted completely irrationally.
The objective of the war became increasingly vague as time went on, so much so that the final objective was to “win at any cost,” just to prove that it hadn’t all been for nothing.
POWER MOTIVATION
Power motivation involves the degree to which people are motivated to influence and control other people. Although domineering, controlling people are certainly high in power motivation, some people who are high in power motivation exercise their influence in less dominant ways. So, don’t think of power motivation as simply dominance. The central question concerns how much a person likes to influence or control the actions of other people.
You can identify people who are high in power motivation by
the paths they take in life. For example, they belong to more
groups and organizations (because joining groups offers
opportunities to influence other people), and they hold more
offices in those organizations. And even when they are not in
a formal position of authority, other group members rate people
who are higher in power motivation as having higher status and
influence in the group.
Power-motivated people tend to end up in careers in which they are in charge of things. They’re more likely to be managers, CEOs, and school principals. They’re also more likely to be school teachers and members of the clergy because those jobs also involve influencing
other people.
When they’re in a position of power, people high in power motivation tend to use a more directive style of leadership. They like to decide what the group should do and then convince everybody to go along.
There are other effective leadership styles that involve a more
inclusive and democratic approach, but people who are high in
power motivation want to call the shots.
Interestingly, this more directive leadership style is not necessarily more effective. When a leader is high in power motivation, fewer ideas get discussed and other group members feel less free to offer suggestions and concerns. So, leaders high in power motivation sometimes cut themselves off from input from other people and end up being less effective than if they had exerted less influence over group decisions.
For most characteristics—such as personality, values, and attitudes— people tend to prefer others who are somewhat similar to them. But this preference for similarity does not generally apply to people high in power motivation.
Systematically create a sense of powerlessness in the person.
Systematically create a sense of powerlessness in the person. This is
accomplished by getting members away from the normal social support
group for a period of time and into an environment where the majority of
people are already group members. The members serve as models of the
attitudes and behaviors of the group and speak an in-group language.
HONESTY-HUMILITY
Research has recently uncovered what is perhaps the sixth
fundamental trait, and some researchers have started including
it in their studies alongside measures of the big five. This trait is
generally referred to as honesty-humility.
At the high end of this trait continuum are people who tend to
be consistently honest, generous, fair, faithful, and humble; at the
low end of this continuum are people who tend to be deceitful,
manipulative, greedy, sly, and arrogant.
This sixth trait involves differences in people’s tendency to be selfcentered and selfish. At the high end are people who, although
they look out for their own interests as we all do, do so in a way
that considers other people. So, they’re honest, generous, and fair,
and they keep their commitments.
The humility part comes in because selfishness often involves
thinking that you are better than other people and thus entitled
to get what you want by whatever means necessary. It’s
difficult to be consistently honest, generous, and fair if you arrogantly think you’re better than everyone else. So, people who score high on this dimension also tend to be humble.
At the low end of this sixth trait are exceptionally selfish and selfcentered people—people who are often deceitful, manipulative, greedy, and sly to get what they want. In fact, very low scorers show signs of psychopathy, which involves almost total indifference to the well-being of other people.
Cultural Values III
Hofstede’s fourth dimension of cultural values involves
uncertainty avoidance, which refers to the degree
to which a culture leads its members to feel either
uncomfortable or comfortable in unstructured and
ambiguous situations.
Cultures that are high in uncertainty avoidance
don’t like situations that are novel, unstructured,
surprising, or dif ferent than usual. So, such
cultures minimize uncertainty by having stricter
rules, laws, and regulations that specify how things
should be done and how people should behave.
They also emphasize safety and security. Cultures
that are high in uncertainty avoidance don’t like
innovation and change, and they can feel repressive
compared to cultures that are low in uncertainty
avoidance.
Cultures that are low in uncertainty avoidance are
more tolerant of different beliefs and opinions,
including being comfortable with a variety of religions.
They try to have as few rules as possible and allow
people the freedom to live as they wish.
In general, uncertainty avoidance is higher in Latin
countries, Japan, and Germany, and it’s lower in
Scandinavia, English-speaking countries, Jamaica,
China, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
People in cultures that value accepting uncertainty
score significantly lower in neuroticism. Normally,
uncertainty, novelty, and change worry people, but
if your culture values those things and says that
uncertainty is not really a problem, you’ll probably
be more accepting of it all.
Greater acceptance of uncertainty is also associated
with higher agreeableness. When a culture promotes
a live-and-let-live philosophy, people are nicer to
each other.
We can interpret these relationships between cultural
values and personality in 2 ways: We could conclude that
growing up in cultures that value particular orientations
leads people to develop certain personalities, but perhaps
people in di f ferent cultures have di f ferent genetic
predispositions that influence their personalities, and over time,
people with different kinds of personalities create different kinds
of cultures.
TIGHT VERSUS LOOSE CULTURES
Personality doesn’t manifest as much in strong situations that
pressure people to act in certain ways as it does in weak situations, and cultures differ in the degree to which they generally exert a strong or a weak effect on people’s behavior. So, cultures differ in the degree to which people’s behavior reflects their individual personalities.
Some cultures put more pressure on people to behave in certain ways—to be a certain kind of person—than other cultures do. And the more that cultural pressures require people to act in culturally prescribed ways, the less people’s individuality comes through and the less variability we see among people.
For example, the dominant culture of the United States permits
a great deal of individual choice in how people behave, including
what they do for a living, who they live with, what they wear, how
they spend their free time, and whether they practice a religion.
In fact, American culture not only permits a great deal of latitude
in behavior, but it values and actively encourages individuality.
There are still social norms and pressures to conform in certain
ways—that’s true of every society—but people’s personalities
are given more freedom to operate when cultural pressures are
relatively weak.
Contrast that with cultures that limit people’s discretion to choose their lifestyle or occupation or religion or spouse. In those cultures, which researchers sometimes call tight cultures, how people behave is more heavily scripted by the culture and less influenced by personality. These cultures allow less personal discretion than so-called loose, or weak, cultures.
Tight cultures are more common in homogeneous societies,
where just about everyone shares the same basic racial and ethnic background, cultural beliefs, religion, and social values. Those societies have many norms and rules about how people should behave, and they punish those who deviate from the rules, even in minor ways. In contrast, heterogeneous societies tend to be looser and more
tolerant of individuality because many different cultural belief
systems are present. People are permitted to make their own
choices of what to believe and how to live.
Growing up in a tight culture creates a different orientation to
rules, authority, and one’s place in the society than growing up
in a loose culture. And when rules are strict, people have fewer
opportunities for autonomy, and their behavior is less likely to
express their individual personalities.
Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control
The use of uncertainty as a psychological weapon. Exposure to a group of people with beliefs to which the victim should be converted. Removing from former environment and any chance to reinforce the old beliefs (talking to friends). Threat of death. lonliness. lack of privacy. Sense of being unable to control one’s fate.
Sheer amount of repetition is mind-numbing. Hours and months party apparatus reinforced with lectures, postures, broadcasts, discussions, the ideological messages. Sheer exhaustion creates psychological surrender.
By having total control over someone’s world, you can control their mind.
SCHIZOTYPAL PERSONALITY DISORDER
Unlike people who are schizophrenic, people with schizotypal
personality disorder don’t have hallucinations or delusions, but
they do have unusual thoughts and ideas. For example, their
interpretations of events are often quite odd. They may explain
things that happen or other people’s behavior in ways that don’t
make much sense to anybody else.
Schizotypal people also tend to have odd magical and superstitious
beliefs that most people don’t have—usually not things that are
downright crazy, but things that are questionable and that most
people don’t believe.
Their speech can be idiosyncratic. It’s sometimes difficult to follow
exactly what they’re talking about because they use loose and
vague language and digress a lot.
They also tend to have odd mannerisms and expressions; they might
never look at other people when they talk, or they might not nod
as you’re talking to them. They might bluntly end a conversation
by just walking away.
And they tend to dress in unusual ways. They wear clothes that
don’t match or don’t fit, and it’s not because they are making
a fashion statement or that they identify with some group that
dresses that way. They’re not trying to be different—they just are.
There’s not really anything wrong with any of this, and it doesn’t hurt
anybody—it’s just an odd package of eccentricities. The worst thing
is that other people think that they’re odd and often avoid them.
POSITIVE AFFECTIVITY
People high in positive affectivity are upbeat,
cheerful, and optimistic, and they tend to get
excited and enthused more easily than people
who are low in positive affectivity. They not
only feel good in general, but they also tend
to experience specific positive emotions—such
as happiness, joy, pride, and inspiration—more
often than people low in positive affectivity do.
Just as people high in negative affectivity are less
satisfied with their marriages and jobs, people
higher in positive affectivity are more satisfied
with most aspects of their lives. People who
are higher in positive affectivity cope better
with the problems they confront in life. They
think about problems in more optimistic and
problem-solving kinds of ways. But they also
behave proactively in ways that promote positive
emotions even when things are going well.
Barnum Statements
“You strive for security in your life both in your personal life and in your career.”
Security or certainty is a basic need of all humans, so this statement would apply to everyone.
As lots of people have discovered too late, there are a good many
questions a prudent shopper should ask before signing up for a cell phone
calling plan whether the service is analog, digital, or a combination; the
number of anytime minutes you can use in a month; whether roaming
charges are included.., and on, and on. Especially important to understand
up front is the contract term of commitment–how many months or years will you have to commit to?
Picture a social engineer in Philadelphia who is attracted by a cheap
phone model offered by a cellular phone company on sign-up, but he
hates the calling plan that goes with it. Not a problem. Here’s one way he
might handle the situation.
The Second Call: Katie
The next call is to a store of the same chain on North Broad Street.
“Hi, Electron City. Katie speaking, how can I help you?”
“Katie, hi. This is William Hadley, over at the West Girard store. How’re
you today?”
“Little slow, what’s up?”
“I’ve got a customer who came in for that one-cent cell phone program.
You know the one I mean?”
“Right. I sold a couple of those last week.”
“You still have some of the phones that go with that plan?”
“Got a stack of them.”
“Great. ‘Cause I just sold one to a customer. The guy passed credit; we
signed him up on the contract. I checked the damned inventory and we
don’t have any phones left. I’m so embarrassed. Can you do me a favor?
I’ll send him over to your store to pick up a phone. Can you sell him the
phone for one cent and write him up a receipt? And he’s supposed to call
me back once he’s got the phone so I can talk him through how to
program it.”
“Yeah, sure. Send him over.”
“Okay. His name is Ted. Ted Yancy.”
When the guy who calls himself Ted Yancy shows up at the
North Broad St. store, Katie writes up an invoice and sells him
the cell phone for one cent, just as she had been asked to do
by her “co worker.” She fell for the con hook, line, and sinker.
When it’s time to pay, the customer doesn’t have any pennies in his
pocket, so he reaches into the little dish of pennies at the cashier’s counter,
takes one out, and gives it to the girl at the register. He gets the phone
without paying even the one cent for it.
He’s then free to go to another wireless company that uses the same model
of phone, and choose any service plan he likes. Preferably one on a
month-to-month basis, with no commitment required.
The First Call: Ted
First, the social engineer dials an electronics chain store on West Girard.
“Electron City. This is Ted.”
“Hi, Ted. This is Adam. Listen, I was in a few nights ago talking to a
sales guy about a cell phone. I said I’d call him back when I decided on
the plan I wanted, and I forgot his name. Who’s the guy who works in that
department on the night shift?
“There’s more than one. Was it William?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe it was William. What’s he look like?” “Tall guy.
Kind of skinny.”
“I think that’s him. What’s his last name, again?
“Hadley. H–A–D–L–E– Y.”
“Yeah, that sounds right. When’s he going to be on?”
“Don’t know his schedule this week, but the evening people come in about
five.”
“Good. I’ll try him this evening, then. Thanks, Ted.”
The Second Call: Katie
The next call is to a store of the same chain on North Broad Street.
“Hi, Electron City. Katie speaking, how can I help you?”
Approach and avoidance are controlled by 2 distinct systems:
The approach system is called the behavioral activation system
(BAS), and the avoidance system is called the behavioral inhibition
system (BIS).
❖❖The BAS is the neurophysiological basis of behaviors and emotions
that involve approach. The BAS is sensitive to possible rewards.
Whenever rewards are salient, the BAS kicks on, orients you
toward the rewarding activity, and motivates you toward doing
the rewarding behavior. The BAS mediates reward-seeking
behavior and the emotions that go along with seeking and
getting rewards.
❖❖The BIS is involved in inhibition and avoidance. The BIS manages
avoidance behaviors, including stopping behavior that’s in
progress, because the BIS is sensitive to possible punishments.
Anxiety and fear and dread are the emotional language of the BIS.
We all have activation and inhibition systems; we couldn’t function and survive if we didn’t have such systems. But people differ in how sensitive and active their BAS and BIS are. People differ in their overall reactions to possible rewards and punishments, which has many implications for how they feel and what they do.
If you have a particularly active BAS, you’re likely to be a bit on
the impulsive side, because being impulsive reflects the fact that
you find all kinds of things rewarding. If you have a more active
BAS, you’re also likely to be higher in extraversion than if your BAS activity is lower. The correlation between BAS and extraversion is rather high, which suggests that a sensitivity to rewards may contribute to extraversion. One reason why extraverts are out there doing extraverted things is because they find them rewarding.
BAS scores are also related to people’s tendency to experience positive emotions, which are reactions to real or anticipated rewards:
The more sensitive you are to rewards, the more positive emotions you’ll feel. This might also explain why people who are high in extraversion tend to have more positive emotions overall. The same brain system—the BAS—is related both to reward seeking and to positive emotions.
Depression is associated with lower scores on measures of the BAS. It’s not clear whether an underactive BAS predisposes people to depression (because they don’t find things rewarding) or whether depression makes people less responsive to rewards—but it’s probably both.
On the other hand, the BIS—the avoidance system—is associated with the tendency to experience negative emotions because negative
emotions are reactions to potential or actual punishments. So,
the BIS is associated with the degree to which people experience
anxiety, fear, frustration, sadness, disappointment, regret, dread,
and just about every other emotion that occurs when bad things
happen. If you have an active BIS, you probably score higher in
neuroticism than if your BIS is less active.
Whereas higher BAS is associated with impulsivity, higher BIS is
associated with restraint—with inhibition and avoidance. People with
a more active BIS are more risk averse; they’re more focused on
being sure that bad things don’t happen than on seeking rewards.
People who are higher in conscientiousness tend to be higher in both BAS and BIS than people who are lower in conscientiousness. One interpretation of this pattern is that people who are particularly conscientious and responsible are motivated both by the possible
rewards they get from behaving conscientiously and also by the
possible punishments of not being conscientious.
Agreeableness is negatively associated with BAS and positively associated with BIS: Agreeableness is lower among reward-oriented people and higher among punishment-oriented people. This pattern suggests that agreeable people are more motivated by a concern with social punishments than by a desire for rewards.
Personality dimensions
SOCIAL ANXIETY AND EMBARRASSABILITY
ANGER AND HOSTILITY
GUILT AND SHAME
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 the people,” the “plain folks.”
Politicians, labor leaders, business men, and even ministers and educators win our confidence by appearing to be people like ourselves-“just plain folks among the neighbors.” In election years especially do candidates show their devotion to little children and the common, homey things of life. They have front porch campaigns. For the benefit of newspapermen, they raid the kitchen cupboard and find there some of the good wife’s apple pie. They go to country picnics; they attend service at the old frame church; they pitch hay and go fishing; they show their belief in home and mother.
In short, these men would win our votes, business, or other support by showing that they’re just as common as the rest of us-“salt of the earth”-and, therefore, wise and good.
Our defense against this device, when used by the undemocratic or the otherwise anti-social, is simply this: We must ask ourselves what the propagandist’s ideas are worth when divorced from his personality. In other words:
What is he trying to cover up with his Plain Folks manner?
What are the facts?
Suspend judgment until we get enough evidence.
Deceptive Practices
There’s a popular saying that a secure computer is one that’s turned off.
Clever, but false: The pretexter simply talks someone into going into the
office and turning that computer on. An adversary who wants your
information can obtain it, usually in any one of several different ways. It’s
just a matter of time, patience, personality, and persistence. That’s where
the art of deception comes in.
To defeat security measures, an attacker, intruder, or social engineer must
find a way to deceive a trusted user into revealing information, or trick an
unsuspecting mark into providing him with access. When trusted
employees are deceived, influenced, or manipulated into revealing
sensitive information, or performing actions that create a security hole for
the attacker to slip through, no technology in the world can protect a
business. Just as cryptanalysts are sometimes able to reveal the plain text
of a coded message by finding a weakness that lets them bypass the
encryption
Rehearse Spontaneity
Practice, practice, practice. Don’t wing it!
People have short attention spans. Be short, funny, and information-packed.
Go to open mics, in front of friends and family, and at toastmasters. (Stage time, stage time, stage time)
Learn from your mistakes. Practice exactly as you deliver it. Stand up. Wear what you’d usually wear.
Make eye contact. Don’t look at your feet. Smile. Don’t sit down and practice.
Principles for mastering non-verbal communication
Be a competent observer of your environment: careful listening to understand
verbal pronouncements, observation critical to understanding our body language.
Observe and assess people within the context of the situation. For example, people are nervous in job interviews or in shock after car accidents, so this behavior is relatively normal and may not be indicative of something other than that.
Learn about universal non-verbal cues like lip pressing and about idiosyncratic ones.
With everyone, establish baseline behaviors. That way you can notice any deviations from the baseline.
Instead of relying on one “tell,” observe multiple tells or clusters of behavior.
Sudden changes in behavior can reveal intentions before they happen.
Learn to distinguish between false and authentic non-verbal cues.
Be subtle with your observing and evaluate
“You have a need for people to admire and like you and enjoy their recognition when you achieve certain milestones in your life.”
Most, if not all, want admiration, plus it’s a basic need too to be recognized for what we do. Therefore this Barnum statement would again apply to the vast majority of people.
Noam Chomsky: The five filters of the mass media
1 OWNERSHIP
The first has to do with ownership. Mass media firms are big corporations. Often, they are part of even bigger conglomerates. Their end game? Profit. And so it’s in their interests to push for whatever guarantees that profit. Naturally, critical journalism must take second place to the needs and interests of the corporation.
2 ADVERTISING
The second filter exposes the real role of advertising. Media costs a lot more than consumers will ever pay. So who fills the gap? Advertisers. And what are the advertisers paying for? Audiences. And so it isn’t so much that the media are selling you a product — their output. They are also selling advertisers a product — YOU.”
3 THE MEDIA ELITE
The establishment manages the media through the third filter. Journalism cannot be a check on power because the very system encourages complicity. Governments, corporations, big institutions know how to play the media game. They know how to influence the news narrative. They feed media scoops, official accounts, interviews with the ‘experts’. They make themselves crucial to the process of journalism. So, those in power and those who report on them are in bed with each other.
4 FLAK
If you want to challenge power, you’ll be pushed to the margins. When the media – journalists, whistleblowers, sources – stray away from the consensus, they get ‘flak’. This is the fourth filter. When the story is inconvenient for the powers that be, you’ll see the flak machine in action discrediting sources, trashing stories and diverting the conversation.
5 THE COMMON ENEMY
To manufacture consent, you need an enemy — a target. That common enemy is the fifth filter. Communism. Terrorists. Immigrants. A common enemy, a bogeyman to fear, helps corral public opinion.
Age of Propaganda Key Idea #9: By understanding propaganda, you can fight it.
It’s easy to get frustrated when you consider the sheer volume of propaganda people are exposed to on a daily basis from politicians, advertisers and the mass media. The disillusionment that this climate fosters also breeds complacency, as people tend to think that propaganda won’t affect them. But there are concrete ways that you can make positive changes to this situation.
For one, you can educate yourself and your children about how propaganda functions. This is a vital step, as children are commonly targeted by propaganda in the form of commercials for toys and fast food. These ads play on repeat during Saturday morning cartoons and during the commercial breaks for educational programming in schools.
Such propaganda discourages kids from becoming individuals who will abide by the central persuasion path of argument and analysis. It deters them from considering the quality of a message itself, and they end up becoming peripherally persuaded from a very young age.
As such, kids should be challenged about why they think, a new toy will make them happier. By posing such questions, you can teach your kids to think on a deeper level that counters the aims of advertisers.
Another powerful strategy for combating propaganda is to personally challenge politicians and companies on the claims they make. Lots of people want to simply opt out of politics and refuse to vote because they don’t agree with the system.
But there is another way; you can write to politicians and force them to support their claims with facts. You can do the same thing with media outlets and demand that they offer in-depth coverage of an important issue. If these people and companies know that they’ll only persuade people through facts and honesty, they’ll have to change their strategies.
You can also write letters to companies, questioning their claims about their products. The way they respond can be very telling – did they actually answer your question or just send you more advertising materials?
If you don’t get a satisfactory answer, it may be time to take your business elsewhere.
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.
Help for the new girl
A Message for Rosemary
Rosemary Morgan was delighted with her new job. She had never worked
for a magazine before and was finding the people much friendlier than she
expected, a surprise because of the never-ending pressure most of the staff
was always under to get yet another issue finished by the monthly
deadline. The call she received one Thursday morning reconfirmed that
impression of friendliness.
“Is that Rosemary Morgan?”
“Yes.”
“Hi, Rosemary. This is Bill Jorday, with the Information Security
group.”
“Yes?”
“Has anyone from our department discussed best security practices with
you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, let’s see. For starters, we don’t allow anybody to install software
brought in from outside the company. That’s because we don’t want any
liability for unlicensed use of software. And to avoid any problems with
software that might have a worm or a virus.”
“Okay.”
“Are you aware of our email policies?”
“No.”
“What’s your current email address?” “Rosemary@ttrzine.net.”
“Do you sign in under the username Rosemary?”
“No, it’s R underscore Morgan.”
“Right. We like to make all our new employees aware that it can be
dangerous to open any email attachment you aren’t expecting. Lots of
viruses and worms get sent around and they come in emails that seem to
be from people you know. So if you get an email with an attachment you
weren’t expecting you should always check to be sure the person listed as
sender really did send you the message. You understand?”
“Yes, I’ve heard about that.”
“Good. And our policy is that you change your password every ninety
days. When did you last change your password?”
“I’ve only been here three weeks; I’m still using the one I first set.”
“Okay, that’s fine. You can wait the rest of the ninety days. But we need
to be sure people are using passwords that aren’t too easy to guess. Are
you using a password that consists of both letters and numbers?”
“No.”
We need to fix that. What password are you using now?”
“It’s my daughter’s name - Annette.”
“That’s really not a secure password. You should never choose a password
that’s based on family information. Well, let’s see.., you could do the same
thing I do. It’s okay to use what you’re using now as the first part of the
password, but then each time you change it, add a number for the current
month.”
“So if I did that now, for March, would I use three, or oh-three.”
“That’s up to you. Which would you be more comfortable with?”
“I guess Annette-three.”
“Fine. Do you want me to walk you through how to make the change?”
“No, I know how.”
“Good. And one more thing we need to talk about. You have anti-virus
software on your computer and it’s important to keep it up to date. You
should never disable the automatic update even if your computer slows
down every once in a while. Okay?”
“Sure.”
“Very good. And do you have our phone number over here,
so you can call us if you have any computer problems?”
She didn’t. He gave her the number, she wrote it down carefully, and went
back to work, once again, pleased at how well taken care of she felt.
Email Scams
There’s an old saying that you never get something for nothing,
Still, the ploy of offering something for free continues to be a big draw for
both legitimate (“But wait–there’s more! Call right now and we’ll throw in
a set of knives and a popcorn popper!”) and not-so- legitimate (“Buy one
acre of swampland in Florida and get a second acre free!”) businesses.
And most of us are so eager to get something free that we may be
distracted from thinking clearly about the offer or the promise being
made.
We know the familiar warning, “buyer beware,” but it’s time to heed
another warning: Beware of come-on email attachments and free
software. The savvy attacker will use nearly any means to break into the
corporate network, including appealing to our natural desire to get a free
gift. Here are a few examples.
WOULDN’T YOU LIKE A FREE (BLANK)?”
Just as viruses have been a curse to mankind and medical practitioners
since the beginning of time, so the aptly named computer virus represents
a similar curse to users of technology. The computer viruses that get most
of the attention and end up in the spotlight, not coincidentally, do the most
damage. These are the product of computer vandals.
Computer nerds turned malicious, computer vandals strive to show off
how clever they are. Sometimes their acts are like a rite of initiation,
meant to impress older and more experienced hackers. These people are
motivated to create a worm or virus intended to inflict damage. If their
work
GLITTERING GENERALITY
GLITTERING GENERALITY
Glittering Generality-associating something with a “virtue word”-is used to make us accept and approve the thing without examining the evidence.
We believe in, fight for, live by “virtue words” about which we have deep-set ideas. Such words are “civilization,” “Christianity,” “good,” “proper,” “right,” “democracy,” “patriotism,” “motherhood,” “fatherhood,” “science,” “medicine,” “health,” and “love.”
For our purposes in propaganda analysis, we call these “virtue words” Glittering Generalities in order to focus attention upon this dangerous characteristic that they have: They mean different things to different people; they can be used in different ways.
This is not a criticism of these words as we understand them. Quite the contrary. It is a criticism of the uses to which propagandists put the cherished words end beliefs of unsuspecting people.
When someone talks to us about “democracy,” we immediately think of our own definite ideas about democracy, the ideas we learned at home, at school, and in church. Our first and natural reaction is to assume that the speaker is using the word in our sense, that he believes as we do on this important subject. This lowers our “sales resistance” and makes us far less suspicious than we ought to be when the speaker begins telling us the things “the United States must do to preserve democracy.” If we have permitted our “sales resistance” to be lowered by the use of “democracy” as a Glittering Generality rather than as a carefully defined term, we may soon find ourselves being “sold” such an anti-democratic notion as a “Corporate State” under a “democratic” disguise, one of Father Coughlin’s tricks.
The Glittering Generality is, in short, Name Calling in reverse. While Name Calling seeks to make us form a judgment to reject and condemn without examining the evidence, the Glittering Generality device seeks to make us approve and accept without examining the evidence. In acquainting ourselves with the Glittering Generality Device, therefore, all that has been said regarding Name Calling must be kept in mind, and especially should we remember what has been said about omnibus words.
Propagandists are most effective in the use of both of these devices when their words can make us create devils to fight or gods to adore. By their use of “bad words,” we may be led to personify as a “devil” some nation, race; group, individual, policy, practice, or ideal; we may be made fighting mad to destroy it. By their use of “good words,” we may be led to personify as a godlike idol some nation, race, group, or the like. Before we are led to any such position, we should know what the propagandist is trying to do with us. If we are to be led, we should be led with our eyes open, not blindly.
In analyzing a Glittering Generality, we must ask ourselves such questions as these and suspend judgment until we have answered them:
What does the “virtue word” really 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 does not serve my best interests and the best interests of society, as I see them, being “sold” to me merely through its being given a name that I like?
In other words, leaving the “virtue word” out of consideration, what are the merits of the idea itself?
Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control
The brain is a strange mirror distorting some aspects of the world and ignoring others, filtering every input it receives on the basis of what it has previously experienced.
Belief functions as reasons for action.
Individuals scoring highly on tests of dogmatism were resistant or even hostile to new ideas, more anxious about the future, less tolerant of ambiguity, more concrete in their thinking, and less flexible in their problem-solving behavior than individuals low in dogmatism.
Highly dogmatic individuals appear to be charismatic because of their strong sense of self. Their high confidence in their beliefs is attractive to others with weaker convictions and this eare are actively seeking security.
The effects of emotive words linger after we’ve read them.
Age of Propaganda Key Idea #3: The credibility of a source and the message it conveys are both crucial to successful propaganda.
So, propaganda is all about misleading people, and while it comes in many forms, it’s always based on the four stratagems of influence. Let’s take a look at the first two: source credibility and message.
Source credibility means that the person receiving the message will be inclined to trust the person delivering it. Propagandists carefully select people to deliver their messages as a way of dazzling their audiences and forcing them to focus on the physical appearance of the source, rather than the words being delivered. A classic trick is to use a much-adored, respected or trusted public figure who appeals to the audience.
For instance, famous and well-liked athletes have long been used to sell breakfast cereal. They’re naturally concerned with eating right to boost their athletic performance, and the implication is that if they eat a particular breakfast cereal, you should too.
In this way, the endorsement of an athlete convinces people to buy cereal without checking how healthy it actually is.
In the second strategy used by propagandists, the message often misleads people on purpose. After all, propagandists don’t care if the product they’re pushing is actually the best one available, they just want people to think it is.
To accomplish this goal, they say things that initially sound like strong positive statements but are actually just an intelligent way of dressing up a mediocre truth. Consider aspirin commercials; a company that sells aspirin might say that no other brand of aspirin works faster than theirs, but fail to mention that no other brand works any slower, either.
By making positive affirmations like this, people are misled into believing that such a product is better than all the others. This, in turn, means they’re willing to pay more for one brand when it’s actually identical to the rest.
Establishing trust
Think of your own attitude when somebody you don’t know asks you for
something. If a shabby stranger comes to your door, you’re not likely to
let him in; if a stranger comes to your door nicely dressed, shoes shined,
hair perfect, with polite manner and a smile, you’re likely to be much less
suspicious.
Maybe he’s really Jason from the Friday the 13th movies, but
you’re willing to start out trusting that person as long as he looks normal
and doesn’t have a carving knife in his hand.
Propaganda - Find the facts/Guard
FIND THE FACTS before you come to any conclusion. There is usually plenty of time to form a conclusion and believe in it later on. Once we learn how to recognize propaganda, we can most effectively deal with it by suspending our judgment until we have time to learn the facts and the logic or trickery involved in the propaganda in question. We must ask:
Who is this propagandist?
How is he trying to influence our thoughts and actions?
For what purpose does he use the common propaganda devices?
Do we like his purposes?
How does he use words and symbols?
What are the exact meanings of his words and symbols?
What does the propagandist try to make these words and symbols appear to mean?
What are the basic interests of this propagandist?
Do his interests coincide with the interests of most citizens, of our society as we see it?
GUARD always, finally, against omnibus words. They are the words that make us the easy dupes of propagandists. Omnibus or carryall words are words that are extraordinarily difficult to define. They carry all sorts of meanings to the various sorts of men. Therefore, the best test for the truth or falsity of propaganda lies in specific and concrete definitions of the words and symbols used by the propagandist. Moreover, sharp definition is the best antidote against words and symbols that carry a high charge of emotion.
Women and Porn
In 2004, “the most common search regarding changing one’s butt was how to make it smaller,” Stephens-Davidowitz writes. But thanks to J.Lo, Kim Kardashian and other large-bottomed beauties taking center stage, this desire did a 180 over a decade.
There were more searches asking how to make your butt bigger than smaller in every state.
“In 2014, there were more searches asking how to make your butt bigger than smaller in every state,” Stephens-Davidowitz writes. “These days, for every five searches looking into breast implants in the United States, there is one looking into butt implants.”
TRANSFER
TRANSFER
Transfer carries the authority, sanction, and prestige of something respected and revered over to something else in order to make the latter acceptable.
In the application of the Transfer Device, symbols are constantly used. With the Cross, the propagandist lends the sanctity of the Christian religion to his program. The flag, standing for the nation and for patriotism, performs a similar service. Cartoonists make “Uncle Sam” portray an aged consensus of public opinion. These symbols stir emotions. At their very sight, with the speed of light, is aroused the whole complex of feelings we have with respect to church or nation.
Propagandists seldom permit a Transfer to depend upon one symbol. Music, pageantry, uniforms, ritual, scenery-all are studied and utilized when appropriate.
How can we analyze the Transfer Device, now that we know how to spot it? How can we distinguish its legitimate from its illegitimate-its fair from its unfair-application? We must teach ourselves to suspend judgment until we have answered these questions:
What is the proposal of the propagandist, stated as simply and concretely as possible?
What is the meaning of the thing from which the propagandist is seeking to Transfer authority, sanction, and prestige?
Is there any legitimate connection between the proposal of the propagandist and the respected and revered thing, person, or institution?
In other words, leaving the propagandistic trick out of the picture, what are the merits of the propagandist’s proposal viewed alone?
“A lie,” wrote Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf (My Struggle), “is believed because of the unconditional and insolent inflexibility with which it is propagated and because it takes advantage of the sentimental and extreme sympathies of the masses. … Therefore, something always is retained even from the most impudent of lies.” And lies, we must remember, take a vast number of forms, the chief seven of which are the unfair applications of our seven Propaganda Devices.
Transfer carries the authority, sanction, and prestige of something respected and revered over to something else in order to make the latter acceptable.
In the application of the Transfer Device, symbols are constantly used. With the Cross, the propagandist lends the sanctity of the Christian religion to his program. The flag, standing for the nation and for patriotism, performs a similar service. Cartoonists make “Uncle Sam” portray an aged consensus of public opinion. These symbols stir emotions. At their very sight, with the speed of light, is aroused the whole complex of feelings we have with respect to church or nation.
Propagandists seldom permit a Transfer to depend upon one symbol. Music, pageantry, uniforms, ritual, scenery-all are studied and utilized when appropriate.
How can we analyze the Transfer Device, now that we know how to spot it? How can we distinguish its legitimate from its illegitimate-its fair from its unfair-application? We must teach ourselves to suspend judgment until we have answered these questions:
What is the proposal of the propagandist, stated as simply and concretely as possible?
What is the meaning of the thing from which the propagandist is seeking to Transfer authority, sanction, and prestige?
Is there any legitimate connection between the proposal of the propagandist and the respected and revered thing, person, or institution?
In other words, leaving the propagandistic trick out of the picture, what are the merits of the propagandist’s proposal viewed alone?
“A lie,” wrote Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf (My Struggle), “is believed because of the unconditional and insolent inflexibility with which it is propagated and because it takes advantage of the sentimental and extreme sympathies of the masses. … Therefore, something always is retained even from the most impudent of lies.” And lies, we must remember, take a vast number of forms, the chief seven of which are the unfair applications of our seven Propaganda Devices.
Barnum Statements
Disciplined and self-controlled outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside.
You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations.
I’ve been too busy fucking, or vis versa
I’ve been too busy fucking, or vis versa
Propagandists
Some of the devices now so subtly and effectively used by good and bad propagandists are as old as language. All have been used in one form or another by all of us in our daily dealings with each other.
Propagandists have seized upon these methods we ordinarily use to convince each other, have analyzed and refined them, and have experimented with them until these homely devices of folk origin have been developed into tremendously powerful weapons for the swaying of popular opinions and actions.
We have all emphasized our disapproval of a person, group, or thing by calling it a bad name. We have all tried to reverse this process in the case of something for which we have had admiration by labeling it with a “virtue word” or “glittering generality.” And thus, we have all used two of the propaganda devices
Demand for Purity.
Demand for Purity. The group constantly exhorts members to view the world as black and white, conform to the group ideology, and strive for perfection. The induction of guilt and/or shame is a powerful control device used here.
