Episode 39

Welcome - “We talk about brainwashing as though it were a bad thing. Everyone is brainwashed. Everyone is indoctrinated. The only question is whether we're indoctrinated with facts or fiction.” - Josh Steimle

Gratitude Time -

Let’s be real - Brainwashing

Have you ever tried to convince someone of something?

Or have you ever been convinced of something?

Of course, you have.

Everyone has. We are constantly bombarded with commercials for products to buy, and exposed to people’s rants, in real life or online, about how we should be voting, and what we should be eating, reading, angry about… The fact is that nowadays “convincing” is a business. The art of persuasion – or “brainwashing” if you prefer – is very profitable, and we are all subjected to it on a daily basis.

Before social media, advertisements were on our TV, on billboards, in newspapers. They would appeal to you only if you were part of their target audience. Otherwise, they would just be ignored and forgotten. For instance, you wouldn’t have paid much attention to the following Polly Pocket commercial unless you were a 10-year-old girl or someone who needed to get a gift for a 10-year-old girl. It was 1994, and gender roles were acceptable and fair game.

However, we have been #blessed with social media and its personalized advertising tailored just for us – see the terms and conditions from Facebook below. They’re committed to showing us relevant advertising, based on the information we provide, sometimes inadvertently. Our likes, comments, status updates,… are all used to design a perfect strategy of persuasion. But does it really work?

The right ad, just for youIn a study recently published in PNAS, researchers from Columbia, Stanford, Pennsylvania, and Cambridge, looked into the effectiveness of advertising campaigns within social media. They studied different psychological traits from digital footprints. These are characteristics that we show online through our Facebook profiles, Instagram pictures, tweets, blog posts, or personal websites. Those traces of ourselves can be used to assess our psychological profile, to some extent.

In their study, they used Facebook “likes” as a version of digital footprints and focused on two personality traits: extraversion and introversion. Looking into the “likes” of over 25,000 users, they classified those said Facebook users who liked “Parties” or “Slightly Stoopid” as extroverts, and those who liked “Stargate-SG1” or “Computers” as introverts (apparently the researchers believe that stereotypes are a valid starting point for these studies). They designed different versions of a beauty ad aimed at women based on the psychological trait of extraversion versus introversion. Slogans such as “Dance like no one’s watching (but they totally are)” or “Love the spotlight and feel the moment” were designed to attract extroverts, whereas the introvert-targeting ads stated that “Beauty doesn’t have to shout” or “Beauty isn’t always about being on the show”. When the extrovert-targeted beauty ads were shown to the extravert audience, those subjects were more likely to purchase the product than when the introvert-targeted ad was displayed on their Facebook page, in spite of the fact that the product was exactly the same.

This online surveillance leading to persuading us to buy more things that we don’t need might seem innocuous when compared to brainwashing and persuasion aimed at political and war gains.

Mind control and brainwashing have been long-lasting goals for governments all around the world. Imagine if you could manipulate your enemies’ will with a simple injection. Isn’t that the dream of a government? It may sound like I’m describing some sort of political thriller, but the truth is stranger than fiction.