click, whirr ... by 1KIKI

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

click, whirr ...

POSTED BY: 1KIKI
UPDATED: Wednesday, November 18, 2020 16:00
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Tuesday, November 17, 2020 5:26 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

click, whirr ...

Cialdini refers to these fixed-action patterns as the click, whirr effect. When they’re triggered, it’s as if a button has been pressed in our brains (click!) that then causes us, robot-like, to perform a standard sequence of behaviors (whirrrrrr!).

A good non-human example of this is a study conducted by animal behavioralist M.W. Fox in the 1970s.

Mother turkeys have a very strong click, whirr response to polecats. A polecat is a type of weasel, who loves eating turkey chicks. So when a mother turkey sees a polecat, even a stuffed one held by a researcher, she flies into a berserker rage, doing her utmost to claw and peck the intruder to death.

But a mother turkey also has a strong click, whirr response to the “cheep, cheep” sound her chicks make. When she hears it, she goes into nurture mode: feeding, tending, warming and cleaning them.

It is so strong, in fact, that it overpowers her programming against the polecat predator. As mentioned, when a stuffed polecat is placed in sight, she will attack it viciously, instantly. BUT, if a recorder is placed inside the stuffed polecat that reproduces the “cheep, cheep” of a chick, the mother turkey will completely change her behavior. Instead of attacking, she will start nurturing the polecat; huddling it alongside her chicks and trying to feed and clean it.

Her natural pre-programmed defense against the polecat has been hacked. And she now acts in its best interest, not her own.

There is a litany of fixed-action responses baked into the human mind. That’s the basis of Cialdini’s book. He details out what they are, along with this warning: Those seeking power and profit will exploit our ignorance of these triggers against us. (emphasis in the original)

Not convinced? Here are just two examples.

† A widely-held mental shortcut is that “expensive = good”. And our daily experience generally reinforces this belief.

Cialdini cites an unintentional experiment where a jeweler became frustrated trying to move some of her excess turquoise inventory during the height of tourist season. She had tried merchandizing it prominently in the highest-trafficked place in the store and incentivizing her staff to push the product. But nothing was working.

(After a brief trip) Upon returning a few days later, she was pleasantly shocked to learn that all of the turquoise had been sold. But even more shocking was the discovery that her instructions had been mistakenly misinterpreted. Instead of cutting the price of the turquoise in half, her store manager had doubled it.

The customers, seeing a notably higher price for the jewelry, simply concluded that it must be more valuable. And therefore more desirable. Enough to influence them to pull out their wallets and buy it.

† When someone requests a favor of us, we’re much more likely to comply if they provide a reason why they’re asking. Interestingly, it’s not the validity of the reason that matters. Only the simple fact that it’s offered does.

When there’s a line at the machine, someone cutting to the front and asking “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the copier because I’m in a rush?” experiences a 94% success rate. Almost everyone will allow them to cut ahead.

(But) When the script is changed to “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the copier because I have to make some copies?”, the success rate jumps back up to 93%.

In today’s society — where corporate cartels control nearly every business sector, where 90% of media outlets are owned by six companies, where powerful special interests fund and control our political parties, where Big Data and social media collect & commercialize our personal information — we are subject to the highest degree of the most-sophisticated psychological manipulation in the history of any species.

click ... whirr
America ... exceptional, righteous
the vote ... secure, honest
my side(tribe) ... always good
other side(tribe) ... demons
because ... Trump

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Wednesday, November 18, 2020 4:00 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Sounds Pavlovian.

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