THE MIND MANIPULATORS
Susan Bryce
All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that
even the most stupid of those towards whom it is directed will understand it.
Therefore, the intellectual level of the propaganda must be lower the larger
the number of people who are to be influenced by it. - Adolf
Hitler (1)
Most of us like to think that our own minds and thought processes are
impenetrable. We like to think that other people can be manipulated, but not
us. We believe that our opinions, values, ideas and beliefs are totally
autonomous. Of course, we might be persuaded by the odd advertisement, but it’s
others that are weak minded and easily swayed.
Many authors have explored the techniques of mass mind manipulation. Vance
Packard's 1957 book, The Hidden Persuaders, studied the psychological tactics
used by the American advertising industry in its drive to advance consumerism.
Almost half a century on from Packard, this article examines how techniques of
mass mind manipulation have evolved and investigates some of the hidden
persuaders of the new millennium.
At the dawn of the 21st century, our emotional and mental integrity are
continually challenged and manipulated by governments and corporations. The
physical body is enshrined and protected by lawmakers, but there are few
safeguards against mind pollution. Mind manipulation is used for a variety of
purposes from inducing us to purchase consumer products to swaying our
political opinions. The manipulation is subtle, covert and insidious. The
tactics used often appeal to basic human instincts - hunger, thirst and sex;
they are based upon the premise that material presented will not be rationally
examined or subjected to logical analysis. Propaganda, images, cliches, and jingles just wash over us, engulfing our mind,
body and spirit, expressing powerful meanings indirectly and simply.
TV BRAIN DRAIN
One of the principal tools in the mind manipulation arsenal is television, the
cultural arm of the established industrial order. Television, the drug of the
nation, maintains, stabilises and reinforces ideas, attitudes and behaviours
through its programming and advertising. When we watch TV,
the brain's left hemisphere, which processes information logically and
analytically, tunes out. This allows the right hemisphere of the brain,
which processes information emotionally and non
critically, to function unimpeded. While the negative impacts of particular
television progrrns and advertisements are well
known, the overall long4erm effects of watching television are equally as
dangerous.
Television programming influences viewers' ideas of what the everyday world is
really like. Research conducted in the 1960's by Professor George Gerbner, dean of the Annenberg Schcol
of Communications at the
Before the television, there was conversation around the dinner table or the
fireplace. Today this has been replaced with microwaved
meals (in)digested in front of the box or the flat
screen. Alone or in company, conversation and communication has been reduced to
stultifying ‘grabs’ during ad breaks. Technology now stands between us and each
other, between people and the natural world. We know our virtual “Neighbours”
on television better than our real neighbours next door. As communities and
extended family structures decay, the isolated individual becomes easy prey for
the mind manipulators. As cathode ray reality becomes genuine reality, public
opinion becomes homogenised and mainstreamed, widespread apathy and
indifference prevail.
This mainstreaming of opinion is evident in nightly news bulletins, which have
become a source of entertainment first and information second. Local television
stations all report the same news simultaneously, even using the same footage.
Despite the similarities, each claims to be ‘the best’, ‘the latest’ or ‘the
most up to date’. In reality, they are hardly different and it is difficult for
the public to distinguish one from the other. Commenting on this subtle mind
manipulation phenomena, former CIA agent Philip Agee, in his book On the Run,
observes: “Television news is show business, designed to entertain and
intentionally or not, programmed to keep people ignorant.”
With the advent of ‘reality’ television, the boundaries between the real world
and the virtual world have been inextricably blurred by the mind manipulators.
The most obvious and obnoxious example of this is the ‘Big Brother’ television
show, which draws its title directly from George Orwell's classic novel 1984.
Big Brother viewers tune in to see the participants manipulate their
housemates, or to find out if any are having sex and with whom. Interest in
such prurient details is fuelled by newspapers and radio stations, which devote
lengthy discussions to the highlights of each show and run campaigns to ditch
certain individuals.
Big Brother is cheap to produce and has proven popular, particularly among
younger viewers, the audience most highly prized by the advertising industry
due to its purchasing power. Viewers of the programme (and the web site) are
plagued by Big Brother's merchandising mania. Items available for purchase
include the BB ringtone, the BB icon, the BB game,
items from the BB Auction, BB wallpaper, BB ‘Bucks’ and so on. Apart from this
overt sales pitch, viewers are surreptitiously subjected to sponsor products
that are displayed and used inside the Big Brother house. Furnishings
(ironically supplied by Freedom Furniture), white goods, appliances, curtains,
pools and spas, home entertainment systems and even stoves are covertly
marketed at viewers who instantly become potential customers.
Quite apart from the crass marketing opportunities presented by Big Brother,
the program has had another more subtle and nauseating effect: the manipulation
of language. In the wake of the programme, searching the Internet for "Big
Brother" will turn up thousands of links to the “Big Brother” TV show.
Anyone looking for references to surveillance or the totalitarian state will
immediately be confronted with the ‘reality’ television phenomenon. The
television show has changed the meaning of Big Brother for an entire
generation. Big Brother has become an entertaining spectacle, no longer an
abhorrent icon of the totalitarian state. Surveillance cameras and microphones
have become ‘cool’ tools and Big Brother’s ‘victims’ have become celebrities and
prizewinners. The implication is that we should be
willing to give up privacy for any amount of fame and fortune.
THE VIRTUAL POLITICIAN
As real-life experiences are replaced by the mediated experiences of reality
and fantasy, gained via television viewing, it becomes easy for politicians and
market researchers to rely on a base of predetermined mass experience that can
be evoked by appropriate triggers. As the mass mind takes
shape, its participants act according to media-derived impulses, believing them
to be their own personal choices arising out of their own desires and needs.
The passing spectacle of politics, for example, becomes a stage-managed event,
the domain of polished performers and public relations (propaganda) gurus --
the era of the virtual politician.
Televised parliamentary debates and door stop interviews have turned political
representatives into colour coordinated fashion statements, more concerned with
image than intellect and substantial debates. When they're not providing glib,
pre-scripted comments via door stop interviews, national leaders languish in
front of the teleprompter, a device that gives any politician, regardless of
talent, the gift of the gab. The use of teleprompters
must surely constitute a fraudulent manipulation of public opinion. Mounted
beside the lens of a TV camera or in front of a podium, the teleprompter allows
the politician to read speeches prepared by staff writers and PR experts, while
appearing to speak ~ The teleprompter has enabled every word, every dramatic
pause and even facial expressions, to be crafted for maximum effectiveness.
Politicians can appear to speak knowledgeably in public, when in reality they
may be ill informed and hopeless at putting across a particular point of view.
Teleprompters are only part of managing the modem political image. Politicians
regularly attend media ‘school’, coaching seminars, and training, where they
learn how to defray journalists questions – “well, that's not the point”; how
to ‘talk’ to the cameras and how to project their voice. There are even
sessions on power dressing. Others have their ‘colours’ done to ensure that
their designer wardrobes match their hair and skin colour. And in a world where
appearance can mean the difference between winning and losing a marginal seat,
or even leading the country, politicians of both sexes undergo cosmetic surgery
in a futile attempt to meet the glamorous Hollywood standards that ‘society’
demands.
CREATING INSECURITIES
The underlying assumption about human psychology is that the public must be
manipulated for its own good. Many advertising strategies involve covert
methods to trick the consumer into believing their lives are incomplete and
deficient without the promoted product; only through purchasing the commodity
will the consumer's life be 'whole' or 'better' again. Mind manipulation feeds
upon itself Advertising agencies know that unhappy and
worried people are likely to buy more consumer goods in order to feel better,
to fill the void created by their dull, robotic lives. This phenomena
is known as ‘retail therapy’, and is epitomised by the popular maximum 'when
the going gets tough, the tough go shopping'.
Many advertisements send the message 'you're not good enough' unless you drink
the right soft drink, buy a new car, use the perfect shampoo or stock up on
scented toilet paper. Other messages subconsciously prey upon guilt, anxieties
or hostilities. Many people, hundreds of times a day, are hearing or reading
subliminally that they're not good enough. This continual suggestion is a major
cause of stress, and certainly the cause of much dissatisfaction, anxiety and
even illness.
Suggestibility exists constantly within our psyches, determining our state of
being, our consciousness and our relationship to ourselves and the world around
us. While the power of suggestion is generally exercised unconsciously in our
day to day existence, it is exploited deliberately and ruthlessly in the world
of advertising. The medical industry, for example, does not want people who
would buy and consume according to their own requirements. Rather, they want
sheep to buy on suggestion. Many advertisements offer cures for a debilitating
array of ills from headaches and backache to constipation, prostate problems
and premenstrual tension. The sheer ubiquity of such promised cures convinces
us, if only by suggestion, that we must need them, and that we must or should
be suffering from the afflictions that they claim to alleviate.
MANUFACTURING THE EXPERTS
Advertisers frequently make banal appeals based upon the stratification of
society, invoking authority, intellect or prestige to sell products. Television and print media advertisements for pain relievers,
toothpaste, washing powder and even pet food feature (usually men) in white
coats discussing products which have been scientifically formulated, university
or laboratory tested and clinically proven. The psychology behind these
claims works not only to reassure the consumer that the product will do the
job, but also to imply that the product is in some way supenor
to its competitors - because science has deemed it so.
In their book, Trust Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and
Gambles with Your Future, Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber offer a chilling expose on the manufacturing of
“independent experts” or “third parties” and their use in the wider media. The
reality is that these third parties are usually anything but unbiased and
impartial. They have been handpicked, cultivated, and meticulously packaged to
make consumers believe what they have to say. In some cases, they have been
paid handsomely for their esteemed “opinions.”
When the US Justice Department launched its antitrust investigations into the
Microsoft Corporation in 1998, Microsoft's public relations firm countered with
a plan to plant pro-Microsoft articles, letters to the editor, and opinion
pieces all across America, crafted by professional media handlers but meant to
be perceived as off-the cuff, heartfelt testimonials by ‘people out there.’ In
another example, a tobacco company secretly paid thirteen scientists a total of
US$156,000 to write a few letters to influential medical journals during the
1990's. One biostatistician received $10,000 for writing a single,
eight-paragraph letter that was published in the Journal of the American
Medical Association. A cancer researcher received US$20,137 for writing four
letters and an opinion piece to the Lancet, the Journal of the National Cancer
Institute, and the Wall Street Journal. The scientists didn't even have to
write the letters themselves. Two tobacco industry law firms were available to
do the actual drafting and editing. Institutional endorsement is another mind
manipulation tactic used by the advertising fraternity. An example cited by Baigent and Leigh(6) is the company that deluged American
hospitals with supplies of its painkiller at dramatically reduced price - so
reduced that the product was virtually given away. Not surprisingly, hospitals
began to, use it more frequently than other brands.
This enabled the company to advertise its painkiller as the one preferred by
hospitals, implying that it was more effective.
POLITICAL PERSUASION
Subliminal advertising was exposed in the 1950s when some TV commercials were
discovered to be transmitting split-second images that were designed to
stimulate a viewer's desire for a certain product. For example, during a soft
drink commercial, an advertiser might have flashed the message -I'm thirsty'
without the viewer realising it.
Quite apart from selling products, subliminal advertisements can also sell
politicians. During the recent US Presidential elections, the Republican
campaign ran a television advertisement which showed, when the ad was slowed
down, the word “RATS” appearing briefly while a voiceover criticised Vice
President Al Gore's prescription drug plan as one in which “bureacrats
decide” Republican presidential nominee, and now US President, George W. Bush,
told reporters that he believed the appearance of “RATS” in the advertisement was
accidental. Mispronouncing the word “subliminal” as “subliminable”
several times' Bush said that he was “convinced” the advertisement was not
meant to send a subliminal message. The so-called “RATS” ad, costing US$25
million, ran over 4,000 times in 33 markets nationally for about two weeks,
before it was pulled from the airwaves.
The power of repetitive advertising is increasingly used by governments to sell
unpopular policies. The Australian federal government reportedly spends $20
million per month on programmes such as Work for the Dole and the Natural
Heritage Trust. The Opposition Labor Party says it
will spend just 15% less on these propaganda strategies, which have become
fundamental to running a modem democracy. Likewise certain phrases are repeated
continuously, at every opportunity, by ministers and bureaucrats: “we need tax
reform”; “we have a mandate”; “free trade is good”; “the economy is on the up”
and the all popular mantra of the moment: “globalisation can't be stopped”. Our
rulers appear to believe that if these magic words are repeated often enough we
will all take our bats and balls and molotov
cocktails and go home to sit on our Freedom sofa in our Calvin Klein undies to
watch the latest episode of Big Brother through our rose coloured Ray-Bans.
SUPERMARKETING THE ILLUSION OF CHOICE
The illusion of choice, of competing brands fighting valiantly for a share of
the market is just that -an illusion. All brands of aspirin, codeine and
paracetamol, for example, are wholly identical. They are marketed in a finite
number of combinations with a maximum dosage limited by law. Yet manufacturers
suggest differences between them, when all that is different is the packaging,
marketing and the pricing of the item. This is true for many products found at
the supermarket, where the illusion of choice and subliminal manipulation can
be explored in depth.
To start out, shoppers requisition an extra large, deep trolley, designed to
ensure that there is plenty of room for all of those ‘impulse’ purchases. The
trolley itself provides a psychological illusion - an empty space waiting to be
filled. If a shopper only purchases a few miserable items then the implication
- of the big unfilled trolley - is that the person is cheap and nasty. If a
child accompanies an adult to the supermarket, then junior will have the
opportunity to wheel her or his own junior shopper trolley', complete with
fluttering red flag, just in case the child gets lost along the way.
Upon entering the supermarket, shoppers immediately become a few degrees
cooler. Even if there is a heat wave outside, the warm air just doesn't make it
past the automatic doors. Cold people eat more and a slightly chilly customer
will spend more. The shopper then moves forward through the turn-stiles, which
might be associated with fun times at the Royal Easter Show, a theme park, or a
special exhibition. Once the turnstiles have been breached, shoppers usually
hit strategically placed staples such as fruit and vegetables, or the bakery
section, effusing a warm, sickly smell. Every day items, milk and dairy
products, will be at one extreme end of the supermarket - the opposite end to
the entry turn-stiles - meaning that shoppers have to traverse rows and rows of
items just asking to be bought. The meat section is usually a long narrow area
located at the back of the supermarket so that shoppers have to pass by two or
three times as they continue up and down the other aisles. The areas which
display staple food items will be narrower or more confined than the 'wide
aisles', ensuring that customers have to compete for a piece of the action.
Once the shopper begins navigating the supermarket obstacle course, they are
faced with a myriad of distractions. Instore
announcements blare over mindless background Muzac.
Trolleys, which are deliberately designed to travel at a snails pace, gnash
against each other in the fight to secure the right of passage down the aisle.
Shoppers stop, staring blank faced at walls of soap powders, dog food, soft
drinks, chips or ice creams, overwhelmed by the illusion of choice. It's no
coincidence that the leading brands are placed at eye level, and that lollies
and dollies are on the lowest shelves where small hands can reach them. The
food titans pay very high prices for the conspicuous positioning of their
brands on the supermarket shelves.
Brand placement goes hand in hand with brand loyalty, one of the most important
factors influencing an item's success or failure in the marketplace. Brand
loyalty occurs because the consumer perceives that the brand offers the right
product features, image, or level of quality at the right price. Purchasing ‘safe’ and ‘familiar brands’ then becomes habitual for
the consumer and profitable for the respective multinational food corporations.
In order to create brand loyalty, advertisers must break old consumer habits,
help people acquire new habits, and reinforce those habits by reminding
consumers of the value of their purchase and encouraging them to buy their
products in the filture.
Every advertising crusade tries to ‘win’ consumer’s brand loyalty with products
designed to save us from the drudgery of cleaning, cooking and domestic chores.
The illusion of competition and choice is quite erroneous. The food titans
Nestle and Unilever control a vast plethora of brand names, which 'compete'
among themselves and against each other. Unilever's portfolio of leading brands
include Continental, Five Brothers, Flora, Magnum Ice Cream, Dove personal
wash, Lipton tea, Findus, Birdseye, Becel, Domestos, Omo, Rexona, Organics, Sunsilk, Lux,
Vaseline, Ponds, Close Up (toothpaste) and Calvin Klein fragrance. The
difference between brands might come down to something as simple as the colour
of the packaging, the fragrance of the contents, or even the marketing
campaign, culminating in a ridiculous scenario where Unilever's Organics
shampoo competes with its own Sunsilk. Similarly,
Nestle, which claims to provide “food through out their day, throughout their
lives and throughout the world”, owns the brand names Nescafe, Lean Cuisine, Nesquick, Milo, Peters, Aliens, Lucky Dog, Carnation,
Crunch, Vittel, Perrier, Friskies, Go Cat, Smarties, Maggi, Kit Kat and Activ.
The packaging of products is a multibillion dollar industry, based upon
psychological research which ensures maximum mind manipulation inside the
supermarket. Red and yellow have been found to stimulate appetite, and are used
extensively in food packaging (and also at hamburger franchises). Blue is a
cool colour and green is psychologically associated with freshness. Dairy foods
might be packaged in blue and yellow, or green and yellow containers (yellow to
stimulate hunger, green or blue to indicate coldness or freshness). Hot
chickens are wrapped in red or orange foil bags indicative of heat, the colour
doing nothing at all to keep the food hot. Toothpaste packaging might be white
and blue or green, with a hint of silver (for sparkling white teeth). Coffee is
packaged in brown or black (indicating style) with a touch of gold (for
quality).
Weasel words are used to embellish a product, making them sound better than
they really are. Words such as ‘extra’, ‘super’, ‘double’ or ‘soothing’ induce
consumers to pay a premium for what are usually regular, every day products.
Other weasel words are 'natural' and 'lite'. Many food products claim to be
made from ‘natural’ ingredients, giving the illusion of goodness or
wholesomeness. In reality, 'natural' fruit juice comes from imported fruits,
juiced (skins and all) and blended in a factory then squirted into a cardboard
box (the box may have been irradiated). This mass produced juice is then
advertised as 'fresh' and 'natural'. Another example, in an age of weight
consciousness, are the many products marketed as
‘lie’, with less fat. Gullible consumers are merely paying a premium for
products that are whipped ‘lite’ with air, extra water and chemical thickening
agents.
Another mind manipulation tactic, most recently adopted in
MANIPULATION OF YOUNG MINDS
Advertising and marketing firms have long used the insights and research
methods of psychology to sell products to children. Today these practices are
reaching epidemic proportions, with an enormous advertising and marketing
onslaught that comprises, arguably, the largest single psychological project
ever undertaken. A great deal of collusion between some members of the
psychology professions, marketing, advertising and entrepreneurial firms occur
as they work together to try to understand how best to sell things to young
children. Psychologists are regulars at marketing conferences and in magazines
such as Selling to Kids and SalesDoctors. Advertising
giants like Saatchi and Saatchi brag that their “global review” of child
psychology gives them the edge when serving clients. Using psychological
principles to sell products to children means not only selling a product, but
also a larger value system that says making money and using money to purchase
material goods is the road to happiness.
THE PROFILERS
Modern computing power and data mining capabilities are providing the mind
manipulators with new tools to delve into our psyche. A growing Internet phenomena is online profiling. This new type of subliminal
ad strategy is based upon a profile of the individual that is built up over
time. Information about browsing habits is culled from various web sites, then every time the person logs on to the Net, they are
immediately inundated with banners based on their profile. Web Site banners
suddenly offer products and services that the person is interested in, based
upon their profile. Similar subliminal sales tactics will be used as Web-TV
becomes widespread.
FRIENDLY FASCISM
In many respects, the modern person is increasingly confronted with the face of
friendly fascism. Not the jackboots and mass rallies that comprise the popular
stereotype of fascism, but rather an insidious, public relations savvy
manipulation of power for profit.
The manufacture of consent. The
creation of necessary illusions. Various ways of
either marginalising the general public or reducing them to apathy in some
fashion. This type of indoctrination and entrapment is innocuous and
painless, it takes over not by force but by running everyone ragged trying to
survive, to keep up with the 'Jones's'. Waking sleep becomes the distraction of
choice: the half awake sleep of mindlessly gazing at the TV screen, the
mechanical repetition associated with most jobs, the hypnotic trance of being
self-absorbed, and the isolated anonymity of being alone, together. The mind is
suffocated and the spirit is stifled by corporate imagination killers who offer
us everything from anti-aging creams to dog foods which 'produce' less sloppy
stools.
In this trance like state, citizens become the easy prey of governments, who
rely on the mainstreaming of opinion to propagate apathetic and listless
indifference. The complete mind manipulation of the citizen by corporations and
government is thus perfected.
Previously published in New Dawn magazine.
FOOTNOTES:
1. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kainpf, from Chapter VI: War Propaganda
2. For a discussion on Gerbner's cultivation theory,
see “Cultivation Theory” by Daniel Chandler at
http//users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/cultiv.html
3. As well as being a cause of more aggressive behaviour among viewers.
4. Cited in Condry, John (1989): The Psychology of
Television.
5. Big Brother sponsors in
6. Baigent, M., and Leigh, ~ (1997) The Elixir and the Stone, The Tradition of Magic and
Alchemy,
Susan Bryce is an Australian journalist and publisher of the newsletter
Australian Freedom & Survival Guide. Her interests include global politics,
big brother and the