Public Opinion Through New Media

The issue
The major point Cialdini is trying to make is that given most situations, humans obey authority figures without considering other options or repercussions. Likewise, we tend to listen to authority as a reaction to receiving a reward. It becomes a learned behavior and like Pavlov’s dogs in his experiment, humans will keep doing a learned behavior due to reward, despite being positive of their actions.

Major strength
There’s no doubt that Cialdini explains many reasons why people obey authority. He could just as easily argue that people obey authority b/c it’s an inherent tendency to do so. However, he goes deeper than that to explain that humans can be swayed to obey “authority figures” just by the clothing they wear, the titles they carry and the ornamental decoration they possess. I also think the fact that Cialdini starts off his chapter describing the Milgram experiment definitely hits home, and maybe in an uncomfortable way, to convince the reader that yielding to authority is a common practice.

I also had to agree with Cialdnin’s argument about governments and how their citizens will typically obey out of pure fear and intimidation. I saw this when I was in Cuba in January. There were two types of people – those locals who talked positively of the communist government out of pure fear for being heard saying something negative (or perhaps they were brainwashed) and those who would whisper to us that they hate the government but couldn’t say it openly and in earshot of anyone who could punish them. It validates Cialdini’s argument that the authoritative power of a government can control its citizens’ behaviors.

Major weakness
I felt as though Cialdini’s story about Vincent the waiter, may have been a bit forced. While indeed Vincent knew more about the menu and the food than the customer did, I don’t think this necessarily made him an authority figure, but more of an expert. If the customer felt intimidated by Vincent then Cialdini’s argument may be valid, but in this case it seems that they listened to him merely because he was more of an expert on the menu, not a member of authority.

Underlying assumption
I think Cialdini is suggesting that we take another look before we agree to listen to a member of authority. His example of the nurses giving patients a bad drug hits home to the reader that not questioning authority can not only be incorrect, but it can be dangerous. As humans it’s instinct for us to obey authority without question, but it seems as though Cialdini thinks we need to ask ourselves first if the request 1) makes sense and 2) feels morally acceptable.

Provocative questions
In an age where social media is king and citizen journalism is everywhere, how do we distinguish fact from fiction in the news industry? Can a news organization trust that their citizen reporters on the ground are true authority figures and post their stories without question before being 100% positive the facts are true?

How much of an effect does a uniform or title have if the authority figure does not present him or herself as an expert? If they come off as unpleasant or misinformed, how much of an effect does that uniform or title really have? Personally, I have been in situations where there is a member of authority who is rude or unprofessional and it’s deterred me from listening to them as opposed to an authority figure I found to be pleasant to work with or be around.

The issue: In chapter five of Influence, Cialdini discusses the idea that people are likely to respond and obey those who are perceived to be in authoritative positions.

Major Strength: Cialdini leads off with a summary and analysis of Stanley Milgram’s “obedience” study, and it is by far the strongest, most persuasive section of the chapter. Milgram’s study is quite famous, and ethically questionable to say the least. I remember studying it in high school Psychology. The case study provides a good amount of credibility to Cialdini’s argument, as it clearly and properly demonstrates the concept of “Authority.” In addition, the concept resonates because the results of the tests are frightening. The study concludes that every one of us has the potential to kill—by anonymously administering high voltage shocks, for example—if we have enough faith in the authority figure that is telling us to carry out the action. That’s heavy, Doc.

Major Weakness: After leading with Milgram, the rest of the chapter doesn’t hit as hard. The “Astrogen” study is powerful, and equally scary compared to Milgram’s, but after that it seems like Cialdini relies more on theory than evidence. I feel like I have to memorize the symbols of authority, because I can’t link the ‘Defense’ section to an applicable real world example, for instance. It’s not to say that the Authority chapter loses its persuasion, but the studies are not as memorable. Additionally, a general weakness I have noticed with Cialdini’s writing (which I mentioned in my last post) is that he doesn’t provide suggestions for how to avoid falling into these social traps.

Underlying Assumption: The skeptic in me infers from the reading that Cialdini wants us all to question authority more than we currently do, but that seems like too much of a generalization. Authority is often necessary, but there is a risk for blindly obeying orders. People in positions of power can corrupt, which is very important to remember.

Provocative Questions: Should we all be more skeptical and fact-check everything we hear because there’s a chance we are being lied to? If so, wouldn’t that make everything less efficient?

If that’s not the answer, then how can we use this information moving forward?

How can we avoid becoming sheep when we should be going against the herd?

The issue: In Robert B. Cialdini’s book, Influence, he talks about the theory of Authority and how it affects our day-to-day lives. He looks into different studies to see if Authority persuades us to do something based primarily on how much authority we perceive a person to have.

Major strength: Cialdini’s example of The Milgram studies is his strongest example in this chapter. The Milgram studies were studies done to see if people would continue to listen to authority figures even if that meant causing innocent victim harm in the process. They told test subjects to administer a shock to a person every time they got a question wrong. The test subjects believed they were sending out real electric shocks to the victims and could hear their fake cries and see their fake reactions. Milgram’s team predicted that only 2% of people would continue to listen to the test giver and continue to give the voltage till the max voltage was given. To the surprise of Milgram and the rest of the research team, they found that every one of the test subjects carried out the full experience, sending the maximum voltage to the patient. This is such a strong example because it shows just how much power authority figures have over our decision-making skills. We are more likely to stop thinking and to go along with what someone says as long as we view him or her to be a higher, credible, authority figure.

Major weakness: I believe the major weakness of this chapter is the section about titles. I agree that we are more likely to perceive someone with a higher title then us to be a credible source. I do not agree with the fact that just because an actor has played a doctor then we view them as having a higher title. I believe that people view the actor as an actor and that is why they gain more money for companies when they appear on commercials. I feel that people do not see them as being a doctor just because they played a doctor. I believe that most human beings can separate their fake profession from their real life job. Most humans would not assume that just because the actor plays a doctor does not mean they are an expert in that field. I believe this section needs some strengthening and it is lacking in real life examples to back up Cialdini’s case.

Underlying assumption: The underlying assumptions of the Authority Theory are that people are more likely to comply and listen to someone if they are perceived to have a higher, credibly status then the person being told to do something. As humans we are more likely to go along with someone who tells us to do something then to stop and think about the situation. We are very trusting beings and people use this against us very easily. If someone has on a police uniform we are more likely to listen to him or her before fully checking his or her credentials. We automatically observe the uniform and are immediately trusting of anything they say. This theory shows us that it is very important to think and use our own brains before doing something a perceived authority figure tells us it is okay to do. This does not mean we need to stop listening to authority figures but we need to start to use our own brains and take a second to see if the situations seem right before proceeding.

Provocative questions: Why are human beings so easily persuaded to do something based primarily on appearance of someone? How have certain things become ingrained in our minds as being considered of higher authority and more credible?
If you are driving down the road at night and see blue lights behind you what are you most likely to do? Most people would stop because that is what we are told to do but why do we immediately stop and assume that a police officer is going to appear at our door?

The Issue: Authority figures have a lot of power and influence in our culture. Once we realize that someone is an authority figure, whether it’s their title, clothing or trapping, we are blindly obedient to whatever they tell us to do. While the opposite of not trusting our authority figures is anarchy, Cialdini suggests even a basic understanding that authority figures will not always tell you the truth or are pushing their own agendas makes you more aware and apt to not mindlessly trust what they say.

Major Strength: Like he usually does, Cialdini gives numerous examples, scientific experiments and real life illustrations. When he talks about Milgram’s experiments on authority influence on test subjects, it’s shockingly obvious that the only reason the subjects are compliant is because he’s in a position of authority. Another example of doctors being put on a pedestal because of their title (and white coats apparently) is due to the fact that we have to trust them. We have no medical knowledge and blindly trust their diagnosis, judgments and prescriptions with out hesitation. The best example, and most humorous that was given was about the prescription for ear drops that ended up being put into the wrong end.  I think about putting myself in that situation and I too would probably blindly trust the medical practice even if it didn’t quite make since to me.

Major Weakness: While Cialdini gives examples and outlying factors for us to trust authority figures, he doesn’t specifically talk about what the other option is. While these people are put into positions of authority for various reasons (education, job title, appearance, height) he says just being aware that everything that comes out of their mouth isn’t mutually beneficial. While I think this is an obvious observation it is easily masked over by a nice suit.

Underlying assumption: Authority is a part of everyday life, no matter what part of the world you live in. There are certain standards that we have for people who are in these positions of authority and typically take whatever they say as truth. Cialdini challenges us to dive deeper into what is being said and not blindly trust them based off of a white doctors coat or a luxury car.

Provocative Questions: Has their been an uprising in not taking what doctors tell us as truth because of websites such as WebMD? Are sites like that breaking down this authority barrier for this specific profession? Is this why professor Gaither wears a suit everyday?

The Issue: In this chapter Cialdini talks about the idea of authority, its subtle cues, and just how much it plays into our lives today. Cialdini notes of not only the dangers of authority but the misconceptions we might believe due to simple triggers such as clothes, titles and supposed knowledge.

Major Strength: One of the most impressive things that Cialdini talks about regarding authority is when it comes to people we are taught to trust and believe above all. I felt that when authority was talked about in reference to Doctors it allowed for us to not only see that people would respect their knowledge to be prevailing purely by their profession, but how even nurses failed to question clearly wrong information purely by the doctors title of M.D. Another smaller example was of Larry King and the way in which he changed the tone of his voice due to the importance of his guest, demonstrating a very simple but poignant way of showing how authority at the route of it impresses us as humans and sparks a competitive nature in us also.

Major Weakness: Unlike Cialdini’s other chapters I felt that these examples of authority were rather on broad side. I recently saw an experiment that a group of people left a wallet in the middle of the street, but put a red tape outline around it. With a hidden camera it filmed multiple pedestrians passing this wallet by, glancing at it but not picking it up or touching it. The experiment showed that because the wallet had been outlined and with the color of danger or warning, this had prevented people from touching it. I think that Cialdini’s chapter could of benefited from touching on the smaller examples of how authority is intertwined in our everyday thinking, such as; responding to a request purely by someones age, not touching an object from a ‘do not touch sign’. These are all small authoritative cues that creep into our everyday life.

Underlying assumption: Authority is evident in everyday life, if a man is dressed in a nice suit and drives an expensive car we are less likely to yell at him for taking our parking space as opposed to a teenager who drives his mums mini van. Titles, clothes and a knowledgable authoritative tone lead people to think of importance.

Provocative Questions: Does authority and it’s ability to influence people fall under a particular theory that we currently been talking about? Could authority fall under framing theory? are we categorising events in our head as they are played out and the more knowledge that we feel is being bestowed upon us, the more diagnosis we decipher in our head, the more likely we are to comply?

The Issue:  In Chapters 4 & 5, Lippmann describes the imperfect processes by which we receive information, as well as both the openness and relativity of the English language and a single word.

Major Strength:  Lippmann is growing on me. His arguments are very broad, sure, but they were certainly ahead of his time in the 1920’s and provide for essential baseline ideas. In these particular chapters, I enjoyed the fact that Lippmann incorporated more quantitative justification, though it was tough to follow at first. His analogies still provided the greatest insight, however. I appreciated the driver vs. rider comparison to the way news is understood by the writer (who was present for whatever is being reported) and the reader (whose knowledge of the situation is diminished to a few inches of copy, shaved down from the full story for the purpose of quick, universal consumption by the mass public). Lippmann succinctly illustrates his point that much is lost in translation between a writer/reporter’s experience and the condensed, scripted piece we normally see.

Major Weakness:  A minor weakness to this section of Lippmann’s work is perhaps that it does not account for current developments in information gathering and reporting. This, of course, is to no fault of his own; we can’t expect him to have been able to see nearly one hundred years in advance. However, I think this argument of condensed content was much more applicable to the times of single news outlets serving as the “watch dogs” for their communities. Now, with so many reports coming from so many different places and people, it’s much easier to piece together more information to have a more accurate account of news stories. This includes the abundance of photo and video we now see in news stories.

Underlying Assumption:  Lippmann is trying to push the fact that consumers of media only get a brief glimpse into a story and should assume that there are more important pieces that are not yet obtained. He also assumes that these incomplete stories lead us to developing stereotypes and connecting the dots via such heuristics.

Provocative Questions:  I really wish this was something that could be quantified; I’d be interested to see just how much more we get out of a news story with multiple outlets and reports, as well as images of what happened. Lippmann also points to the fact that  the majority of media consumers rarely question its derivative; do consumers give media too much benefit of the doubt today? The news landscape has obviously changed with the integration of social media into the information cycle; how does something like Twitter affect Lippmann’s argument?

The issue: Cialdini explore the theory of social proof and how our actions are influenced by the individuals around us.

Major strength:  The theory of social proof is argued for by multiple examples. He starts by looking at product advertisements and then charity telethons that would be easily relatable to the reader. Then he chooses to look at more specific examples such as Catherine Genovese and Jonestown.  Each example is unique enough to expand on the theory of social proof without overwhelming the reader or being overly repetitive.

Major weakness: The weakest example given was due to the number of airplane/vehicular fatalities influence on suicide. Perhaps the science and graphs were over my head but I couldn’t help thinking that correlation does not imply causation. While I found the short section on “Devictimizing Yourself” important advice, it was presented in a way that was almost distracting from the overall chapter.

Underlying assumption:  All individuals are influenced by social proof. Individuals rationalize their behavior and even unconsciously rely on leaders and those around them.

Provocative questions:

How does social media reflect the idea of social proof?  Does it encourage or discourage it?

If the general population was more aware of the bystander affect and dangers of social proof, would there actually be any change?

The Issue: Chapter four of Cialdini is about “social proof” and the concept behind people following the behavior patterns of others before them.

Major Strength: As Dr. Gaither mentioned in class, Cialdini’s writing style very much resembles Malcolm Gladwell’s, filled with relevant examples from both the past and the present. This chapter contains references to Jonestown and the stabbing of Kitty Genovese, among other powerful cases that demonstrate how masses of people can fall into the pattern of following the lead of others. Cialdini emphasizes free thinking, and how important it is to hang onto this virtue. His “strength in numbers” argument seems to hold up, and since the theory is difficult to poke holes in, he has a strong argument.

Major Weakness: Cialdini helps the reader understand how publics can slip into patterns of mass ignorance, but not necessarily how to prevent this from happening to you in real life situations. Perhaps Cialdini’s job is just to introduce us to these concepts. And awareness is the only strength we need. I’d like to think if I saw a woman get stabbed even once, I would call the police regardless of how many others were also looking on. I can’t be sure, but I can hope. And I feel this chapter would have been strengthened if there were advice to follow to prevent falling victim to social proof.

Underlying Assumption: There is this general idea that relying on social proof is part of human nature, and while most of us do not experience this phenomenon on a large, traumatic scale like that of Jonestown, we are vulnerable to following the masses, and it isn’t likely that will change.

Provocative Questions: This reminds me of high school health class, when we learned about CPR. We were instructed ask a specific person to call 911 as the first step, rather than hoping someone would do it. We also learned that requesting, “someone call 911!” didn’t help much either, due to this “bystander effect.“ I remember being unsettled by this, but it leads me to ask if it would be safer to have an emergency situation in front of a massive group, or in front of a small one?

Are there ways to train our minds to prevent falling victim to social proof?

The Issue: Cialdini discusses social proof, the pressures and influences that effect indivudals within a society. Cialdini relates social proof to almost our sense of belonging and how we

Major Strengths: The use of multiple examples of social proof and in slightly different scenarios are not only fascinating but a major strength to unfolding this critical theory. Although I might not completely agree with the suicide and crash fatalities example on a whole, Cialdini did an excellent job of presenting the “Werther effect” at the right time. This theory is far fetched, and the first time I have ever heard of it, however when the idea of “copy cat suicides” was touched upon, it was extremely relatable to multiple stories I had heard in the news last year. I felt that Cialdini knew that this example out of all of them was his most grand and the one in which he would have to provide a lot of evidence for, and different ways of looking at it, in which he did not disappoint.

Major Weakness: I think with a chapter with such broad examples and such a dense amount of ideas and material, it would of been beneficial to have a final section to select key points from each and draw some similarities. It is impossible to have a section summarising it all, as social proof is not something you can summarise and leave behind, however there has to be some theory on what happens when individuals or even groups resist against certain aspects of truth. This is something I felt was lacking after the chapter had ended.

Underlying Assumption: Social proof is unavoidable.  To act from an incident or situation as an individual may lead you to react in the correct way and to help or prevent a situation. The pressure to be that person within a larger group of people results in stalling and unresponsive actions.

Provocative Questions: Through Cialdini’s examples they seem to lean toward the more extreme. We learned that bystanders who witness an attack in groups larger than 3 are less likely to report an incident as they assume it will be reported by someone else, however I would of liked this example to have gone further. What happens when someone does react out of a larger crowd? What happens to that 1 person out of the 38 who did panic, did make a scene, and did pick up the phone and potentially save someone? Did this act have a profound effect on not only the person reporting the incident but the people who didn’t?

The Issue-Robert Cialdini introduces the principle of social proof, which says that people are influenced socially when deciding how they should behave. People strive to exhibit “correct” behavior in social situations by evaluating the behavior of others.

Major Strength-The strength of this particular chapter is Cialdini’s use of numerous real world examples to illustrate the affects of social proof. The examples that are featured are not only relevant…in most cases they are shocking. Instead of generically defining terms like the ‘bystander effect’ or ‘pluralistic ignorance’ Cialdini uses examples like that Genovese incident that really paint a picture of the frightening power of these terms. Cialdini does a great job of providing these relevant examples while showing the logic and reasoning behind the outcome of each case and that’s what makes his claims so believable.

Major Weakness- Cialdini presents research to support his assestions about social proof but how would a police officer or EMT worker react in one of these social situations?  How would a stroke victim react if they saw the girl experiencing familiar symptoms near the tree? Cialdini fails to address those who challenge his claims. He does not take into account how authority figures or those with prior experience or knowledge would react to a similar situation.

Underlying Assumption-In social situations people rely on the concept of “safety in numbers”. People are most susceptible to the principle of social proof when they are uncertain or when they witness the behavior of someone similar to them.

Provocative Questions- How would someone with prior experience or knowledge jumping into help a victim affect the principle of social proof? There were some examples in the reading of citizens who were educated about social proof (the women in Wroclaw, Poland who saw the man fall in the ditch) who made informed decisions about how to behave based on the knowledge they gained after reading this book. How will people like her who are actively fighting the principle of social proof effect it’s its function in our society? Will the men who helped her or even the victim be inclined to follow her lead in future encounters and do the right thing even if it means breaking away from the pack?