We, as human beings, have a natural desire to be loved, adored, and socially accepted. According to Dr. Rajiv N Rimal, his well written article, Media Campaigns and Perceptions of Reality, he observes that we as a society, like to think and act accordingly to how others expect us to– but how accurate are we actually? Furthermore, yes, we are a society based on acceptance, but where do we base our ideal, acceptable presentations of ourselves off of? The most prominent and ever evolving– social media campaign and advertisements. Rimal thoroughly presents five patterns of common misperceptions– pluralistic ignorance, the false consensus effect, the third-person effect, influence of presumed influence, and lastly, optimistic bias. These principles correlate directly with how we, as a society, view and execute the “ideal” social norm that we desire so badly to follow. But what is everyone thinking? How do we accurately perceive how other people want us to be and act like?
First and foremost, I had to define the differences between perception and reality. Here are Googled dictionary terms of the two.
Perception – a way of regarding, understanding, or interpreting something. A mental impression
Reality – the world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them.
Now this is to say that perception literally varies from person to person. One’s own beliefs, upbringing, experiences, prior knowledge, and self-interests factor into their perception. Each individual has their own one of a kind lens they view anything and everything through. Reality is the absolute state that it exists, not easily influenced, if not at all. Now because of this, perception is not reality, but more so can become one’s reality. One occurs within the mind, the other occurs outside. But what is even real anyway? *Shrugs shoulders*
What do these two terms have to do with how us human beings choose how we want to be around one another? In Dr. Rimal’s view, people are actually not as accurate as they think when it comes to knowing how others want them to act. This introduces us to his first principle, pluralistic ignorance. As first articulated by Allport (1942), it is “the tendency of people to underestimate the public support for the norms deemed to be socially desirable”. This essentially means that people tend to conform easily– more so reluctantly, about a certain idea because they think it is what others want as well, but in reality, not really. This immediately made me think of peer pressure– I’ll just do it because everyone else is doing it, but do I really want to– no. Another mechanism that boosts pluralistic ignorance is the frequency a person is exposed to a certain idea via social media. Let’s take e-cigarettes for instance, smoking, as well as the inhalation or basically consumption of nicotine is detrimental to our respiratory health, however we see endless commercials and advertisements of the newest e-cigarette pen on the market. Because we see several commercials throughout our day of how others seemingly enjoy using it, now it is socially acceptable for you to have one too.
The second principle Rimal asserts is the false consensus effect. Very similar to pluralistic ignorance, however they are different in that the false consensus effect is the tendency to believe that others are in support or share the same values, attitude, morals, and or behavior. It is also thought to be a special form of social projection– when one’s way of thinking or behaviors are validated by expecting others to accept or follow. Why do people tend to do this? Because of our human nature to want to be accepted and appealing to others. An example that I could think of in relative terms of social media is when a group of male friends are together at the gym to workout. They are all three in a happy committed relationship. One out of the group points out a very attractive girl he notices working out nearby and comments, “Check this hot chick out, I’m going to ask for her Instagram”. As his two other friends demonstrate complete disinterest to join his sightseeing, he then retorts, “It’s okay to just look, it doesn’t mean anything,”. This is an example of the false consensus effect because one of the group believes that it is completely normal to demonstrate such behavior when in reality, the rest of the group were not for it.
The third principle that is presented is the third person effect. This occurs when a person believes that he or she is less susceptible to social media influence. As referenced directly from Dr. Rimal, the concern of censoring explicit content, such as pornography, because of the detrimental effects it may have on children because of their lack of mental capability to remain unharmed by such content. As opposed to a teenager? Anyways, the third person effect arises because one person believes that they will not experience that particular negative effect in comparison with others. This ties in hand with social media because if you really think about it, how many times do you hear and or see the same commercial on Youtube or Pandora? “Like a good neighbor Statefarm is there”, or “ARBY’S we have the meats”. How frequently are you exposed to their commercials? It’s like, you would never think you’d cave in to Statefarm’s silly little saying, then poof! Oh hey guys you should totally buy insurance from Statefarm because, “Like a good neighbor, Statefarm is actually there!”
Let us continue. Influence of presumed influence is the concept that those that are in fact influenced by the media, modify their behavior towards those they think have been influenced as well. If I could put this in the most simple terms, to me it sounds like monkey see, monkey do. Fashion is the simplest example that I can personally think of. If I see on my social media my friend follows a Fashion Nova brand ambassador, I am going to believe she shops from them, and intuitively I am going to wear Fashion Nova clothes too. It’s just a never ending circle of systematic trends that could rise at any time. Remember when planking was a thing?
Lastly, optimistic bias. As further explained by Dr. Rimal, this is the principle that a person has a tendency to view themselves less vulnerable to negative experiences or illnesses unless it is deemed entirely uncontrollable. This seems to be most prevalent in health domains. It’s like um no, I’m just as susceptible to AIDS just as much as anyone else. One person may not get it sexually, but perhaps they came across the wrong person and got stabbed by an object that happened to contain dirty fluids. Who knows.
Now putting all of these previously mentioned principles together, how does social media, perception, reality, and how society behaves have anything to do with each other? In this day and age, literally EVERYTHING. We easily conform to the ‘social norms’ because of what we’re exposed to on a day by day basis. Instagram, Facebook, Youtube ads, television series on Netflix and Hulu, Disney movies we have known since kids, the list just goes on. Besides trends, it goes even deeper in society. How we eat, how we live, how we relationship, where to shop, how to treat one another, how we should live our lives basically! The point of social media is to capture a specific audience and their dynamic to brainwash them in believing in a perspective of that entity’s choosing. Because society is so dynamically different, perceptions are extremely sensitive to this constant exposure. Not to mention technology is continually evolving to become more and more invasive in our human lives. In entirety, social media groups easily distort our perceptions of reality to any reality of their choosing, which then results in the five principles Dr. Rimal has presented. Social media companies inhumanely thrive financially off our human nature to want to be socially accepted and validated, which brings me to my title, Global brainwashing.
Platinum thoughts... 