Smith & Engel showed 120 men a photo of a car. For half the subjects, the photograph showed only the car, whereas for the other subjects a sexually objectified woman features. After examining the picture, participants were asked to evaluate the car on several dimensions.
Those who saw the car with the attractive female next to it rated the car as significantly more appealing & better designed. They also estimated it to be more expensive & faster.
When the authors later asked a subset of the participants of their ratings had been influenced by the presence of the model, 22 out of 23 denied it.
One respondent claimed, “I don’t let anything but the thing itself influence my judgments. The other is just #propaganda.”
Another commented, “I never let myself be blinded by advertising; the car itself is what counts.”
Thus, although the model’s presence clearly altered the participants’ ratings of the car, virtually none believed that he had been affected.
Politicians often take advantage of this unconscious transference of emotions to influence how we vote.
Political ads & messages often prominently feature the national flag, in the belief that the positive emotions aroused by the flag will be transferred to the candidate. 🇬🇧
Ron Hassin studied the voting intentions of American voters in the 2008 Presidential election involving John McCain & Barack Obama.
In a pilot study, the authors asked people whether their voting would be influenced by the presence of a flag.
90% said no. In the main experiment, participants first filled in a questionnaire about their voting intentions. For one group, a small American flag was located in the top left corner of the questionnaire; the control group filled in the same questionnaire, but without the flag.
Then, in the week after the election, the participants were contacted again & asked for which candidate they had voted. 83% in the control group reported voting for Obama, but only 73% of those exposed to the flag did.
A single exposure to the flag as they thought about their views appears to be sufficient to alter how they later voted.
Effects were still apparent when interviewed 8 months later: those who had seen the flag were now significantly more conservative than those who had not.
As in the Smith & Engel study, almost no one in the pilot study believed their views could be altered by seeing the flag, but a single exposure was enough to
change how they voted.
This helps us understand why there are flags everywhere, & why there's been a lurch to the Right.
The horror.
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'Divide & rule' is an effective political strategy.
"Far-right populist parties thrive whenever there is a crisis. They either construct or exaggerate a crisis, or instrumentalize existing crises." It's all they've got - but around 30% of voters fall for it every time.
'Divide & rule' (Latin: divide et impera), is gaining & maintaining power by breaking up larger concentrations of power into smaller groups, by turning them against each other: individually, these groups then have less power than the one implementing the strategy.
It is a political strategy to gain or retain power, & it works primarily by cultivating disunity among potential opponents, often by co-opting some individuals & groups, while excluding others.
It often involves scapegoating particular identities - as the Nazis did with Jews.
Unlike damaged Kanye “death con 3 on Jewish people” West & loads of cowardly anonymous far-right trolls, Donald Trump & West's new mate White Supremacist Nick Fuentes is (at least for now) even too much for "free speech absolutist" Elon Musk's @Twitter.
Scott Wiener is a California state senator who represents San Francisco and northern San Mateo County. A day after Elon Musk reactivated Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Twitter account, she tweeted that he was a “communist groomer,” presumably because Wiener is gay Jewish Democrat.
The thread that follows quotes extensively from Wiener's article, here:
Most fascist movements portray themselves as defenders of Christianity & the traditional Christian family against atheists & amoral humanists. Modern #neofascists claim "Judeo-Christian values must be defended", or are "under attack from western liberals".
DMG Media is an intermediate holding company for Associated Newspapers, Northcliffe Media, Harmsworth Printing, Harmsworth Media, & other subsidiaries of Daily Mail & General Trust.
Its portfolio regularly reach 63% of the GB adult population every month.
The London Evening Standard was owned by DMGT, then sold to Lebedev in 2009. DMGT maintains a 5% share.
On 27 April 2007, Associated Newspapers was ordered to pay undisclosed damages to Hugh Grant.
'Critical theories of neoliberalism (CTNL) & their significance for left politics', by Matthew Lepori.
A thoughtful discussion article attempting to synthesise a very wide-ranging critique of #neoliberalism in order to build left-alliances.
It's not open access, I'll just thread a few extracts.
There is no battle between those studying #neoliberalism as a political economy (‘Marxian’) & those studying it as a governmental project designed to constitute particular types of social & political subjects (Foucauldian).
Some analysts treat neoliberalism as an ideology & class project emerging in reaction to falling rates of profit, this economic ‘trigger’ is not explained through structural-economic contradictions but through politics eg strikes, inflationary policies, & an open global economy.
Ignore the divisive reactionary dickheads demonising & scapegoating Albanians.
FUN FACT: 53% of Albanian asylum seekers' claims were granted in an initial decision in the year to June 2022 (the share is expected to increase after accounting for appeals).
In the year ending June 2022, a majority (53%) of Albanian asylum applicants were successful at initial decision, and the share is expected to increase after accounting for appeals. This compares to 76% positive initial decisions for all nationalities.