Modern psychotechnology manipulation

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

“Radio and television programs are constantly interrupted to broadcast advertisements. … the gradual increase in the amount of time children concentrate on one thing can be a factor with which they can control the development of their mental abilities."

G. Schiller

Communication is information, a message

S. G. Kara-Murza

Methods of influencing the psyche through the media:

- mass media, information and propaganda.

- manipulation of mass consciousness and the media.

- features of the psychological impact of television.

- computer gambling addiction.

- cinematic methods of manipulation of the mass audience.

Means of communication- ways of transmitting messages to large areas. Mass communication means the involvement of the masses in a similar process. In terms of the effectiveness of the impact on the mental consciousness of the masses, mass media and information come out on top.

This becomes possible for the following reasons. Let us briefly consider how the process of information impact on the psyche of an individual or the masses occurs. The human brain consists of two large hemispheres.

The left hemisphere is consciousness, the right is unconscious. There is a thin layer of gray matter on the surface of the hemispheres. This is the cerebral cortex. There is a white substance underneath. These are subcortical, subliminal, parts of the brain.

The human psyche is represented by three components: consciousness, unconsciousness and a barrier between them - the so-called. called the censorship of the psyche.

Information is any message that comes from the outside world to the human psyche.

Information passes through the censorship of the psyche. Thus, the censorship of the psyche stands in the way of information that appears in the area of its perception by the individual (through the representational and signal systems), and is a kind of protective shield, redistributing information between the consciousness and the unconscious of the psyche (subconsciousness).

Part of the information, as a result of the work of the censorship of the psyche, enters consciousness, and part (large in volume) is displaced into the subconscious.

At the same time, we note that the information that has passed into the subconscious, after some time, begins to affect consciousness, and therefore through consciousness, on the thoughts and behavior of a person. Recall that any information that has ever passed by an individual is deposited into the subconscious. It doesn't matter if he remembered it or not.

Any information that a person could see or hear, information captured by the psyche with the use of the organs of sight, hearing, smell, touch, etc., such information is invariably deposited in the subconscious, in the unconscious of the psyche, from where it soon begins to influence consciousness.

As you know, the main role in reflecting a person's contacts with reality, in the perception of this reality, belongs to consciousness. However, in addition to consciousness, there is also the subconscious or the unconscious of the psyche.

Thus, the human psyche consists of two layers - consciousness and the unconscious, subconscious. It is on the subconscious that a person's realization of latent, subliminal influences, or influences from manipulators, which, using the developed psycho-technologies, introduce psychological attitudes into the human subconscious, depends.

Subconscious or unconsciousin turn is also represented by two layers. This is the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious (or the so-called phylogenetic memory).

The representatives of the masses, unconsciously fulfilling the attitudes laid down in their psyche, owe their behavior to the archetypal components of the psyche, which partly passed to such a person phylogenetically (i.e., were formed before his birth), and partly formed as a result of the personal experience of each person.

Those. the personal unconscious is formed during a person's life through the use of his representative and signal systems, and the formation of the collective unconscious depends on the experience of previous generations.

The information coming from the outside world is partially influenced by the person himself, as well as by the living environment, which forms the direction of his thoughts in the spectrum of certain knowledge.

Unconscious psycheis a baggage of knowledge accumulated by a person in the process of life.

Moreover, it should be noted that the information of the personal unconscious is constantly replenished throughout life.

The information coming from the outside world will, over time, be processed with the involvement of the deep layers of the unconscious, as well as archetypes and patterns of behavior in the unconscious, and then this information will pass into consciousness in the form of certain thoughts arising in a person and, as a result, committing appropriate actions.

It is in the unconscious of the psyche that desires, the initiative component of actions are concentrated, and indeed everything that later passes into consciousness, i.e. becomes conscious by this or that person.

Thus, if we talk about the archetypes of the unconscious in the factor of influence on the subconscious using manipulative techniques, we must say that this becomes possible through a certain provocation of the archetypal layers of the unconscious psyche.

Manipulatorin this case, it fills the information entering the human brain with such a semantic meaning, so that, by activating one or another archetype, it causes appropriate reactions in the human psyche, and therefore encourages the latter to fulfill the settings inherent in his subconsciousness by the manipulator himself.

In addition, archetypes are present not only in the collective, but also in the personal unconscious.

In this case, archetypes consist of the remnants of information that once entered the human psyche, but was not displaced into consciousness or into the depths of memory, but remained in the personal unconscious, being enriched earlier with semi-formed dominants, semi-attitudes, and semi-patterns.

Those. at one time such information was not the creation of full-fledged dominants, attitudes or patterns, but, as it were, outlined their formation; therefore, upon receipt of information of a similar content in the subsequent (i.e., information with a similar encoding, or in other words, similar impulses from afferent connections, i.e. connections between brain neurons), early semi-formed dominants, attitudes and patterns are completed, as a result of which a full-fledged dominant appears in the brain.

And in the subconscious, full-fledged attitudes appear that turn into patterns of behavior.

The dominant in the cerebral cortex caused by focal excitation is the reason for the reliable consolidation of psychological attitudes in the subconscious, and therefore the appearance of corresponding thoughts in the individual, in the subsequent deedsdue to the preliminary transition of attitudes in the subconscious into patterns of behavior in the unconscious.

And here we should note the power of the mass media.

Because it is precisely with the help of this kind of influence that psychological processing occurs not of an individual individual, but of individuals united in masses.

Therefore, it must be remembered that if any information comes through mass media (television, cinema, glossy magazines, etc.), then such information will certainly completely settle in the psyche of the individual.

It settles regardless of whether the consciousness had time to process at least a part of such information, or did not have time. Whether the individual has memorized the information entering his brain, or not.

The very fact of the presence of such information already suggests that such information has forever been deposited in his memory, in his subconscious.

And this means that such information can have an effect on consciousness both now or tomorrow, and in many years or decades. The time factor does not play a role in this case.

Such information never leaves the subconscious. It can, at best, only fade into the background, hide until the time in the depths of memory, because the memory of the individual is so arranged that it requires constant updating of the available (stored) information in order to memorize new volumes of information.

It does not matter whether such information has passed through consciousness or not. Moreover, such information can be enhanced if it was enriched with emotions.

Any emotions, emotional filling of the semantic load of any information, significantly enhances memorability, forming a dominant in the cerebral cortex, and through this, psychological attitudes in the subconscious.

If information “hits the senses”, then the censorship of the psyche can no longer fully exert its effect, because what concerns feelings and emotions easily overcomes the protection of the psyche, and such information is firmly absorbed into the subconscious, remaining in the memory for a long time.

And in order to somehow separate the information received by the subconscious through the barrier of the psyche (censorship), and the information received by the subconscious, bypassing the censorship of the psyche, we note that in the first case, such information is deposited in the surface layer of the personal unconscious, i.e. it is not deposited very deeply, whereas in the second case, it penetrates much deeper.

At the same time, it cannot be said that in the first case, information will eventually pass into consciousness faster than information that has not previously passed through consciousness (and therefore through censorship).

There is no particular relationship here. The information extracted from the subconscious is influenced by many different factors, including the archetypes of the collective and personal unconscious. And then, just by using this or that archetype, it becomes possible to extract information from the subconscious - and translate it into consciousness.

From which it follows that such information will soon begin to influence the behavior of the individual, guiding his actions.

Dwelling a little on archetypes, we note that archetypes mean the formation of certain images in the subconscious, the subsequent impact on which can cause certain positive associations in the individual's psyche, and through this, influence the information received by the individual "here and now", that is, the information evaluated by the individual in the present time.

An archetype is formed through the systematic flow of any information (i.e., through the flow of information over a period of time), and most often it is formed in childhood (early childhood), or adolescence.

With the help of one or another archetype, the unconscious is able to influence consciousness.

C. G. Jung (1995) assumed that archetypes are already inherent in human nature from birth. This position is in direct relationship with his theory of the collective unconscious.

In addition, since the archetypes that are in the unconscious are themselves unconscious, it becomes explainable that their effect on consciousness is not realized, just as in most cases any form of influence on the consciousness of information stored in the subconscious is not realized.

Introducing the concept of the collective unconscious, Jung (1995) noted that the surface layer of the unconscious is called the personal unconscious. In addition to the personal unconscious (acquired from personal experience in the process of life), there is also an innate and deeper layer, which is called the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious includes contents and images of behavior that are the same for all individuals.

Of all the mass media, television stands out with the highest manipulative effect.

There is a definite problem of modern man's susceptibility to manipulation through television.

Refuse to watch TV programs for most individualsimpossible, because the specifics of the TV signal and the presentation of the material are built in such a way that first provoke the symptoms of psychopathology in an individual, and later - remove them through television broadcasting, thereby providing a stable addiction (akin to drug addiction).

Everyone who has watched TV for a long time is in this kind of addiction. They can no longer refuse to watch television, because in the case of avoiding viewing, such individuals may develop states that resemble the symptoms of neurosis in their characteristics.

On provoking symptoms in the psyche of an individual borderline psychopathologythe significant effect of manipulative techniques is based.

By means of a TV signal, television encodes the psyche of an individual.

Such coding is based on the laws of the psyche, according to which any information first enters the subconscious, and from there it affects the consciousness. Thus, through television broadcasting, it becomes possible to simulate the behavior of the individual and the masses.

S. G. Kara-Murza (2007) notes that television production- this "product" is akin to a spiritual drug.

A person in modern urban society is dependent on television, because the impact of television is such that a person loses free will and spends much more time in front of the screen than his needs for information and entertainment require.

As in the case of drugs, a person, consuming a modern television program, cannot rationally assess the nature of its impact on his psyche and behavior. Moreover, since he becomes "addicted" to television, he continues to consume its products even if he is aware of its harmful effects.

The first mass broadcasting began in Nazi Germany, during the 1936 Olympic Games (Hitler was the first to understand and use the manipulative power of TV).

A little earlier, in April 1935, the first TV show for 30 people with two TVs appeared in Berlin, and in the fall of 1935, a TV theater with a projector for 300 people opened.

In the United States in 1946, only 0.2% of American families had a television. In 1962, that figure had risen to 90%, and by 1980, nearly 98% of American families had televisions, with some families having two or three televisions.

In the Soviet Union, regular television broadcasting began in 1931 from the building of the Moscow Radio Center on Nikolskaya Street (now the Russian Television and Radio Broadcasting Network - RTRS).

And the first television set appeared in 1949. (It was called KVN-49, it was black and white, the screen was slightly larger than a postcard, a lens attached to the screen was used to enlarge the image, which increased the image by about two times.)

Until the mid 80s. in our country there were two or three channels, and if the first channel could be watched by almost 96% of the country's population, then two channels were not “caught” by everyone (depending on the region), approximately 88% nationwide. Only a third of the country had three channels.

Moreover, the majority of television sets (by two-thirds) remained black and white even before the 90s.

When broadcasting, the psyche is influenced by activating various forms of information transmission; the simultaneous participation of the organs of sight and hearing has a powerful effect on the subconscious, due to which manipulations are carried out.

After 20-25 minutes of watching a TV program, the brain begins to absorb any information that comes through the TV broadcast. One of the principles of mass manipulation is suggestion. The action of TV advertising is based on this principle.

For example, a commercial is shown to a person.

Suppose, at first, such a person has a clear rejection of the demonstrated material (that is, his idea of this product is different). Such a person looks, listens, justifying himself by the fact that he will not buy anything of the kind. This kind of calms himself down.

Actually, if for a long time any signal gets into the information field of a person, then the information is inevitably deposited in the subconscious.

This means that if in the future there will be a choice between which product to buy, such a person will unconsciously give preference to the product that he has already “heard something” about. Moreover. It is this product that will subsequently evoke a positive associative array in his memory. As something familiar.

As a result, when a person faces the choice of a product about which he knows nothing, and a product about which he has already “heard something”, then instinctively (ie subconsciously) will be drawn to the familiar product.

And in this case, the time factor is often important. If for a long time information about a product passes before us, it automatically becomes something close to our psyche, which means that a person can unconsciously make a choice in favor of such a product (a similar brand of product, brand).

With a television signal, especially during advertising, three basic principles of passive trance technology (hypnosis) are used: relaxation, concentration and suggestion.

Relaxing and concentrating in front of the TV screen, a person absorbs all the information suggested to him, and since humans, unlike animals, have two signaling systems, this means that people react equally to both a real sensory stimulus (right hemisphere of the brain) and on human speech (left hemisphere of the brain).

In other words, for any person, the word is as real a physical irritant as everyone else.

Trance enhances the action of words (left hemisphere of the brain) and emotionally perceived picture-images (right hemisphere of the brain), therefore, while resting by the TV, any person at this very moment and in this state becomes extremely psychophysiologically vulnerable, since the person's consciousness goes into a hypnotic state, the so-called "alpha state" (a state that is neurophysiologically accompanied by alpha waves on the electroencephalogram of the cerebral cortex. In addition, television advertisements are necessarily often repeated.

In this case, another important principle of hypnosis applies. Repetition dramatically increases the power of suggestion, eventually reducing the behavior of many people to the level of ordinary reflexes of the nervous system.

L. P. Grimack (1999) notes that modern television acts as the most effective means of forming a hypnotic passivity of the viewer, which contributes to the strong consolidation of the created psychological attitudes, therefore it is television advertising that is considered the most effective way of programming buyers and consumers of services.

In this case, the programming of the viewer is carried out according to the type of post-hypnotic suggestion, when a given setting is activated at the appointed time after leaving the trance, i.e. after a while after watching a TV show, a person has an obsessive desire to make a purchase.

Therefore, in recent years, a new mental illness has emerged - shopping mania. It is characteristic mainly of people suffering from loneliness, inferiority complexes, low self-esteem, who do not see the meaning of their existence. The disease manifests itself in the fact that once in a supermarket, such a person begins to buy literally everything, trying to get rid of some inner anxiety.

Arriving home with purchases, both the buyer and his relatives are shocked, being amazed at the magnitude of the cash costs and the obvious uselessness of purchases. Women especially often suffer from this disease, tk. they are more suggestible.

It was found that 63% of people who are unable to refrain from shopping, even if they understand that they do not need this item, suffer from depression. Watching television is especially dangerous for a child.

One of the reasons for the hypnotizing effect of television is that watching television is very energy-intensive

It seems to a person that he is sitting and physically resting, however, visual images that quickly change on the screen continuously activate in his long-term memory many images that make up the experience of his individual life.

By itself, the visual row of a TV screen requires continuous awareness of the visual material, the associative images generated by it require certain intellectual and emotional efforts to assess and inhibit them.

The nervous system (especially in children), being unable to withstand such an intense process of awareness, already after 15-20 minutes forms a protective inhibitory reaction in the form of a hypnoid state, which sharply limits the perception and processing of information, but enhances the processes of its imprinting and programming behavior. (L. P. Grimak, 1999).

Television has no less danger on the psyche of women housewives, as well as men and women who come home after a working day and turn on the TV.

Television, with its huge flow of visual information, affects mainly the right hemisphere of the brain.

A quick change of images, the inability to go back and once again view insufficiently understood frames (and therefore comprehend them), these are signs of dynamic art, which is television.

Comprehension of what he saw, i.e. the transfer of information from the right (sensory, figurative) hemisphere to the left (logical, analytical) occurs by recoding the images seen on the screen into words. This takes time and skill.

Children have not yet developed such a skill. Whereas when reading books, the left hemisphere works predominantly, therefore, a child who reads books has an intellectual advantage over those who watch TV to the detriment of reading.

A. V. Fedorov (2004) cites data on the negative impact of mass communication on the psyche of the younger generation, noting that currently Russia has one of the highest crime rates in the world

The annual number of murders (per 100 thousand population) in Russia is 20.5 people. In the USA this figure is 6, 3 people. In the Czech Republic - 2, 8. In Poland - 2. According to this indicator, Russia shares the first place with Colombia.

In 2001, 33.6 thousand murders and attempted murders, 55.7 thousand cases of grievous bodily harm, 148.8 thousand robberies, 44.8 thousand robberies were committed in Russia. At the same time, juvenile delinquency is becoming a national disaster.

After the abolition of censorship in the media, thousands of domestic and foreign works containing episodes of violence began to be shown (without observing age restrictions) on film / television / video / computer screens. The violence shown on the screens is associated with the commercialization of television and the abolition of state censorship.

The scenes of violence are often replaced by a weak plot of the picture, because scenes of violence have an immediate effect on the subconscious, using feelings, and not on the mind. By demonstrating sex and violence, manipulators use the media to degrade the younger generation, whose representatives are impaired in their ability to adequately perceive reality. Such a person begins to live in his fictional world.

Moreover, television and cinema (as well as all mass media in general) form attitudes and patterns of behavior in the teenager's psyche, in accordance with which such a teenager will react to a particular life situation in accordance with the attitudes that he has formed through viewing TV shows and films.

Of course, television and cinema stand out clearly, tk. Unlike print or electronic media, in these types of influence on the psyche, the greatest manipulative effect is also achieved from the combination of music, picture images, voice of the announcer or the heroes of the film, and this all significantly increases the semantic load that the manipulators of mass consciousness have laid in the plot of one or a different picture.

Another manipulative effect is the involvement of viewers in what is happening on the screen.

There comes a kind of identification of the viewer with the heroes of a film or TV program. This is one of the features of the popularity of various programs. Moreover, the effect of this kind of demonstration is very significant, and is based on the mechanism of influence (intentional or unconscious) of what is happening on the screen on the subconscious, with a special kind of involvement of the archetypes of the personal and collective (mass) unconscious.

In addition, we must remember about such a category of influence on the psyche as the connection to information sources. If you watch any program on TV, then even if you are alone at the same time, you enter a certain informational biofield of masses, i.e. connect to the mental consciousness of those who also watch the same program; thus you form a single mass, which is subject to the mechanisms of manipulative influence inherent in mass formation.

“Commercial cinema deliberately and methodically, with devilish sophistication, arranges traps for the viewer on the screen,” notes K. A. Tarasov, who cites the following fact as an example: in 1949-1952. the creators of the world's first crime television series "Man Fighting Crime" (USA) received instructions from their leadership as follows:

“It has been found that audience interest can best be sustained when the plot is centered around a murder. Therefore, someone must be killed, it is better at the very beginning, even if other types of crimes are committed during the film. The threat of violence must always hang over the rest of the heroes."

The main character, from the very beginning and throughout the entire film, must be in danger.

The demonstration of violence in commercial films is often justified by the fact that good triumphs in the final of the picture. This implies a qualified reading of the film. But there is another reality of perception, especially in adolescence and adolescence: socially significant is the meaning that the audience ascribes to the film, and not the intentions of the author.

There are five types of consequences of the perception of screen violence

The first type is catharsis. It is based on the idea that the failure of an individual in everyday life causes him a state of frustration and the resulting aggressive behavior. If it is not realized through the perception of the corresponding heroes of popular culture, then it can manifest itself in antisocial behavior

The second type of consequences is the formation of readiness for aggressive actions. This refers to the setting on aggressive behavior that occurs as a result, on the one hand, of the spectator's excitement from scenes of violence, and on the other, the idea of the permissibility of violence in interpersonal relationships under the influence of scenes in which it appears as something completely justified

The third type is learning through observation. This means that in the process of identifying with the movie hero, the viewer, willingly or unwillingly, assimilates certain patterns of behavior. The information received from the screen can later be used by him in a real life situation

The fourth type of consequences is the consolidation of the viewers' attitudes and behavior patterns

The fifth type is not so much violent behavior as emotions - fear, anxiety, alienation. This theory is based on the idea that the mass media, primarily TV, create a kind of symbolic environment where people immerse themselves from childhood. The environment forms ideas about reality, cultivates a certain picture of the world

Therefore, it follows that images of violence affect personal identity in three ways:

1) the formation of readiness for aggressive actions as a result of the consolidation or emergence of an idea of the permissibility of physical violence in interpersonal relationships.

2) learning through observation. In the process of identification with the movie hero, the viewer, willingly or unwillingly, assimilates certain patterns of aggressive behavior. The information received can later be used in a real life situation.

3) consolidation of the viewers' existing attitudes and patterns of behavior. Thus, in children's development, contemporary screen art contributes to the formation of aggressiveness as components of a person's general personal identity. (K. A. Tarasov, 2003) Most scientists do not disagree about the negative impact of the uncontrolled flow of scenes of screen violence on the child audience and the need to create a well-thought-out state policy in relation to the protection of children's rights in the media. (A. V. Fedorov, 2004).

In terms of the impact on the child's psyche, one should pay attention to the fact that such a structure of the psyche as censorship (the barrier of criticality on the way of information coming from the outside world) has not yet been formed in the child.

Therefore, almost any information from the TV sets the attitudes and patterns of subsequent behavior in the child's psyche. There is no other way.

This is the strong manipulative effect of television, when a person may not even understand the meaning of the information that he sees on the TV screen; the content of a TV show can even be a set of funny stories with a scandalous connotation (which intensified the suggestive effect, because any provocation of emotions destroys the barrier of the criticality of the psyche), and outwardly, as if an obvious negative is not visible.

Such negativity becomes noticeable after, when the teenager begins to demonstrate behavior that was previously modeled as a result of watching TV.

Speaking of attitudes, we must say that such attitudes are expressed in programmed patterns of behavior.

Highlighting one of the characteristics of the installation, T. V. Evgenieva (2007) notes that an attitude is called the state of an individual's internal readiness to react in a programmed way to objects of reality or to information about them.

It is customary to distinguish several functions of the attitude in the process of cognition and motivation of behavior: cognitive (regulates the process of cognition), affective (channels emotions), evaluative (predetermines assessments) and behavioral (directs behavior). Considering similar functions, T. V. Evgenieva gives an example of understanding the differences between attitudes, known as the "Lapierre paradox."

In short, the essence is as follows. In 1934 R. Lapierre conducted an experiment. He decided to tour many different hotels in small American towns, taking two Chinese students with him. Wherever the company stayed for the night, the owners of the hotels welcomed them very cordially.

After Lapierre and the Chinese returned to the base, he wrote a letter to all the hotel owners, asking if he could come to them with a company that would include the Chinese. Almost all hotel owners (93%) refused.

In this example, it can be seen that the evaluative attitude towards the representatives of a particular racial group in a situation requiring a behavioral reaction was replaced by the behavioral attitudes of the hotel owner in relation to the client.

T. V. Evgenieva (2007) notes the chaotic nature of the Russian media, which are guided by rating and attracting advertisers, and complements the above guidelines with one more: the installation of a barrier.

Note that such an attitude lies in the plane of psychoanalysis, and denotes the fact that information received from the external world, which does not come across archetypes or patterns of behavior previously embedded in the subconscious, will not be perceived by the individual's consciousness, which means it is sent to the subconscious before the deadline.

But it does not disappear. This must be remembered. Because any information from the outside world, which turned out to be not perceived by consciousness and repressed by it into the subconscious (into the unconscious), in fact, after a certain time has passed, begins to exert its influence on consciousness.

Thus, the attitudes introduced into the subconscious and aimed at the formation of the corresponding thoughts, desires and actions of the individual and the masses, very stable in time, and dissolving in the unconscious (both personal and collective) in the form of the formation of the corresponding archetypes, have a key influence on life person. We have already noted the increased perception of any information by the child's psyche.

In fact, any information supplied to the psyche in childhood is deposited in the subconscious, which means that over time it begins to affect consciousness. Thus, with the help of the media, manipulators from business and government program the consciousness of the masses for many years, because adults live by the attitudes they received in childhood.

Speaking about modern means of mass influence on the audience, we must talk about a combination of advertising and mass media.

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