Persuasion, Subliminal Persuasion and Propaganda...From The Bible to Evolution
by Kevin Hogan
Page 3
The Root of Persuasion
Persuasion is what caused us to develop language in the first place. As a species we needed stuff. We learned to speak so we could ask for help in getting that stuff.
And, persuasion is simply the stuff of life.
What is Subliminal Persuasion?
Subliminal persuasion is the experience you have when you aren't completely aware of everyone popping 20 dollar bills in the collection basket, you have a 10 but for some reason you decide to dig for another 10 and make it twenty.
A significant percentage of the actions you take are because something you were not consciously aware of caused you or primed (prepared you unconsciously) to act in a specific fashion.
"Subliminal" can mean "invisible" or "covert" but it can also mean...what it means...stimuli that you are not aware of.
In the last decade more research has been done on subliminal and supraliminal messages than the previous century before.
We now know that audio subliminal messaging is a great scam and that most video messages designed to subliminally persuade, don't work, because they simply don't work in how the brain accepts information.
But scientists and researchers in subliminal persuasion now know what does prime and persuade people at the unconscious level.
We can cause someone to drink X over Y or X over not drinking at all.
And those things can be done while looking at a computer screen and having an image of the word "drink" revealed at a duration too short for conscious awareness to pick it up, even if you're "looking for it."
The research in subliminal messages is nothing short of mind blowing in potential. The ability to change short term behavior can assist in changing long term behavior. The ramifications are beyond measure in society.
Propaganda and Persuasion
Propaganda is persuasion on a large scale.
I used to tell audiences, "I have propaganda at the back of the room. Please feel free to pick it up, check it out and ...."
One day a Jewish man came up to me and he was angry. Suggested that I was supporting evil by just using the word "propaganda" in a sentence.
Why?
Because I used the word, "propaganda."
I told him that while I could appreciate his point of view, I was speaking only from a scientific point of view. There is nothing special about the word "propaganda." It's a message crafted to persuade more than one person. It's designed to persuade many about something I or the creator feels passionate about.
It certainly could refer to Hitlerian propaganda about the creation of a superior race, but that is a really narrow minded view of a term that covers a lot of ground.
Commercials are propaganda. Marketing messages are propaganda. What your teacher teaches your kids and my kids teacher teaches my kids, is propaganda.
The man who came up to me was propagandizing his ideology to me. Now I wasn't going to tell him that, because I had learned over the years that logically debating with a disgruntled audience member can put you
in the psychiatric admitting room at the hospital. It's a waste of time.
Fact is...Propaganda is a necessary tool in a free society to differentiate yourself or your company or your religion or political ideology from another.
Propaganda is news with a spin and intention, and all news has a spin and all spun news has an intention.
When I took journalism at the University of Wisconsin 25 years ago, I found the most difficult factor in writing news articles was being "objective." Today, of course, there is no such thing as objective news. Walter Cronkite is long gone from the news stage and the era of trying to get it "right" without a message attached to it is simply no longer possible due to how our world "runs."
If you want to watch your favorite TV shows and read your favorite newspaper, your favorite church publication, your favorite company newsletter, you will have to wade through "spin." They can't afford to publish without it. It's no longer possible to compete with objective news. Whether CNN, Fox or Al Jazeera, they all have an agenda. And that is the only way it can work in the 21st century.
Propaganda and subliminal persuasion in no way demands that Kevin Hogan gets something out of you being shaped by a message I send. The same is true for you sending messages.
