The First Perception, Persuasion and Propaganda Quiz
by Kevin Hogan
The 2008 Olympics have begun in China.
The U.S. Election is fast approaching.
Both are providing great opportunities to observe Propaganda, Persuasion,
Attraction and Perception.
Today you find out just what you really know about persuasion, perception,
attraction, sex and propaganda...what works...what doesn't.
Amanda Beard posed in the nude for a PETA poster and unveiled it in China this week. (It was a "PG" picture so it could be billboarded.)
Chinese officials told the well-known American swimmer that her safety
was at risk and that she could not hold a press conference about PETA.
"Fur farms" in China are famous and not appreciated by most people, forget the quirky PETA group.
So, here are the Amanda Beard questions.
Does the Amanda Beard poster influence people to take an action or change a belief about Chinese Fur Farms?
Do the actions of the Chinese shutting down the "risky" press conference help or harm the perception of the Chinese government in the minds of the Chinese and in the minds of the rest of the world?
Do the Chinese see Americans in general differently?
What things does the Amanda Beard nude poster accomplish?
Who benefits the most from the poster?
Masked U.S. Olympic Cyclists walked through the Beijing Airport.
So a half dozen men and women cart their luggage through the airport upon arrival and they are wearing these black masks.
Question: Does this seemingly provocative moment cause a stir in the Chinese government?
How does it play back home in the USA?
Assuming it was planned as a statement against the Chinese government's lack of intervention in the air quality of Beijing, who wins? Who loses? What part of the propaganda, if any? worked? Where?
Obama and McCain have been notably silent in the news the last couple of weeks. Wouldn't it be smart for one of them to leverage this time and exploit the media with appearances on high visibility shows at high visibility events?
Before you go on, write your answers down. Really. This is pretty cool.
OK, now get that pencil ready. This is where it gets very interesting...
We'll start with the biggie first.
1) Are people more influenced by their own thinking, that of computer
generated calculations, or the calculations of other people?
Subjects in a study are given the basic task of determining
if 3D objects were the same or different from
each other. There were three groups.
{A} In one group they simply made their own choices.
{B} Different subjects were part of another group. These subjects saw the results of what four other
confederates had answered before them. (The information was all inaccurate.)
{C} Subjects in a third group were told that four computers had calculated their answers and the subjects were shown those results. (These results were also
phoney and the information was wrong)
In each group the subjects made their choices as to whether the objects
were the same size or not.
One of the groups was right 59% of the time, another was right 68% of the time
and the other was right 84%.
Assign the above percentage of accuracy to each group below.
a) People making choices on their own______
b) People who had seen computer results______
c) People who had seen results of other people_____
2) The Confidence and Results of Experts Study. Two groups of people were put to test in Sweden. A group
of fund managers, brokers and analysts, and, a group of psych
majors in college.
Each group was asked which stock they felt would perform
the best of the two. Then they were asked to rate their odds of successfully
picking the right stock. In other words which stock is going up
in price and what are your chances of being right in your prediction...
One group picked the better stock 52% of the time. The other picked
the better stock 40% of the time.
One group predicted their average odds of success at 59%.
The other was 67%
Assign the numbers above to the groups below
a) The professionals________
b) The college psych students___________
3) Can you change their BEHAVIOR by injecting one little thought, study?
Giving people games or thoughts to think about that are
associated with God, causes people to be....
a) more altruistic
b) less altruistic
4) Among nonbelievers in God, when given games, or puzzles
that prime thoughts about God, these people tend to be
a) more altruistic
b) less altruistic
5) When researchers used words like civic, jury, court, police or
civic responsibility as the scrambled words to be unscrambled,
these priming words soon thereafter caused people's behavior to
be...
a) more altruistic and cooperative
b) less altruistic and cooperative
Ok, Write down your first set of answers real quick then turn the page...
