Propaganda is information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view. Propaganda is something that was very prevalent during WWI and WWII and is still something that occurs today.
According to Goldstein (2015), the propaganda effect is a result of priming, which occurs when the presentation of on stimulus changes the way a person responds to another stimulus (p.170). The propaganda effect is when a subject is more likely to rate statements they have read or heard before as being true, simply because they have been exposed to them before (p.171).
It is no secret that propaganda was an effective tool used by both Germany and the United States to influence the populations view of the opposing side. Through posters, films, radio and other media, the governments influenced their people in support of each sides cause. After repetitive exposure to this propaganda (repetition priming), the people were beginning to believe and stand up for what each respective government had been flashing before their eyes, without them even knowing it.
Another example of propaganda is the North Korean government. The North Korean people believe that the United States is evil and is the reason for their poor economy among other things. They believe that the United States started the war between North and South Korea and that only the Kim family can keep the country safe from the wrath of the United States. This propaganda is used as a form of control over the North Korean people, similar to how Germany and the United States convinced their people to join their war.
This also happens in everyday life. For example, if all you saw were movies depicting that law enforcement is corrupt and evil, without ever having other exposure to law enforcement, you may be more conditioned to believe it is true.
Sources:
Berlinger, Joshua. “Why North Korea Still Hates the United States: The Legacy of the Korean War.” CNN. N.p., 28 July 2017. Web. 3 Mar. 2018. <https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/26/asia/north-korea-united-states-relationship/index.html>.
Goldstein, E. B. (2015). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience (4th Ed.). S.l.: Wadsworth
Lam, Katherine. “Kim Jong Un’s Bizarre North Korea Propaganda Photos.” Fox News. FOX News Network, 01 Feb. 2018. Web. 04 Mar. 2018. <http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/02/01/kim-jong-uns-bizarre-north-korea-propaganda-photos.html>.
Little, Becky. “Inside America’s Shocking WWII Propaganda Machine.” National Geographic. National Geographic Society, 19 Dec. 2016. Web. 04 Mar. 2018. <https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/12/world-war-2-propaganda-history-books/>.
Riddle, Lincoln. “American Propaganda in World War II.” War History Online. N.p., 6 Aug. 2016. Web. 3 Mar. 2018. <https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/american-propaganda-world-war-ii.html>.
“Visual Essay: The Impact of Propaganda.” Facing History and Ourselves. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Mar. 2018. <https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-6/visual-essay-impact-propaganda>.
Algerians
awesome sauce
I found it so interesting how another student already brought up the current Trump administration in regards to your post on the propaganda effect. But the truth is, it isn’t just in regards to the Trump administration but rather our everyday all-encompassing lives. Propaganda is defined as influence or suggestion through the manipulation of symbols and the psychology of the individual and is all around us on a daily basis, playing a huge role in the conditioning of our brains. (Pratkanis) For example, we see it in billboards, advertisements, movies, shows and even within our schools. It also involves implicit memory due to the fact that it can have an effect even when the individual is unaware of ever hearing it before, thus making it so effective. Ever started singing a commercial without ever realizing you watched it?
In fact, America has been using the propaganda effect too its advantage for many years. The nephew of Sigmund Freud, Edward Berneys wrote a book in 1928 called Propaganda and gained great influence by popularizing deceiving advertising and because of it, is considered to be a founding father of the public relations industry. On the subject of propaganda and its potential influence, he stated: “With the printing press and the newspaper, the railroad, the telephone, the telegraph, the radio and airplanes, ideas can be spread rapidly and even instantaneously all over the whole of America.” (Jones) On top of that, propagandists typically target emotionally charged situations, feeding off anger and fear and using it to their advantage. For example, an attack in Charlottesville, Virginia last year by a white supremist occurred and Trump used this opportunity to say “both sides” were at fault, therefore creating a rhetoric that activists fighting for rights were just as dangerous as racists seeking to suppress those rights. In fact, the White Houses propaganda right now is so effective because it constantly plays off fears that are already deeply engrained into peoples minds, whether it’s building a wall to keep us from the rapists and drug dealers in Mexico, preventing the blacks from burning our cities or protecting us from “fake news.”
Jones, S. (2017, August 30). How Trump Is Creating a Propaganda State. Retrieved March 26, 2018, from https://newrepublic.com/article/144592/trump-creating-propaganda-state
Pratkanis, A. R., & Aronson, E. (2007). Age of propaganda: The everyday use and abuse of persuasion. New York: Holt.
Hi Chelsea,
I thought that your explanation of propaganda and its’ connection to events in history was great. In elementary school, I learned about propaganda during WW1 and WW2. However, reading about it from a psychological perspective clarifies how the use of propaganda contributes to bias points of view. One of the reasons that propaganda is so effective is because it involves the repetition of the same stimuli. Eventually, people began to believe that the propaganda is true because they are constantly exposed to it, contributing to these negative attitudes.
One thing that I wanted to mention was that priming could also be a beneficial factor in memory recollection. For example, when teaching children their alphabets, parents often say, “A is for apple, and B is for bananas.” The constant exposure to the alphabet in this manner, allows children to see an apple and know that it starts with the letter A. In addition to propaganda, priming can also lead to the formation of implicit memories, which are, memories that “ we are not consciously aware of but show evidence of prior learning and storage” (Goldstein, 2017). To this day, we can easily associate apples with the letter A because of what we learned as children.
References:
Goldstein, E. B. (2017). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience.
It’s interesting that you brought up the propaganda effect. It seems to be used more and more in recent months and not just back in the days if WWI and WWII or even today in North Korea. I’m sure you are aware of the Russian Collusion charges against the current administration. The alleged propaganda scandal with meddling in the election. I Could see how this would relate to the propaganda effect introduced by Goldstein (2015). It’s interesting to wonder if we were one of the people influenced by it or if we did come across such ads were we able to recognize the effects.
According to an article in the New York Times by Parlapiano and Jasmine (2018), the propaganda was target for select groups of individuals whom they felt they could target and influence to vote a certain way or abstain from voting all together. Was the goal of the Russians to just persuade voting? Not entirely, but they have succeeded in dividing the country on many sensitive issues uprising within the United States among various ethnic groups.
Our brains are very malleable and susceptible to many influences. Kinda allows one to feel a little paranoid at the capabilities of being purposefully influenced, yet unknowingly. This article only helped to articulate that, I wonder if this is a propaganda effort within itself.
Resources:
Parlapiano, Alicia, and Jasmine C. Lee. “The Propaganda Tools Used by Russians to Influence the 2016 Election.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 17 Feb, 2018, http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/02/16/us/politics/Russia-propaganda-election-2016.html.
After reading this post I found it interesting because propaganda is something that still exists today. It is in the news and on social media and pretty much everywhere else that we can look. As stated in the post priming is what we have to blame. Priming basically is something that exposes use to a situation and later we have these same ideas both negative and positive in our memory based off our first experience. For example when I was a child I seen a movie with clowns and it scared me and later on in my life I am still afraid of clowns and it is due to priming. It happens in the media a lot because new sources put out information and as people we believe the media so the next time we see a similar article we have the same opinion as we did when we read the first article.
I think that this issue pairs with the growing nature and involvement in media with how we as a society gain our information. I think that, similar to what you mentioned about North Korea, information is gained primarily by what is provided directly to us. Many people will hear about events through the media, and will not dig any deeper and take what is said as fact when it can be misleading or biased. For example, with the most recent presidential election there were many pieces of Trump and Hillary propaganda that, depending on exposure, may have heavily influenced the public. The most popular slogan, that of “Make America Great Again” targets an audience that sees fault in the way America has been and will be heading in again, sending a powerful message that Trump has the aim of moving the country in the right direction again.
The idea of the effect of propaganda starts with the idea of repetition priming, as you said. When an idea or stimulus is repeatedly provided to someone, their brain begins to change, and sometimes it changes to adhere to a notion or idea (SciTech). Considering that priming is an unconscious effect, people are incredibly susceptible to it. In addition, the concise nature of a piece of propaganda provides a shortcut that people seek in a complex and rapid world (Stanford). People do not have the time to analyze and recognize everything (events, situations, etc.) and therefore become incredibly susceptible to small pieces of key information, regardless if that is provided in a biased or misleading way.
https://web.stanford.edu/class/e297c/war_peace/media/hpropaganda.html
http://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/repetition-priming/