This week we turn our attention once again to media manipulation. In my book, Gotcha! The Subordination of Free Will, I flesh out the counterintuitive nature of disclaimers and retractions. However, a new study reminded me of just how important it is that we all remember they simply have no power. The fact is, you can retract a story but the research shows that even when you know the story was incorrect, you nevertheless form your opinion around the original content. So if an article insists that XYZ is harmful based on arguably reasonable evidence, then even when the article is shown to be biased or false, we generally hold to the original opinion we formed. 1
Contraindications Sell
Research has also shown that when a medicine is advertised with strong contraindications, people tend to see the medicine as more powerful and therefore more desirable. In other words, telling someone that the medicine may cause all sorts of bad things only motivates them to desire it more. 2
Now the new study goes a step further than a simple retraction or contraindication. It includes disclaimers designed to subvert the power of an ad. This sort of thing is referred to as “subvertising.” Researchers at Chapman University tested if adding disclaimers or ‘subvertisements’ to altered images of bikini models counteracts the negative effects of this media on body image.
Disclaimers and Subvertising Fails
Quoting from Science Daily:
“The results showed that the women exposed to the disclaimers and subvertising did not report higher body satisfaction than women exposed to unaltered images,’ said David Frederick, Ph. D., assistant professor of psychology at Chapman University and lead author on the study. . .
“To test whether disclaimers or subvertising were effective, 2,288 women were recruited across two studies. The average age of women participating in the surveys was 35. Some women were shown unaltered advertisements that featured slender women. Other women were exposed to these same images but had a disclaimer label in red stating “WARNING, this photo has been photoshopped.”
“The last set of women saw these images after they had been subvertised with different messages written across them. Examples of different subvertisements included “Photoshop made me ripped,” an image focusing on a woman’s buttocks with the phrase, “Why don’t you show that she is a person with a face and personality instead of presenting her as a sexualized body part,” and a thought bubble coming out of a model’s head stating, “I’m thinking about that last cheeseburger I ate… 5 years ago.”
“After viewing the images, the participants were asked to complete established measures of body satisfaction and dieting. They were also asked how much they compared their bodies to the bodies of the models. Women who saw the subvertised or disclaimer images did not feel any better about their bodies than women who saw the unaltered images.” 3
Our Sometimes Mechanistic Psychology
Bottom line, you must be more than aware of the facts involved—you must also pay close attention to the nature of human psychology in order to guard against the sort of media manipulation that billions of research dollars has demonstrated effective. Please always remember that the underlying message in advertising comes down to the proposition that you are deficient in some way and that’s why you need their product. You are not deficient—unless you accept the message!
As always, thanks for the read and I appreciate your feedback.
Eldon Taylor
Provocative Enlightenment
NY Time Bestselling Author of Choices and Illusions
www.eldontaylor.com
Sources:
1 Taylor, E. 2016. Gotcha! The Subordination of Free Will. Medical Lake, WA: Progressive Awareness Research and R. K. Books
2 Ibid
3 Chapman University. 2016. “Research on Media Disclaimers’ Effects on Body Image: Women Exposed to Disclaimers, Subvertising Did Not Report Higher Body Satisfaction Than Women Exposed to Unaltered Images.” ScienceDaily. April 18, 2016. Retrieved April 20, 2016 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160418145508.htm