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- This study demonstrates the motivation in humans to compare themselves
with other people.
- Uses wages and wage related attributes as the most immediate and
convenient method of comparison, and shows that socioeconomic status
is the prevalent method of comparison.
- Defines some components of social stratification.
- Explains some behavior patterns of groups of satisfied,
neutral, and dissatisfied people.
- Explains some behaviors of corporations toward instilling dissonance
within the workforce.
- Retail store managers are hired from outside the store and not
promoted from within the store, as a message to the employees
that "you don't have a future here, so don't stay long enough
to earn full benefits."
- Supports the argument on the Effects of Television on the
Public By demonstrating the human tendency to seek visual
cues of social status and to readily adopt perceived authoritative
sources of information as opinion leaders, such as mass media outlets.
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- Students subjected to embarrassing and unpleasant experiences in
the attainment of group membership placed a high value upon such memberships.
- Different groups of school children were given varying degrees of
reward for writing essays in favor of shorter summer vacations. The
high reward group showed less actual change in attitude in a post-test
than the low reward group.
- Less becomes more and more becomes less. Cohen's findings elude
to the twinkling of something just under the surface of human awareness.
That switch under the murky waters of consciousness that causes paradigm
shifts.
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- You choose that, to which you pay attention, and choose to be virtually
oblivious to other things.
- It is difficult to pay attention to everything at once. New environments
make it difficult to focus initially.
- Internal contemplation is as much a distraction as the environment.
- You can choose to divide your attention between two inputs at once.
- Ignoring is an active process, not a passive process
- the content of the ignored message is ignored, but the conditions
of the ignored source can be remembered.
- Something outside your focused attention can catch your attention
if you are sufficiently primed for it (such as repeated exposures
to a brand, the name of a movie you saw, or something personal and
prevalent).
- Some people require more practice to tune out the other conversations
at a cocktail party
- Having just ignored a stimulus, it is now a bit harder to pay attention
to that stimulus.
- Our attention can be preprogrammed to be sensitive to certain stimuli.
Called "Selective Priming"
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- This paper defines a "latitude of acceptance" of messages
that is surrounded by "latitudes of rejection" on both sides.
Within a range that is not quantified, a message may be accepted and
an attitude changed.
- Messages too extreme are rejected and barriers of resistance are
employed.
- Messages of no consequence are simply ignored or are only temporarily
and finitely effective.
- This paper describes methods used to bring a passive audience into
an active mode for Public Relations work.
- Relies on values transmitted through the act of social comparison
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Consumer Behavior.
Bennett, Peter D.; Kassarjian, Harold H.
Foundation of Marketing Series
©1972 Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
ISBN 0-13-169383-2
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- You believe that you see everything around you, but you don't. This
book explains the components of an attitude, how an attitude is developed,
and how our attitudes dictate what we perceive around us, and ultimately,
how we are herded into our socially stratified classes and cultures.
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- Cognitive Dissonance as it applies toward one's own social status.
- The disparity between perceived behavioral expectations and real
behavioral expectations.
- Behaviors that indicate perception of social status.
- This paper quantifies and segments important audiences and is highly
applicable to Public Relations in that certain audiences are to be
avoided, or at least, the appearance that certain audiences are being
avoided should be maintained..
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Cultural Criminology
Jeff Ferrell; Clinton Sanders, [editors]
© 1995 Northeastern University Press
ISBN 1-55553-235-7
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- the mass media's responsibility for "engineering reality",
generating "cultural norms."
- Moral Entrepreneurs and media generated "moral panics."
- How the news media triggered a democratic shift to the right in
New York in the 1980's.
- The codependency of journalists and the"authorities."
- The public's gradual acceptance of fewer constitutional rights and
harsher treatment of crime suspects.
- Thesimplistic focus on symptoms of problems rather than the sources
of problems.
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- This paper draws upon the Eisenhower Commission and the Kerner Commission
on Civil Disorders to understand the perceptions of social problems
by civic leaders, particularly with regards to poverty and civil rights
policies. This paper follows several civil rights conflicts and during
the Vietnam War.
- "Traditional, middle-class morality places emphasis upon perceptions
which regard criminal behavior as the result of individual personal
failing, with blame resting and retribution focusing on the individual
committing the act."
- This paper actually tests the responses of people to alternative
explanations of crime, and develops categories of responses similar
to Homeostatic theory.
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- Individuals seek to validate their attitudes, opinions, and
behaviors.
- Individuals seek to make related attitudes, opinions, and behaviors
consistent.
- This paper quantifies the disparity of perception of public opinion
and actual public opinion. Similar to the question of status consistency
above. But this paper develops a four segment typology that may be
adaptable to the status consistency dissonance. The two papers
were composed in the same year, 1967.
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- This paper analyzes several approaches to attitude change and develops
a theory based upon "...a kind of balance of forces approach
in which the overloading of one type of factor gives rise to changes
designed to restore balance." The research draws some conclusions
about behavior that is alternative to attitude change. People have
alternatively:
- strengthened The original attitude and discounted The source
of The conflicting communication.
- Simply refusing to attend The message, or repressing or deverbalizing
it once The message is received.
- Compartmentalizing or fractionalizing The attitude so that The
inconsistencies are not so readily apparent.
- Some people can tolerate ambiguity and inconsistency, and even seek
it. Some have parlayed dissonance into a very lucrative career in
mass media.
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- Iwao tested a group of Jewish divinity students against a group
of gentiles and found by accident that there was a "delayed dissonance
arousal" affect. Special cultural cohesiveness differences between
Jews and Gentiles may have played a more significant role than predicted,
possibly resulting in a Pygmalion Paradox (A study becomes a self-fulfilling
prophesy). Nevertheless, Contradictory statements made from within
a group were tolerated more than those from another group.
- Thestudy works under The premises of some of Festinger's behaviors
for reducing dissonance
- Derogating The person who is in disagreement (Attacking The
messenger's credibility)
- Eliminate The disagreement
- by changing his or her own opinion.
- By attempting to influence The disagreeing person
- Convince him or her self that The evidence is unimportant.
- Seek additional social support for The original opinion
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- News is split into two functions that ultimately reinforce The authority
of The dominant social order.
- Reporting of threats to The social order as well as The resulting
efforts to restore order.
- Routine activities that reinforce The power of The dominant
social order.
- Instead of reflecting The increasingly greater diversity, The news
media has continued to provide homogenized, mainstream, and uniform
versions of reality that tend to avoid fundamental controversy.
- Thenews media consistently underplay petty, nonviolent, and white-collar
offenses while they overplay interpersonal, violent, and sexual crimes.
Invariably, media portrayals of criminals tend to be one-dimensional
reflections of The crimes commonly committed By The poor and The powerless
and not those crimes commonly committed By The rich and powerful.
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- Suddenly, you remember why you were angry and it had nothing to
do with The dog.
- "Theperson experiencing The dissonance may at times misattribute
his arousal to a source other than The discrepant cognitions responsible
for The arousal."
- People tend to misdirect their anger (dissonance) or frustration
toward The distant or defenseless in order to avoid confronting The
original source directly.
- There is a suggestion that a person actively seeks a target of dissonance
reduction from The immediate environment. The result is inexplicable
behavior such as road rage, or spousal or child abuse.
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- Theneglected middle ground between Interpersonal Communication and
Mass Communication.
- Touches on The channels of communication available to small groups
before The creation of The Internet and before cable television's
segmentation of The American Public.
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A summary of areas where Self Fulfilling
Prophecy, and Self-Defeating Prophecy has been detected. The author pushes
The envelope to The outer limits of perception in order to try and recognize
that which remains mostly unrecognizable to The rest of us, The habitualization
of our conduct to undesirable ends. |
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- This paper involves social status and comparison
- Precisely explains why certain audiences are to be avoided as stated
above. A good argument for at least maintaining The appearance that
a Public Relations campaign is deliberately avoiding a certain audience
for reasons of social stratification.
- This paper codifies audiences that are likely to be hostile toward
others and each other by explaining beliefs and value systems.
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- "Persons not only have preferences over states of The world,
but also over their beliefs about The state of The world."
- People tend not to think about long term consequences. Young
people tend not to save for their retirement or even think about their
retirement. Proof that we need a Social Security Program.
- People tend not to think about The safety of their current working
conditions or living conditions, so they avoid buying safety equipment,
- Persons prefer to think of themselves as nice people, and will lower
their opinion of people to which they inflict cruelty, whether The
cruelty was deliberate or not. This paper sheds some light on adolescent
social manipulation. How people act weird towards you because they
heard someone mock you.
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| Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People |
- This process requires selflessness and sacrifice of one's own dignity and pride.
- A simple approach to getting people to do what you want them to do.
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