Social Engineering Blogs

     It is shameful to say, but my home country South Korea’s suicide rate remains highest among members of the OECD and this is also apparent among students. In fact, suicide is the leading cause of death among South Korean teenagers. Statistics Korea (2014) reported that suicide was the number one cause of death among people aged 10 to 39. As teenagers are emotionally unstable and are susceptible to other people’s behavior, they are largely influenced by media coverage of suicides. The influence maximizes when the report is about a celebrity’s suicide. Consequence could be as serious as more teenagers committing suicides, following what they’ve seen in the media. Such increase of copycat suicides after a “widely publicized suicide” is called Werther effect.    Monthly total number of suicides (South Korea 2005-2008). Arrows indicate points of celebrity suicides.      There were seven cases of celebrity suicides from 2005 to 2008 in South Korea, and each one of them produced numerous follow-up reports on all kinds of media including newspaper and television. An analysis of subsequent suicides revealed that they definitely induced copycat suicides (Jang, Sung, Park, & Jeon, 2016). There was a great increase in the number of suicides, especially among people of the same gender, and many of them used the same method. The Korean Association for Suicide Prevention suggested a “recommendation for media reports on suicide” in 2004, yet substantial media coverage has still been reported. Stronger regulations are needed for better media reporting of suicides. For instance, specific depiction of the suicide method should be restricted. In addition to stricter measures to media coverage, there has to be an effective system within the society ready to cope with potential copycat suicides.References Jang, S. A., Sung, J. M., Park, J. Y., & Jeon, W. T. (2016). Copycat suicide induced by entertainment celebrity suicides in South Korea. Psychiatry investigation, 13(1), 74-81. Ji, N. J., Lee, W. Y., Noh, M. S., & Yip, P. S. (2014). The impact of indiscriminate media coverage of a celebrity suicide on a society with a high suicide rate: epidemiological findings on copycat suicides from South Korea. Journal of affective disorders, 156, 56-61. Korea, S. (2014). Cause of death statistics of Korea. Stack, S. (1987). Celebrities and suicide: A taxonomy and analysis, 1948-1983. American sociological review, 401-412.

Although this commercial was never actually used by Bridgestone as they did not feel it represented them appropriately, it racked up millions views on YouTube and ended up being their most viewed commercial. Worked out well for Bridgestone as they got free worldwide advertising!There are three ways we could explain why this commercial had so much success compared to perhaps more generic ads. Firstly of course; humour. There is a lot to be said about the effect humour has in advertising. Although humour may not always be universal because of language barriers for example, there are generally widely accepted topics that everyone can agree are amusing. This commercial plays with this idea as not one word is spoken but the video still shares an idea that everyone can understand. Sternthal and Craig (1973) explain how humorous messages attract attention, which distracts the audience and which in turn leads to a reduction in criticism and an increase in persuasion. Clearly this works in the commercials favour, as it would increase the likelihood for someone to buy Bridgestone tyres. Additionally, the fact that the ad is now in your mind means when you come to choose which new tyres you want for your car, the availability heuristic will ensure they are Bridgestone tyres.https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8b/Elm-diagram.jpg/406px-Elm-diagram.jpg Another way to look at the persuasive power of this ad is through the heuristic-systematic model of information processing (Chaiken, 1980), which explains how people receive and process persuasive messages. HSM allows both systematic and heuristic processing to occur; heuristic processing requires minimal cognitive effort on the part of the audience, basically like a mental short-cut whereas systematic processing requires more comprehensive and analytical thinking. Depending on the audience’s involvement in the message content, heuristic and systematic processing can occur independently or at the same time. Specifically, Lancendorfer, Atkin and Reece (2008) found that people processed ads with dogs more heuristically, and if people process more heuristically then ad liking increases. He explains that the presence of the dog in the ad suppresses the systematic processing and increases the heuristic processing, ultimately leading to an increased positive attitude towards the ad. Overall, the accepted belief is that animals in commercials instigate good feelings and subsequently a positive view of the brand. This process is similar to the elaboration-likelihood model (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986), where there are also two routes to process information, depending on how much cognitive effort the audience is willing to use. They will take the central route if a lot of cognitive effort is used, just like systematic processing.  Whereas the peripheral route will be taken when there is less cognitive effort such as in heuristic processing. This shows how the audience would be more persuaded by a commercial containing a dog as it requires less cognitive effort to process and is thus more pleasant for the viewer. I previously mentioned the use of humour in this commercial, but what really makes it that funny? An important aspect to look at is the use of anthropomorphism, which is the practice of giving human characteristics to non-human things such as animals or inanimate objects. A successful ad elicits a physiological response in the viewer, which makes them connect with the content subsequently making the message harder to forget. The commercial becomes relatable through the use of anthropomorphism, as even though they are animals the emotions they feel are human. Additionally, it was found that people actually prefer animals in advertising when they are presented anthropomorphically (Connel, 2013). As explained above, the use of animals already increases the commercial appeal and by anthropomorphising the dog it makes it even more persuasive.So basically if you want a successful commercial, include a dog acting like a human.References Chaiken, S. (1980). Heuristic versus systematic information processing and the use of source versus message cues in persuasion. Journal of personality and social psychology, 39(5), 752.Connell, P. (2013). The role of baseline physical similarity to humans in consumer responses to anthropomorphic animal images. Cass Knowledge.Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Macmillan.Lancendorfer, K. M., Atkin, J. L., & Reece, B. B. (2008). Animals in advertising: Love dogs? Love the ad!. Journal of Business Research, 61(5), 384-391.Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. In Communication and persuasion (pp. 1-24). Springer New York.Sternthal, B., & Craig, C. S. (1973). Humor in advertising. The Journal of Marketing, 12-18.

Have you ever thought about an amount of bad news you hear every day? Or maybe, could you remind yourself the last good news you hear about?https://www.flickr.com/photos/caribb/15418956100Latterly, every time I turn on TV, radio or open any newspaper I have low odds to come across such topics as crisis, shootings, or corruption. And unfortunately, every time it convinces me how terrifying this world is. A level of cortisol in my blood increases because it seems that evil is closer and closer. And finally, I’m wondering if any bigger good happens that is worthy to show during evening news. Of course, except for celebrities’ weddings, divorces, private life confessions or shocking faux pas in dress code. These issues find their place between one tragedy and another – I am supposed to be cool about it. However, still – isn’t true that bad news rush everyday headlines?In my opinion it is truth. And luckily for me there are scientists of the same point of view. Trussler and Soroka (2014) did a study wherein asked people to choose some articles from a news website to read in order to measure their eye-tracking. Of course, they hid a real purpose of their study. What shouldn’t be surprising in the context of this paper, most participants chose negative stories. Even though at the same time they declared that they preferred good news and discommended media that provided overfull negative facts. In another study that was focused on electrical activity in the brain’s cerebral cortex, it was also proved that people react stronger to negative stimuli, e.g. a mutilated face than positive or neutral one (Ito, Larsen, Smith,& Cacioppo, 1998). Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkenauer, and Vohs (2011) made a wide review of studies to answer the question whether bad is stronger than good. Trying to answer the above, they were searching for proofs in many fields including reacting to events, relationships, emotions, learning, memory, information processing , health etc. Evidences indicate that we respond strongly to bad things. In particular it applies to those bad news that retain in our unawareness even after an extinction of behavior changes that were caused by a negative stimuli.Michael J. Robinson (People & the Press American, 2007) went a step further and focused only on topics of news and prepared synthesis of 165 American surveys. He found that topics such a war, terrorism, disasters were in top 5 categories that had attracted people between 1986-2006. Robinson,M. J. (2007). The news interest index 1986–2007: Two decades of American news preferences/Part 1: Analyzing what news the public follows- and doesn’t follow.Indeed, there is no doubt that our news are overfull by pervasive mares. Why is that happening? Most studies mention a term “negativity bias”. To understand it, we need to start from the very beginning. Thus, in the beginning there was a fear that kept us alive. Being better responsive to dangerous situation, such as for example a meeting with wild animals, our odds to survive and pass genes increased significantly (Baumesiter et all., 2001). Unfortunately, times of our ancestors weren’t romantic and a rustle of leaves couldn’t be treated as a singing of nature and a doubtful entertainment was running away from a tiger.Daniel Kahneman (2011) a man who whole life studies psychology perspective of decision-making, as well as behavioral economics, also brings the theory of fast reacting for bad signs of predator in his book Thinking fast and slow (2001). Moreover, he writes about human “mechanism that is designed to give priority to bad news” and pay our attention that bad words such a crime or war (which we can hear in media everyday) attract our attention faster that happy ones. When we’ve already known our original “tendency to bad”, following Rozin and Royzman (2001) we can understand that negativity bias is “a principle that comes out in most situations, whereas negative events are more salient, potent, dominant in combinations, and generally efficacious than positive events.” Actually, I’ve also found another, a little different but still an interesting explanation. I would like to mention John Allen Paulos (1990), a famous American mathematician, who was tempted to write in his book Innumeracy that our focusing on bad news is a part of probability theory and was mostly related to people leaving in big cities, but it isn’t now. Why? According to statistics, unusual accidents aren’t very often. However, in population of millions of people, a probability that something bad will happen is higher. Even 1% becomes important and significant in ratio of an average city. Thus, the bigger population you live in, you are more aware of the occurred accidents. Nevertheless, times are changing and now when most people have access to news from all over the world, the prevalence of bad news increases for everyone. The truth is that no matter which theory we are more susceptible with regard to daily bad breaking news, we definitely spend more time focusing on them what is very profitable for media concerns. Of course, the solution is not to stop watching TV, listening to radio or using computer – however this idea probably would be quite useful for many of us not only in this case. Anyway, every day we should try to concentrate on a good that surrounds us. I believe that thanks to that, we will see the difference in our attitude to the life. And if someone asks you to remind yourself last news, please remember, it should be something good that made you smile.References:Trussler, M.,& Soroka, S. (2014). Consumer Demand for Cynical and Negative News Frames. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 19(3), 360–79.Ito, T. A., Larsen, J. T., Smith, N. K., & Cacioppo,J. T. (1998). Negative information weighs more heavily on the brain: The negativity bias in evaluative categorizations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 887-900.Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C.,&Vohs, K. D. (2001). Bad is stronger than good. Review of General Psychology, 5, 323-370.Robinson,M. J. (2007). The news interest index 1986–2007: Two decades of American news preferences/Part 1: Analyzing what news the public follows- and doesn’t follow. Retrieved November 12, 2016, from http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/old-assets/pdf/NewsInterest1986-2007.pdfKahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow (pp. 300-302). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Rozin, P., & Royzman, E. B. (2001). Negativity bias, negativity dominance, and contagion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5, 296-320.Paulos, J. A. (1990). Innumeracy: mathematical illiteracy and its consequences. Harmondsworth: Penguin.