Thirteen: Brand Ideology
The chapter opens with reference to a number of study about religious ideology, which sought to explore whether people conform to the principles of a religion faithfully or adapt their concept of religion to their pre-existing beliefs.
- Anecdotally, it is quite evident that people ascribe their personal beliefs to their religion - insisting that something they believe in is espoused by the religion when it is not and even when the opposite is indicated by the religion itself.
- A test presented by people with moral dilemmas and asked how they would behave, then later asked how a religious person (a priest or rabbi, or even Jesus or Mohammed themselves) would behave. For the vast majority of individuals, the two aligned perfectly - again, even when the behavior was not in line with the actual principles of the religion.
- Another test placed individuals in a fMRI to the medial prefrontal cortex (an area active during self-referential thinking) while being asked what they would do, what a religious figure would do, and what the average person would do in a given situation. The area active for religious figures as for considering oneself, and had far less activity when asked about the average person.
These studies lead to the conclusion that people do not follow a moral compass, but rig their moral compass to coincide with their emotional reactions. That is, a "religious" person is no more religious than anyone else - they are merely skilled at externalization and rationalization, selectively ignoring or adapting their ostensible religion to support whatever their gut feelings tell them is right.
With this in mind, we need to reconsider the notion that a person's purchasing behavior is attuned to their beliefs - it seems more likely that people are driven by baser desires, and any correlation to their claimed beliefs is a fabrication. It is also likely that marketers should consider whether their own beliefs about customers might be externalization of their own personal preferences.
The Influence of the Media
The author considers where people get their ideas. It used to be that people were strongly influenced by the media - most people read newspapers or watched television news, which filtered the days events to suggest what was important and what people ought to think about it. The influence of the media, however, is significantly diminished: people do not watch the news as much as they use social media and the internet, which has democratized and fragmented public opinion.
(EN: However, this is mitigated by the finding that there are few original thinkers online and most people in social media are merely reposting information they received from the traditional media - so it's likely the mass media still holds sway, but passes through the filter of social media, which selects what to pass along and likely changes it on the way.)
The author then considers the limitations to the power of the media: they must pander to their investors, their advertisers, and their audiences. Compare the content of the media today to that of fifty years ago, and it's much more melodramatic and slanted, with the "major" news media taking on the characteristics of tabloid journalism. The same is also true of the internet and social media: objective and balanced information gets less attention than what is salacious and incendiary.
He also mentions a few incidents where individuals created fictional news stories, simply attempting to get attention or create controversy. It is quite common for these gags to get lots of attention (tens of millions of shares and tweets) and in a few instances a fake story online has been picked up and reported as factual by the mass media.