Orchard's persuasion

Tutorial on Wednesday morning made me realised that i could use persuasion method to explain the theory behind persuading someone. Simply using the central route-cognitive response theory, and the peripheral route-heuristic. Probably Maslow's hierarchy of needs to explain why people buy branded bags imitations. The central route to persuasion means that under certain condition, people are motivated to pay attention as well as to think deep about the facts in the message. The peripheral route to persuasion would mean that people pay attention to characteristics that are superficial and appealing when first looked at. Maslow's hierarchy of needs include satisfying the basic needs such as food, water and shelter, security needs, belongness and love needs, esteem needs and lastly, self actualisation.



it has been a puzzling thought that i have carried in my mind for a long time and finally, social psych provided me the official names and theories to it.

My mom and I would walk the Orchard area when it's holiday for me. Of course, we would walk pass the Orchard underground tunnel that will lead us to either Marriot Hotel, Wheelock, Isetan or Tangs...

Along the Orchard tunnel, we will often see people bustling to and fro with some flyers distributors. But, out of the intertwining flow, you will see a barrier that will cause the flow of human 'water' to be especially squeezy at the area near the barrier.

Barrier here would mean a whole lot of aunties crowding at a corner buying imitations of branded goods such as the wallets and purses. i do see LV, guess? and other sorts. It's not legally sold i am sure, because they were ransacking for more nicer looking ones IN A LUGGUAGE BAG! The person selling it looked, according to heuristic biasness, like he was from China. SO, using representative heuristics, we often associate China with imitation and unsafe products. I not trying to smear the reputation of China chinese or trying to do anything bad but...it's a fact...:D

of course, armed with persuasions, i used the central route to change the attitude of my mom's. i told my mom that they are imitations and even if it is real, it could not possibly be sold at such area, in a lugguage bags with the shifty eyes of the vendor. People selling stuff like these would be caught by the police and whoever buys them, violate the law on purpose. So i broke the whole thing down to let my mom think and analyse, and instilled the 'fear' in her.

So why are aunties buying imitations?? What's more at Orchard Tunnel?

First of all, advertisments of branded goods by famous celebrities appeals to our cognitive peripherally, that if you have a branded good, you are cool, you will be like by your friends and you will be part of the higher social class.The peripheral route to persuasion- heuristic persuasion or the 'soft sell' refers to using images, emotions, or values to sell.

MOtivated,one would want to have it for themself because that will boost your self-esteem. WIth self-esteem, you will strive for the next need-self actualisation.

but because those aunties cant afford that expensive luxury, they then settle for the lesser.

i thought the aunties would do better without these luxury because that would make them feel more guilty by buying imitations.

Older women strikes!

ST, March 14, 2008

Tycoon's wife charged with slapping SIA girl.

woohoo! can we say this is a tabloid, or gossips women would gather together to discuss and curse the old wife of tycoon's? (yes, another schema for women being the nose parker.)

Automatic thinking comes along when the accessibility( ease which schemas can be brought to mind easily) of women being nosy, full of jealous, and overbearing are easy to surface on our minds. NOw with this news paper article, it primes and therefore triggers us to think deeper, whether our concept of women is really that unchangeable? Is women in our mind that bad an image!?
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THere may be exceptions where some women are really nice and not bear grudges against those who hurt them, but i guess social psychology let me understand one thing. Although sexism is no longer that prominent, the stereotype that we had before might somehow influence how we think. Implicit intergroup bias, the distorted judgements about members of a group based on a stereotype, which can occur without the person's awareness, explains what i meant.

It could be the evolution theory that affects us. What was held steadfast would still exist in the modern society now. Examples would be women are still weaker than man, african-americans are still biased against as compared to the whites and etc.

The article says this, which contribute even more to the implicit intergroup biasness:

'Tan Siew Hoon, 61, was taken to court a week after she settled a civil claim by Ms Then Jiamin, 25, with an unspecified payout.'

obviously, the age element stated in the newspaper triggered the available heuristic in people that old women had some grudges against younger and prettier women.

It may be true that older women are 'jealous' of those pretty girls but havent it occur to us that those old women had their glorious times before?! They were those pretty girls in "da club" before.

That somehow triggered my available heuristics about older women being barred from going into the clubs. haha..yes those people must be thinking...it's disgusting for old women tobe in,but for that case...i stand by with the older women.

However, after thinking 'socialogically', We cant blame 61 yr old Tan because she was feeling insecure. Though she could inherit the large amount of money from the tycoon husband, i guess ultimately, women would love the feeling of being attended to.

" she also claimed that after the alleged assault, Tan asked her loudly: ' why are you talking to my husband?'"

That double confirms that she's 'jealous' because she's scared that her husband, like all typical men, would succumb to beauty.

However, we should sympathise women in general because beauty is short-lived.

Below is how she looks like....as to how to interpret her case depends on how u look and listen.

Adios

MAS SELAMAT WINS BLAME GAME!

INSIGHT S9, ST, Saturday, March 15 2008

Mas Selamat wins in blame game

" ... NO, wait... within sight of some minister, who sits at home with a huge bank of television screens, channel-surfing so that he knows everything that goes on here -......There's a certain gleefulness i detect on blogs and chatrooms in pointing out how Singapore's much-vaunted and supposedly 'all-seeing and all-knowing' Government has been blind-sided and tripped up by a limping terrorist's ability to walk out of a secure facility that one int'l report i cam across described as Guantanamo Bay."


We can see that Singaporeans are rather active in the cyber world, speaking their minds without much thought. I supposed that the schema they have was that Government is almighty and it would be so impossible that Mas Selamat would escape, except their comments on net.

When i first read it, i thought the government was rather incompetent when such a short and unkept person would actually get out of the hands of the superior government. However, from the social psychological perspective, the question of why people jumping at conclusions that quickly soon reveals.

So, the foremost question we should be asking is, why would all Singaporeans see government as the almighty? Government although is supposed to be the structure, the body that controls and feed the ultimate accurate information to the public, they are afterall, humans because it's not machines at work. I am sure that humans make error. Those comments made on net showed that they made the Fundamental Attribution Error, where according to Social Psychology Alive book, the tendency to overestimate the extent to which a person's behavoir is due to internal, dispositional factors and to underestimate the role of situational factors. Yes, it's perculiar that Mas Selamat escaped when there's hundred of eyes on him but, i guess it's not due to any internal factors such as policemen being slackers, spy for Osama, same fate as Mas S. etc. But rather, situational factors like Mas S. is good at escaping as said by the police, changing shifts of policemen that result in lower attention, hunger and therefore, a slip of attention....

I don't think we should blame on the efficiency of the government. I believe that government in this case cannot take up the whole responsibility in rap of the policemen who lost Mas S. because we must take into account of the situational factors which were unforeseen. The policemen gave their best i'm sure and besides, Singapore is that small and with large amount of money pumped into the military sector, the militants are bound to find Mas S. in no time. Even if he were to limp into Malaysia, with the diplomatic ties that tight, Malysia will lend its helping hands. In Just World Theory, it is said as a defensive attribution where people assume that bad event will happen to evil people and the good will reward the good people. There will be a time when the policemen use a smart strategy in nailing Mas S. down gloriously and Mas Selamat will get his desserts. Well, in fact, the government was indirectly made the victim of those vile tongues. It may be said that the victim had it coming due to their lack of attention and so on but as the saying goes, Good will triumph Evil( Mas Selamat and the underminers).

What the Government is doing now is reparative work. Such as getting more resources to fix deficiencies and launching manhunt, shall seal those net vipers' lips because what those detractors can do were just finger-pointing and damaging the confidence and spirit and effort of the National Service men in hunting down. Instead, we should not have any bystander effect, where the chance of intervening into or even concerning the effort decreases in case of emergency such as the time in hunting down is longer than expected or Mas S. attacks people, as the number of bystander increases, especially in Singapore.

Singaporeans are educated in such a way that they strive for the better. In this event of losing Mas S., government as said by others, SHOULD NOT have let that happened because they supposedly have all the best systems locked onto Mas S and policemen at their best performances. When Government does something good such as helping the poor, citizens regard that as the job of the Government and they should do it with no complaints.


Citizens expected more bonus from the government and they believe that government should continue to do that. I saw this word in The Straits Time before this article and they had this word 'Beware of the Red Packets', something that has to do with bonus giving from the government because of the revenue earned from the GST 7%. i guess Singaporeans expected too much from the government when they are doing good. When the government does something, which everyone didn't like, they blame government for making decision before showing off their democratic actions.


That is related to selective information processing, which we can also call the cock-tail phenomenon. According to 'Social Psychology Alive', Selective Information Processing means that we tend to select what we want to attend to. What stereotypes we have can guide our attention as well as interpretation of behaviour. What is seemed 'unglam' would be criticized and our schema or can we say 'stigma' of the government is so strong that a fair bit of mistake would throw the government into a bad light. I'm sure that Government is doing their best as a granny for the state.