Camilla Dallerup Celebrity Out Of There

So Camilla Dallerup is the first to bottle out of I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here. I am a bit suprised that she didn't expect food to be in short supply after all the series has been going for Seven Years. Doesn't she watch the telly?

Mind you the psychological melting pot that is IACGMOOH works in mysterious ways. What if she sensed a confrontation to her ego, what if she sensed the potential for personal change. Avoiding these things has to be rationalised somehow.

So, when her agent called was Camilla Dallerup gullible in accepting the offer to star in the show?

No doubt the real reason will come out in her celebrity block busting autobiography at some point. I can't wait...yawn....

Spotting A Bare Faced Lie

People use lies to deceive and manipulate others So the best way of not being duped is to know when people are being honest. But is there a sure fire way of making sure people are being honest?

Dr Stefan Fafinski has set up honestylab.com in an attempt to apply science to that most subjective of human pastimes...deciding if someone is telling the truth.

Can it be done though? Uncovering the truth has vexed the layman and the philosopher for thousands of years. Pontious Pilate posed the question What is Truth to the Pharisees at the trial of Jesus Christ.

There isthe constant possibility of deception in our attempts to rationalise events. Referring to the ideas of Robert Trivers, Steven Pinker (2002:263-264) says that

“Every human relationship…has a distinct psychology forged by a pattern of converging and diverging interests” adding that we “suppress evidence that we are not as beneficent or competent as we would like to think”

Trivers (1976) explains this phenomenon in the following way:

“If…deceit is fundamental to animal communication, then there must be strong selection to spot deception and this ought, in turn, to select for a degree of self-deception, rendering some facts and motives unconscious so as not to betray…the deception being practised. Thus the conventional view that natural selection favours nervous systems which produce ever more accurate images of the world must be a very naïve view of mental evolution”

So can we ever spot the double bluff? Is deception just a look in the face or does it also have something to do with the situation and the pattern of events that have led up to the deceptive act.

Fafinski's research is interesting. It is only one part of the story. Therefore it can never honestly claim to be the truth about honesty.

Self-help makes you feel worse

via news.bbc.co.uk

So here is the scientific argument that 'Self Help' might easily become 'Self Delusion'.The appeal of mantras that you can 'be whoever you want to be' and 'do what whatever you want to do' are certainly appealing.

Many therapeutic, counselling and advisory approaches do a fantastic job of helping people recognise self imposed limitations on their ambitions. This is invariably achieved through helping the 'client' notice what is missing or ignored from their mental map of the world and then guiding them in drawing upon their often undervalued resources and potential.

Much of this approach is founded upon a philosophy that manifests itself through Positive Psychology a type of psychology that affirms the good in the situation and the capability of the individual.

This is all well and good, and psychologically we have 'bad' feelings because of their evolutionary benefit. They help us recognise the 'reality' of situations and they protect us from engaging in unnecessarily risky behaviours. Imagine acting on the song lyrics 'I believe I can fly...believe I can touch the sky..." when standing on a cliff top. The result of such an attempt would rapidly confront you with ontological reality of gravity, velocity and mass.

Perhaps the most famous positive thinker was King Canute who sincerely believed he could stop the tide coming in!





The message is clear. Don't be gullible and believe everything you read from a blogging 'Life Hack'. Remain sceptical of their claims, and be sure that you check that they advise what they advise for 'your' benefit and not theirs!

Posted via web from Gullibimundi

Cotton Wool Society The Gullibility Of Health and Safety Regulations

As we approach the 35th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing on the 20th July it brings home the fact that a significant number of human achievements have been achieved at great risk. Would the moon landings in 1969 have been achieved in a health and safety culture? Would the risks of the Apollo programme have been undertaken in a cotton wool society? What has also come to light is a previously unknown snippet of Apollo 11 radio traffic reveals that Buzz Aldrin's initial words to Neil Armstrong were 'Mind The Step'

We now know that these words of caution inspired the burgeoning Health and Safety industry so that today we have an invisible hordes of bureaucrats and hand wringing worriers increasing the burden of Health and Safety legislation in our schools.

The arguments that explain the socially debilitating impact of 'cotton wool rules makers' are well known. What a job that must be! Presumably these people have been carefully selected for their positions by psycho metrically testing for neurotic predispositions and an overly fertile imaginations that are capable of imagining every possible negative consequence of every possible positive action.

Who is holding these people to account for the destructive educative consequences of their actions? Someone should be pointing out the 'risks' to individuals and society of their rule making and suing them accordingly!The 'Worry Culture' is endemic.

On my commute to work yesterday I had to listen to a woman bragging, yes bragging! to her friend that she 'was that obsessive parent', so obsessively concerned about her child's safety that 30 minutes after taking her daughter to her friends house to play she drove back 'just to check she was alright'

Any educator will explain the value of Experiential Learning. This is how we learn! This is how we develop social relationships. Now, how about this for a thought...what if aspects of youth on youth violence are nothing to do with economics and popular culture? What if the increased violence in our society is actually driven by a need to experience risk? What if our molly coddled society is actually breeding the violent and high risk situations it seeks to prevent! Do you agree?

On a more mundane level the same applies to business. How many people work in organisations where exciting new ideas are crushed because somebody has 'seen' (for that read imagined) a host of potential pitfalls. These are the businesses that don't learn how to productively manage the experience of risk because risk never happens.

Imagine...35 years ago, NASA development meeting.

Person A "I think we should go for Moon landing"

Person B "Don't you realise there's a chance that the lunar module might crash or not be able to take off from the moon and the astronauts will die"

Person A "Oh I'd not thought of that, we'd better no do it"

Person B "Great!...now what do you reckon to my design for my new paper aeroplane?"

Person A "Make sure we have our safety goggles on before you chuck that thing around the office"

Person B "Don't worry I'll be posting paper plane evasive manoeuvre procedures on the notice board in advance for you all to read. Be careful though, don't get too close to the notice board in case you strain your eyes, or get really close and bump your nose"

Person A "I need to check with Health and Safety that the publication of Health and Safety notices isn't damaging our Health and Safety by increasing stress levels, so just hold back on the whole paper plane thing until we're sure its safe to proceed"

Person B "OK"

She Should Have Had 'Gullible' Tatooed On Her Forehead

image credit Daily Telegraph












There are several factors involved with gullibility. One is not thinking through the consequences of one's choices and decisions, another is placing yourself in vulnerable situations that are in the control of unscrupulous people.

Now you may think I'm being harsh when I describe Kimberley Vlaeminck as gullible. However what on earth was going through this pretty girl's mind?

I can remember camping in the South of France and watching travelling tatooists working the bars and beaches. Clearly relying on the 'holiday spirit'of prospects so that they would take advantage of their relaxed and uncritical situation.

That this young woman fell asleep as she had the face art done is surely a metaphor for an uncritical mind. The full story can be read here 56 Stars later

Am I Gullible If I Believe In Luck?

Do good and bad things happen in your life because of Luck? Aren't we being gullible if we think we can change our luck by using charms, colours, numbers, sequences and the like in an attempt to alter destiny.

Was the lady who threw away her mother's mattress containing $1million dollars badly organised, ill informed or just unlucky?

Were the additional 42 people who have just been diagnosed with Swine Flu in Britain simply unfortunate?

Was the man who found a dead mouse in his loaf of bread unlucky too?

Why is it that we attribute things we can't control to a lack of luck. Why do we spend so much time and energy on trying to find out How To Attract Good Luck and Fortune into our lives

Surely things just ARE. Aren't they? As Marcus Aurelius said "How ridiculous and how strange to be surprised at anything which happens in life!"

Taking Care of Susan

Reading the runes I'd say that the pressure on lovely and talented Susan Boyle to live up to expectations was self evident in her demenour on the Britain's Got Talent Final.

The news that she has been taken into clinic is yet another example of the use of language to imply that Susan is somehow 'mentally shaky'. This is unfair. Anyone who has had to Reframe the context of their life and their sense of identity knows that this is a challenging and often up-setting experience.

I would also not be suprised in the slightest if the Britain's Got Talent production took and executive decision to take some of the pressure off Susan by massaging the results. This of course is pure speculation, and it could have been a weird sort of 'care effect' by the voting public to refrain from voting to protect their heroine.

Thinking like this is also unfair to Diversity, who I thought were awesome on the night. I was one of the first people to Stumble their Youtube on April 26th 2009. So its very likely that Diversity won outright fair and square.

This just goes to show how the mind works in lots of different situations. Are we gullible in thinking that rocketing to international fame wouldn't cause Susan to need a massive re-think about what is happening to her? Are we gullible in thinking that the type of super hype pressure cooker that is Britains Got Talent won't turn grown men and kids to tears? Are we gullible in thinking that we don't 'fill in the gaps' and create conspiracy theories the instant we only have partial information.

Susan Boyle deserves every ounce of success. She deserves some well earned rest, and she deserves to be taken care of not only by the entertainment industry but by the the Media and the public. Other wise every single one of us deserve to be accused of taking advantage of another human being.

How appropriate that she does a cover of the Rolling Stones Wild Horses. She's certainly riding them!

Madeleine McCann Hope Belief Expectations and Certainty

The news is full of a new suspect in the search for Madeleine McCann today. It's tempting to believe that the private investigators 'have got something' here. There's no smoke without fire, or so we like to think. In the abscence of information its seems natural to want to fill the gap as soon as possible. To make things fit.

I've just spent 5 minutes scouring the photo-fit and the photo of convicted paedophile Raymond Hewitt looking for similarities. That's what we do with information when we start to loose our objectivity. We seek out information that supports our hunches and find increasingly sophisticated ways of denying any disconfirming evidence.

Of course the detectives are saying its just one of many lines of enquiry. Lets hope, unlike the original Portugeuse investigator they are able to resist acting on hope belief and only seeing things that confirm their expectations.

Then there are the news papers and news sites. Perhaps editors have decided we have had our fill of outrageous British MP expense claims and we need a change. Is this is a 'none' story introduced to 'mix it up' and drive flagging sales and visits because of 'sleaze burn-out'.

Salient Advertising and the Album Cover

The Manic Street Preachers have given us case study in gullibility with the release of their new album and its controversial cover. As Bandler and Grinder say "The meaning of communication is the way it is received" and when I look at that cover I associate it with a young female victim of violent crime, which disturbs me because I then start to wonder about the context of how it might have happened. I then switch to wondering if using such an image is an appropriate image to represent an entertainment product.

There are several possible explanations for what is going off here.Is what the Manic Street Preachers do about entertainment or art? If you believe its entertainment then no doubt the use of an image that risks being construed as violent is pretty naive. I don't think the Manic Street Preachers are naive. If you believe what they do is art then perhaps the reason for using the artwork on the cover of the Journal For Plague Lovers album is justified from a post-modern standpoint. i.e. all opinions are equally valid, there is no absolute right or wrong, art is about raising controversial and difficult issues and provoking us to think about them. The supermarket managers who have covered up the image for sale clearly believe selling albums is not about art.

Interesting that the group don't claim 'their art' as the reason for using the image. They profess innocence. "We just thought it was a beautiful painting...It is her brushwork...if you're familiar with her work, there's a lot of ochres and browns and reds and browns...We just saw a much more modern version of Lucian Freud-esque brushstrokes"

Either the Manics are gullible or they think that we are. The use of Salience is a familiar device to anyone in the business of communication. Remember the Benneton adverts and the dying Aids victim?





Salience is used to 'cut through' the background noise in our social world, and the Manics or their advisors were clearly aware that using a controversial image would attract attention (I'm blogging about it for goodness sake!). Perhaps the truth of their point of view is given in their supposed denial when they say "perhaps people are looking for us to be more provocative than we are being" Frequently the truth of meaning is the direct opposite of what is said. In other words they sub-consciously reveal that they are being provocative. Listen for it next time you hear someone say things like "You are just being awkard", or "You are clearly devious"...what are they really saying? This is classic Projection which is a "a defense mechanism where a person's personal attributes, unacceptable or unwanted thoughts, and/or emotions are ascribed onto another person or people.(Wikipedia 2009)

In a triumphant 'I'm gullible or I hope you are' statement James Dean Bradfield claims "It is bizarre that supermarkets actually think that that's going to impinge on anyone's psyche."

Well the retailers are sensitive because they know that's exactly what they do for a day job! We are all in the business of changing minds and social influence.Big business does it for a living. Marketers call it Positioning - The Battle for Your Mind. If there was no chance that the album cover would 'impinge on someone's psyche' why the hell do we have album covers in the first place? Why aren't they all sold in plain covers? Why invest the money in the artwork? Why have meetings to decide what the album artwork should be? Album covers are powerful and unduring pieces of communication. Don't believe me? OK. Don't think about Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album cover...now tell me what happened!

If it doesn't matter and it doesn't have any effect Mr Bradfield why are you bothered about the supermarkets covering it up?

Arsenal Fan Suicide - The Ultimate Expression of Brand Loyalty?

image credit Wigo











The unfortunate suicide of a Kenyan Arsenal Soccer Club Fanfollowing their defeat to Manchester United brings home the power of club loyalty and the strength of identity association with somebody's favourite team.

As the wonderful character and ex-Liverpool team manager Bill Shankly (dec) said.

“Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it's much more serious than that.”

Garry Adamson, Warwick Jones, and Alan Tapp wrote a fascinating article in Database Marketing & Customer Strategy (2006 Vol 13,2) Titled From CRM to FRM: Applying CRM in the Football Industry.

In the article they remark that football fans have a 'perverse loyalty and fanaticism'. Extreme behaviour in relation to any brand not just a sports team is not unheard of. There is the example of the Gucci fanatic who had the company name tattooed on his neck, regretting the move when his fashion tastes changed and he fell out of love with the fashion house.

Adamson, Jones and Tapp, provide some interesting charactersiations of 'fan types'

The temporary fan
The local fan
The devoted fan (remains loyal despite time and geographic boundaries)
The fanatical fan (where one other source of identity apart from the team exists)
Dysfunctional fan (there main source of self-identification comes from team support)

This latter category includes hooligans and it would also seem to include Suleiman Omondi. The fanaticism of fans cannot go understated as the quote from R Taylor in a 1998 radio interview on the BBCs Nicky Campbell show reveals:

"No one has their ashes scattered down the aisle of TESCO" No amount of BOGOFs, Club Points and Two for ones could ever create that sort of loyalty!

The intimacy of personal association with a teams performance often resents the commercialisation of the club. Fans bask in the reflected glory of success, and agonise in the on-going struggles (these fans are called Under Doggers)One thing is for sure, fans are not merely customers they express a loyalty to the brand that goes far beyond that seen by the super rich players that prance and preen on the pitch.

Next time the manager asks a player them to 'die for the shirt and his team mates' how many would be really willing to consider that option I wonder. Football Clubs would be gullible to underestimate the social influence of their brands.

A Kick In The Nuts For Harsh Torture Techniques

You might ask why is torture used? or perhaps why is torture good? why is torture bad? and even why is tirture wrong?

President Obama has said that no officials will be held to account for for harsh torture techniques This is a position that has dismayed some campaigners Nevertheless Barack Obama has made a stand and taken action to ban these techniques in future and he should be applauded for it.

Presumably by creating the category 'Harsh Torture Techniques' this means there is a category called 'Soft Torture Techniques' and that somewhere there is an official memo which defines what these are. Is it the distinction between phsyical harm and psychological harm? Perhaps not; especially if psychological distress results in physical symptoms.

Is that why 'torture by threat of nasty insect' has been banned I wonder? I guess torture is all about playing on someone's fears. So perhaps a definition of 'harsh' torture is all about techniques that induce a fear of being killed and 'soft' torture is fear of anything else that you fear, such as being tickled, or eating lemon meringue pie?

The ultimate 'soft' torture would have to be 'phobaphobia' or 'fear of fear' because as we all know 'we have nothing to fear except fear itself'. In which case no government aides need ever be prosecuted for torture because the prisoners could simply 'scare themselves sh@*tless' and confess everything without direct intervention! (Wow can this idea be patented I wonder)

Physical pain is scary and debilitating though and that's why torturers have used it rather than the psychological techniques on their own. I knew someone who worked in the British Territorial Army and as a psycholgist they specialised in 'resistance to interogation techniques'. I was fascinated to know the psych-methods they used for unlocking the prisoners mind and mouth and was keen to hear more...well, they told me...'they all talk when you kick 'em in the nuts'!

This leaves us with 'the comfy chair'. So let me torture you with laughter as you watch this classic from Monty Python.



Read More:
Abuse Isn't Torture If a Doctor Is There
2000 photos of prisoner abuse to be released April 29th 20009

The Jade Goody Effect

There can be no disputing that Jade has had huge social influence. Her main legacy will of course be the impact she has had on the number of women ensuring they are checked for cervical cancer. As many people are aware, increases of more between 20% -40% in the number of women getting screened have been reported.

That fact certainly tells something about the 'what' of Jade Goody's influence. The Jade Goody Effect. She has also positively influenced people in other ways too. These other 'whats', such as her commitment to the welfare of her children, her confidence in making the best of the opportunities she was given, and the strength (some might say naivete, or ignorance) to speak as she found.

The intriguing aspect of the Jade Goody Effect is 'how' it worked and in some cases continues to work, and some ideas from social psychology throw some light on this.

The first is the notion of 'heuristics', the rules of thumb that we use to guide our behaviours. One type of rule of thumb has the name 'the availability heuristic'. This describes the way in which our awareness and familiarity of an event good or bad causes us to think that it is more likely to happen to us. This is why lottery companies tell us about winners, slot machines make a loud noise when they pay out, terrorists commit 'spectaculars' and so on. Jade certainly made her health experience available.

The second is the notion of 'authority' Conventionally this refers to our deference to people who have symbols and signs of authority, such as scientists and doctors with their white coats, badges of rank like titles, expensive cars, emblems, and of course celebrity.

For a significant number of people Jade was an 'authority'. Somebody who showed them that its OK to express themselves plainly, its OK to have a straightforward view of often complicated affairs, and its OK to do things your way without having to meet the expectations of what other people think is the 'right and proper way'.

Of course, there have been controversies. Some people have said these were the result of Jades ignorance and lack of education. I'd like to think of her ignorance not in the sense of its 'uncouth' meaning, but in the sense of 'un-knowing' or not knowing any better. For many this too is an appealing aspect of the Jade Goody Effect. I think Mark Twain summed up this aspect of Jade's appeal with the following quote.

"Education is the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty"

I hope the people who thought they were better than Jade ponder on this quote.

In the end we are talking about a life cut short. A person and a fellow human being. And I think that the following quotes by George Bernard Shaw give cause for reflection.

"Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about? They are more true: they are the only things that are true." George Bernard Shaw, Candida (1898) act 1

"What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesn't come every day." George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion, Act 2

Read More:
Michael Parkinson suggests that Jade Goody was ignorant and puerile and what we're left with is a woman who came to represent all that's paltry and wretched about Britain today...she was brought up on a sink estate, as a child came to know drugs and crime, was barely educated
In response to Parkinson's analysis on the 8th April 2009 Bishop Jonathon Blake defended Jade Goody's memory by refering to her inherent gifts and untutored intelligence

Are We Being Hypnotised About Jacqui Smith

image credit The Daily Telegraph










Its easy to see how Jacqui Smith has developed a Thousand Yard Stare as she contemplates seeing her career being shot to pieces as a result of the latest faux pas involving her expenses claim for pay per view porn films.

But hold on. Are we being placed in a trance too by the skilful words of Conservative former shadow home secretary David Davis who tells us that "there would be little sympathy for Ms Smith"

He said: "I don't call for people to go unless I think there is absolutely a smoking gun, but I just do think in this circumstance the sympathy for her will be even less than it otherwise would have been because she is not that good at her job."

After reading the work of social influence experts Kevin Hogan and Bob Cialdini, the words highlighted in the previous sentence appear to be subtle instructions to the listener. There are three potential uses of hypnotic language patterns in his speech.

1. Apparently we ignore the word 'don't' and only take in what in what follows because of its continuous use in our childhood to the extent that we react to its use and do what what we are told not to do. Don't believe me?

2. When we are told to 'imagine' or 'think' we are being instructed to hold in our minds what follows. Any thought placed in our minds is a form of hypnosis. Think about it.

3. The use of the word 'because' and what follows it is known as a placebic response. We assume that anything that follows the word 'because' is a justifiable reason. Because of this its taken as true.

To think that politicians are not unaware of persuasive language use is gullibility

Am I Gullible If I Believe In God?

Now if ever there was a commercial blunder it has to be down to God!

The most powerful (omnipotent) and well known (omnipresent) brand in the universe. Anybody who who has been on a Marketing 101 course will tell you that protecting your intellectual property (omniscience)is critical.

Well the guys at Vevivi have taken full advantage of God's oversight and produced a range of clothing that any self respecting Atheist would look 'so last millennium' without.

If it wasn't for blogging's Eye of Providence,Mary Ann I would never have got to hear about this. Thanks Mary Ann! Readers should pop over to her blog now for another observation about life the universe and everything.

If you 'get' the T shirt, does that mean you 'get' the philosophy too? Sure we are taught religion and science, and rarely are we taught what the real debate is about. That's probably because its clouded (apols to any angels reading) by philosophical jargon.

Fundamentally (apologies to any religious zealots reading) the discussion hinges on what we believe is 'real' (Our Ontology) and how we decide what is true(Our Epistemology) 9 times out of 10 people will have an argument about stuff without first sorting out where people stand on these matters. Which in turn means arguments just go round in circles (not 'real' circles of course, just imaginary ones)This is the whole gig about Metaphysics i.e. do non physical things exist?

Basically there is one major fault line, between Realists and Idealists. Whether you consider things to physically exist or whether they are made up in your head. So, although I have never seen with my own eyes, touched, or smelled any of Vevivi's T shirts I do believe they physically exist. This means I have a Realist Ontology and an Idealist Epistemology. (I regard the photos as proof of their existence, which means I am relying on Testimony). This, you will probably realise is spookily like another famous story you may have heard involving a guy with long hair and a beard! By deciding your 'O'& 'E' you can work out where you stand regarding any of the four permutations. Which in turn explains why you agree or disagree with someone on matters like 'does God exist'.

If you have a idealist ontology and an idealist epistemology everything is made up in your head. Natural scientists don't go along with this and that's why many of them are atheists because you can't physically prove God exists.

Now just because he can't be seen, touched, or smelled doesn't mean that the 'idea' of God doesn't have psychological value for human beings. Although philosophers like Ken Wilber try and integrate all approaches. There is a physical world and a spiritual world and we can exist in both.

What is your 'O&E'?


Read More:
How Your Brain Creates God

The Madness Of Releasing The Yorkshire Ripper

The prospect that The Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe might be considered for release because in the opinion of clinical psychologists 'he no longer represents a threat' is alarming.

In the language of social influence this is a Fundamental Attribution Error and society would be really gullible if they acted on the advice the clinicians.

We shouldn't be susceptible to what is the psychological equivalent of 'Captainitis' where because these people have the titles & trappings of their profession we go along with everything they say. As cognitive psychlogists they are evidently locked in their own 'psychic prisons'.

The Yorkshire Ripper will obviously from a cognitive and personality point of view appear as 'No Threat' because the situation he is in is a controlled medical environment!

The point is that there is no way of predicting at all if in a free natural environment he will not revert to his killing behaviors. We do have chilling past evidence though that his situation provided the platform for his behaviour. Retired Detective Chief Superintendent Chris Gregg is right to be staggered at the prospect.

So what do these cognitive scientists suggest? Gathering empirical evidence? Let this mass murderer out into a normal environment and see what happens? A normal environment for Peter Sutcliffe will probably mean that he returns to his normal behaviour.

Situations affect behaviour Don't believe me? Take your drum kit down to the library and start playing it, then tell me what happens.

Do you think this serial killer should be released on the recommendation of prison psychologists? Let me know.

Read more:
Yorkshire Ripper Fit To Be Freed
Peter Sutcliffe
Exploring Lunatic Asylums
Ripper To Be Freed From Broadmoor

Lies, Deception and The Selfish Meme

image credit Walt Disney

I'm reading Richard Dawkins book The Selfish Gene for the first time. I have never read Pinnochio.

On page 63 of the 30th Anniversary edition of The Selfish Gene (OUP) he says...

"A survival machine may be said to have communicated another one when it influences the behaviour or the state of its nervous system". This got me thinking about general social situations and current affairs like the Banking fiasco and how unscrupulous people are hell bent on making sure their version of events survive.

I have also recently read Steven Pinker's book The Blank Slate in which he explains that:

"Every human relationship…has a distinct psychology forged by a pattern of converging and diverging interests" adding that we "suppress evidence that we are not as beneficent or competent as we would like to think"

In other words if we think we've been gullible because we haven't spotted someone lying or decieving us then we should be kinder to ourselves because we are so susceptible to the power and skill of a deciever.

Robert Trivers suggests that:

“If…deceit is fundamental to animal communication, then there must be strong selection to spot deception and this ought, in turn, to select for a degree of self-deception, rendering some facts and motives unconscious so as not to betray…the deception being practised. Thus the conventional view that natural selection favours nervous systems which produce ever more accurate images of the world must be a very naïve view of mental evolution”


Woah!! our nervous systems (brains and cognitions) are NOT about creating the truth and there is survival benefit in telling lies.

Dawkins points out (p64) that many animals are in the business of deception from butterflies to angler fish, glow worms to hover-flies. With the Bankers in mind (and of course this applies to any deciever in any social situation), Dawkins then makes the precient remark that:

"Whenever a communication system evolves there is always the danger that some will exploit the system for their own ends...we must expect lies and deceit and selfish exploitation of communication to arise whenever the interests of the genes of different individuals diverge...we must even expect children to decieve their parents, that husbands will cheat on their wives and that brother will lie to brother"

Powerful ‘mind-sets’ (the rich, the bully, the narcissist) make sense of and speak of the world in a particular way. This could be described as the ‘selfish meme’ It resists changes that might be made to a direction it didn’t want to go. Change is not about rational actors but rationalising people. These rationalisations (theories for success and of causes and effects) are expressed as words that grow into discourses, which in turn inhabit the world of social influence, a world in which rival versions of the truth seek to survive longer than their adversaries by any means they can in order to protect the psychological integrity of the individual who cares for them.

The only evolutionary development human's needed now is for lying genes to influence the size of someone's nose just like Pinnochio. Just imagine...never being duped again, I could justify my investment in my wide screen TV because of its ability to cope with 'Nasal Extensiveness'seen in Political Broadcasts and in Treasury Committee hearings :)

The Social Psychology of Jade Goody's Health

So how do we rationalise our feelings given the sad news that Jade's illness has progressed? The cost of celebrity means that the private and the public become fused together, and you and I become fused to the celebrity. The cost to the celebrity is perpetual limelight regardless of the circumstances and the cost to us is perpetual involvement whether we ask for it or not.

We become 'involved' in a way that only interconnected media can achieve.

On the one hand many of us will have an image of Jade as a rather boorish, cocky young lady who shot her mouth off in careless ways. On the other hand we are confronted with the tragedy of a fellow human being facing a terrible illness.

Social Psychologists give this the name Cognitive Dissonance the unpleasant feeling we get when we try to reconcile two conflicting 'cognition's'. If you are familiar with Jade how do you feel right now?

Here's Anorak UKs take, and I have to say I wonder what role the media should play in this.

The Press Trust of India reports in a matter of fact way.

I suppose news like this causes us to think about the principals of life. Perhaps the realisation that regardless of the chase for material wealth and fame is folly because it doesn't make us immune to the vagaries of our basic biology.

The other effect Jade's story has on us relates to 'rules of thumb' or heuristics. One type of heuristic is called the Availability Heuristic What this does is make us feel that the more frequently we are aware of something such as Jade's story the more likely it can effect us. This skews our reality and increases personal concern and worry. Now, we can't complain if we've bought into Celebrity. We are gullible if we believe there aren't consequences for ourselves by participating in the Celebrity Circus.

Cognitive Dissonance and The Availibility Heuristic are the cost of the ticket to the show.

Jade's Story

Latest developments on dying in the limelight
Goody family supports OK! tribute

Annals of Gullibility: Why We Get Duped and How to Avoid it

As a visitor to this blog you are no doubt interested in what it takes to stop people taking advantage of you or perhaps you have known somebody who has been taking advantage of someone.

People say there is a 'book in all of us' and Stephen Greenspans book Annals of Gullibility: Why we get duped and how to avoid it is certainly one that I would have liked to author! That said, there is thinking about doing and there is doing it.

Carpe Diem!

Mind you I have been tracking and commenting on people and events where gullibility can be found for two years now, and so I have quite a tome of material for the gullibility aficionado to dip into.

Amazon introduce Professor Greenspans book as "An unprecedented examination of gullibility, how we develop this tendency to be duped, and what we can do to become less apt to be fooled. The first book to provide a comprehensive look at the problem of gullibility, this groundbreaking work covers topics from how we are fooled in areas from religion, politics, science, and medicine, to personal finance and relationships"

I look forward to getting a copy soon and will post a review here and on Amazon. It's great to see the subject of Gullibility getting formal attention. So if you want to,avoid being taken advantage of at work, stop people taking advantage you in politics, marketing, religion, and relationships why not give it read too!

Mother Gets 8 Years For Kidnapping Own Daughter

Karen Matthews, 33, and Michael Donovan, 40, are found guilty of kidnap, false imprisonment and perverting the course of justice. In a classic example of gullibility Karen Matthews has underestimated the power of her intellect 'soooooooooooo much'. One of the roots causes of gullibility is over estimating your capability and this was her down fall.Now she's going to spend 'soooooooooooo much' time behind behind bars for taking advantage of her daughter.Sooooooooooooooooo Much for her and her partner in crime Michael Donovan.

News Story
You Tube

Barack Obama's Inspirational Value Meme

The way you see the world affects how you understand problems and which solutions you think will solve those problems. Listening to Barack Obama's inauguration speech I was fascinated to hear him tap into important traditional core values, recognise the inter-connectedness, diversity and changes happening in the modern world, and weave a steely determination to defend key principles against violent enemies at the same time as offering friendship hope, and a sense of common aspirations.

It was also fascinating listening to UK TV commentators attempting to 'make sense' of this complexity. One commentator struggled to 'label' President Obama. She agonised as she tried to place him one side of the fence. 'What does he really stand for?' she pondered.

A while back I was introduced to the thinking of Clare Graves he was a colleague of the more well know social psychologist Abraham Maslow (Maslow's hierarchy of needs)Graves classified a range of 'world views' that explained how people understand how the world works, key causes and effects, key guiding principles and values.

Grave's ideas were taken up by writers Don Beck and Chris Cowan. They developed Grave's classifications into a range of memes which they called Value Memes.

Two things are significant. Firstly they made a division between what they called first and second tier thinking. Secondly they noted that the more developed the meme someone has the more they are able to 'transcend and include' less developed memes.

Second Tier thinking (yellow meme and above) is characterised by an ability to grasp systemic complexity and interdependence, accept diversity, emphasise individual responsibilities, and yet take decisive and definite action even if it might clash with a minority view.

Second tier memes are difficult for first teir thinkers to make sense of. Communitarian first tier memes have trouble with the decisiveness, individualistic memes (hello Bankers)have trouble with social responsibility. Be sure Barack Obama has taken the USA and the rest of the world to a different level.

Beck and Cowan predicted a global meme shift around this time. This is when a significant proportion of the worlds population begin to think in a different way. President Obama leads the hope that this will happen. As he said...

"On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics."

"What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them"

"We will not apologise for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defence, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you."

"For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness."

"With eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations."

With thinking like this there is clear Hope.