The Conditioned & Responsive Human Brain, A Media Enterprise

 

What are some of the contemporary agencies that drive brain conditioning ‘exercises’, aka cultural programming, developed to control our Minds via interactive processes?

The Media, and in the 21^st century, Social Media (Web 2.0), provide the channels that funnel Products and Services to cultures entangled in Materialism. They provide  essential services, as demonstrated by the increasing share of purchases transacted via the web.

Platform managers have recognized that the real Product, on sale to those who invest in their platforms, is the hungry (lonely) human Mind, seeking novel experiences. Web based social experiments, using surveys, are one of the main data engines that guide target acquisition and web based audience selection. See Amazon Mechanical Turk for recent examples.

 

The best current clinical (experimental) models of human misery (stress, anxiety, and depression patterns) that I see  guiding marketing research are models based on conditioning. More specifically,  burning mnemonic traces into our visual and auditory systems (e.g., a catchy jingle, chords) by simple repetition, aka reinforcement, without any reward other than association to a product or service.
WE know the programming has worked when we can all recall the product or service upon hearing just a segment of the jingle.  That implicit linkage, of a set of sounds to a product (service) is a conditioned response, due to behavioral reinforcement.

The classical conditioning model of Body< >Mind integration was recognized and developed by the brilliant Russian experimental physiologist and neurologist Ivan Pavlov.
In those studies, a natural stimulus (e.g., food, aromas)  which generates an unconditioned, or automatic reflex like response, like salivation, or panting,  is paired with of  ‘novel’ stimuli (e.g., a bell) known as the conditioned stimulus.

The trained brain associates the artificial or conditioned stimulus (e.g., bell, jingle, or pretty image used in marketing pitches) with desired outcomes. Outcomes that address unmet immediate or instinctual level biological  needs, e.g., hunger, longing for company, or overcoming sadness.
With reinforcement, the conditioned animal(human) will respond to social and biological conditioning in a highly predictable fashion. That is the basis of executing a successful sales program.

To summarize, linking an unconditioned or biological stimulus to a range of conditioned stimuli, so as to sell their wares, represents the high art of Jackmen, aka sophisticated marketers, to train the naive brain to hand over the cash.

Beyond the classical conditioning/training  model are the use of variable reinforcement schedules to generate desired outcomes and the operant conditioning model (B. F. Skinner), where the desired outcome (human/animal behavior) must be completed by the subject/animal to secure the ‘reward’ .

For example, we “know” the golden rule, according to marketers and salespeople,
… ‘Spend the gold and you will feel better.’ It doesn’t matter what you buy.

Operant conditioning allows flexibility in training people to strive for “rewards”, e.g., dopamine release, that have no intrinsic biological value. The process, however, generates the neuroactive rewards that serve to reinforce desired behaviors.

Addictive and obsessive behaviors are examples of psychological overreactions to aggressive cultural and societal programming.

 

Media, For Pleasure & Profit

Implicit associations, driven by audiovisual stimuli that are presented simultaneously, or sequentially, in our TV shows suggest the way an “influencer” would behave. We are shown the way to behave, to achieve the desired outcome.

These psychosocial cues are at the heart of Media’s ability to program of our Mind, i.e, societal programming, to ensure social conformity.
Large variances in the content used to program a range of societal expectations are seen during public elections, i.e., collective decision making periods.
Another example. Local TV Preachers exhort us to send them large sums of money because then we would be more likely to get oversized returns from the Creator. The Creator is apparently monitoring our personal contributions to that Preacher’s revenue stream to see how to reward us.
Repeated exposure to aggressive stimuli (ads) can be coercive, especially when we are feeling down or confused. They inevitably lead to the desired outcomes, i.e., the mark/subject (us) behaves as directed and completes a transaction with the advertiser.

 

Broken By Media

Current findings suggest that online marketers have developed considerable sophistication in social cuing and influencing, using short videos, e.g., on TikTok, and Meta. The juxtaposition of enjoyable experiences and desired for outcomes can lead some of us to despair, on account of our self assigned feelings of personal inadequacy.
Perhaps, our suffering is linked to an inability to feel pleasure, a troubling condition known as anhedonia.

Often our self perceived limitations are illusory and generated from the perspective of normatively enforced societal guidelines that are reinforced by Media.  These societal guidelines, or mores, are usually arbitrary but subtly reinforced by influencers, as if they are laws, using reminders, repetition.
Residents of the PRC offer case reports (PBS) about how people there accept this type of training or societal conditioning, by the government. In America, we are ‘trained’ to serve Corporate interests.

In capitalist societies, the daily stressors transmitted by Media apparently raise feelings of inadequacy and despondency. Other stressors include health, family, and work circumstances.
In America, these feelings send us looking for “the Fix”– the bottle, or the needle– that has all the answers, i.e., the panacea promoted by medical doctors. Unfortunately, the drug fix often becomes the medically induced new iatrogenic monkey on our backs.
As a drug addled society, thanks to the licentious prescribing practices developed by medical doctors to secure a steady personal revenue stream, we are trained from birth to seek the convenience of drugs for any health problem.

Our geopolitical adversaries are having a good time capitalizing on these weaknesses.

As citizens of a country that celebrates Liberty, why do we rarely ask for new ways to fix our health  issues  using nonpharmacological approaches? Cultural factors?
This is something WE all will have to work on, in the years to come, if America’s Mental Health related societal crises are going to resolve in a timely fashion.