It seems to me like there is some kind of 'overcorrection effect' that society and people are vulnerable to. I've noticed this with many things throughout time. Does anyone know if there is any academic writing describing something like that? The sentence illustrating the point about rule-following societies exemplifies it, "if it's bad to underrepresent them, it must be good to overrepresent them."
Obviously, propaganda or 'cultural messaging' plays a significant role on pretty much everything and its importance can't be overstated, but in order for it to be so effective, there must be some neurobiological, psychological, or sociological (or a combination thereof) vulnerability for us to respond to this messaging so well. I wonder if this is something specific related to rule-following behaviour. Perhaps it involves thought in general, as I believe this happens with more abstract (non-social or political) matters too, but I can't think of an example off the top of my head.
E.g.: in response to learning of an overestimation of crime (or some other kind of antisocial behaviour) in a certain demographic, there comes to be an underestimation; in turn, I suspect that rather than there being an equilibrium toward a more accurate view of reality, the bias will turn the other direction.
Thanks for another thought provoking piece, Frost. I always look forward to your writing, and it always expands my mind and gives me something to think about for some time after.
We’re blackfacing our culture not so much through overcorrection as through over-implementation. Absolute rules are better understood than relativistic ones. In other words, people find it easier to understand the rule “Show more Black faces!” than the rule “Show Black faces in proportion to their share of the population!”
The second rule is all the more difficult to implement because blackfacing makes us overestimate the Black population percentage: “Black Americans estimate that, on average, Black people make up 52% of the U.S. adult population; non-Black Americans estimate the proportion is roughly 39%, closer to the real figure of 12%.” So there is an endless feedback loop. The more we overrepresent Black faces in our visual environment, the more we become convinced that we’re not doing enough to represent reality.
It seems to me like there is some kind of 'overcorrection effect' that society and people are vulnerable to. I've noticed this with many things throughout time. Does anyone know if there is any academic writing describing something like that? The sentence illustrating the point about rule-following societies exemplifies it, "if it's bad to underrepresent them, it must be good to overrepresent them."
Obviously, propaganda or 'cultural messaging' plays a significant role on pretty much everything and its importance can't be overstated, but in order for it to be so effective, there must be some neurobiological, psychological, or sociological (or a combination thereof) vulnerability for us to respond to this messaging so well. I wonder if this is something specific related to rule-following behaviour. Perhaps it involves thought in general, as I believe this happens with more abstract (non-social or political) matters too, but I can't think of an example off the top of my head.
E.g.: in response to learning of an overestimation of crime (or some other kind of antisocial behaviour) in a certain demographic, there comes to be an underestimation; in turn, I suspect that rather than there being an equilibrium toward a more accurate view of reality, the bias will turn the other direction.
Thanks for another thought provoking piece, Frost. I always look forward to your writing, and it always expands my mind and gives me something to think about for some time after.
We’re blackfacing our culture not so much through overcorrection as through over-implementation. Absolute rules are better understood than relativistic ones. In other words, people find it easier to understand the rule “Show more Black faces!” than the rule “Show Black faces in proportion to their share of the population!”
The second rule is all the more difficult to implement because blackfacing makes us overestimate the Black population percentage: “Black Americans estimate that, on average, Black people make up 52% of the U.S. adult population; non-Black Americans estimate the proportion is roughly 39%, closer to the real figure of 12%.” So there is an endless feedback loop. The more we overrepresent Black faces in our visual environment, the more we become convinced that we’re not doing enough to represent reality.
Reference
https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/41556-americans-misestimate-small-subgroups-population?redirect_from=%2Ftopics%2Fpolitics%2Farticles-reports%2F2022%2F03%2F15%2Famericans-misestimate-small-subgroups-population
Thank you for this. I think it's important to understand how the owners/rulers of society are using mass migration to farther their own hierarchical anti-egalitarian ends. Some of this is described here http://johnspritzler.substack.com/p/german-and-us-rulers-are-using-weapons and here (with a focus on US, but same pattern is true also for the corporate empire's colonies in europe) https://johnspritzler.substack.com/p/illegal-immigration-to-the-us-myth
And finally, here https://www.pdrboston.org/inventing-the-enemy