Coffin nails and deceptive subtle conditioning

While I was driving my daughter to school this morning, I heard that the government’s $280 billion lawsuit against American tobacco companies is heading into court. Second-hand smoke of any kind gives me a thumping migraine headache. I also have to deal with apartments left with smoke-stained walls and stinky carpets after tenants who claimed they didn't smoke leave. I hate smoking, but the government’s lawsuit isn’t for my benefit. The concept of rule of law means that individuals and businesses are not to be punished for what was not a crime when they did it. There was no law against selling cigarettes. The government itself is complicit in their sales; it not only sells them in military commissaries, but also takes a share in the profits from sales through sales taxes, corporate income tax, and personal income tax on the salaries of people who work in the tobacco industry. There are laws that regulate the marketing of cigarettes, but each time a new law was passed, the industry complied. The government is trying to make its case on the way that the public relations (PR) for cigarette manufacturers downplayed the dangers associated with smoking cigarettes. PR isn’t illegal either. It does seem to be remarkably persuasive, though. Let’s take a closer look at how it is that PR can convince people to engage in self-destructive behaviors. Contrary to popular but fictional accounts of how women started smoking, women smoked for pleasure about as early in history as men did. Cigarettes were considered as being for women, and it was unmanly to smoke one. Men generally preferred pipes or cigars until cigarettes started showing up in soldier’s rations during World War I (yet another way that the government was complicit in the tobacco trade). What most women did not do was smoke in public. That was the behavior that advertised a prostitute to potential clients. Stories about women being arrested for smoking in public probably have to do with being arrested for soliciting, not smoking per se. Women chose to smoke privately because they did not want to be mistaken for prostitutes. George Washington Hill was an executive in the cigarette industry who wanted to boost his sales. He reasoned that women would smoke more if they smoked more often. He hired Eduard Bernays to find a way to encourage women to smoke in public. Mr. Bernays consulted with a psychoanalyst, Dr.A. A. Brill, on the psychology of women and smoking. Eduard Bernays was the nephew of Dr. Sigmund Freud. He probably knew something about the theories of his famous uncle, because it occurred to him that if you supply someone with information (whether true or not) indirectly, he is less resistant to persuasion than if you tell him directly. Freud’s work is in disrepute these days, because it was “unscientific”. That’s true, and I won’t even vouch for its accuracy, and yet there does seem to be something to it. I don’t know what Freud’s subconscious was supposed to be, other than that part of our thought processes which aren’t conscious. Whatever it is, it does seem that mental processes go on without our being conscious of them, and then our conscious behaviors mysteriously change without ever having gone through any conscious deliberation. Bernays hired some celebrity women to smoke while marching down Broadway in New York City’s Easter Parade. Smoking in public was taboo; smoking while walking was even worse. Bernays arranged for newspaper photographers to be on hand to take pictures for their newspapers. Seeing reputable women smoking in public, some of them accompanied by their husbands, without mention of scandal in the newspapers, planted the idea that it was acceptable for women to smoke in public. Some of the women were wearing sashes with the words “The torch of freedom” written on them. What kind of freedom? Smoking was still associated with sexuality; Hollywood movie producers were paid to work scenes in showing lovers smoking after a romantic evening—subtly indicating that they had taken a roll in the hay. “Freedom” to smoke in public was spun as a mark of the emancipation of women, while the idea of sexual freedom was subtly planted in their heads. Another association Bernays helped create was that between smoking and women’s desire to be slender. For the Lucky Strike label, he came up with the slogan “reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet”. The label Virginia Slims exploited both the desire to be “slim” and the idea of women’s liberation. Most of the women I have ever known in my life are appalled that any woman would fall for this line. Somebody did; it was a popular and aggressively-advertised brand. Subtle conditioning seems to work. One of Bernays’ best clients was the government itself. It hired him to produce propaganda to popularize some government programs during the First World War. The government remains a big customer for deceptive subtle conditioning. Government media coordinators working with activists of a certain stripe have successfully planted the idea in a majority of American heads that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction despite years of monitoring by the UN and an unsuccessful search after the invasion. The Newsmax article I linked to openly admits that no WMD were ever found. The hawkish editors of Newsmax don’t need to be concerned about the truth getting out; planted attitudes are more persistent than facts. The institution which published the poll results, the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, didn’t have much to say about the correctness of popular perceptions; its purpose in publishing the poll was probably to reassure its clients that not being able to back up claims made before the war isn’t politically relevant. Pseudo-scientific research organizations sprang up after Bernays and other PR consultants needed organizations with the aura of scientific authority or, in the case of the Program on International Policy Attitudes, manufactured popular consensus. Try googling “Iraq and the war on terror” to see one of many ways that hostile attitudes towards Iraq were planted in American minds (just click on the link I provided). This morning I got 10,100 hits; this evening I get 9,970. That canned phrase was used repeatedly not only on the Internet but also in pro-war news sources such as CNN and NPR. NPR is of course biased by government ownership, but its reputation as Left Wing media helps plant acceptance for the invasion and occupation among the wine-and-cheese set. Television news reinforced the message by displaying graphics of the twin towers in flames whenever the anchor discussed Iraq. Although there was plenty of egregious lying by the press, most of the deception was based on suggestions rather than outright statements of fact. What about all the people who never fell for the deception? People vary a lot and some people are probably naturally more resistant to subtle conditioning than others. In future columns I will write more about subtle conditioning and its consequences. Deceptive subtle conditioning induces people to act against their personal interests, whether it is by smoking or by dying in a war for the benefit of hostile conspirators. Understanding how it works is enough to build up resistance to it.