PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE

•The second group of fallacies that we are going to study is

the Psychological Warfare.

•We have defined this group of fallacies as:

Psychological Warfare The group of fallacies that

seduce and intimidate man’s

sensuousness, emotions and

subconscious drives. •Meaning from Association

•Misuse of Authority

•Repeated Assertion

•Attitude Fitting

•Tokenism

•Poisoning the Well

•Rationalizing

•Argumentum ad Baculum

•Argumentum ad Hominem

•Confident Manner

•We have also mentioned that this group of fallacies

contains ten types of fallacies.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 1: MEANING FROM

ASSOCIATION

•The fallacy of meaning from association is perhaps the

most abused fallacy in the production of commercial

advertisements.

•Here, the advertised products are put side by side with

logically unrelated things and ideas, to suggest that if you

purchase this or that product you too get the associated

things and ideas.

•For instance, a bottle of whiskey is shown in front of a

famous masterpiece painting.

•The advertisers had carefully calculated it that the

intended audience will associate the fine quality of the

masterpiece with the quality of the whiskey.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 1: MEANING FROM

ASSOCIATION

The Marlboro Country is always

represented as a romantic and wild

scenery, where men conquer the

great outdoors.

But the real Marlboro Country could

actually be like the following image.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 1: MEANING FROM

ASSOCIATION

This beer commercial

poster associates the

product with sexy and

scantily dressed girls.

There is no logical

relationship between this

particular beer and the

ladies.

There is a more obvious logical

relationship between beer and

the beer tummy, or the beer

bloat.

But advertisers do not associate

this two things.

The Marlboro Country is always

represented as a romantic and wild

scenery, where men conquer the

great outdoors.

But the real Marlboro Country could

actually be like the following image.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 1: MEANING FROM

ASSOCIATION

These two cigarette brands associated

cigarettes with sexual attractiveness

and glamour, although cigarettes have

no logical relationship to the two things.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 1: MEANING FROM

ASSOCIATION

Cigarettes are more

logical related with

lung cancer.

But advertisers would

not show images like

this.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 1: MEANING FROM

ASSOCIATION

This beer commercial

poster associates the

product with sexy and

scantily dressed girls.

There is no logical

relationship between this

particular beer and the

ladies.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 1: MEANING FROM

ASSOCIATION

There is a more obvious logical

relationship between beer and

the beer tummy, or the beer

bloat.

But advertisers do not associate

this two things.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 1: MEANING FROM

ASSOCIATION

•Marshall McLuhan, a pioneering theorist in

mass communications, has even suggested

that advertisements will not only seduce

man’s sensuousness and emotions, but

even his sub-conscious itself.

•This is what McLuhan calls the subliminal

seduction.

•This same fallacy is employed by politicians whenever

they circulate pictures of themselves in a pose with, say,

Mother Theresa of Calcutta, or the Pope, or the

Archbishop of Manila, or with any other important

personalities, in newspapers, self-printed calendars, and

posters.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 2: MISUSE OF

AUTHORITY

•Since we cannot possibly be experts in all sorts of fields,

consulting and appealing to authorities are oftentimes

useful.

•When one finds a mathematical problem

too difficult, it is only appropriate to

consult one’s mathematics professor, or

when having problems with an English

composition, the best thing to do is to

approach the language professor.

•The fallacy of misuse of authority happens

whenever we cite an authority in one given

field regarding an issue that is outside

his/her field of competence.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 2: MISUSE OF

AUTHORITY

In this poster a very famous

singer, who may be an

expert when it comes to

music and vocalization, is

endorsing a particular brand

of soda, forgetting that she

is not necessarily an expert

on sodas.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 2: MISUSE OF

AUTHORITY

Michael Jackson said

“heal the world, make it a

better place.” Then, we

better should. How can

the King of pop be

wrong?

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 3: REPEATED

ASSERTION

•It is a fact that it is easier to accept a lie that one has

heard many times before than to accept truth that one

has never heard of.

•The fallacy of repeated assertion takes advantage of this

psychological fact.

•This fallacy repeats or multiplies essentially the same

assertion with the aim that sooner or later people will

accept it as true.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 3: REPEATED

ASSERTION

Adolf Hitler used this fallacy, when he practically littered

Germany with his ideological banners and slogans.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 3: REPEATED

ASSERTION

•The politician who clutters all the street corners and

public walls with his and office long before election time,

and with truck-loads of posters during the campaign

season is guilty of this fallacy.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 3: REPEATED

ASSERTION

•More ingenious advertisers

will compose catchy jingles

or television scenes that

will hopefully recur over and

over again in heads of the

audience, so that even

though the advertisement

is no longer in front of them

they will still see it or hear

it in their minds.

•But of course stating a lie a

hundred times will certainly

not make it true.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 4: ATTITUDE FITTING

•The person's attitude is his habitual way of regarding

other persons, objects, situations or ideas.

•The fallacy of attitude fitting is done through inserting into

the argument persons, objects, situations or ideas that

are known in advance to be positively or negatively

regarded by the intended audience.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 4: ATTITUDE FITTING

•At about the same time they also discovered another

territory which was lush and fertile, wanting to keep the

island for themselves they called it Iceland.

•They knew very well that other peoples love the images of

a green and fertile land, and were disgusted with the

images of ice and frozen wasteland.

•Their strategy of naming in order to attract and repel was

an early example of attitude fitting.

•As early as the later part of the ninth

century, the Vikings discovered a huge

island that is 85 % covered with ice.

•Wanting to attract more settlers, they

named it Greenland.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 4: ATTITUDE FITTING

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 4: ATTITUDE FITTING

Dark Skin?

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 4: ATTITUDE FITTING

Introducing:

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 4: ATTITUDE FITTING

Dark Skin? Introducing:

Filipinas love to have whiter skin. Pharmaceutical

firms give them several whiteners to choose from.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 4: ATTITUDE FITTING

And this is a gross

example of attitude fitting:

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 4: ATTITUDE FITTING

An unfair knightly fight A fair knightly fight

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 5: TOKENISM

•This fallacy happens when people are misled to see a

token gestures as the real thing.

•Whenever substantial action is needed but performing it

would be too expensive, time and effort consuming, and

even distracting to one’s agenda, people often resort to

tokenism.

•This cartoon, for example,

pokes fun on the creation

of a department without

the necessary funding.

Hence, the department is

practically drawn on a

blank wl.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 5: TOKENISM

•This fallacy happens when people are misled to see a

token gestures as the real thing.

•Whenever substantial action is needed but performing it

would be too expensive, time and effort consuming, and

even distracting to one’s agenda, people often resort to

tokenism.

•The real thing here is the department, while the token

thing is the front door of the office.

•By presenting the front door, without the real department,

tokenism happens.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 5: TOKENISM

•On August 21, 1971, Plaza

Miranda was bombed. Two

grenades exploded in the middle

of a political rally, which killed

nine and wounded several

persons. Among the injured were

Senators Roxas, Salonga,

Osmena, and Kalaw.

•To appease the people, the incumbent

president publicly ordered a thorough

investigation, fully knowing that after the

excitement would die down, the public

clamor for justice will also wane. Of

course, the criminals were never

captured.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 5: TOKENISM

•One of the favorite themes politicians love to print in their

campaign posters is their token shot hugging a dirty street

urchin here, or shaking hands with miserable slum

dwellers there, as if to document their love for the poor

and the downtrodden who after the elections they

immediately neglect and abandon.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 6: POISONING THE

WELL

•When one poisons a well all the water that is drawn from

it becomes poisoned and unpotable.

•The fallacy of poisoning the well works similarly. It

happens when one discounts in advance the opponent’s

evidence, proof, or counter argument, thereby preventing

him from employing them.

•When a biblical fundamentalist says

“theories are speculations, and

speculations are always unreliable, now

how do you prove your theory of

evolution?,” he is already discounting in

advance the value of a theory and has

prevented his opponent to argue in favor

of it.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 6: POISONING THE

WELL

• When your biology professor exhorts the

class that only lazy students ask for

examinations with open notes, then asks

later on who wants an examination with

an open notes he is using the same ploy.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 7: RATIONALIZING

•Aesop, a 6th century Greek folk hero

and teller of animal fables, had a story

about a fox who felt so bad because

he could not grab the hanging bunch

of grapes.

•After some more tries the fox finally

gave up and comforted himself, saying,

“Anyway, those grapes are sour. Who

would like to eat sour grapes?”

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 7: RATIONALIZING

•When one’s ego is placed in an unpleasant situation one

can spin untrue, but pleasant, reasons to settle things.

•Some teachers who were driven into their profession by

circumstances would rationalize that it is their decision to

be in their profession because molding the youth into

better citizens is the noblest task a man could ever

dream of.

•If real reasons are not available, pleasant reasons can

always be made.

•This is the fallacy of rationalization, it makes a clearly

delicious bunch of grapes sour, and the obviously sour

lemon sweet.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 8: ARGUMENTUM AD

BACULUM

•This fallacy still bears its classical Latin name. Baculum

means a club or staff, and argumentum ad baculum

roughly means an argument accompanied with a

threatening blow of a club.

•This fallacy happens when force or the threat of force is

used instead of proper reason.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 8: ARGUMENTUM AD

BACULUM

•A professor who is bombarded with numerous questions

regarding a controversial subject matter can easily control

everything by screaming “shut up, or else I'll flunk you

all,” but he commits this fallacy.

•The father who says “you better study well, or I’ll cut your

allowance,” is as guilty as the board room strategist who

insists “all executives should act in accordance with this

proposal, otherwise the CEO will recall their

appointments.”

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 8: ARGUMENTUM AD

BACULUM

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 9: ARGUMENTUM AD

HOMINEM

•Argumentum ad hominem is another fallacy that still

bears its classical Latin name. It simply means

argument against the person.

•Normally, arguments attack the opponent’s arguments and

counter-arguments. The fallacy of argumentum ad

hominem attacks the person of the opponent himself.

•It wrongly assumes that if you discredit a person, his

argument is also discredited. Yet, obviously it does not

follow that if a person is a thief, his arguments are all

wrong.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 9: ARGUMENTUM AD

HOMINEM

•When the prefect of students yells at a defendant in a

disciplinary investigation, “I don't believe your alibis, you

are a cheat ever since” he is arguing against the person

of the student and not against the student’s reasons and

evidences.

•However, in court adjudications argumentum ad

hominem may be reasonably used. Lawyers may

attack the testimony of witnesses by focusing on their

character, credibility and expertise because witnesses and

experts like doctors, and psychologists often present

opinions which we cannot argue with directly. The next

best way then is to evaluate their credibility, integrity, and

judgment.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 10: CONFIDENT

MANNER

•When reasons, evidences, proofs and

answers are unavailable, one can still

fool others by using proper gestures, well

calculated intonations and positive

language.

•The fallacy of confident manner is saying

too little or nothing at all in so much

impressive words and body language.

•This fallacy is not only useful to

politicians, who are forced to make

stands and comments about so many

things, but also to students who are

taking oral examinations and graded

recitations.