Image is reality, true or false?

[spotbird]

Without discussing any current candidate, does anyone here think that the impression that a candidate leaves is as important as any other factor in election outcome?

For example, the image of Chimp as a rugged rancher, Texan, oilman successfully hid the truth. The public bought the manipulation skillfully created and sold to them hook, line and sinker without regard to the pesky reality that there was nothing factual about it. Most people still think packaged image is who * is.

If the package is what people buy isn't it wise to get every possible edge in that direction? It's like extra credit points. I don't intend to argue that the shallow nature of the electorate is a good thing, only that since it is a fact it should be a paramount consideration for the candidates. Voters should look at issues but don't.

[Nay]

1. The success of "image" rather than actual worthiness is, to me, a

legacy of 100 years of increasingly effective advertising advances. Advertising has taken advantage of every psychological technique, visual stimulus, and propaganda device that has been discovered. It's major victory has been to convince the majority of the populace that it (the populace) is too savvy to respond to advertising or any kind of manipulation.

Advertising's runaway success has been its ability to bypass conscious reasoning and conscious emotions and go straight to the subconscious and unconscious areas of the human mind. People not only don't know they are manipulated, they consciously deny that anyone could have any such power over them. It's like having slaves who don't even see their own chains. What a boon to the slaveowners!

Read about Bernays, the first real advertising genius. It's like reading about Hitler.

And yes, it is distressing that our candidates are getting winnowed out on superficial details. Only brute reality has a chance to shake people out of their superficial modes of knowing, and frankly, things aren't bad enough yet to qualify as brute reality. And in the next generation, we will have to fight the same fight all over again, because history is "boring."

[lovedems]

2. Perception is reality. The candidate can portray any image he

likes, it is how the image is perceived (edit: by the voters) that is important. While the chimp probably gets his rocks off on his cowboy routine, I find it repulsive.

[SharonAnn]

5. Perception is NOT reality, it's a person's perception of

reality.

Example: Just because the R-W Republicans "perceive" that * is telling the truth, doesn't make it REAL! What's REAL is that he's lying!

The challenge is to change a person's perception so that it is congruent with REALITY!

[ElsewheresDaughter]

3. ahhh the perception over substance thingy works everytime...sad...&...

peter finn of Ruder & Finn is a neighbor of mine...i knows how he earns his $'s :(

http://www.ruderfinn.com/Default.asp?bhcp=1

[Redleg]

4. The old "social construction of reality" idea-

The short answer is "yes." Most of us voters don't have the time, motivation, ability, or whatever, to really understand more than a few issues. So we often rely on simple social identity processes and other categorization schemes to help us make decisions.

For example, if I strongly identify with the Republican party, I will tend to attribute positive intentions to Republicans and negative intentions to Democrats. If I believe that my party guy has my interests in mind then I don't really need to know the details of the issues- I just vote for the guy.

These cognitive "shortcuts" make it so much easier on us- we don't have to spend the time learning about the issues and then learning about the candidates' position on the issues. We will then have so much more time to watch TV.