1. Social Determinism
This is the hypothesis that social interactions and constructs alone determine individual behavior. Your behavior is determined not so much by your genetics but is determined by the influences of others around you.

2. According to this view your actions can be explained by what you have undergone at the hands of others.
You are not free because you are the product of what others have done to you.
To a social determinist, the past, your past, determines who you are.
Your behavior is explained by societal factors, not by your decisions therefore you cannot be held accountable or responsible for your actions.

3. The socially determined actions of an individual can be influenced by forces that control the flow of ideas.
By creating an ideology within the society of the individual, the individual's actions and reactions to stimuli are predetermined to adhere to the social rules imposed on him/her.
Ideologies can be created using various social institutions.

4. Read the excerpts located in your notes and identify the various social institutions that exist in order to directly control the decision making process of individuals.

5. To summarize…..
a social determinist would say that our behavior is determined by the influences of others who make up the socially constructed institutions that we are surrounded by. These institutions include:
Your parents/family
Your culture
Your social background (race, socio-economic status, race, gender, religion, education)
Your government
School
Media

6. The Media & Social Determinism

7. For many years both consumers and advertisers believed that it was the savvy and persuasive content of ad campaigns or the reputation of the product itself that shaped our brand belief.
Recent advances in psychology, neuroscience and behavioural economics collectively refute the idea that “salesmanship” or “persuasion” are responsible for the consumers impulse to buy a product.

8. Robert Heath, an ad practitioner-turned-academic believes that it is our subconscious response to advertising (the part of our brain associated with emotions) and not our rational conscious brain that is responsible for our tendency to buy.
Heath believes that consumers often shop on autopilot. They have better things to do than rationally weigh up each of their purchase decisions. Therefore if an ad uses rationally persuasive messages to sell their product, they are less likely to convince the average consumer than an ad that targets our subconscious and emotions.

9. How does advertising work?
The effectiveness of an ad has much to do with
Association
Repetition
Symbolic (visual) messaging

10. Symbolic (visual) messaging
Advertisers know that only 8% of an ad’s message is taken in by the conscious mind.
Advertisers use visual images and “message-less” or “message-light” ad campaigns in order to appeal to the subconscious.

11. Association
This is why ad campaigns target the subconscious part of the brain when marketing a product.
They appeal to primal emotions/desires of belonging, comfort, sex, and pleasure.
For adolescents advertisers know that that boys tend to base their decisions on the question “Will this lead to sex?” While girls base their decisions on the question “Will this keep me in the social group and my place in it.”
When marketing a product, advertisers attempt to create a link between their product and these subconscious desires that drive our impulse to buy.

12. Repetition
Advertisers know that in order for an ad campaign to be effective they must constantly expose you to images of the product that they need consumers to purchase.
Through repeated exposure to message-less and message light information (i.e. jingles), advertising companies “train” and convince you to believe that you need the product being advertised in order to achieve the desirable qualities that are being associated with the product.

13. Examine the following advertisements:
L'Oreal because you're worth it
The Axe effect million women
Audi prom super bowl commercial
Super bowl commercials 2010 bud light
Note that if we actually allow the message in the ad to bypass our conscious and allow it to enter into our subconscious, we most likely see no problem with the advertisement.

14. Conscious vs Subconscious
In short, our emotions and subconscious are the key to our behaviour.
Advertisers know that if they use rationally persuasive messages to make consumers buy their product they will be met with consumer counter-arguments.
The idea that rationally persuasive arguments makes us appreciate and pay more attention to ads is wrong. If anything we tend to pay less attention to creative ads because we don’t feel threatened by them.
The less attention we pay, the less we counter-argue so the more effective the subconscious communication is.
We are so in awe of our thinking brain that it never occurs to us that advertising might be quietly influencing what we buy by subconsciously seducing our feeling brain.

15. Paul Mazer - Wall Street Banker
We must shift America to a desires economy. People must be trained to desire. To want new things even before the old have been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality in America.

16. Charles Kettering - GM Keep the consumers dissatisfied. 1929
The Story of Stuff

17. What is the by-product or effect of these advertisements and television in general?
Unhappiness (due to society’s perception of what a human is meant to be and how to achieve this – not happy through reason but a consumer by purchasing materialistic goods)
Social injustice (rejection of human rights in favor of profit)
Environmental turmoil (limitations are not recognized and stewardship of the planet is rejected in favor of irresponsible consumption)
Killing us Softly 3

18. When traditional Fajian culture is juxtaposed with North American Media influences
Traditionally for Fijians, identity had been fixed not so much in one’s individual body as in family, community, and relationships with others, in contrast to Western-cultural models that firmly fix identity in the body/self.
So what happens when self-centered North American values are juxtaposed with Fagian values of community and self-worth?

19. The Effects
The juxtaposition of extreme affluence depicted on most television programs against the materially impoverished Fijians associates the nearly uniformly thin bodies and restrained appetites of television characters with the (illusory) promise of economic opportunity and success.

20. Junk Food, the food industry and Childhood Obesity
Is there a connection between childhood obesity and how junk food is marketed to this age group?
Are these marketing strategies aimed at children moral? Especially considering how children and teens are a lot more susceptible to influence than adults? (How are children and teens more susceptible?)

21. Going Broke on 300 K a year
What is responsible for our desire to live well beyond our means?

22. I hate myself and I want to buy
Contrary to popular belief, people to not spend the big money on things that help them to fit in , but they spend exorbitant amount of money on things that will allow them to ________________________.
What is wrong with consumerism model of achieving happiness?

23. What can be done to counter the effects of advertising and the entertainment industry?
Messages in children's movies