“The intriguing thing about the effects of censoring information is not that audience members want to have the information more than they did before; that seems natural. Rather, it is that they come to believe in the information more, even though they haven’t received it. For example, when University of North Carolina students learned that a speech opposing coed dorms on campus would be banned, they became more opposed to the idea of coed dorms. Thus, without ever hearing the speech, they became more sympathetic to its argument.
“This raises the worrisome possibility that especially clever individuals holding a weak or unpopular position can get us to agree with that position by arranging to have their message restricted.
“The irony is that for such people—members of fringe political groups, for example—the most effective strategy may not be to publicize their unpopular views, but to get those views officially censored and then to publicize the censorship.”
— Robert B. Cialdini PhD, Influence (1984)
Sherlock.
“The intriguing thing about the effects of censoring information is … that they come to believe in the information more, even though they haven’t received it.”
Not in 2021.
And certainly not in Canada.
Influence (and its re-issues, updates etc.) is a terrific book; not just for marketers/salespeople, but for anyone wondering how the six major types of influence play out in daily life. The first step to defending yourself against manipulation is to know exactly how it’s done.
That premise certainly proved valid in the case of McCarthyism as it made western universities and eventually most all cultural institutions completely safe spaces for Marxist ideology ever since. I’m not so sure it has worked lately. When Jorden Petersen is cancelled as a speaker does the student body then call for his return or that his books be inserted into the curricula? Not so much, I would guess. How about all the CAGW skeptics? Same thing.
From a work published in 1984 no less.
I was reading the piece “What My Soviet Life Has Taught Me About Censorship and Why It Makes Us Dumb”, this ties in nicely. I wonder how they are related?
Censoring views, makes people dumber.
Publishing that you are censored, predisposes people to believe your position, before you even speak.
This cannot be a simple coincidence.
So why isn’t Canada totally conservative then?
““This raises the worrisome possibility that especially clever individuals holding a weak or unpopular position can get us to agree with that position by arranging to have their message restricted.”
Phaa! Academics.
People in the movie industry and book industries knew about this *and used it* generations before the 1980’s.
I know of very few cases where this theory has proven true in recent times, what people are not allowed to hear has not magically spread through the population as a cherished belief, more likely, it has never occurred to the vast majority and never will spontaneously.
A good example might be gay adoption. Without saying anything, I can identify for you a fairly common belief about that practice that exists among social conservatives. Opportunities to state this belief are few and far between. Very few people out there in society seem to have come to these conclusions, although they may in fact be aware that it is something you are not allowed to criticize.
If there were no barriers to stating those beliefs, I doubt that fewer people would agree than is now the case, although it might not be more either. But we’ll never know.