Manipulation Patterns
The main subcategories of propaganda are command propaganda, which seeks a specific and immediate response (Buy... Do ... Vote ... Join ... Fight ....), and sub-propaganda or conditioning propaganda, which seeks to mold public opinions, assumptions, and attitudes on a long-term and widespread basis. The basic patterns for manipulation of socio-political "Cause" groups can be described in a pattern of: Threat; Bonding; Cause; Response. Socio-political persuasion follows similar patterns as consumer marketing campaigns: a basic pattern, of commercial advertising is a simple 5 step formula of "the pitch": Attention-Getting, Confidence-Building, Desire ? Stimulation, Urgency-Stressing, and Response-Seeking.
Persuasion techniques are a systematic effort to persuade a body of people to support or adopt a particular product, opinion, attitude, or course but attempt to influence attitudes by the use of symbols rather than force. Invariably in every communication, nonverbal or in words, some aspects are intensified and some downplayed. Manipulation is strongly based on intensifying information elements by repetition, association, and composition and downplaying by omission, diversion, and confusion. Persuasion analysis can identify several patterns of behavior modification and influence techniques and the awareness of these patterns helps to analyze complex emotional arguments although it does not inform on reliability of supporting evidence. Social influence programs seek to induce reaction, obedience with as little thought as possible in the target audience. Impulse for action comes directly from the depths of the unconscious and using deep persuasion is the instrument to attain this effect. The transformation of language as an instrument of the mind into symbols directly evoking feelings and reflexes, where words become "pure sound," is a deliberate devaluation of thought as the basic condition of the social organization causing serious dissociations. One of the most intriguing influences from outside of our awareness is subliminal psychodynamic activation. The "mere exposure effect" of an only marginally perceptible stimulus, also known as subliminal perceptual priming, is the effect on our preferences of a briefly flashed picture in a forced choice test. Especially as reinforcement, variations of the mere exposure effect have been demonstrated to activate emotional centers of the brain, without awareness.