9.2 Social Imagery

(The Dynamics And Relevance Of Social Imagery)

ESSENTIAL SRV: Social Imagery

SRV suggests that we are dependent on signs and symbols to make social decisions. We treat people differently purely because of their appearance.

For instance if someone is dirty and untidy, this image will tell us how to treat the person. If someone looks like us, we will treat them in a particular way. If people are surrounded by negative images, this will affect our response to them.

9.2.1 Introduction To The Theme of Social Imagery

9.2.2 The Psychology And Sociology Of Social Imagery

Previous Coverage

The basics of this have been covered in the earlier text.

Anthropology Etc.

Insert anthropology from texts and place appropriately.

Symbolism

A symbol can be thought of as a type of sign. The field of semiotics defines a symbol as a sign that is attached by purely arbitrary convention to an object, but here we will use it in a wider sense to mean what semiotics would call a sign. Thus, a symbol here could mean an iconic sign (a type of representation like a model or a picture of a thing- like many road signs), an indexical sign (something cause by an object, for instance, a bullet hole in a window is a sign that a bullet has been there), and finally the specific term of symbol as described above; this follows the work of Peirce.

Image

An image is a type of symbolism similar to the iconic sign above. Icon is derived from the Greek for picture. An image is the representation of something.

The Use Of Imagery

Imagery refers to the ideas created in the brain by the phenomena perceived by the senses. As with several other mental mechanisms we have discussed, it is a type of mental short-cut. An image of a person or a thing saves time in processing all the information available. It can be very useful to save processing time by only considering the simplicity of the image rather than the complexity of the totality of the information available. However, sometimes the symbolism will be overwhelming and will also be contradictory to the reality of the situation perceived. Reacting to a false symbol can result in problems for the perceiver and for the perceived. When the person perceived by imagery is a person-at-risk it can have major negative effects on them.

Imagery is overwhelmingly important.

Imagery can be an individual image, or the image transferred to the persona by their physical and social surroundings. We discussed this earlier when talking about Image Juxtaposition and Image Transfer.

Personal Image

Personal Image is seen as very important in our society. Large amounts of money and much time is spent by valued people in chasing after a good personal image. Clothing, make-up, personal possessions, physical fitness, fashionable activities, etc. are all chased after, not necessarily for themselves, but because of what they say about the individual. For instance, if a person wanted to be accepted in modern youth culture, all of the above would be sought in terms of going to concerts or raves, fashionable clothing, CDs and good sound systems, interest in ecological issues and possibly a sense of illegal drug use appropriate for the era. The overall goal is acceptance into a peer group, and the route taken is image management. Consider how difficult it would be to gain admission to such a group without the appropriate image.

Now consider how difficult it must be for persons-at-risk if they have a contrary image to valued positions in society.

Advertising Imagery

McGill and Cummings

SUMMARISE FROM RACE AND ORIGINAL

Eayrs and Ellis

SUMMARISE FROM RACE AND ORIGINAL

Management Of Spoiled Identity- Stigma

Goffman describes this subject in depth in the five essays in his book ‘Stigma’. He covers how stigma affects social identity, how stigmatic signs can be controlled and how stigma affects social versus personal identity; he also summarises some aspects of deviancy theory.

Primitive Responses To Images

Horror at seeing a skeleton or skull- a reminder of death- is deep seated and automatic. Such an appearance may cause immediate fear and even screaming.

Images As The Language Of Affect

Symbols and images are the language of affect- they predate abstract verbal language. Because of this they operate at a deep and often pre-literate and pre-conscious level. The effect they have is on affect rather than on higher cognitive structures such as conscious thought. Their emotional load can overcome and block-out conscious desires.

Symbols As Enduring And Embedded Entities

Symbols often have a very long history so that they become embedded (red as the colour of danger-blood). The reaction to them can be deep and visceral and may even be determined by pre-conscious (animalistic) reactions.

The Effect of Image on Personal Interpretation

The Image that a person has affects the entire social interpretation of that person. For instance, physically attractive people are assumed less likely to be maladjusted or disturbed.

A physically attractive person is more likely to be offered a job.

Attractive people are assessed as happier, more successful and more likely to get married.

Attractive women defendants were treated more leniently by jurors.

Physically attractive people are likely to be judged as more capable, and their work is likely to be seen as better. An essay marking experiment where the essay was accompanied by a picture of the supposed writer showed a difference in grading dependant on the attractiveness of the writer.

We have already talked of positive and negative image-transfer. Images surrounding people-at-risk tend to be overwhelmingly negative.

The Realities of Imagery, Image Transfer, Generalisation and Enhancement

This is an extension of the concepts of image juxtaposition and transfer that we discussed earlier

Juxtaposition of Entities:

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PERSONS ç è EVENTS

é ë ì é

ê í î ê

OBJECTS ç è SYMBOLS

What gets communicated, transferred or triggered:

Cognitive messages: facts, directions, warnings, meaning

Affective messages: emotions mostly from previous associations

ADD IN FRENCH AND GERMAN MUSIC- SUPERMARKET SALES- QUERY SOURCE.

Why There Is So Much Unconscious Symbolic Communication Between Human Beings And Why It Is So Powerful And Effective

There is a great deal of unconsciousness and relatively little consciousness in all human endeavours.

Symbolic communication is very ‘primitive’ behaviour, with many symbols deeply rooted in the ‘collective unconscious’.

Totality of what symbols used to mean and therefore the messages that they still carry, is often unknown or forgotten.

Inconsistency in beliefs or values leads to repression of less ‘noble’ belief or value; whatever is repressed in unconsciousness seeks expression, usually symbolically.

Symbolic communication is often directed towards the receiver’s unconscious.

Even when they ‘impact’ strongly, symbolic communications are difficult to decode (in part because of all of the above), and are therefore very resistant to conscious analysis and resolution.

Factors which Facilitate Attachment, Association and Transfer of an Image

Contiguity, i.e. nearness in time and space

Explicitness of the images that represent an entity

Number of representative images attached or associated to an entity

Intensity of affect elicited in perceiver by an image attachment

Patterning, i.e. frequent or repeated occurrences of an association

Positive reinforcement of an association

Stimulus generalisation, i.e. a perceiver associates with an entity images similar to the one associated with it earlier

Response Generalisation, i.e. a perceiver emits a wider range of responses to an

Negative Images Are Problematic To The Degree That They

Are negative

Are attached to people at value risk

Enlarge or play into pre-existing negative stereotypes

Are attached via a large variety of communication channels

Are attached relentlessly

Features Of Service Settings That Convey Messages Of Values, Roles, Images, Expectancies

Internal versus internal features

Match with culturally valued analogue

Fit with surroundings

Juxtapositional Proximity

Setting History

Age-appropriateness

Aesthetics

Semiotics

Semiotics is the academic study of signs. Signs have been defined as "any mark, bodily movement, symbol, token, etc., used to indicate and to convey thoughts, information, commands etc."

ALSO USE BOOKS ON SEMIOTICS ETC.

9.2.3 Social Imagery And SRV

Previous Coverage

The basics of this has been covered in the earlier text.

Various Images Convey Messages About A Person

Social Status

For instance value and respect or low value, power or powerlessness/voicelessness

Social Roles

e.g. developing person or stunted, healthy person or ‘patient’, citizen taxpayer or ‘scrounger’

Age Identity

e.g. Mature adult or eternal child, typical youngster or prematurely old

Similarity To Others

Similarity to others and place in society, e.g. member of the community or outcast

Competence

e.g. intelligence and skill or incapacity, strength or weakness, ability or impairment

Miscellaneous Personal Attributes

Miscellaneous personal attributes or characteristics, e.g. attractiveness or ugliness, wealth or poverty, alertness or insensitivity.

Some Of The Outcomes Of Deviancy-Imaging Of Devalued People

Enabling Devaluers To Escape Censure

Expresses social devaluation largely in the realm of the unconscious, making it extremely difficult to identify and combat and thus enables perpetrators to escape censure.

How Devaluation Is Taught

That a group should be devalued is taught:

a/ massively, to many people

b/ over generations

c/ in a way which can still allow people to continue to give lip-service and token obedience to higher ideals

Avoiding Recognition Of Devaluation

This ensures that devaluation will never be fully recognised and rooted out, even within one individual

Confirming Devalued Status

Confirms devalued status of victim(s) in their own eyes and the eyes of society

Legitimising Distantiation

Legitimises distantiation and segregation

Fixing People In Roles

Freezes devalued people into negatively valued and competency-diminishing roles

Enables Brutalisation

Legitimises and even invites brutalisation, even genocide, of negatively-imaged persons/groups

Causes General Social Policies Of Systematic Devaluation

Enables real social policies of devaluation, hatred and oppression to be perpetrated, despite recurring efforts to remediate the victim’s plight.

Raises Or Saves Money

Raises a lot of money, or avoids it being spent.

Maintains Jobs For Service Workers

Allows the employment of many deviancy engineers.

Images Frequently Associated With People At Risk Of Devaluation

These images below are similar to the list of roles into which people-at-risk are cast that we discussed earlier:

Sick or diseased organism

Children

Non-human

Objects of Dread

Objects of Pity/Charity

Objects of Ridicule

Dying, or Already Dead

Certain Traps To Avoid While Striving For Image-Enhancing Language About Devalued People

Exchange Of One Poor Image For Another

Unnecessarily exchanging one image-jeopardising formulation for another, possibly even more image-demeaning one, perhaps because it is more popular. For instance, changing a social problem to medicalised problem may in fact make the outcome for the person worse because the image moved to has further negative connotations.

Misuse Of Language And The Denial Of Disability

Doing violence to the normative or even natural language usage. Talking incessantly of ‘person’s who suffer from (for instance) challenging behaviour’, when one in fact means people who cause a problem. Often such usage denies that the person has a problem, or that the role or image surrounding them is not a problem for them, but one of the entire social system. For instance, if defining the problem as ‘a challenge to the system’, and then changing that system to avoid such behaviours without looking at the person’s underlying non-normative behaviour as well, will ensure that the person (when faced with problems elsewhere) will continue to challenge that other system.

Political Correctness Leading To Ridicule And Denial Of Impairing Conditions

Using euphemisms and code words, especially ones that are not transparent, that are phoney, contrived, misleading, or that the public finds ridiculous will often lead to the general public treating such people as objects of ridicule, or even denying that the people-at-risk really have extra needs because of their underlying condition. For instance, saying ‘differently-abled’ invites ridicule and denial of their condition.

Concealing Or Denying Impairments

Ceasing to communicate unpleasant realities altogether, even where the messages are relevant and needed by the receiving party. If people are denied knowledge that might help them view or treat people-at-risk better, then this is a perversion of that person’s real needs.

The Use Of Language Terrorism

Practising ‘language terrorism’ on others and/or disabling their fluency of discourse ensures that communication about issues important to the people-at-risk becomes distorted and often impossible.

Typical Media Through Which Image Association to Devalued People are Conveyed

Images are transferred via various media (methods of transfer of information):

Characteristics Of The Physical Setting

Internal and External Appearance Aspects:

Harmony with neighbourhood

Consistency with Culturally Valued Analogue

Beauty, upkeep and seasonal appointments

Physical Features

Location/Proximity

History

Groupings With Other People

Clients

Staff (including volunteers)

Others

Personal Imagery

Appearance

Possessions

Autonomy and Rights

Language

Personal Names and Labels

Service Names and Labels

Setting and Location Names

An Example Of False Image

People with mental health problems are seen to be violent- they are given an image of menace. However, this image is largely Media-led as Greg Philo and colleagues show in their paper ‘The Impact of the Mass Media on Public Images of Mental Illness: Media Content and Audience Belief’. They show that in popular media, 66% of coverage stressed violence to others as a main theme. This is also promoted by films such as ‘Silence Of The Lambs’, ‘Fatal Attraction’, and ‘In The Line Of Fire’. Elsewhere it has been shown that the real situation is that people with mental health problems are at greater risk from violence than of being violent themselves. Additionally, many people who are labelled by the media as mentally ill after having committed a violent crime, are shown to be have not been ill at the time, or that their illness was not contributory to the offence.

SRV suggests that we are dependent on signs and symbols to make social decisions. We treat people differently purely because of their appearance.

For instance if someone is dirty and untidy, this image will tell us how to treat the person. If someone looks like us, we will treat them in a particular way. If people are surrounded by negative images, this will affect our response to them.

9.2.4 Summary Of The Theme of Social Imagery

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