Consumer Behavior and Belief

We consume a lot of things — including, I guess, things we aren’t even aware that we’re consuming … like ideas.

I think a lot of our behavior follows patterns that are “animalistic” in nature. Like Mick Jagger (with the Rolling Stones) sang: we salivate like a pavlov dog.

Apparently, our systems are based on the reinforcement of rewards. We are rewarded when our behavior is optimized for survival (and propagation). There seem to be feedback loops built into our systems — such that reinforce the way survival and propagation lead to such rewards.

I feel quite out of my depth on this topic in general, but I won’t let that prevent me from going out on a limb to extrapolate my very speculative thoughts far out into a tangential space I intend to colonize all on my own! 😛

As I indicated at the outset, I think that such reinforcing feedback loops also play out in the world of ideas and beliefs. My hunch is that the biological basis of conditioning is that things seem to become more and more true the more often we experience these things occurring. When we let go of a stone, it almost always falls down towards the Earth (it would require an awfully strong wind to change that significantly).

When we experience other people confirming our own ideas, then this is also a positive feedback loop. Likewise, it feels good to be around people who are prone to confirm our ideas (this phenomenon is known under a variety of names — perhaps one of the most widely known case being the so-called “bandwagon effect”).

My general hunch is that such feedback loops operate on a wide variety of levels throughout society. Perhaps the most prominent instance of this is how information is organized in society. Two analyses of such phenomena which I have cited before are “The Social Construction of Reality” and also “Manufacturing Consent” (see e.g. “Authority, Certifications, Trust in Social Order and Novice Internet Users“, “The Social Construction of Publishing” and “Manufacturing Consent“)

For now, I am merely posting this mainly as a note to myself — because I feel I need to think about this stuff a lot more … or maybe have someone explain it (to me) more, better, etc.