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the level of social trust (as measured in the World Values Survey). Similarly, a high measure of perceived corruption (as measured by Transparency International) is positively associated with heavy TV-viewing hours, as we see in Figure 8.1(b). Italy, for example, scores very high on both measures, a fair reflection of a country long governed by a media owner with a seemingly endless trail of corruption charges, while the citizens of Scandinavian countries are low TV viewers with very high levels of social trust. The United States, fortunately, lies a bit below the best-fit line in this case. Despite America’s remarkably heavy TV viewing, the corruption level is judged to be only moderate in comparison with the others. (Perhaps this is because much of America’s corruption is in effect legalized through corporate lobbying and campaign financing.)

Figure 8.1(a): Relationship Between Television Viewing and Social Trust

Source: Data from World Values Survey Databank and the RTL Group.

Figure 8.1(b): Relationship Between Television Viewing and Corruption Perception

Source: Data from Transparency International and the RTL Group.

Heavy TV viewing also appears to be bad for one’s mental and physical health. We know from opinion surveys that heavy TV watchers report being less happy on average and indeed unsettled by their heavy TV viewing. Heavy TV viewing therefore seems to fit the pattern of psychological addiction rather than a healthy consumption behavior. There is also a not-surprising positive correlation between TV-viewing hours and obesity, shown in Figure 8.2. This correlation probably reflects, in part, a direct causal link from sedentary behavior (heavy TV watching) to obesity. It may also reflect a higher tendency of TV watchers to have the junk-food diets promoted in TV ads. Perhaps there is also a psychological linkage in play, in which overeating and excessive TV watching both reflect a loss of self-control.

The correlations between heavy TV viewing and the adverse social and personal outcomes are, of course, very far from causal proofs. Heavy TV viewing would be only one of several factors determining complex social outcomes. Still, the relationships are suggestive and worrisome.

Figure 8.2: Relationship between Television Viewing and Obesity

Source: Data from the RTL Group and OECD.

The relentless streams of images and media messages that confront us daily are professionally designed to distort our most important decision making processes. We are encouraged to act on impulse and fantasy instead of reason. And we need to understand that the difficulty of maintaining our balance in a media-rich economy is even greater than we might have supposed even ten or fifteen years ago. The advances in modern neurobiology and psychology have revealed a level of human vulnerability that would have surprised even Freud and Bernays.

The problem is not just that we are a bundle of rational and irrational motives that operate without our conscious knowledge and therefore are vulnerable to unconscious manipulation. Uncle Freud and nephew Bernays knew that, and generations of research psychologists have since confirmed it time and again, by showing how our decisions are influenced by the slightest changes in mood, setting, or unconscious cues as manipulated by the experimenter. The newly understood fact is that we are also biological “works in progress,” even into our later years. Our brains, and hence personalities, decision making capacities, and values, are subject to extensive and continued neural rewiring over time. We are not just what we eat. We are also what we see and hear, since these literally change our brains, minds, and future judgments.

This constant reshaping of our brains, and our deep vulnerability to manipulation, require us to understand just how strange our advertising-laden economy really is. We’ve learned more and more that human beings are vulnerable to manipulation, yet we’ve also fostered a vast advertising and PR industry designed to prey on those weaknesses. The neuroscientists give us