Empathic people are more susceptible to subliminal cues and influence

Evidence

What Facebook researchers failed to acknowledge in either experiment is that a person’s susceptibility to subliminal cues and his or her vulnerability to a “contagion” effect is largely dependent upon empathy: the ability to understand and share in the mental and emotional state of another person, including feeling another’s feelings and being able to take another’s point of view—sometimes characterized as “affective” or “cognitive” empathy. Psychologists have found that the more a person can project himself or herself into the feelings of another and take the other’s perspective, the more likely he or she is to be influenced by subliminal cues, including hypnosis. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 945

Categorization

• QUESTION: If high empathy predicts higher subliminal susceptibility, do surveillance-capital platforms effectively select FOR manipulation of their most empathic users? Worth chasing.
• XREF: Mirrors the Milgram/obedience literature on individual differences in susceptibility to authority and suggests platforms exploit dispositional vulnerabilities. — connects to: Nonverbal cues convey another’s consciousness beyond deliberate communication. — Karin Knorr Cetina & Urs Bruegger, Global Microstructures: The Virtual…, 63; Subliminal racial priming shifts judgments even among people low in prejudice — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 299; Thought suppression ironically makes unwanted traits dominate one’s perceptions of others — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years…, 2355 (+5 more)
• SEED: Angle: the empathic are the most manipulated — an irony where the most socially-connected people are also the most tractable targets of behavioral surplus extraction.

Broader Connections

• Subliminal racial priming shifts judgments even among people low in prejudice #exemplifies (0.80) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 299
• The same emotional tactic succeeds or fails depending on audience empathy #qualifies (0.75) — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 248
• The brain’s amygdala vigilance toward outgroups relaxes when people are treated as individuals #exemplifies (0.75)
• Thought suppression ironically makes unwanted traits dominate one’s perceptions of others #exemplifies (0.72) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2355
• Implicit measures reveal biased feelings people consciously disavow #corroborates (0.70)