Prof Jiang Media

Performed authenticity

AI detected as: Manufactured Authenticity

The deliberate construction of "realness" — confessional tone, casual filming, strategic vulnerability — designed to lower your guard. When someone appears unpolished and honest, you evaluate their claims less critically. The spontaneity is rehearsed.

Goffman's dramaturgy (1959); Audrezet et al. (2020) on performed authenticity

Performed authenticity

The deliberate construction of "realness" — confessional tone, casual filming, strategic vulnerability — designed to lower your guard. When someone appears unpolished and honest, you evaluate their claims less critically. The spontaneity is rehearsed.

Goffman's dramaturgy (1959); Audrezet et al. (2020) on performed authenticity

Single-cause framing

Attributing a complex outcome to a single cause, ignoring the web of contributing factors. A clean explanation is more satisfying and easier to act on than a complicated one. Especially effective when the proposed cause is something you already dislike.

Fallacy of the single cause; Kahneman's WYSIATI principle

Us vs. Them

Dividing the world into two camps — people like us (good, trustworthy) and people not like us (dangerous, wrong). It exploits a deep human tendency to favor our own group. Once you accept the division, information from "them" gets automatically discounted.

Tajfel's Social Identity Theory (1979); Minimal Group Paradigm

Fear appeal

Presenting a vivid threat and then offering a specific action as the way to avoid it. Always structured as: "Something terrible will happen unless you do X." Most effective when the threat feels personal and the action feels achievable.

Witte's Extended Parallel Process Model (1992)

Moral framing

Presenting a complex issue with genuine tradeoffs as a simple choice between right and wrong. Once something is framed as a moral issue, compromise feels like complicity and disagreement feels immoral rather than reasonable.

Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory; Lakoff's framing research (2004)

Association

Pairing a new idea, product, or person with something you already feel positively or negatively about. The goal is to transfer your existing emotional response without any logical connection. It works below conscious awareness.

Evaluative conditioning (Pavlov); IPA 'Transfer' technique (1937)

In-group/Out-group framing

Leveraging your tendency to automatically trust information from "our people" and distrust outsiders. Once groups are established, people apply different standards of evidence depending on who is speaking.

Social Identity Theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979); Cialdini's Unity principle (2016)