Marlena Fritchman
English 101
Ch. 3 and 4 Summary
Bleck

Chapter 3

Tricks of the Deception Trade
 Trick #1-Misnomers
o the assault weapon ban did not fully ban weapons only cirtain semiautomatics.
o “tall” coffee and “large” olives are not exactly precise.
o names can be just as misleading as people.
 Trick #2-Frame It and Claim It
o the best way to explain this one is by saying that words are spoken about laws and what not and eventually they spread and the original person wants credit for it. Example of this is the “estate tax” becoming the “death tax”.
 Trick #3-Weasel Words
o this trick is by phrasing words to sound better to a consumer. An example of this is “up to 50 % off”. I know that I personally have been caught in this trick. I expected to get 50% off of an item and it was explained to me that only certain items were actually half off.
 Trick #4-Eye Candy
o the best way to explain this is by stating that pictures are a thousand words. Where as a commercial my say something, the only meaning coming through to us is what the picture is saying. Commercials will put the unatractive points of an item in words and form the ad attractively through pictures.
 Trick #5-The “Average” Bear
o average does not allways mean “typical” such as with the “average” tax cut proposed by Bush.
 Trick #6-The Baseline Bluff
o this is mostly used by politics. They use this tactic to try and disuade voters to vote for their rivals. Such as accusing another runner for cutting Medicare benefits.
 Trick #7-The Literally True Falsehood
o this is twisting a false statement with truth in order to look better such as Clinton did about his sex scandal. He had previously had sex with Lewinski but not at the time of his statement.
 Trick #8-The Implied Falsehood
o this is used to legally sell products with no foundations. Marketers do not explicitly state that a product will work, they just make implications that make us believe that it will.

Chapter 4
Why We Get Spun
 The Moonbat Effect
o truthout.org was a website that reported a UFO landing that did not happen.
o barking moonbatters were people who sacrificed sanity for consistency.
 The Psychology of Deception
o we get facts wrong or twisted in our heads more often then we think.
o humans seek out the weakest evidence to support our beliefs.
o pretty much the idea is that we want our beliefs to be substantial and not to stray from them. This can be supported by the idea of a plane crashing and people not wanting to fly due to the unsafeness.
 The “Pictures In Our Heads” Trap
o I feel that this is pretty much the same as The Psychology of Deception. Again is is about reinforcing our beliefs and not wanting to hear anything that discourages them.
 The “Root For My Side” Trap
o this is about the way we see things and is related to the last two items. A person who sees a certain thing, such as a bad call at a football game, will go to all ends just to prove that they are right and do not want to hear any supporting facts that make them wrong. The “bad call” at a football game may not have been and the fan may not have seen it clearly, but will not go to the other side of way of thinking. I feel that this also goes hand-in-hand with “The I Know I am Right” theory.
 The “Close Call” Trap
o this is about difficult decisions. When faced with tough decisions we are not as confident as if we had made the decision and had the opportunity to repeat the task. We want to feel certain about a choice even if it effects our accuaracy and constency of our choice making.

Sorry that it came out like this. I was using word and trying to paste it hear and this is what I wound up with.