A Splash In The Water: Accident Or Murder?

Although an old topic, the mysterious case of Natalie Wood has been puzzling authorities for years and continues to do so to this very day. A case that happened about thirty-seven years ago was reopened in the year 2011 and has once again been cycled around. The case involves Natalie’s late husband Robert Wagner, Christopher Walken, and a yacht captain, Dennis Davern. While out on a yacht trip, Natalie Wood had been found floating dead in the water. Suspicions were raised over how Natalie had died, pointing fingers at Wagner, Davern, and Walken. In the most recent update to the case, Natalie’s sister Lana, speaks up about how she feels and how she wants her brother-in-law to admit to what truly happened that night on the boat. Us Weekly Magazine gives us the inside scoop with an article containing a small excerpt of audio between Lana and Wagner.

The case revolves around many assumptions, theories, and thoughts of skepticism. However, when we look at it from the perspective of social psychology we can apply different concepts to help explain or dwindle down certain views or maybe even perhaps make the case even more elusive than it already is. A main concept that plays a role in this case is the concept of the confirmation bias. The confirmation bias is the tendency to look for information that helps confirm our own preconceptions. For instance, Natalie’s sister Lana opens with this statement in the thirty-minute clip found on an exerpt by US Weekly, “We all have to accept what we’ve done in life and accept the wrongs. We have to all face up to it…and if that’s what he’s done, he has to face up to it.” She constantly implies that Robert Wagner was involved in Natalie’s death. She also implies that he was involved with the death of Natalie by confronting him in an interview and saying “…but R.J you’ve changed your story, you’ve never said anything to me, you’ve never for one minute stopped and said, ‘This is what happened”’, after saying that he had spoken about the events to people many times. This relates to confirmation bias by the simple fact that Lana is trying to find information to confirm her own views, and is reluctant to look or accept facts that support other possibilities.

We also see the concept of illusory correlations play a role in this investigation. Illusory correlation happens when we perceive a strong relationship between two things rather than what truly exists. We have a perception that there is a prominent relationship, when there really isn’t any. In the case of Natalie Wood, there may be a high tendency of correlating two events that happened to the buildup of Natalie’s death. This tends to be rather easy for the simple fact that the case does not have a lot of people involved, and the area in which the events took place were confined to that of a boat. A prime example of this illusory correlation would be surrounding the idea of Natalie and Robert fighting earlier on in the night. Many times when we see that a spouse of someone has died rather unexpectedly or abruptly, we like to trace it back to the other half. For example, if a man’s wife had suddenly died due to some freak accident, many people would be inclined to believe that the woman and her husband had had a bad marriage or some sort of conflict that lead the man to do something horrible to his own wife. People would assume that they had gotten in an argument that lead to extreme anger leading the man to lash out regardless of previous judgements of the couple. However, there is no true correlation between this woman dying and her husband being involved with the murder. However strong the correlation between fighting and something bad happening preceding a fight is, we cannot conclude in complete confidence that Natalie and Robert arguing, lead to Robert murdering his own wife.

Perhaps by looking at the mind puzzling case without preconceptions and wants of our own, we could see it in a different light and by chance find new facts. The reason I say this is because our own needs to fulfill our confirmation bias, as well as illusory correlation, blinds us from seeing other possible options.

Citations:

Us Weekly Staff. (2018, October 1st). Natalie Wood’s Sister Lana Confronted Robert Wagner: ‘Why Won’t You Speak to Detectives?’

.Retrieved from https://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/news/natalie-woods-sister-confronted-robert-wagner/

Ads Persuade Us More Than You Think

Pop star and actress, Selena Gomez, signed a contract with Coach to design her own line and become the face of the brand. She has a very large fan base and is the most followed account on Instagram with 129 million followers. Coach has seen a spike in sales and social media interaction. Whenever Selena posts a photo of her with a Coach bag, the brand’s social media pages have shown a dramatic increase in activity. An analysis by assessment management firm Piper Jaffray, reported that since partnering with Selena, Coach has seen an increase of roughly fifty percent in followers. Her promotion of the products has helped increase sales; on the same day Coach and Selena launched their fall collaboration collection, the brand’s stock rose by 2%. It is a marketing tactic to have celebrities promote products in order to influence the consumer’s mind about it. The goal is to convince consumers that the merchandise is worth buying. This is persuasion, the process by which a message induces change in beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors.

Celebrity endorsements and promoting products on their social media page is a peripheral route to persuasion. This occurs when people are influenced by incidental cues like a speaker’s attractiveness. The audience/consumer was able to focus on the very famous pop star/actress who has a huge following on social media which triggered automatic acceptance without much thinking involved. Associating a product with celebrities and their fame and attractiveness allows these visual images to become peripheral cues. Peripheral route processing builds implicit attitudes, through repeated associations between an attitude object and emotion. This means that people unconsciously formed attitudes through the repeated connection between their

feelings and judgement of Selena Gomez in the ad. This is different from central route to persuasion where the audience focuses on the content of the message. If the ad or photo had facts about the kind of material used for the Coach bag and said the quality was the best, then the audience can be convinced by the arguments presented and not by peripheral cues.

Credibility of the speaker in an advertisement is important in the persuasion of the consumer. Selena Gomez has the perceived trustworthiness and expertise necessary to make her promotion of the merchandise believable. A lot of times celebrities get caught up in scandals like inappropriate behavior and drug abuse. Selena Gomez has never been involved with any kind of scandals and is seen as a person with a good reputation. She’s worked with many charities and foundations and rose to fame due to her starring role in a popular kid’s television show. Gomez is very involved in the fashion world so she has lots of experience with clothing brands. It makes sense why there are so many athlete endorsement deals. There’s more credibility if an Olympic gold medalist were to be in a sneaker advertisement than if it were just any ordinary person. A credible person makes consumers believe that they can trust the speaker because they are experts in what they are promoting. So, next time you see an ad, ask yourself did you really like that product or did you like who was promoting it?

References

Velasco, P. (2017, October 09). Did Selena Gomez Boost Coach’s Insta-Popularity? Retrieved November 06, 2017, from http://people.com/chica/selena-gomez-boosts-coach-instagram-success/

 

– Hilary Concepcion

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