20 CCOT Essay Topics on Advertising in Cultural History

20 CCOT Essay Topics on Advertising in Cultural History The importance of choosing an essay topic you truly understand and are able to work on cannot be overstated when the task at hand is writing a continuity and change-over-time essay (CCOT). This is because of the technical details that must be considered when writing such an essay. To explain further, when writing a CCOT essay, the student must pay attention to the time periods of his subject matter such as when certain things had occurred, analyse the changes since then as well as areas where continuity has been noted. This means that a CCOT essay on advertising in cultural history must first go about discussing the history of an advertising medium or concept, proceed to discussing how the advertising medium or concept has changed over time as well as the factors that influenced these changes. Lastly, one must employ the use of the chosen historical concept to show the change and continuities that occurred over time. As you can see, writing a CCOT essay tests the student research and writing abilities in multiple ways. Therefore to successfully write your essay, you will need concrete and continuous facts to make your arguments and these facts can be found in this article on the 10 CCOT essay facts and advertising in cultural history. This article is intended to simplify your task in choosing a topic once your initial research has been completed and these are the 20 topics for today. 20 essay topics on advertising in cultural history: Historical Context in Advertising and its Growth Over Time Exploring the Similarities between Ancient and Modern Advertising Techniques Ancient and Modern Advertising: Comparing and Contrasting Techniques The Invention of New Media and Advertising History The Role of Media Inventions in Revolutionizing Advertising Discussing the Effectiveness of Billboards as an Advertising Tool A Study on Advertising and its Continuous Growth Analyzing Salesmanship in Print and New Media The Evolution of Advertising Making Sense of Advertisement and its Application Through the Ages The Origin of Branding and Its Effects on Society A Historical Analysis of Advertising and Women Objectification The Ever-Changing Face of Advertising in the Non-Profit Sector Comparing Online Advertising Reach to Print Media Children as Consumers: Studying Advertising Demographics Historical and Modern Analysis of Sexism in Advertising Shaping the American Woman: Feminism and Advertising in the US A Study on Advertising to Kids in the 21st Century The History and Evolution of the Advertising Industry Analyzing the Public Perception of Advertising through its History Here we come to the end of the 20 topics we believe should inspire you to write excellently on the topic of advertising in cultural history. These topics will be preceded by a CCOT essay developed from a topic chosen off this list. This written essay on the historical and modern analysis of sexism in advertising would provide some direction on how you should go about drafting yours in such a manner that guarantees you top marks. Sample CCOT Essay: Historical and Modern Analysis of Sexism in Advertising The time tested phrase ‘sex sells’ has played a huge role in advertising and marketing through the years as advertising firms fought to get consumers using products regardless of the morality of long-reaching effects of marketing campaigns. In the 90s advertising had witnessed an upsurge as more people became financially capable of purchasing consumer goods and sex was used in advertisement as a means to an end. As time passed, feminism and the increased social awareness of the average individual wrought some changes on the phrase and my essay will attempt to analyse the changes in advertising sexism and the roles society played in pushing these changes. With the advent of print media came a corresponding increase in advertising and in 1911, the first sexualized advert in the United States was created. This Woodbury Facial Soap advertisement named ‘A Skin You Love to Touch’, showed young women reclining on sofa’s while men ogled over the condition of their skin. A corresponding advert by Marlboro in 1955 created sexualized pictures of the ideal man and his smoking habits. Needless to say, these adverts led to highly increased sales of both products using subliminal messages to shape public perceptions. These adverts opened the floodgates and in the late 90s, the female form became the hallmark object for the advertising industry but this practice did not go unchallenged for long. In 1960, feminist groups were the first organized body of individuals to bring to the public’s notice the harmful effect of creating a pseudo perfect human appearance could have on an individual’s psyche. They pointed out how the use of models pushed women to pursue unrealistic goals and how glamorising smoking and alcohol intake led others into developing unhealthy vices. As more people became aware of how manipulative and sexist modern advertising trends were becoming, certain limitations were set by the (EPA) on the acceptable advert forms that can be displayed on both print and video media platforms. Some of these measures included the publishing and highlighting of the dangers of smoking in cigarettes advertisements as well as the viewership age restriction system on video ads. These checks on the excesses of traditional advertising formats that promoted sexism were positive to an extent for they reduced over sexualisation of the female form as well as what was considered appropriate to be shown on television. But despite this progress, forms of sexism in the advertising industry still continue as the female form is still been used to sell jewellery, clothing, sport items and perfumes. The advent of the internet as the new platform for advertising has also sprung some challenges for just about anyone can create and advertisement and there are no real ways to counter the use of inappropriate or sexist materials on the World Wide Web. In conclusion, sex still sells and it would take a concerted effort from both government organizations and stakeholders in the advertising industry to truly tackle the far-reaching effects of sexism. The above essay was written as a CCOT essay on advertising in cultural history. The last article in this series is written in tutorial form and provides tips on how to write a great CCOT essay on advertising in cultural history. References: Mustapha Momoh, M. (2013). Effect of Demographic Variables on Information Seeking Behaviour of Company Advertising Strategies in North-Eastern Nigeria. IOSR Journal of Business and Management, 9(3), pp.46-51. Dahlà ©n, M. Edenius, M. (2007). When is Advertising Advertising? Comparing Responses to Non-Traditional and Traditional Advertising Media. Journal of Current Issues Research in Advertising, 29(1), pp.33-42. CURTIS, R. (1986). Product Identification and Advertising on Roman Commercial Amphorae. Ancient Society, 17(0), pp.209-228. Feng, S. (2009). Talking about Ancient Chinese Commercial Advertising Styles. Asian Social Science, 5(12). Leclerc, F., Schmitt, B. and Dube, L. (1994). Foreign Branding and Its Effects on Product Perceptions and Attitudes. Journal of Marketing Research, 31(2), p.263. Cheong, Y., de Gregorio, F. and Kim, K. (2010). The Power of Reach and Frequency In the Age of Digital Advertising. Journal of Advertising Research, 50(4), pp.403-415. Sridhar, S. and Sriram, S. (2007). Is Online Newspaper Advertising Cannibalizing Print Advertising?. SSRN Electronic Journal.

Evolutionary Psychology As A Unifying †Research Paper

Evolutionary Psychology As A Unifying – Research Paper Free Online Research Papers Evolutionary Psychology As A Unifying Research Paper In this essay I will assess evolutionary psychology (E.P) as a scientific research programme. I will outline the concept of a scientific research programme and the utility of discussing E.P in this manner. I will also give an outline of the origins of E.P, discussing on the one hand its fundamental principles and their auxiliary hypotheses and on the other the earliest work done in this spirit. I will discuss certain ambiguities and weaknesses present in the programme, those concerning reverse engineering, modularity, adaptation and the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness (E.E.A). I will complete the discussion of Archer’s claim by assessing criticisms of E.P and their motivation, and providing some warning comments about progress and degeneration. E.P as a Scientific Research Programme Archer (2001) presents the hierarchical theoretic structure of E.P. as outlined by Buss (1990). His basic claim is that the fundamental principles of E.P are not being tested in empirical research; the role of these fundamental principles (the first and second level) is to generate ‘novel hypotheses’ (the second and third level) which are then empirically tested. To understand fully what is being claimed one needs at least a brief gloss on work done in Philosophy of Science in the latter part of the twentieth century. In his Conjectures and Refutations Karl Popper made what many consider to be a key move in the justification of scientific method. His suggestion was that science follows a ‘hypothetico-deductive’ system. Rather than being an attempt to prove theories inductively from set of relevant observations, a more stable characterisation (which would also account for the success of scientific theories) would be as follows: hypotheses are deduced from theories; these hypotheses generate predictions which are submitted to rigorous tests; any observations which violate these predictions refute the theory via a retransmission of falsity under the logical law of modus tollens. Theories are conjectures which stand only until falsified; the wider the range of predictions and the more rigorous the test, the better the theory. (Popper, 1972) One problem noted by one of Popper’s students, David Miller (in his Critical Rationalism), is the lack of any theory of verisimilitude. Given that there is no way of identifying a specific set of all the hypotheses a theory may generate in potentia there is no way of knowing which un-refuted theory is objectively better, and thus closer to the truth, than its contemporaries. (Miller, 1994) An alternative view presented by Kuhn in his Structure of Scientific Revolutions is that ‘normal science’ consists of ‘paradigms’, which are themselves dependent upon historical factors such as their socio-political context. Unfortunately Kuhn’s use of the ‘paradigm’ is fairly ambiguous and whilst it is useful for talking about dramatic changes in accepted scientific thought e.g. the ‘Williams revolution’ in evolutionary biology, it is unclear whether it can be specifically applied to E.P. Kuhn recognising this ambiguity changed the term to disciplinary matrix or matrices (Kuhn, 1970, 1977). However, some e.g. Buller Hardcastle (2001) read ‘paradigm’ as a shared and unquestioned framework of theory, methodology, and exemplars (specific explanations that serve as models for further scientific research) and believe E.P may be represented in this way. I am unconvinced that they have wrestled with the ambiguities a nd will argue that a Lakatosian ‘scientific research programme’ (S.R.P) is closer to Archer’s representation of E.P as a â€Å"research agenda† and can better account for the diversity within the field (Archer 2001, p414). Imre Lakatos, also a student and colleague of Popper (but sympathetic the idea that history is a key factor in considering the nature of scientific research), proposed the idea that an S.R.P is characterised by a continuity which ties together its members: the metaphysical ‘hard-core’. The hard-core is metaphysical in the Popperian sense that it is not subject to refutation by empirical testing. Within the hard-core are the central theoretic principles from which auxiliary hypotheses are deduced. In E.P. the hard-core, at the very least, certainly comprises the principle that species evolve through genetic inheritance, mutation and differential selection: Darwinian evolution. It would also include certain Neo-Darwinian ethological principles such as Trivers’ theory of reciprocal altruism, Hamilton’s theory of kin selection and Maynard Smith’s application of ‘game theory’ to evolution. The inclusion of these is indicated by the words imme diately following the title quote â€Å"natural selection has made us this way† (Archer 2001, p414). Note that these theories are empirically testable, however what is important in the context of E.P as an S.R.P is that they are tested elsewhere (they are the auxiliary hypotheses of other S.R.P’s); the experiments conducted under the banner of E.P serve to test the auxiliary hypotheses which form a protective belt around the hard-core (Archer 2001, p415). This, I hope, will add some depth to Archers comment that it is a â€Å"fundamental misconception† about E.P research to believe â€Å"that in each case the evolutionary view is being tested† (Archer 2001, p416). The auxiliary hypotheses are interpretations of the hard-core with specified empirically observable predictions from which experiments may be constructed. If the predictions are falsified by experimental observations the relevant auxiliary hypotheses will be discarded as false interpretations of the core. A degenerative S.R.P is one which is continually forced to discard auxiliary hypotheses, thus reducing the range of empirical prediction and continually reinterpreting the hard-core. A progressive S.R.P is one which continually increases the range of empirical prediction through the survival of auxiliary hypotheses and the generation of novel hypotheses from the former. The Santa Barbara School and the early auxiliary hypotheses In the light of this discussion we can more clearly discern what might be characteristic features of E.P and see whether it does what Archer proclaims. Here I will examine the claim that the early writings and mission statements of Leda Cosmides and John Tooby provides the â€Å"defining features of the field† (Laland Brown (2002)). Together with Donald Symons, who brought them to the University of Santa Barbara, this group of researchers will be referred to as the ‘Santa Barbara School’ for the sake of convenience. Cosmides Toobys views on the nature of E.P seem to be in the same spirit as Archers rather general statement (serving as title for this paper), as shown the following quote: â€Å"Evolutionary psychology is an approach to psychology, in which knowledge and principles from evolutionary biology are put to use in research on the structure of the human mind.† (Cosmides Tooby, 1997) One noteworthy disparity between the Santa Barbara School and Archer (and perhaps also Buss, see Laland Brown (2002) p158) seems to be the extent to which they emphasise a computational theory of mind. Archer uses the word mechanism freely but without committing himself to any clear statement of his stance upon the functionality of the mind. Cosmides and Tooby on the other hand clearly emphasise that they take mind to be an information processing machine consisting of circuits operating programs which manifest adaptations: â€Å"When evolutionary psychologists refer to the mind, they mean the set of information-processing devices, embodied in the human brainthe programs comprising the human mind were designed by natural selection to solve the adaptive problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors.† (Cosmides 2001) Thus we should exhibit evolutionary adaptations in our behaviour and cognitive abilities. An apparent thesis of the Santa Barbara School is what might be called hyper-modularity. Fodor originally introduced the idea of modularity to the Philosophy of Mind in arguing that the areas of mind involved in perception have certain pointed and discrete functional properties and are thus domain-specific whilst the rest of the mind may be a domain general problem solving machine (Fodor, 1983). A crucial feature of these modules is informational encapsulation; the module is only privy to the very specific information related to its function and does not access information processed in other parts of the brain. The Santa Barbara School adopt the idea of domain-specific modules whilst seemingly rejecting the idea that the mind may be domain-general. It is useful to understand this as a reaction to what they referred to as the Standard Social Science Model (SSSM), which retained what they considered a dogmatic view (inherited from the 17th and 18th century empiricists) of the mind as w hite paper to be written upon by social cultural and physical experience and so must be domain general (as it begins with no information regarding the problems it may face). A quote from Symon illustrates their view: â€Å"It is no more probable that some sort of general-purpose brain/mind mechanism could solve all the behavioural problems an organism faces (find food, choose a mate,select a habitat, etc.) than it is that some sort of general-purpose organ could perform all physiological functions (pump blood, digest food, nourish an embryo, etc.)† (Symons, 1997 as cited in Buller Hardcastle, 2000) To understand what problems these domain-specific modules have adapted to solve one must be familiar with the environment in which they evolved. Evolution takes a long time, only comprehensible in terms of thousands of generations. Cosmides and Tooby suggest, following Bowlby, that we have not significantly evolved since the time when our hunter-gather ancestors roamed the African Savannah in roughly the Pleistocene period; this would be the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness (E.E.A) and only in reference to this, rather than our post-agricultural/technological-revolution modern day world, may we understand present day adaptations. Thus we have a stone-age mind in a space age world, but â€Å"the past explains the present† , and we must reverse-engineer to understand a particular trait or disposition (Cosmides Tooby, 1990; Pinker, 1997 cited in Archer, 2001). Cosmides (1989) doctoral dissertation provides an illustration of the methods proposed above. Following the principle of reciprocal altruism and the idea that its effective function requires an ability to detect cheats to the rules of reciprocation (i.e. in solution to the free-rider problem), Cosmides designed a series of elegant experiments using the Wason selection task to test the hypothesis that humans possess a cheater detection module adapted to solve this problem. The data showed that even where subjects had training in formal logic 75% failed the task when in an abstract form, whereas 75% got it right when it was presented in a social form in which subjects had to detect cheats to a social rule (both tasks had the same logical form). This indicated that the subjects possessed a cheater detection module that was not party to the subjects knowledge of logic in a separate stream of the brain. In sum, we have a number of auxiliary hypotheses detailed above that have been interpreted from the hard-core which we established earlier. These are that the mind functions as a computer with discrete domain-specific modules, we will exhibit evolved adaptations in our behaviour and cognition our adaptations were selected for in an environment vastly different from that which most of us currently live in to understand these we must focus upon the E.E.A I shall give brief criticisms of each of these. Ambiguities, weaknesses, criticisms of E.P, degeneration and progress. I shall not address the concept of a computational theory in general but rather the specific modularity thesis. There are two initial points: firstly a modular theory of mind does not necessitate a mind composed of entirely domain specific modules – as Fodor (1983) suggests, there may be informationally encapsulated modules which do not interact with the rest of a domain general mind; secondly whilst Cosmides early conclusions at least require some domain-specific/informationally encapsulated modules there is little to suggest that this precludes them being a part of a domain-general mind. In fact there seems to be evidence that some psychological traits are domain-general, and when pushed upon the matter Cosmides and Tooby agree, pointing to their own recent work which indicates just this, making it somewhat ambiguous what their stance is. Work done by Ramachandran and others has shown that hand-gesturing in babies comes before the use of language, gesticulation experiences are reported by phantom limb patients when communicating, blind persons use the same gestures in the same manner as sighted persons, sighted persons still gesticulate when talking to blind persons and subjects recall details of a story better when allowed to gesticulate. All of which indicates that gesticulation may not be a culturally learned behavioural trait but rather a tool for the speakers language use. This is in turn would indicate that there is a dynamic interaction between brain areas involved in language and those involved in motor control; this is a direct criticism of Pinkers arguments that there are discrete language modules and of hyper-modularity in general (Badcock, 2000, pp23 25). Adaptations are a point of controversy within Darwinian theory. Darwins own comments seem to suggest that an adaptation selected to solve a specific problem may be an illusion or very heavy interpretation of what is really just an amalgam of surviving parts (see quotation in Badcock pp 22 23). Also Williams warns against regarding something as an adaptation prematurely, stating that the criterion for regarding a feature of an organism as adaptive (and if so what it was originally adaptive to) are far too unclear, as such he warns that we should only regard something as adaptation when we have exhausted all other possibilities. There seems to be a problem here for the reverse engineering thesis that presumes we can glean semantic properties (the why) rather than just causal properties (the how) from our analysis of whether a particular behaviour or ability is adaptive (Badcock, 2000, pp18 19). Having anything interesting to say about the E.E.A may be precluded by the difficulty of being able to say with confidence that something is an adaptation rather than an epiphenomenon of other other unnoticed adaptations. This aside it is not particularly clear what exactly the E.E.A is; denoting a general time-period and place does not get us far in having a working model. Cosmides and Tooby (1990) have attempted to provide something more definitive: â€Å"it is a statistical composite of the adaptation relevant properties of the ancestral environments encountered by members of ancestral populations, weighted by their frequency and their fitness consequences.†(as cited in Laland Brown 2000 pp179) Yet this does not denote a particular ancestral population or even a particular time period which would mark key stages in our evolution of certain adaptations (Laland Brown, 2000) The idea of an E.E.A and focus on the general hunter-gatherer concept also gives a misleadingly static view of evolution in the surrounding time periods. In addition, to say that we are maladapted to our current environment is akin to saying that the hunter gatherers, being originally vegetarians, were maladapted to theirs. It seems a moot point to argue focus upon one environment rather than another. A few things must be noted in conclusion. Firstly very few of the criticisms above are decisive or even arguments. To do this effectively one would have to level each against all the diverse work done in the field. But the line of attack is clear; if the auxiliary hypotheses cannot achieve the generality they purport or worse still their predictions are disconfirmed then they will have to be reinterpreted in order that the programme may survive. If reinterpretation persists then the field should be considered degenerative. But if it can field all the criticisms and make new predictions, progress must be noted. One thing that is omitted above is a proper treatment of the diversity of research done in this field, as I have tried to look at the bigger picture. The picture is overall a highly deterministic one and rejecting this aspect is a common motivation for some of the more valid criticisms. Rose Rose point out that there is no account taken of plasticity and the dynamic complex nature of living systems (Archer, 2001 pp428 429). And as a final note, volitional action is still considered one of the things that makes us human, our behaviour seems under-determined by genetic mechanisms, something may be being left out. Bibliography: General note to reader: Where philosophical literature has been cited, exact page references have been omitted intentionally, in the belief that all references made are simply interpretations of their work. If my interpretation is deemed correct, the insight belongs to the referee, if deemed incorrect then I am simply mistaken. Archer, J. et al. (2001) Evolving Theories of Behaviour, in ‘The Psychologist’, 14(8): 414 431. Badcock, C.R. (2000) Evolutionary Psychology: a critical introduction; Blackwell, Polity Press Buss, D.E. (1990) – Evolutionary Social Psychology: prospects and pitfalls; in ‘Motivation and Emotion’, 14: 265-286. Buller Hardcastle (2000) Evolutionary Psychology, Meet Developmental Neurobiology: Against Promiscuous Modularity; in ‘Brain and Mind’ 1: 307–325: Netherlands, Kluwer Academic Publishers. Cosmides Tooby (1997) Evolutionary Psychology: a primer: (psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html) Copyright John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, Updated January 13, 1997 Cosmides, L. (1989) The Logic of Social Exchange: has natural selection shaped how humans reason? Studies with the Wason selection task; in Cognition 31: 187-276 (2001) Interview with Alvaro Fischer and Roberto Araya for the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio (psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/ledainterview.htm); part of a project entitled New Paradigms at the Beginning of the Third Millenium. Fodor, J. (1983) The Modularity of Mind: an essay on faculty psychology Cambridge, Mass. ; London : MIT Press Hume, D (1975) Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals; L.A Selby-Bigge: Third Edition, Oxford, Clarendon Press. Kuhn, T. S (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; Second edition: Chicago, University of Chicago Press. (1977) The Essential Tension. Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change. Chicago: University of Chicago Press . Lakatos, I. (1976) Proofs and refutations: the logic of mathematical discovery; edited by John Worrall and Elie Zahar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Laland Brown (2002) Sense and Nonsense: evolutionary perspectives on human behaviour; Clarendon, Oxford University Press. Miller, D. (1994) – Critical Rationalism: a restatement and defence; Chicago: Open court Popper, K. (1972) Conjectures and Refutations; Fourth Edition: Routledge Kegan Paul Limited Research Papers on Evolutionary Psychology As A Unifying - Research PaperThree Concepts of PsychodynamicEffects of Television Violence on ChildrenResearch Process Part OneGenetic EngineeringOpen Architechture a white paperInfluences of Socio-Economic Status of Married MalesStandardized TestingAnalysis Of A Cosmetics AdvertisementAnalysis of Ebay Expanding into AsiaRelationship between Media Coverage and Social and