Chapter 2 Quiz: The Long History of Persuasion Technology

Instructions: Choose the best answer for each question. The answer key is provided at the end.

1. Aristotle's three modes of persuasion, as described in the Rhetoric, are:

A) Emotion, logic, and authority B) Ethos, pathos, and logos C) Credibility, evidence, and repetition D) Appeal, argument, and action

2. In Aristotle's framework, pathos refers to:

A) The logical structure of the argument B) The credibility and character of the speaker C) The emotional state of the audience D) The historical precedent for a claim

3. The chapter argues that the "Like button" on Facebook, introduced in 2009, is analogous to which psychological mechanism?

A) Classical conditioning, as described by Pavlov B) A variable reward schedule, as described by B.F. Skinner C) Cognitive dissonance, as described by Festinger D) Social learning theory, as described by Bandura

4. Which of the following best describes the business model pioneered by Benjamin Day's New York Sun in 1833?

A) Subscription-only model in which readers paid full cost for content B) Government-funded journalism serving a public interest mandate C) Advertising-supported free content in which audience attention was sold to advertisers D) Cooperative model in which readers and journalists shared ownership

5. "Yellow journalism" in the 1890s is most associated with which pair of newspaper publishers?

A) Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst B) Benjamin Day and Horace Greeley C) Arthur Nielsen and Edward Bernays D) Henry Luce and Robert McCormick

6. What was the primary competitive strategy of yellow journalism, according to the chapter?

A) Investing in investigative reporting to break exclusive stories B) Lowering subscription prices to undercut competitors C) Using emotionally manipulative content to maximize reader engagement D) Hiring the most credentialed journalists to establish authority

7. Edward Bernays is credited with:

A) Inventing the Nielsen rating system for measuring broadcast audiences B) Inventing the World Wide Web and the first banner advertisement C) Founding the profession of public relations and applying psychological insights to mass persuasion D) Developing the keyword auction model that became Google AdWords

8. In his 1928 book Propaganda, Bernays argued that:

A) Manipulation of public opinion is inherently undemocratic and should be resisted B) The conscious manipulation of public habits and opinions is an important element of democratic society C) Advertising should be clearly labeled as such to protect consumer autonomy D) Psychological techniques should only be used in government communications, not commercial advertising

9. The "soap opera" as a narrative format derives its name from:

A) The sentimental, emotionally overwrought storylines typical of the genre B) The cleansing function the narratives were supposed to provide for audiences C) The fact that early radio dramas were typically sponsored by soap manufacturers D) The washing machine advertisements that appeared during commercial breaks

10. Newton Minow's famous 1961 description of American television as a "vast wasteland" primarily criticized:

A) The technical quality of the television signal and broadcast infrastructure B) The gap between television's potential and the low-quality, commercially driven content it actually produced C) The political bias of television news coverage toward liberal perspectives D) The excessive amount of time Americans spent watching television instead of reading

11. What does the chapter identify as the "proto-engagement metric" — the earliest quantitative measure of audience attention that established the template for later digital metrics?

A) The circulation figures of nineteenth-century newspapers B) The click-through rate of early internet banner advertisements C) The Nielsen television rating D) The subscriber count of early cable television channels

12. Cable television in the 1980s and 1990s introduced the principle of:

A) Audience segmentation — targeting specific content at specific demographic groups B) Interactive advertising — allowing viewers to request more information from advertisers C) Public interest broadcasting — requiring channels to serve civic as well as commercial purposes D) Subscription bundling — selling access to multiple channels as a single package

13. The first web banner advertisement appeared in October 1994 on which website?

A) America Online B) Yahoo! C) HotWired D) Netscape

14. Google AdWords, launched in 2000, introduced which key innovation to online advertising?

A) The ability to display visual images in advertisements rather than just text B) Relevance-based targeting — showing advertisements matched to what users were actively searching for C) The ability to track whether users who clicked on an ad subsequently made a purchase D) A subscription model in which users paid to see fewer advertisements

15. According to the chapter, what made Facebook's social graph fundamentally different from previous online attention architectures?

A) Facebook was the first platform to use advertising as its primary revenue model B) Facebook aggregated attention around social relationships rather than around content C) Facebook was the first platform to use machine learning to rank content in users' feeds D) Facebook allowed users to publish content for free, rather than charging for publishing access

16. The chapter identifies three features that are genuinely new about contemporary algorithmic systems, distinguishing them from historical persuasion technologies. Which of the following is NOT one of those three features?

A) Speed and scale of feedback — systems learn in milliseconds rather than weeks or months B) Individualization — personalization at the level of the individual rather than demographic groups C) Emotional intensity — content that provokes stronger emotional reactions than older media D) Opacity — the invisibility of algorithmic decision-making to users, engineers, and regulators

17. The "Persuasion Stack" framework introduced in this chapter identifies how many distinct layers of influence?

A) Three (biological, psychological, economic) B) Four (psychological, social, technological, economic) C) Five (biological, psychological, social, technological, economic) D) Six (neurological, cognitive, emotional, social, technological, economic)

18. Shoshana Zuboff's concept of "surveillance capitalism," referenced in the chapter, refers to:

A) Government surveillance of citizens through social media platforms B) An economic logic based on the extraction and commodification of human behavioral data C) The use of surveillance cameras in retail environments to track consumer behavior D) A form of capitalism in which consumers monitor and regulate corporate behavior

19. The chapter's analysis of the shift from chronological to algorithmic feeds argues that this shift was primarily driven by:

A) User demand for more relevant and personalized content B) Technical limitations of chronological systems at large scale C) Commercial incentives to maximize engagement and advertising revenue D) Regulatory requirements to reduce the spread of misinformation

20. Which of the following best characterizes the chapter's overall argument about the relationship between social media algorithms and historical persuasion technologies?

A) Social media algorithms are entirely novel phenomena that cannot be understood through historical analogies B) Social media algorithms are simply a faster version of television advertising and require no new analysis C) Social media algorithms are continuous with historical persuasion technologies in their underlying logic but are genuinely new in their speed, individualization, and opacity D) Social media algorithms are more ethical than historical persuasion technologies because their operations are transparent to users

21. According to the chapter, what does the "Torches of Freedom" campaign (discussed in Case Study 01) primarily illustrate about manipulation?

A) That manipulation is only effective when the audience is fully aware it is being manipulated B) That manipulation is most effective when audiences believe they are responding to their own authentic desires C) That manipulation of health behaviors requires medical expertise and regulatory approval D) That manipulation campaigns are ineffective without celebrity endorsement

22. The chapter's discussion of Maya, the 17-year-old TikTok user from Austin, Texas, is primarily intended to:

A) Show that teenagers are more susceptible to algorithmic manipulation than adults B) Demonstrate how all five layers of the Persuasion Stack are engaged simultaneously in a real social media interaction C) Argue that TikTok is more harmful than other social media platforms D) Illustrate that individual users have no meaningful agency in the face of algorithmic systems

Answer Key

1. B
2. C
3. B
4. C
5. A
6. C
7. C
8. B
9. C
10. B
11. C
12. A
13. C
14. B
15. B
16. C
17. C
18. B
19. C
20. C
21. B
22. B