Hello, curious thinkers and psychology enthusiasts! Ever thrown a boomerang and watched in amazement as it made its unexpected return journey back to you? Well, in the fascinating world of social psychology, there’s a concept that mirrors this very action, known as the Boomerang Effect. We’re delving deep into this intriguing phenomenon, where efforts to change attitudes or behaviors end up causing the opposite of the intended effect.
Boomerang is a v-shaped bit of carved wood. When you throw it out, it goes all the way around and will return right to where it was standing. It is a real art to be able to throw the boomerang. The boomerang effect affects our thoughts and involves our words. It goes out into the world when we think or speak energetically. It’s a natural process that occurs randomly, like a chain reaction and creates an opposite reaction that is difficult to predict
In social psychology, the boomerang effect refers to an attempt’s unwilled consequences that create a small or large outcome. It’s like the butterfly effect, which states that a small event or action starts a significant event or a tornado. These two effects teach us that nothing is negligible and every existence affects the large one. For example, an ant can kill a giant elephant by attacking a small ant.
What is a Boomerang effect?
The Boomerang effect is a feedback loop or cycle where events return positively or negatively. It is an interconnection between people that looks like an ecosystem. When our thoughts and words energetically go out into the world, it has the same effect as the boomerang. It will go all the way out and come back around. That part of the creation model is our thinking and speaking. We’re unconscious and co-creating our reality. The Boomerang effect is everywhere: politics, business, relationships, economics, environment, marketing, etc.
When we create action, we react in a way that is sometimes opposite or equal to directly proportionate to what we put out there. Your belief systems can create a perception of what brings you back. Also, It can be the programming on a conscious or subconscious level that sends these signals out and back. This is how we manifest.
The process sends out an intention and receives our manifestation back, and what we manifest back comes in many forms. It can come in the signs that we’re seeing. It can also come in the people who show up. They can come and experiences that we are experiencing and ordinate. To get up and get the experience, we need to wake up. It can be physical things such as the physical world, relationships, economy, or finances.
The key here is to realize that this process is multi-dimensional, coming in many forms every time. Newton’s 3rd law states that every action has an opposite reaction. You can compare it with karma or a cycle that can be good or bad for you.
Many people get stuck in the right or wrong way because there is no right or wrong way. There is a path in many ways because of the free will contract, which involves signing up for the divine winner. The sooner you can align with your path, the sooner you can align with your truth.
Boomerang effect in politics
Government policies and actions initially focused outside the US tend to come back around and significantly impact domestic governments back home. It is because of something called the boomerang effect. One major example is how foreign interventions allow government decision-making and centralization of power.
Interventions require lots of people and resources. So many smaller, peripheral political agencies are drawn toward the political center. The centralization of power happens in two significant ways. The first is the process of bureaucratization. Existing Federal Government agencies expand and gain more resources to achieve the foreign policy objective.
New agencies are also created. Also, It means unelected bureaucrats and military officials make more decisions without much oversight by the general public. Second, foreign interventions provide a rallying cry for citizens around a common external cause. Citizens shift their attention away from government actions that directly affect them and instead focus externally.
Citizens are likelier to miss troubling changes at home or encourage government power to expand domestically. At the same time, the ideology of citizens can constrain government abuses and expansion of power fear. Phone intervention can stifle this vital check on the government. Beyond the general centralization of power, other ways phone intervention tools are Dumer-ring back and come to be used domestically.
Boomerang Effect on international relations
The Boomerang effect happened through people, the human capital channel of the boomerang effect. The people involved must possess or acquire specific skills to succeed in foreign intervention. Soldiers, bureaucrats, contractors, spies, and other US personnel apply foreign interventions abroad to develop skills and attitudes related to their work.
These skills don’t leave or disappear when they return home. They bring these tools of intervention with them. Since many people involved in foreign interventions seek work in government agencies, law enforcement, other public sectors, and private sector jobs, various institutions have real effects.
Three key aspects govern today’s global public policy environment.
- First of all, public policy tends to be quite zero-sum. It has winners and losers.
- Second, short-termism, myopia, and public policy affect how governments and policymakers think about public policy through a very short lens.
- Finally, boomerang effects.
How public policy instituted today manifests itself further in time can harm and impact the world. One prominent example is that today, there are 60 million refugees displaced from their homes of origin. The problem is this number is the highest number since World War Two. Now, many people around the world look at that refugee statistic. Europe alone has accepted over a million refugees in the past year. They think of it as a very short-term problem.
However, many refugees are an artifact of public policy designed in Europe and the United States decades ago. For example, trade from the standard era culture policy in the European Union and farm subsidies in the United States many decades ago.
These are designed to keep cotton, sugar, and bananas that many developing countries produce out of the developed markets. To be clear, many compelling reasons developed countries do that. They would like to protect their markets and their farmers. But as a consequence, given that we live in a globalized environment.
Boomerang effect in economics
Many farmers in developing countries cannot sell their products in these developed markets. Therefore, we see the collapse of the economies and political stability.
It’s also worth remembering that between 1870 and 1915, there were 14 million Europeans who were refugees who left Europe to move to other parts of the world. However, immigration and refugee status have become a hot-button issue in politics. Many people have been displaced from their homes and will be replaced by bad public policy decision-making.
It is very suitable today but has significant consequences that harm people’s lives. Immigration has challenges but positive aspects of integration and immigration worldwide. For example, seven of the 2016 Nobel Prize winners in the United States were immigrants. Albert Einstein was also a refugee.
In 2007, Inland Revenue Services doubled the fine for late taxes from $100 to $200. The IRS’s reason for doubling the fine was that many American citizens had failed to submit their tax returns on time the previous year. So, to motivate people to submit their tax returns on time, they double the fine. The following year, there was a 22% increase in late submissions! Often, leaders will mistake drawing attention to regrettably frequent undesirable behaviors.
Example of Boomerang effect
We can see the Boomerang effect in action in many ways. Take, for example, a soldier. To be good at his job, a soldier must think quickly on his feet, react quickly in uncertain situations, and be prepared to use lethal force if necessary. Suppose that after his term in the military, the soldier returns to civilian life as a police officer. He brings his military experience with him. In comparison, this can mean good things, like strong communication and organization skills. It could also mean getting a battlefield or us versus them mentality into their interactions with civilians.
Another way foreign interventions can boomerang back is through technology and equipment or physical capital. For example, the government develops technologies that help them control or gather intelligence on foreign populations. It also allows them to use those same assets on people back home. Those people who use the technology during the intervention. Many now working domestically feel comfortable using that equipment as well. We can see this happen with NSA surveillance.
While many NSA technologies were developed to spy on foreign targets, it’s well documented that the same technologies have also been used to spy on US citizens.
A third way these interventions have a boomerang effect back home is by changing many organizations’ administrative dynamics. Administrative dynamics are like a firm’s culture. What people think and feel, and what’s considered normal, abnormal, acceptable, or unacceptable.
Like changes in human capital, once individuals involved in interventions return home, they work in other agencies, taking their skills with them. As these agents work their way into management and different positions of authority, they share the mentalities and skills they’ve gathered with others.
It means tactics, methods, or equipment that may have been considered unacceptable previously become standard operating procedures. Thus, foreign intervention tools are integrated into the daily operations of various private and public sectors. When discussing foreign intervention, it’s common for people to treat it as divorced from domestic issues.
Foreign issues are over there. In contrast, domestic problems are wholly separate. What the boomerang effect tells us, however, is that we can’t draw such a clear distinction. Activities abroad can and do have real consequences at home. As we’ll see, many tools of foreign intervention have been positively disastrous for US citizens.
We’ve navigated through the complexities of human psychology, discovering how our best intentions in persuasion can sometimes lead to unexpected outcomes. It’s a powerful reminder of the subtleties in communication and influence and the importance of understanding the minds we’re trying to reach.
We hope this journey has not only enlightened you but also equipped you with insights to navigate the delicate art of persuasion more effectively. Thank you for joining us on this thought-provoking adventure. Until next time, keep questioning, learning, and remembering—the paths of influence are as winding and surprising as a boomerang’s flight. Stay curious, and may your efforts in persuasion always land where you intend.
More Article:
What Is Mandela Effect With Causes
What Is The Domino Effect With Example
Explanation Of Bystander Effect
References:
Brehm, S.; Brehm. Psychological reactance: a theory of freedom and control. Academic Press.
Hovland & Kelley, H. H. Communication and persuasion. New Haven. Yale University Press.
Hovland, Carl I.; Harvey, O. J.; Sherif, Muzafer. “Assimilation and contrast effects in reactions to communication and attitude change.” The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology.
Brehm, Jack. “Increasing cognitive dissonance by a fait accompli.” The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology.
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