What do people really mean when they say “the system,” “the policy,” or even “that’s just how it works”? In this video, we break down the psychological concept of reification which is the act of treating abstract ideas like they’re real, decision-making entities. From everyday conversations to institutional language, reification can subtly shift responsibility away from individuals and onto vague forces. That’s when it becomes powerful and potentially manipulative. We’ll explore: * What reification actually means in psychology and rhetoric * How phrases like “the system decided” or “policy requires it” obscure human decision-making * Why this matters in education, leadership, and media literacy * A pop culture example from The Hunger Games—how “The Games” is framed as if it has agency Whether you’re a teacher, student, or just someone trying to think more critically, understanding reification helps you spot when language is being used to avoid accountability. This is a must-know concept for anyone interested in critical thinking, rhetoric, psychology, and education. #Reification #CriticalThinking #PsychologyExplained #Rhetoric #MediaLiteracy #EducationMatters #TeachingTips #TheHungerGames #CognitiveBias #Persuasion #LanguageMatters #TeacherTok #LearningPsychology #youtubeeducation
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the system keeping me down is ordained by god according to my spiritual adviser Pete Hegseth
“Big Pharma” is subject to this almost constantly lol people treat the term like it’s a specific Illuminati-like cabal
Excuse me, but what is the difference between Reification and Personification? I'm genuinly curious
what's the difference between reification and personification
Reification takes all meaning from social movements. Suddenly BLM is a concept that can be commodified as an abstract yet concrete thing that exists on its own. You start to see BLM slogans on target shirts for 25 dollars. When the reified concept becomes commodified the reified concept loses its meaning and power on TOP of the people who are the actual movement.
Cut to: 50 years of conservatives telling you “‘The Government’ is bad for you!”
Have you done coles law yet? Ive heard its pretty tasty
I’m learning so much! I hope I can remember it for the test
The market (that a few people invented, implemented, and forced onto everyone under threat of violence) decides.
Oh my goodness, you spin your expo marker the same way I do, I just noticed…SPINS FOR THE WIN
Thanks for explaining that. It is also used a lot in the AI debate, stuff like "AI steals" "AI thinks" "AI doesn't care ". All of this is clearly not possible for a non sentient and artificial thing, yet people still try to push the narrative that it has some intent behind its products or it purposely does something that actually really depends on how the single AI is modelled
Isn't it true that the reverse of this can also be weaponized? I heard some people say: "Since it is people that dictate what the system is like, therefore we need a strong man to lead us, because we can't depend on a system, so we shouldn't bother with it."
Love your work !
Ash yes, like "The Algorithm" deciding what videos I see.
Thank you, now i can argue back with people when they say "the market decides" i can tell them that a market is not a person, an employer is a person
Ray or Ree, but either way it's 5 syllables and you must say the "if" as a separate syllable! Like qualification or fortification or any other such word, it's based on an -ify verb, to reify. Rhymes with deify / deification.
politics and religion are littered with it
Inverse of it is also dangerous. People who speak of "families", "nations", "congregations" or any other collective noun of humans can easily exploit such to strip away human liberties and welfare for some abstract unseen entity. It's vital to remember that everything we do is done in pursuit of individual breathing, dreaming, living humans and all policies should seek to answer: "How do I empower this human given their circumstances without hurting others?" rather than "how do I use this human to empower the faith/nation-state/family."
My favorite- slightly different- form of reification is the Reification of Evolution. People like to pretend that 'evolution' is this deciding factor, like some perfect path that life goes down and slowly gets better and better, rather than a bunch of random mutations wherein the most successful ones have higher chances of being passed on through reproduction, leading to living things with traits that are the most useful for their environment. You'll hear things like, "this species 'developed a strategy'", or "humans are 'more evolved' than fish", giving this sort of idea of evolution being a 'skill' rather than a process.
Buuuut, the other way around doesn't help to much either... Like removing a bad person from power and thinking everything's fine... Although the system selects for bad people because it was built by bad people for bad people. Simplifying a lot here of course, but yeah, there's the odd system we might wanna change, BUT the system is designed to make it nearly impossible to get the right people into the right positions (some of which shouldn't even exist) so that these people can make the right changes