Establishment of Trust Mechanism and Trust Crisis--The Influence of Scientific Symbols in Advertisements on Social Trust
Abstract
Due to the refinement of professional knowledge, individuals have to trust authority in every field in a limited life, and social trust is constituted in this way. Cosmetics merchants add a lot of scientific symbols to advertisements to shape themselves as authorities in order to make people trust their products. However, with the phenomenon of advertising fraud exposed by the news media, scientific symbols in these advertisements have triggered customers' "trust crisis". This paper analyzes the establishment of trust mechanisms and trust crises through the scientific symbols in advertisements from the perspective of knowledge power. In the end, it puts forward three ways to alleviate the crisis of trust and puts forward suggestions from the government, legislature and intellectual elite, respectively. For example, to prevent some brands from attracting consumers by establishing knowledge power, including creating pseudo-scientific concepts, purposefully confounding scientific concepts, inflating product efficacy, and publicizing scientific conclusions that cannot be validated, the government should supervise the advertisements well as the products' quality.
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