The Irrationality Of Rational Politics (The Political Brain Part 1)

Neuroscience and psychology research prove that voters do not appeal to reason and logic when choosing a candidate. Republicans fail to be surprised.

Scott Brown’s recent victory over Martha Coakley for the U.S. senate seat in Massachusetts is reminiscent of George W Bush’s two “victories” over equally impotent Democrats; both cases clearly demonstrate that voters do not appeal to logic and reason when selecting a candidate. In his book The Political Brain, renowned psychologist Drew Westen cites evidence from the fields of psychology and neuroscience indicating that “what passes for reasoning in politics is more often rationalization, motivated by efforts to ‘reason’ to emotionally satisfying conclusions” (xi). In other words, people usually rely on their emotional (gut) feeling about a candidate rather than actually giving a shit about what the person is going to do in office. This is how our brain works in relation to most things in our world. We like things based on our gut feelings about them, which are largely derived from the implicit (unconscious) activation of various bundles of thoughts and images, known as associative networks (3). The ability to strategically play to these associative networks is crucial to any successful political campaign. Unfortunately, recent history shows that the GOP is much more skilled at this game than the Democrats.

Whether they realize it or not, Republicans seem to have a more accurate understanding of how the brain actually works. They seem to have figured out intuitively what “the philosopher David Hume recognized three centuries ago: that reason is a slave to emotion.” Democrats, on the other hand, display an “irrational emotional commitment to rationality—one that renders them, ironically, impervious to both scientific evidence on how the political mind and brain work and to an accurate diagnosis of why their campaigns repeatedly fail” (15). This almost exclusive reliance on rationality leads Democrats to focus their campaign strategies on what actually appear to be quite insignificant things like “facts, figures, policy statements, costs and benefits, and appeals to intellect and expertise.” It is unfortunate that appeals to reason and intellect are insufficient to move voters, but this reality must be accepted by Democrats if they hope to win elections this fall. They should also familiarize themselves with the strategies Westen outlines in his book that describe how candidates can speak more to the emotional rather than the logical brain of voters.

Dr. Westen’s (among loads of other) research clearly demonstrates the overwhelming power of implicit associative networks. For example, in focus groups, the vast majority of people support universal health care plans, but only when the term itself is not explicitly referred to. When the exact same plan is then revealed to fall under the universal health umbrella, almost nobody supports it. Westen explains how this is due to the successful branding by the GOP of the term universal health care itself. For most Americans, simply hearing that term alone primes the implicit negative associations of “big and personal clinics, socialized medicine, and the idea of being separated from your doctor.” Westen advocates that Democrats do away with this term altogether in their public discourse for this very reason.

Another example of where Republicans have been extremely successful at employing negative branding strategies is in the association of Democrats with liberal elites, or ivory tower intellectuals that cannot possibly be in tune with mainstream America. So how exactly can Democrats combat this already successful branding of them by the GOP? Well, the most important thing a candidate can do is win over the (emotional) hearts and minds of the people. This is done most effectively when they are able to communicate a sense of passion through weaving together a coherent and emotion-laden narrative that plays on specific positive networks of association and/or directly combats negative associations.

The associative network that leads people to perceive Democrats as weak on national defense is yet another glaring example of a successful brand-job by the GOP, an association that Obama consistently concerns himself with trying to refute. Unfortunately, as it stands now, more or less maintaining the status-quo with national defense seems the only way that Obama and other Democrats feel they can quell this nasty association of them with big blubbering vaginas. If Democratic strategists paid more attention to Westen’s work, however, candidates might begin to counter this type of branding that all too often contributes to them losing elections.

In the following clip, Dr. Westen gives an example of what Democrats should have been saying all along in response to the claim that they do not support the troops (by favoring withdrawal). His example demonstrates how the Democrats should be stealing from the GOP playbook in order to win over the hearts and minds of the public by using passionate speech which appeals to the emotional rather than reasoning faculties of the brain.



References

Westen, Drew. The Political Brain: The Role Of Emotion In Deciding The Fate Of The Nation. Public Affairs: New York, 2007.

~Wolf