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psychology helps politicians bend the truth
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| DJ Shibby |
| quote: |
Our psychology helps politicians bend the truth
10 October 2008
Jim Giles
HOW do politicians get away with bending the truth? The answer may lie with a fundamental psychological tool that we use to make sense of the world.
The current US presidential campaigns have featured untruths on both sides that have been notable for their durability. Politicians have been exposed for misrepresenting their position and then kept at it anyway, making the same misleading statements again and again.
Sarah Palin has taken much flak for this. To prove she is a fearless fiscal conservative, Palin touts her previous resistance to the "Bridge to Nowhere", a multimillion-dollar link between mainland Alaska and an island that is home to a small airfield and 50 inhabitants. In reality, Palin backed the bridge, even after Congress scrapped the project. Journalists have pointed this out, yet Palin continues to voice her apparent opposition.
Democrats are also at it. They've repeatedly said that McCain is in thrall to free-market thinking. He wants to privatise social security, warns Barack Obama. That will put the savings of millions of elderly people at the mercy of stock market fluctuations. "Balderdash," says the non-partisan FactCheck.org, based at the University of Pennsylvania; McCain is actually proposing moderate reforms that would not affect the current generation of senior citizens.
How do politicians get away with this? Ignorance is part of the answer. Many voters will never read the newspaper article or watch the news broadcasts that reveal the true situation. But psychology is also at work. The short cuts that we use to make sense of the world shape our perception of it. When it comes to politics, this can lead voters to reach the wrong conclusions about candidates, even when they have been exposed to the truth. Could it be that politicians and their strategists are harnessing this phenomenon?
The origin of this is a seemingly mundane psychological finding: we tend to arrange the world into categories. This saves thinking time. Even the least-engaged voter knows that McCain is a Republican, for example. When the voter places him in that category, their brain automatically links McCain to attributes shared by other Republicans. The voter might not recall McCain's position on the 2003 invasion of Iraq, for example, but they would assume that as a Republican he supported it - which he did.
Problems arise when we try to recall something that does not fit with the categories we use. Experiments conducted in the 1980s by Milton Lodge and Ruth Hamill at the State University of New York at Stony Brook examined how beliefs and stereotypes, such as those associated with gender or race, affect the way that voters analyse candidates. They found that correct information about a candidate was often forgotten or misinterpreted if it conflicted with the way voters categorised that politician.
It is this that the campaigns are tapping into when they release false information. Palin's misstatements on the Bridge to Nowhere have not attracted much attention with voters in spite of stoking media discussion, because Palin is a Republican and so is expected to want to cut back on government spending. For the same reason, Obama's inaccurate statements about McCain's social spending plans do not sound wrong, even though they are.
The categorising process, which has been shown to help explain how we learn and remember things, has now been modelled for political beliefs by Nathan Collins, a political scientist at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. In a paper being considered for publication by The Journal of Politics, he finds that voters are more likely to misremember a candidate's position if it conflicts with the party line. And that, says Collins, opens the door to deceptive campaigning. FactCheck.org, it seems, should be compulsory reading for any American with a vote.
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| mndeg |
popular vote doesn't matter anyway. founding fathers already knew the average american citizen were idiots.
gas tax holiday, my friends, maverick, wallstreet/mainstreet, karl rove fear tactics |
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| Jake Benson |
| Psychology helps anyone bend the truth if they know how to use it to their advantage. Just another business abusing the concept of persuasion. |
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| DJ Shibby |
| quote: | Originally posted by Jake Benson
Psychology helps anyone bend the truth if they know how to use it to their advantage. Just another business abusing the concept of persuasion. |
Indeed.
I'd go so far as to say that most of us abuse this internal, often unnoticed, subconscious empathic connection our brains constantly compute.
I do believe that psychology is not native to the individual, but rather a shared ratio; by communicating with another, you become a little bit of them and vice versa, and this functions also on a more massive scale with all beings, spiralling outwards like a vast web. Almost, ironically, like a neuralnet building itself up. That which exists within, exists without.
When someone tries to control large portions of the web through dystrophy, natural resistance arises. |
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| Krypton |
| “A lie told often enough becomes truth” Vladimir Lenin. |
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| DJ Shibby |
| quote: | Originally posted by Krypton
“A lie told often enough becomes truth” Vladimir Lenin. |
Perhaps he should have told everyone he was immortal, eh? :) |
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| Krypton |
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ Shibby
Perhaps he should have told everyone he was immortal, eh? :) |
Do you insult comrade Lenin? |
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| DJ Shibby |
| quote: | Originally posted by Krypton
Do you insult comrade Lenin? |
The other day while watching the second debate, I told a buddy of mine that McCain used the word "Friends" similarly to how the Russians used Comrade. =P |
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| Krypton |
Off to the Alaska gulag with you!
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| Zild |
| I can't wait for the new USSA. |
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| Krypton |
| quote: | Originally posted by Zild
I can't wait for the new USSA. |
This country definately isn't going to be the USSA. It's shifting to the far right, not the left. It'll be more like the United Republican States of America. |
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
| quote: | Originally posted by Krypton
This country definately isn't going to be the USSA. It's shifting to the far right, not the left. It'll be more like the United Republican States of America. |
i think he's talking about the financial decisions of late. not that nationalisation has much to do with socialism of course ;) |
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