A few years ago a book was published in the US that become an influential tome to the US political left - The Political Brain by Drew Westen proposed a new strategy for American progressives. Backed by evidence taken from neuro science, Weston argued that one of the greatest mistakes Democratic politicians and their advisors made was in assuming that people vote logically and rationally, weighing facts and truths before making their decisions.
What Weston evidenced is that this is far from the case. When it comes to deciding who to vote for, people make these decisions based on emotions and a collection of neurological responses that occur outside of their awareness. The key to engaging with voters is therefore not in appealing to their judgement and logic - it's in appealing to their emotions.
Conservatives have understood this for a long time. Millions of dollars have gone into researching how to do just that by right wing think tanks. Just look at the popularity of the Tea Party - whatever you may think of them, no one can say that logic is a strong thread running through their arguments. In fact, many of the assertions made be figures like Glen Beck and Sarah Palin fly in the face of logic - universal health-care akin to Stalinism? Barack Obama as a non US born Muslim?
Their arguments are extreme to many, but they are most definately emotional; angry, fearful and very, very empassioned. They talk about 'Freedom' , 'Patriotism' 'Fighting for truth' and 'ridding the US of the evils of socialsim.' They have published books with titles such as 'The Manchurian President: Barack Obama's Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists', 'Conduct Unbecoming: How Barack Obama Is Destroying the Military and Endangering Our Security' and 'Crimes against Liberty: An Indictment of President Barack Obama'
Measured, rational and factual they are not. To many of us these arguments seem so off the wall to be ridiculous - how can anybody take them seriously? And yet millions of Americans apparently do. Are they all stupid? Of course not. They are simply doing what Westen found the human brain does naturally - rationalise and dismiss facts and evidence which do not fit into our belief system and world view.
And before the rest of us start to feel too smug, Westen's research shows that we all do this in our own way, in fact it's a natural brain process that takes place outside of our awareness. In 2004 Westen and his team conducted some brain scan experiments - scanning the brains of 15 confirmed Democrats and 15 confirmed Republicans. They were shown a series of slides with clear inconsistencies supposedly stated by Democrat John Kerry or Republican George W Bush (the presidential elections were in their final months at the time and they were the opposing candidates.) The statements were expected to create distress and discomfort as the brains of the subjects processed the statements. How would they square such contradictory statements without losing faith in their chosen party candidates?
What the researchers found was that our brains are adept at removing distress caused by contradictions from our chosen parties quickly and easily. A key thing to note about how this happens at a neurological level is that this is done by the emotional circuits in the brain - not the logical, reasoning ones. And our brains are partisan - the Republican test subjects easily soothed away discomfort with Bush's inconsistencies but not with Kerry's. The Democrats erased discomfort at Kerry's inconsistencies but not Bush's.Their brain's spotted and fought against inconsistencies spoken by their opposing party but not only accepted but also quickly developed a pleasure response to those spoken by their chosen party candidate!
Westen is clear in the lessons to take from this. Neither side of the political fence should waste energy trying to convert those of the other side - their brains are wired to resist any logical arguments against their chosen party. What they should focus on is the middle ground - the people who don't consider themselves as partisan or loyal to any one party. These people are open to persuasion but it isn't just logical persuasion that will win the day - it's emotional.
The lesson for the UK labour party is clear. Facts are important. But just as important are emotions - people's gut reactions. To win the progressives need to engage voter's passions.
This may seem frustrating-depressing even. Look at what happened to Gordon Brown - he was a great Chancellor and as a Prime Minister he created some amazing, positive, progressive changes for the UK. BUT many people didn't 'take' to him. 'Why not?' we on the left cried - 'for goodness sake, I like my politicians human. I don't want some botoxed, smiley, bland, pretty boy' I was heard to utter on more than one occasion during the election campaign. I couldn't understand why people liked Clegg and Cameron more that Gordon Brown - couldn't they see through it all? Surely logic told them that these untried pretty boys didn't have the grasp of economics that Gordon had shown? how come the Lib Dems were appearing to be left of the Labour party on some issues?
And now that this coalition is in power and their election pledges have come to nothing (and in some cases, downright lies) why are they still doing so reasonably well in the opinion polls? And how come Labour is now seen as being economically irresponsible after 6 short months?
The answers lie in the language, framing and emphasis used by the government and many in the right wing press. To truly gain back the ground lost, Labour needs to get clued up on how this is being used against them, and start playing the political game by the real rules, instead of the ones the Coalition are pretending are in use.
When we know the real rules of engagement and play to win, we have a fighting chance. By ignoring this (and incidentally, Westen has written some great stuff on how he thinks Obama has forgotten the lessons that brought him to power in the first place -you can read more here) we doom ourselves to failure, and the country to a decade or more of decline similar to that witnessed during the Thatcher years.
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