Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Journalism 201
Paper 2 final draft
12/9/2008
bombardment of advertisements, and dealing with fanatics in the course of choosing the
next president. This year was no different as people everywhere seemed to be acting
crazier than usual and for no real reason. This may lead one to wonder how much work
people put in to find facts and histories of the candidates or if they are simply emotionally
turned on by these presidential hopefuls. Everyone likes to believe that their emotions
take the back seat in decision making but is this the case? When deciding on a
presidential candidate, emotions play a larger role than does rationality in that people rely
on personal feelings more than rational fact finding in the decision process. Stimulating
emotional responses over a long period of time can increase support for a candidate by
causing the psychological idea that emotion overrides reason to take effect. Because this
happens at a deep cognitive level many people affected by it will believe they are acting
In order to understand how and why what will be explained later happens we need
to first understand how emotions affect our rationality. Emotions often function at levels
we are unaware of, or what could be called subconsciously (Brader, 2005). Because of
this it can be difficult to tell why you feel a certain way at the moment or even when your
emotions are being evoked. Our subconscious is the ultimate decider because this is
where our brain stores things considered to be absolute truths. If your conscious and
subconscious are in conflict the battle is often won by the subconscious. This explains
why when presented with immediate danger many freeze first before deciding to run.
Your fearful emotions petrify you even though your conscious is saying get away. The
same is true with positive emotions. We’ve all seen a team score important points and
then cheer like they won the game while the other team is just about to score right back.
Their excited emotions made them forget their conscious saying to keep a cool head
because there is still more game. Another way to know when your subconscious does not
agree is if consciously you feel there is nothing wrong with what you’re saying, reading,
or hearing and yet you still have that nervous feeling in your stomach. Not to be
stereotypical or what some might call sexist but you can also see this idea very well if
you push a person past their “boiling point,” which is more noticeable in females, and
watch the irrationality flow like a river. It is no wonder then that when asked to choose
between candidates many people chose the one that evoked the strongest emotional
response (www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/opinion/story.html?id=e1142869-a396-
4e82-896c-760180ecf342).
Now that we know a little about how emotions affect reason we can examine the
effect of the most commonly elicited emotion, fear. Fear is a very powerful control
emotion, especially in a world like ours where the average person is made to believe that
they themselves cannot think up solutions for themselves and in turn has to be told by
experts what the best solution is for complex issues. This can be used advantageously
because it has been found that increased fear can be associated with increased positive
attitudes towards the policies or behaviors presented as remedies to the fear inducing
threat (DeSteno et al., 2004). An example can be seen in the economic issue. Most
Americans are nervous about the economy and Obama’s plan to not raise taxes for those
making less than $250,000 sounds very nice even though it’s physically impossible
because he wants to increase spending and our national debt, now over $10 trillion,
continues to grow. John McCain used this when saying that Obama was not experienced
enough to lead. In the world we live in many people were probably affected by the
“maverick’s” message and would rather support someone who’s been in Congress for 20
some years compared to someone who has only served one term and came out of
nowhere. Some people voted for McCain simply because Barack Hussein Obama sounds
too much like a terrorist I guess. There was a good amount of Hillary supporters who
defected because of this reason. Fear is also used in almost every single ad we see on TV
for these people. The purpose of attack ads is to make you fearful of the victim while
making you believe the sponsor has the right or better policies. These emotions are used
to grab your attention throughout the whole ad which causes a person’s rationality to be
Fear is not the only emotion preyed on during campaigns. Positive emotions,
mainly enthusiasm, are elicited for the same reason as negative ones, to increase support
without much thought. Notice how every ad uses images, music, and even certain words
or phrases; why is this? This is because adding images and music increases emotions and
can unleash desired emotional responses when watching ads (Brader, 2005). Think about
it this way, would “I love you” be as happy or romantic in a movie if they were standing
in the middle of a field instead of with roses, candle lit dinner, and the sappy background
music? Each of the recognized candidates uses this as well. John McCain played the
heroic, victorious music in his ads and Barack has the all so powerful saying of “yes we
can.” It’s interesting to note that it is possible and I think likely that Obama is using what
shocked and think of the Hollywood version of hypnosis, which is just that, Hollywood.
Hypnosis is simply getting your conscious mind so focused and concentrated on one
thing that it doesn’t notice anything else, even that which the subconscious sends and
receives. An example would be the video with a black team and white team, each has a
basketball and you are told to count the number of passes by each team. You are so
focused on your task that the first time you watch the video you don’t even notice the
gorilla take center stage, beat his chest, and then leave. The way Ericksonian hypnosis
works is that almost everything you say is unquestionably true. Since your subconscious
stores absolute truths all of this is allowed to pass into the subconscious. You also have to
use a technique called pacing which is basically rhythmic speaking to get you into a
concentrated flow. This is why Obama speaks so slowly, rhythmically, and long. Now
that your conscious is so focused on his pace and every word he says since it’s so slow
and you’ve been letting almost all of it into your subconscious you start to let things in
(www.pennypresslv.com/Obama’s_Use_of_Hidden_Hypnosis_techniques_in_His_Speec
hes.pdf). This can explain why so many people voted for Obama and most of them
probably can’t tell you clearly five things he stood for that they liked other than he’s
people tend to vote based on singular issues instead of looking at the whole picture
same for all people. This is because every decision has an underlying emotion associated
to the situation whether you know or not. The more rational a person is, the more able
professor does not make a person more rational in decision making than someone who
never watches TV and works at McDonalds. In fact, the more sophisticated someone is
politically the more able they are to develop complex rationalizations for dismissing data
(www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/opinion/story.html?id=e1142869-a396-4e82-
896c-760180ecf342). Some people even voted because of race or sex. According to a poll
of people who were voting for McCain just as many were voting that way because they
liked Sarah Palin as because they thought McCain had honesty and good character
who are black and asked them why they were voting Obama. They couldn’t really say, so
when I said it’s because he’s black like you they get angry and change the subject
the course of an election campaign the emotions evoked can cause them to have a greater
pull in the decision than your rationality. One way to use as much rationale as possible is
to realize the important role of emotions and that candidates love to evoke your emotions
and spend a lot of money doing so. They are no more than salesmen trying to sell you
their platform and like anything you buy it is wise to be cautious when considering all
facts. The founding fathers hated democracy because they knew people were easily led in
certain directions and now that the study of psychology and of emotions has progressed
so much since their time it is even easier to guide the people on these grounds. So next
time when you see a political ad and the music comes on they start using vague words to
elicit emotions what they’re really saying to you is, “don’t think, let your emotions do the
work.”
References
1. DeSteno, D., Petty, R.E., Rucker, D.D., Wegener, D.T., Braverman, J. (2004). Discrete
Emotions and Persuasion: The Role of Emotion-Induced Expectancies. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 86, 43-56.
2. Brader, T. (2005). Striking a Responsive Chord: How Political Ads Motivate and
Persuade Voters by Appealing to Emotions. American Journal of Political Science, 49,
388-405.
3. http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/interview/075
7.
http://www.pennypresslv.com/Obama’s_Use_of_Hidden_Hypnosis_techniques_in_His_
Speeches.pdf