- (1) The human brain (neocortex), where we handle logic, abstract thought, words, symbols and time. This is the one you've been preaching to and reaching only a small audience.
- (2) The reptilian brain, which focuses solely on survival, fight-or-flight, and getting away from pain. This is, largely, what fearmongering politicians try to stir up.
- (3) The mammalian brain, which handles emotions: love, indignation, compassion, envy, hope, etc. This is what, largely, what Obama's "hope" politics has focused on.
Most
people incorrectly assume that if enough facts and logic are presented,
people will believe the truth. In fact, psychologists, marketing
experts and trial lawyers have found that facts are less persuasive for most people than emotions in reaching decisions.
Why?
The reptilian and monkey portions of our brain reach decisions based upon survival and emotion before the neocortex can make rational decisions. So facts alone won't convince most people. Instead, stories, images and emotions are what sway most people.
For example, one political psychologist writes:
If you appeal primarily to people's reason without first getting them to feel the significance of the issue you're talking about, they're not going to be interested. From an evolutionary standpoint, our emotions play two major roles. One, our emotions appear to capture our attention, so if you don't make emotionally compelling arguments, if you don't use stories or examples to grab listeners, they won't hear important things you have to say. The other role of emotion, which is probably most crucial, is that emotions motivate us -- positive feelings pull us towards things that are generally good for us, and negative emotions move us away from things that are generally bad for us.
People are driven primarily by one of two emotions:
- (1) Moving away from pain. People whose primary drive is to move away from pain usually believe that the world is primarily a scary and dangerous place, and that people are basically bad. Conservative political advisors typically try to manipulate this emotion.
- (2) Moving towards pleasure.
People whose primary drive is to move toward pleasure usually believe
that the world is fundamentally a fair and good place, and that people
are basically good. Liberal political advisors typically try to
manipulate this emotion.
If someone falls into the
first category, discussing how truth will help them avoid pain will be
effective. For people in the second category, stressing the pleasure
that truth will bring will be useful.
Of course, if you are communicating with more than one person at a time, you should mix both messages.
These illustrations brilliantly illustrate how those in power can manipulate these two emotions.
Motivating
people through a moving away from pain/fear strategy works very
effectively in the short run. This is because the reptilian brain
reacts first and overrides the higher thinking functions. But, over
time, it stops working, and the moving away from pain strategy
eventually becomes ineffective. In the long run, hope and a positive
vision works better than fear. The fact that we went from Bush to Obama
make sense in this light.
Seeing, Hearing, Touching
Most
modern people process information primarily through their visual sense.
Some process information through hearing. Other process information
kinesthetically (through touch and feeling).
People not living
in modern societies process information primarily kinesthetically, as
that is how we are biologically wired. As stated above, we are wired to
make decisions largely based on feeling and emotion.
As a neuroscientist points out:
Smells and tactile stimuli are routed immediately through the amygdala the emotional seat of the brain most responsible for the fear response. To give you a simplified explanation, this means that smells and touch can evoke much more vivid memories and emotional responses than sights or sounds.
Sights and sounds are shunted first to the thalamus. The thalamus deconstructs your vision into basic chunks of information: shape, size and color. Audio signals are similarly reduced to information about volume and dissonance. Only after this has happened does the signal get passed to the amygdala and the frontal cortex. As a consequence of this slightly more circuitous route, visual and auditory cues often trigger emotions that feel less intense than those of smell and feel.
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