Donald Trump’s victory shocked political pundits, pollsters, and “experts” of all kinds, who almost unanimously predicted that Trump would get clobbered by Hillary Clinton. Perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised by their failure; none of them were basing their opinions on the real thing doing the voting and making the decisions—the human brain. If they had been looking at all the science, which is just a cool term for “that which we can measure,” rather than just poll numbers, they may have gotten it right.
According to neuroscientist and VP of Research at SPARK Neuro, Ryan McGarry, PhD, Trump’s win could have been predicted based on the results of a series of political neuroscience studies the company conducted last year. Spark Neuro is a startup from Bethesda, Maryland that uses the tools of neuroscience to measure audience engagement, with clients that range from major brands and TV networks to the U.S. military. Rather than relying only on self-report measures like focus groups and surveys, which are subjective in nature, they go straight to the source by measuring nervous system activity.
Based in years of study in influence and persuasion, Trump did all the right things, and Hillary did almost none of them.
Once the Democrats replace all of their failed leadership they can move on to getting up to date on what it takes to win.
Old-style liberals think that if you just explain things rationally to the voters they will be on your side. Wrong. Emotion first then logic.
What is your actual definition of winning in the arena of political ideas? Because here’s the thing, Liberals won the POPULAR vote by a very large margin. Liberals have won 7 of the last 8 presidential races regarding the popular vote. Liberals have won the popular vote in a majority of congressional races–local and federal–for many, many years.
Why is it that “majority opinion rules” is the norm of democracies, yet this gets ignored in elections, including those that have no antiquated electoral college process? The Democrats have only generally failed at gaming the system with voter suppression and lopsided gerrymandering, both well-documented.
If winning at any cost to your democracy is the end goal then you have already lost the long game, history is full of such examples.
It’s the reptilian brain that is in charge on some of these things.
Hillary’s war-mongering, such as when she shouted “Russia” during one of the debates, triggered the reptilian brain to go into survival mode and reject the threat she constituted.
Scott Adams had a good take on this matter, in which he described Trump as being a master at hypnosis, and predicted that Trump would win over a year before the election. I think maybe the science described above helps explain how this hypnotic affect worked.
“I am seeing research in the neuroscience literature arguing that most of what we call politics is really the manipulation of psychophysical processes ” _ Stephan. BINGO! I worked in ‘higher education’ as social psychology came in as a discipline. Mob psychology manipulation is all it is about. Good for advertising. Good for manipulation of the lower elements. Of counter benefit in a democracy. But the oxymoron ‘political science’ has never had much to do with reasonableness and may have become a cross between map and doily making. I bet today you can recieve a major in jerrymandering with a minor in tweet bots.
Tweet bots for those many who have not heard of them yet are algorithms that automatically respond to tweets making them appear popular.
It is really time to have a discussion if a) democracy can work b) what necessary changes must be done for it to function and c) it that is not possible, what are the next steps.
I know This. Journalism is a calling, a calling for truth tellers. BUT the publishing of journalists is now entirely warped by the funding model that Google has irrevocably altered.
Reporters are not protected as is necessary to tell truth to power. Citizens must contribute.
Whole generations expect ‘news’ for free and refuse to pay for it. Only corporate interests pay for the majority of media complete with no cover zones. Until this is fixed, democracy cannot be anything but a sham. … or worse.