(cross-posted @ dKos)
Earlier this week I posted a diary discussing the different approaches men and women take to emotion when communicating about problems. I tried to make the case that getting emotion right is necessary not just for personal relationships but for political success. I also suggested that a feminine paradigm for exploring emotion could be helpful to Democrats in helping them get the emotional connection to voters right.
In recent elections, Republicans have become masters of manipulating voter emotion to win elections. Democrats, in turn, have sometimes responded to this manipulation by rejecting the role of emotion entirely in the process. This is a strategic mistake. Just as we had to take the battle over national security directly to Bush, we must also engage Republicans directly on other emotional issues.
To do this effectively, however, we have to start getting our emotional ducks in a row. To succeed against the Republican BS machine and to win the hearts as well as the minds of America, we have to learn to do a better job of emotional politics.
DISCOVERING THE FAULT LINES
Emotion can be utilized to determine the priorities of the electorate and where the most serious political fault lines lie within and outside of our party. Some rules to explore:
Passion matters.
One issue that voters feel passionately about is worth ten that they are lukewarm about. We can be right on all issues but one, and still that one can sink our campaign if voters feels passionately enough about it. So individual issues are important.
On the flip side, passion can also be felt for a vision that encompasses numerous issues — none of which individually rise to a passionate level of feeling. So a party’s core message is important.
Finally, passion can be felt for a candidate that supercedes the emotions elicited by the candidate’s issues. So the emotional reactions elicited by a candidate are also important.
To win, we need to understand and respond to passions in all three of these areas.
When people act unexpectedly, you’ve probably seriously misread or underestimated their emotion.
This was certainly true about women voters in the 2004 election. Bush was re-elected because he narrowed the gender gap from the 10 point margin Gore had in 2000 to the smaller 7 point margin Kerry attracted in 2004. Why was Bush able to close the gap when so many of his positions hurt women?
One word — or rather — one emotion: fear. Earlier in the summer of 2004, women voters favored Kerry over Bush by 10 points. However, after the Swift Boat Liars debacle, the Republican convention, and the attack on a Russian school by Chechen separatists, that 10 point lead evaporated. Kerry was eventually able to win most of those women back, but not that crucial 3%.
Negative emotions may win arguments, but positive emotions are necessary for consensus and solutions.
This is one reason Republicans are doing such a lousy job governing despite dominating all three branches of government. Our challenge as the opposition is to be clear and passionately engaged battling what they’re doing wrong, but also to be equally clear, passionate, and emotionally coherent about what we would do to give people hope, help, and opportunity.
People will sometimes hide behind facts when they are uncomfortable with the emotional source of their positions.
When Republicans hide behind facts, the facts are often false. In such cases, we should not only unmask the false positions, but also seek to determine what emotions are making them uncomfortable and why. On the Democratic side, we have to be careful when we are uncomfortable with the emotional source of our positions, because this discomfort can come across as insecurity, lack of confidence, or insincerity.
If people are embarassed by an emotion, they will often attempt to hide its source — ie. the thoughts, prejudices, and assumptions that led to the emotion.
A voter may be embarassed by their support for a given issue or candidate and still be difficult to persuade. Such support should never be dismissed; it can in fact be hazardous because it is hidden and extremely difficult to engage directly.
CHANGING MINDS
It is tempting in the face of what we may see as irrational feeling to attempt to change minds by arguing facts and figures. However, we are unlikely to succeed in changing minds if we do not handle emotion with knowledge and respect.
Emotions can’t be reasoned with, only acknowledged.
Because strong emotion can evoke equally strong opposite emotion, there is often a instinct to try to argue with someone who has opposing views you see as misguided and emotional rather than rational. Unfortunately, the emotion is the result, not the cause, of the thoughts, assumptions, and prejudices you seek to change. Arguing with the emotion, therefore, accomplishes nothing. Acknowledging an emotion, on the other hand, conveys respect and may encourage the person you disagree with to open up enough to give the reasons that they feel the emotion they do. This is valuable, because
The thoughts that create emotion can be reasoned with, but only if they are brought out into the open. This only occurs in an atmosphere of trust.
Until you know why someone believes what they do, you can do nothing about what they believe. Not until they feel comfortable enough to admit the thoughts and assumptions that led them to support or oppose a given position, will you be able to persuade them to question some of those thoughts and assumptions.
Emotions denied only become stronger and more disconnected from their original cause. This in turn makes them harder to change.
Ignoring, rejecting, or dismissing the emotions of people you disagree with has two negative results. One, they are more likely to dig in their heels and harden their position. Two, it will become harder to discern the true source of the negative emotion and thus will be harder to change minds and heal rifts.
It is far easier to dismiss a possible grievance than to acknowledge it.
It is human nature to assume we are right and others are wrong. Right now it is easy for Democrats to reflexively assume we are always in the right and Republicans are always in the wrong. Similarly, in our shared passionate desire to win, we sometimes ignore the grievances within our party, dismissing them as unimportant compared to the bigger fight. In both cases, we will achieve more with respect, calm, and humility, then we will by giving our natural defensiveness free reign.
DEALING WITH LIES
Finally, if we learn to deal with emotion more effectively, we may also grow better at dealing with lies.
An emotion will feel true even if its source is false.
One frustration for a lot of Democrats is that we can know that the source of an emotion is false and yet be unable to persuade the the person feeling the emotion of that falsity. What is important to remember in such a situation is that you cannot tackle the emotion directly. Instead, the false source of the emotion must be chipped away at until, with luck, the emotion begins to change organically. This can be a slow, frustrating process (like water on stone), and it requires information be provided to the person from trusted sources in small increments, but it can work.
The time to fight a lie is when it is still a thought.
Once lies have been accepted to such a point that they elicit emotion, they become much harder to counter. This is because the emotion is a construction by the individual based on a false foundation provided by others. There is more personal commitment to the emotion and there is an ego element to defending the falsehood as true.
This is why we have to attack lies quickly, get our leaders to speak out against them forcefully, and insist the press do their job and set the records straight as soon as possible.
Not all truth can be proven.
We have to be careful about being put into the situation of always having to prove what we say is true while the other side gets the assumption of truth without proof. Sometimes truth is difficult if not impossible to prove; it still can be true nevertheless.
Similarly, we should not be too quickly dismissive of those within our own ranks who see something we cannot see. While we want to remain in the “reality-based” community, we need to take a respectful, if skeptical, view of our “conspiracy theorists.” There are people who sense things by instinct if not by proof, and like the canaries in the mine, they may alert us to dangers and issues the rest of us are just not able to perceive.
EMOTION MATTERS
It is easy to lose track of the fact that much of politics is just personal relationships on a massive scale. If being respectful and knowledgeable about emotions matters in successful personal relationships, it matters even more so in doing successful politics. Many in politics know how to handle emotion well by instinct. Others need to learn what doesn’t come naturally.
Taking our country back is going to require the efforts of each and every one of us, so it behooves us all to consider how we can do emotion better to make us all more successful at Emotional Politics.
what “emotional rules” you’d add to the list.
Don’t let your emotions sound too far left, when dealing with a far right, you will be turned off permanently ; )
Regaurdless of how you really feel, you must be able to cover up, as good as them.
Wait till you win, and then, work on the problems of change.
Sure. Why be honest when you can be as fraudulent as the GOP?
I think the main thing people want to feel about their leaders is trust, and the response they expect is respect. I know how it feels to realize that someone you trusted has lied to you, and that’s what is happening to a lot of Americans now. Fear is the weapon of choice for these charlatans, but it is not our most powerful emotion.
Good point. What we have to remember is that when people start understanding they were lied to, they may leave denial, but that does not guarantee that they will take positive action (ie. vote for Democrats). They may just freeze or withdraw from the political process. What we have to do at this time is to step in and be ready to offer a positive vision that eases them past that frozen, disillusioned stage toward a more hopeful and active embrace of progressive values and candidates.
yes, but it is my theory, only mine of course, is there is a process for most humans that can think, that they have to be allowed to move thorough this process of denial to anger then to acceptance. Once this is completed then and only then will ppl not be in the confused state of mind. Remembering that some wake up and go thru this procss easier than others..so the delemma is what to do when? I always believe if truthful in the begining they will see it quicker than wading off into muggy waters of do I think I know what they are saying. BTW, very good diary for each of to think about in the upcoming days and weeks ahead of us.
Good point. I think what I was referring to here was the denial process and shock that people go through during a crisis. I wrote a diary @dKos a while back that discussed how even after people get past denying there is a crisis, they tend to freeze rather than act to save themselves from the crisis, because they are so flummoxed to find that the crisis could happen in the first place. What researchers have found is that in such situations, people actually do better if there is someone there to direct them/lead them to safety. The analogy can be taken too far, but that is sort of what I was referring to.
ok…I understand now…thanks…will give this some serious thought too. I have the habit of trying to catch a fly and of course, it is quicker than I. :o)
now what ai felt in the kos was just that, might I say. he was our leader and after what he said, Ilost trust in him as a leader. Trailing behind was my anger and disgust. I have since got over that anger an dI still read and post there on occassion, but I do not discuss there for much of the time. For I go back to trust there. I just simply do not trust there. am I wrong in that premice?
Probably not.
The fact that you ask suggests that you doubt yourself.
Has your gut feeling ever led you wrongly?
Or have other people pushed you in a direction that bothered you–and what were the results of that?
yup, right on. I only go to look at serious diaries, or so I think till I get to reading them then low and behold, it is the same old one two three song and dance. I suppose I feel betrayed in sense. I have to get over that one real quick for my own survival sake.:o)
Maybe that is why I feel so badly about it all…anyhow thanks for your answer.
I think your feelings about this are important. As I said in another discussion thread, I believe what happened on dKos represented in microcosm what we need to correct before 2006. If we cannot learn to respect and pay attention to the emotions of our fellow progressives, whom we share so many values with, how can we learn to do it with those we hold basic, core disagreements with?
what then would you suggest? I really have failed to communicate what so ever with them. I do not know if is my stubborness or their attitude..maybe both. But you know, I find it very hard to stomach such rudness and filthyness of mouth, when it is totally uncalled for. I can be guilty of spiting out a few nasty words myself, but on a political page that is not the place for all others to see my arrogence and bad manners, let along those who read from other sites, and republicans. I wished they would just know that I am willing to fight in the trenches with them if they would only do right by me as a female and a person. I just wished they would recognize that we the women of their party is a good thing to have onboard for them, let alone us. We have so much to give and so much energy to present to the forum. I just am having lots of trouble understanding I suppose. I am not going to let it ruin anything for me..for I am going to work and as hard as possible, in any fashion as I can, and let that be that.
I watch the Hart productions of the polling part of the elections of 04 and what I really saw was a lot of emotion there. some good some bad..I tried to figure most of them out..impossible in my opinion. I would like to have tried to change some minds, but I figured they couldn’t be changed for way to set now on how they thought.
First of all, you may have communicated more than you realize, because despite the emotional responses in the spur of the moment, you communicated that this was something that mattered to you. I sometimes compare it to water on stone. It can take a staggering amount of patience to change emotional attitudes, because the sources are so often hidden.
What you were coming smack dab face to face with was some emotions that probably in a real world setting wouldn’t even have been voiced. The fact that they were voiced was hurtful and destructive, but I’m hopeful that good can come out of it, because I think a lot of people with more reasonable and moderate outlooks were taken aback by how crude some of the attacks got to be.
One reason I wrote these diaries is that I wanted to convey from a more abstract position, why this fight mattered and why ignoring and disrespecting the emotions of our own we are weakening the overall fight.
Unfortunately, I think that some of the macho belligerence of the Bush crew has rubbed off on us, because we are getting so frustrated with how arrogantly they are destroying our country.
Problem is, those who want to fight their belligerence with our own belligerence are missing the point.
yes, I think you have a point there. So in that respect, do we covertly define our movements or overtly do this. I do not want to sly or sneaky on my presentation of how I feel to others, either. I do nto want to manupliate others either. I think I have always tried to be honest in discussion. I just feel beating myself up or myhead on that brick was that never gives on inch, is fruitless for me. Therefore I give up. Walk away. Making excuses for the otherside that of which I find repulsive about them. I try hard to refrain from talking to that kind of person again unless pushed into it and then I find I am burdened with the old feelings of doing the same old thing over again and for what ….This is how I feel about them there. I know, sounds childish, at least that is what I tell myself. But I have to preserve myself here and not subject myself to that kind of harressment again. I sometines get tired of fighting that same old battle over and over again. And besides, I thought that battle was won years ago, then to find out it isnt. Boy was I living in a dream world or what. Therefore, I find it hard to combat the FEARS deep within me to keep up the battle..Now that FEAR thing is a real bigeeee or at least for me, it is. That emotion I would not like to experience ever again. Some of the fears I have had to experience is not worth getting into ever again..so I feel GUARDED.
Sorry to go on and on, but I think I have defined a few of my own emotions here of which I think we can work on…:o)….Thanks, YOu are doing a great job.
oh and another thought just crossed my mind here.
I have tried to use the feedback methond of understanding the other person too..sometimes it works and then again there are othrs that seem not to.
I try the question method to get communication out in the open.. sometimes that works and sometimes not. I suppose the most objective thing for me here is to be able to see which situation it is an duse said methods.
Again, you ae doing us all a great service here so please go on and teach us how to communicate. I for one am listening
I will check in tomorrow. I have managed to stay here on this blog sight most of the day off and on and try to get somethings done around the house. I need to seperate me from all of this for a while and tomorrow, I have to work for a while. So will check in briefly..Thanks again, for everything.
you know the moves. Part of the equation is how comfortable the other person is with what they support and why the support it. People who feel most insecure about either of these will be hardest to get to admit to true motivation. In one sense, that’s a clue right there; on the other, it may be more work than it’s worth, because you may work and work to figure out their true motivation and still be unable to change their mind. On the other hand, if they’re uncomfortable with their position, maybe it’s because deep down they already have doubts, in which case, managing to create a true dialogue may actually result in change. It’s a call you sort of have to make on a case by case basis.
I think overt is better than covert. I think one can state one’s positions forcefully but with tact, which allows one to state one’s positions in a way that doesn’t automatically antagonize the other side.
Some people are antagonized by any position that is different from their own. One has to make a judgement of how deeply held their position is and then pick one’s battles taking into account a) how much battle we feel up to (not feeling up to battle is entirely ok; and b) how likely one deems that one will be able to successfully get the other side to listen.
FWIW, I think a lot of the antagonism on dKos was less a matter of deeply held anti-feminist views as rather sophomoric bullying akin to attacking a rival sports team. It was a lot of us against them that got out of hand, but there also was just enough of a streak of male anger and dismissiveness to hurt. Unfortunately, the top tier at dKos didn’t do enough to curb this.
Will comment more later on your other points. My son’s up, got to get to church, and will be busy with Father’s Day celebs most of the day, but will get back eventually to write more.
and it drove me crazy during the 2004 campaign, to hear people say they were going to vote for Bush because they didn’t like Kerry. Why? I would ask. Well, they would respond, and moments would go by while their eyes turned inward.
This is the sort of emotion I would love to see driven out of politics. My neighbor hates Bill Clinton because her ex-husband had an affair and now she hates men who have affairs. Another person hates Kerry because his wife is “uppity”. You know the stories.
I acknowledge that you can’t drive emotion out of politics, but how can we bring it about that reason will trump emotion in voting decisions?
reason will trump emotion in voting decisions
They’re not mutually exclusive. I think that’s what kat’s saying. It really comes to down to trust – posted above. In the last election, by the time dems got clueful it was too late. Too many “factions” in the party screaming “anybody but bush”, not “Kerry/Edwards”. [Kerry campaign didn’t help either].
oh good heavens you just know!!! I work with a very educated woman in my community of healthcare..now take it she knows right from wrong. very respectable and I am very good friends with her. But one day before the elections, she and I were discussing hte pros and cons of both men running. she made the most alarming statement ever that I have ever heard her say in my entire life…she was gonna vote for george cuz she happened to like laura…not the man but his wife…how discusting….I could only try to say that is not who I am voting for and no matter about their wives, I vote for the man..she sortta just walked away from me.
I’m not sure we can drive out that sort of emotional voting, because honestly there are a large number of people who do decide things emotionally.
That said, just because someone has decided something on an emotional basis doesn’t make them a lost cause. Instead of trying to attack the emotion head on, what I’m advocating is trying to reach enough of a position of trust that someone might admit their true reasons for feeling the way they do.
For instance, there was an incredibly exasperating Ira Glass piece on This American Life where he followed a so-called “uncommitted” Republican voter through the campaign to see what he would finally decide. Although this guy claimed he was willing to vote for a Democrat if the Democrat was good enough, it quickly became obvious that no matter what the info was, he just couldn’t bring himself to vote for Kerry, even though he flirted with the idea for a while.
Was this because Kerry wasn’t good enough? No. There was obviously a part of him that realized Kerry’s policies were better.
Was it because he really liked Bush better? No. I think he was embarassed at the thought of being a Bush supporter — hence the supposed undecided tag — but his emotion would not let him vote for a Democrat.
That kind of emotion can be difficult to deal with, but until we know what we are dealing with, there is no chance. We could have tried to sell Kerry to him all day and night and it wouldn’t have mattered. We had to find out what being a Republican meant to him and why he found it so hard to vote Democratic to have any chance to sway him and that conversation just never happened.
As an aside, one emotion I suspected at the time that didn’t really get talked about enough was the identification people felt with the Republicans as a “winning team.” There was definitely an emotion among some Republicans that they were on top and Bush put them there so there were going to go along for the ride, because losing just doesn’t feel good. Never mind that he might be bad for the country. That sort of emotion may be the hardest to deal with because it’s based on selfishness; I think those sort of voters can only be persuaded when they see their own needs threatened.
We tried to get that message out that Republicans are hurting the country, but the press made it hard to do. I’m hopeful that more boots on the ground, better coverage from local media, and our using the community means at our disposal to help people see the truth will help in 2006.
did you by some chance watch the Hart experiements of ppl and why they were voting for whom and why? Lots of emotion a going on in those groups.
I think I caught one of them on C-SPAN. Fascinating stuff, but I kept being frustrated, because I kept wanting to dig deeper with each one at the individual level. There was so much hand-waving, and I suspected that many had reasons they either couldn’t figure out or didn’t want to admit behind the positions they were expressing publicly.
Course, I love trying to pick apart what people really think. To me it’s almost a kind of a hobby.
oh Katrina, me too…I just couldn’t get my mind around some of the answers they were giving..honest to God answers were like feces, IMO. Glad you know what I am refering to, BTW
and “passion.”
This is an excellent diary. I don’t know if you post at Kos, but you should cross-post this there. I know a number of people here aren’t happy with dKos right now, but this is the kind of thing that needs to spread far and wide in the party, that way, when we’re all dealing with our winger friends/bosses/neighbours and whatnot we can engage them without alienating them.
I find that Al Franken does this really well. A lot of people get on his ass b/c he’s not as aggressive as Randi, and he doesn’t outdebate the wingers as vigorously. Know what tho? He has a hell of a lot of right-wing friends because of it, and righties will come on his show b/c they know they will be treated respectfully, then the public sees/hears the way he respects them and it leads to them respecting him and thus his viewpoints. It takes a long time to plant a seed like this and actually have it yield fruit, but if you’re patient, you will turn more people to the “truth” that way, then by yelling at them like Randi does… (and all of us sometimes)
Thanks for the kind words. You offer an interesting insight into Al Franken’s appeal. What’s interesting is that you’re right about the respect he shows those on the other side of the debate, yet that doesn’t stop him from being quite frank (forgive the pun) about where he stands on the issues. (Of course, using humor doesn’t hurt either.)
This is an important point, because what I am not advocating is to be wishy-washy about issues in hopes of not offending people. Instead, what I am saying is to be respectful of people’s positions on the other side and try to determine the thinking that is behind them, so we can successfully frame our side of the issues to highlight common ground and undermine caricatures of our positions.
Katrina, would it totally impossible for you to give us a few senerios on how to talk with the republicans in the right manner here. Might strick up a cord to give some thougth to…thanks.
to post a 3rd diary in this series about how to apply this to strategy. I’ll try to include some scenarios there. It may take me a week or two to get it posted. This coming weekend we’re going on vacation and then my daughter goes to camp for 3 weeks, but I’ll try to post it as soon as I get time to sit down and think for a while at the keyboard.
According to Aristotle there were three primary components to rhetoric (art of persuasion): logos, pathos, and ethos.
Logos — logical appeals
Pathos — emotional appeals
Ethos — character or credibility of the speaker
Of the three, logos, he considered the most important. Pathos, however, is essential. Pathetic appeals only degrade an argument that is deficient in logos. Richard Nixon’s “Checkers” speech is a prime example of pathos at the total expense of logos. It also got him out of a slush fund scandal. Any rhetoric that does not contain an emotional element will fall flat, because human beings are far more emotional than they think they are. In my experience, choice is a gut response, rooted in the emotions and only justified through logical assessment. The right has been using emotional appeals at the expense of logic for some time, and we need only look around us to see how well it’s working. We absolutely need to rise to a higher rhetoric using an integration of Aristotle’s three basic appeals. The left has got to stop deluding itself into thinking that facts and logic are enough.
Good comment. I wish I was up on my rhetoric as well as you seem to be. It got me to thinking about the ethos part of the equation.
Unfortunately, in this age of the lapdog media and the Republican party’s use of both government and some fundamentalist religious leaders to propagandize for them, it is harder for average voters to discern the ethos of a candidate except thru the haze of emotional appeal.
Kerry was a genuine war hero who chose to serve his country and put himself in harm’s way. Bush couldn’t even manage to do his duty by the champagne wing of the National Guard. Yet somehow in many voters’ minds, Bush was seen as the candidate that represented traditional values.
The Republicans have been masterful at declaring black is white and white is black partially because while we’re busy defending reality, they’re manipulating emotions. We have to start using emotional martial arts on them and using the weight of their own emotional manipulation to pin them to the floor.