Obama is a do-nothing president. Romney is a flip-flopper. Obama is a socialist. Romney is a fascist. Every four years we seem to ask “Is this the most negative campaign ever?” We can hardly remember a time that was more negative than this one, with accusations of Romney being secretly bought out by corporations or Obama not even really being a citizen of our country!
Historically, of course, this is simply more of the same: Andrew Jackson was accused of murder, Grover Cleveland of having a bastard child, and rivals said a Jefferson presidency would bring about a society of “murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest.” Every four years we hear the same outcry “for a more positive campaign season” followed by “the most negative campaign in history.”
Why? Because it works. Statistically, negative ads improve numbers more than positive ones. Some suggest this is less because they convert people to your side and more because they convince people on the fence to simply not bother voting. This may seem a trivial difference, but it actually reveals a great deal about what motivates us to vote at all.
Emotions are not trivial. Our society has downplayed their importance in recent years, often pushing for a Vulcan-like rationality that simply does not exist. There is something enticing about being rational, because it implies a level of autonomy and control over our lives that being emotional lacks. Being emotional means feeling out of control.
But human beings don’t make rational decisions. Human beings make emotional decisions and then rationalize them.
Most people become annoyed and defensive the first time they hear me say this — how dare I question our rationality! Notice how ingrained this love of rationality has become — the reflex is to call such emotional response bad. But why?
Emotions exist for a reason. They are a wonderful part of us that we need in order to function day-to-day, minute-to-minute. Imagine a life without feeling: it probably sounds dry, dull, empty. For some, it may even sound like a relief.
But what if you pictured emotion more broadly? As our cognitive reflex system — the automatic part of our thought process? Imagine having to actively think about each and every little thing. Imagine driving a car while contemplating foot pedal pressure, steering wheel angle, the location of each and every car on the road, and even each and every sign, line, barrier, tree… It would be exhausting. Not just dry, dull, empty, or a relief. It would be impossibly overwhelming.
Our emotions allow us to quickly respond to situations without re-analyzing every bit of information first. In the same way that a tennis player practices a swing until she no longer needs to contemplate wrist or elbow angle, amount of force, or foot position, and instead can simply request her body perform “return swing.” Through practice, her body learns to react automatically to a situation so that she can use a simple shortcut based on past experience instead of starting the contemplation anew.
This is the function of our emotions. Based on our experience, we create shortcuts so that instead of re-analyzing the data for every decision, we can spend our time only on the new information. The wonderfully paradoxical part, of course, is that the more aware of this we become, the more rational our decisions become as well. The goal shouldn’t be to quash or emotions, but instead embrace them and realize their role.
So what role do they play in our election season? Every four years, candidates play on our lack of awareness to exploit these feelings. Negative (aversive) emotions are the most powerful, as they should be: if we are in danger, we want those feelings to quickly mobilize us and move us to protect ourselves. Athletes use this technique as well: use the reflexes of your opponent to force the opponent to make a mistake — it’s much easier than trying to simply ace a shot. The best players are those that can recognize when this is happening and take action to override that particular reflex in exchange for a different one.
No reasonable metric would define Obama as a socialist or Romney as a fascist, and yet there are many who believe these things. They feel it in their gut. Perhaps you do too. And that’s okay. What’s important is not to stop feeling these things, but instead to let yourself feel them. To realize they are your reflexes, and simply examine them. To check in with yourself and determine wether the emotional reflex is correct, or whether you’ve been hoodwinked by another great campaign team.
What do you think? Are you as rational as you think? Comment below!