tug those heartstrings!
Washington Post - September 18, 2006
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Zeitgeist Checklist: GOP Rebellion Edition … DISPATCH FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR In Politics, Aim for the Heart, Not the Head By Shankar Vedantam Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, September 18, 2006; Page A02
In 1935, researchers from Columbia University fanned out around the
city of Allentown, Pa., and handed out leaflets ahead of local and
state elections. What residents did not know was that they were part
of an experiment in political persuasion — an experiment whose
results came to mind last week as Adrian M. Fenty stormed to victory
in the District’s Democratic primary.
Researchers first divided Allentown into sections. Five thousand
campaign leaflets in some wards asked residents to answer a series of
questions about policy matters. For example, it asked them whether
they thought all children should have access to higher education
irrespective of income, whether banks should be run on a nonprofit
basis like schools and whether workers ought to have more say in
running their workplaces.
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Adrian Fenty found an issue that resonated with voters’ emotions,
helping him win D.C.’s Democratic mayoral primary. (By Bill O’leary
– The Washington Post)
Monday, Sept. 18, 1 p.m. ET
Science: Human Behavior
Washington Post science writer Shankar Vedantam will be online to
discuss his weekly series of stories about to sociology and
psychology behind news events.
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Another set of 5,000 campaign leaflets went to a different set of
wards. These leaflets contained a heartfelt letter — supposedly from
the young people of Allentown — which said that with “Dad working
only part-time on little pay, and Mother trying to make last year’s
coat and dress look in season,” the future for young people in the
city looked bleak.
The researchers looked at how many voters in the two sections they
could persuade to vote for the Socialist Party, rather than the
Republicans or Democrats. (The Socialist Party was chosen because it
had no chance of winning the elections.)
What the researchers wanted to study was the contrast between
rational and emotional appeals in political persuasion. The
questionnaire’s appeal was rational. It asked people who wanted a
more egalitarian society to vote their views on policy matters. The
letter’s appeal was emotional: “We beg you in the name of those early
memories and spring-time hopes to support the Socialist ticket in the
coming elections!” it said. When the election was over, the Socialist
vote increased by 35 percent over the previous election in the
sections of the city that received the rational appeal. In the
sections that received the emotional appeal, the Socialist vote
increased by 50 percent.
Given the enormous proliferation of policy questions today, surfing
the emotional wave nowadays may be even more important than it was in
1935. George E. Marcus, president of the International Society of
Political Psychology, said modern research confirms that unless
political ads evoke emotional responses, they don’t have much effect.
Voters, he explained, need to be emotionally primed in some way
before they will pay attention.
The research is of importance to politicians for obvious reasons –
and partly explains the enduring attraction of negative advertising
– but it is also important to voters, because it suggests that the
reason candidates seem appealing often has little to do with their
ideas. Political campaigns are won and lost at a more emotional and
subtle level.
The District’s Democratic mayoral primary, for instance, turned on
which candidate seemed freshest and most energetic. By that measure,
Fenty, 35, bested a field of same-old, same-old insiders, including
his nearest rival, Linda W. Cropp, 58.
But why should that issue have been the one that voters cared about?
Why not maturity and experience, in which case Cropp may have looked
like the natural winner?
The success of the Fenty campaign, several political psychologists
said, was in making energy the central emotive issue in the campaign.
Once it was the top item on the agenda, Fenty had to win. (Besides
being amid a whirlwind of activity, the candidate made sure he said
the words “energy” and “energized” every chance he got. Reporters
followed Fenty’s lead, attaching the adjective “energetic” to news
reports about his campaign.)
The Fenty machine essentially took advantage of what the Allentown
study found: It is comparatively difficult to persuade anyone to
change their mind on an issue. What works much better, because it
influences people at an emotional and subtle level, is to get people
to focus on a different issue — the one where the candidate is the
strongest.
“The agenda-setting effect is what we are talking about,” said
Nicholas A. Valentino, a political psychologist at the University of
Michigan at Ann Arbor. “The ability of a candidate not to tell people
how to feel about an issue, but which issue they should focus on –
that is the struggle of most modern campaign managers.”
“Campaigns have been much more successful at shifting people’s
attentions to different issues rather than shifting people’s
positions,” he added.
A political scientist who lives in the District, Lee Sigelman,
pointed out that as Fenty put the question of energy at the top of
the agenda, Cropp tried to strike back with ads painting Fenty as
inexperienced.
But it was too late. As many politicians before her have realized, no
one notices when the first nimble candidate changes the agenda. It’s
always the candidates who come late to the agenda wars who look like
they are trying to manipulate voters.