0:00

Once again, it's election season.

0:03

This year, contests from governorships

0:05

and senate seats to sit councils

0:08

and school boards will turn on headline

0:10

grabbing issues including abortion, the

0:12

economy, climate change,

0:14

and education. But political

0:17

and psychological research has found that

0:19

most often, voter behavior

0:21

is not driven by the nuances of

0:23

policy debates on these topics. In

0:26

stead, it's how voters feel about

0:28

candidates and political parties. Whom

0:30

they trust to share their values and the

0:32

emotions that politicians messages,

0:34

speeches and ad campaigns evoke.

0:37

So how do emotions drive our political

0:39

behavior? What makes an effective

0:41

political speech or ad campaign verse

0:43

is one that falls flat. How

0:45

can small changes in wording? ReShape

0:48

voters' opinions on controversial topics

0:51

And what role might political

0:53

messaging play in shaping our increasingly

0:56

polarized public discourse?

1:00

Welcome to Speaking of Psychology. The

1:02

flagship podcast of the American Educational

1:05

Association that examines the links

1:07

between psychological science and everyday

1:09

life. I'm

1:10

Kim Mills.

1:13

My guest today is doctor Drew Weston,

1:16

a clinical personality and political

1:18

psychologist and professor in the departments

1:20

of psychology and psychiatry at

1:23

Emory University. He also

1:25

runs the consulting firm, Weston Strack,

1:27

strategies, which advises progressive nonprofits

1:30

and democratic candidates on how to talk

1:32

with voters about a range of issues. from

1:35

abortion to immigration to taxes.

1:37

He's tested political messages with thousands

1:40

of voters over the past two decades, He

1:42

is also author of the two thousand eight book,

1:44

The Political Brain, the role of

1:46

emotion in deciding the fate of the nation.

1:49

And he's working on a follow-up book to be published

1:51

in twenty twenty three. He is

1:53

a frequent contributor on political

1:55

and psychological issues on radio, television,

1:58

and in print in venues such

1:59

as The New York Times, The Washington Post,

2:02

and CNN. Thank

2:04

you for joining me today, Dr. Wester. Thanks

2:06

for helping me again. Before I

2:08

toss out my first question, I want to make

2:10

clear that APA is a non partisan

2:12

organization, so I want to be sure that

2:14

our discussion is balanced and that we will talk

2:17

about Democrats, Republicans, and

2:19

independents without fear or favor.

2:22

How does that sound to you?

2:23

I promise to be just like Fox

2:25

News, fair and balanced. But but

2:27

I will I will say that I will

2:29

say that that you

2:31

did you did introduce me, someone who works

2:33

with Democrats, and Republicans

2:35

will be especially happy with

2:37

what I have to say because Republicans

2:38

tend to be very good at messaging

2:40

and democrats tend to be really off planet.

2:42

So I'll be more critical of democrats. Alright.

2:46

Thank you. So my first

2:48

substantive question.

2:50

In an article a couple of years

2:52

ago called How to Win an Election, You

2:55

wrote that politics is less

2:57

a marketplace of ideas than a

2:59

marketplace of emotions. Why

3:01

is that? Why is it so crucial

3:04

for politicians to reach voters on an

3:06

emotional level rather than just an

3:08

intellectual one. You

3:09

know, in some ways, you could answer that question

3:11

by asking, how do we choose a mate?

3:14

or how do we choose how do we choose

3:16

dinner? You know, we we don't we don't go through

3:18

the list of, like, with a navy. If

3:20

if we do go through a list of let's see. I'm

3:22

gonna make list pros and cons. There's

3:24

fifteen on this side, fifteen on that side.

3:27

We would typically be divorced in about

3:29

two years because that's

3:31

simply not how that's how our minds

3:33

work. We we are and

3:36

I guess another way to put it is that emotions

3:38

provide the fuel for human behavior.

3:41

and cognition provides or

3:43

thinking provides the roadmap. So

3:45

there are really -- there are two basic

3:47

questions the voters ask. and and

3:49

when they're trying to decide on on which

3:52

party or candidate they support. One

3:54

is, does this person understand

3:57

and care about people like me.

3:59

And

3:59

the

3:59

second is, does this person share my values?

4:02

And

4:02

you know what? If you're an educated voter,

4:04

if you're not a terminally ill hit the voter.

4:06

Those are the same two questions that you're asking.

4:09

In an emotional way, they're actually

4:11

pretty rationing questions most of the time.

4:13

So

4:14

much of your work has to do with

4:16

exploring the importance of language

4:18

and political messaging. One example

4:20

I've heard you put forward is that people react

4:22

completely differently to a program

4:25

that's described as, say, helping

4:27

the unemployed versus one

4:29

that helps quote, people who have

4:31

lost their jobs. Why

4:33

are these seemingly small changes in

4:35

language so significant?

4:38

From a neuroscience perspective, they're

4:40

activating different what you would call,

4:43

and you would call this from a clinical perspective

4:45

as well, different networks of associations

4:48

in our minds and brains that is interconnected

4:50

sets of thoughts and feelings and

4:52

images and memories and values so

4:55

that when you activate part of that network, you

4:57

activate the rest. So when you, for example,

4:59

say,

5:00

Oh, I'm I'm concerned about

5:02

the unemployed.

5:03

You're taking real people with

5:05

pain lines, faces who may

5:07

have just had to tell their kid that

5:09

they're moving in it. This is sweetie. This

5:11

isn't gonna be your room anymore. That's

5:14

a really evocative thing and it makes

5:16

you feel something. You're turning people

5:18

like that into a nameless, faceless

5:20

abstraction, the unemployed, which

5:23

is also an other. it's not it's like,

5:25

if I'm not unemployed right now, I don't I'm

5:27

big you up, sure, glad not them.

5:30

And as soon as you use that, themify

5:32

somebody, you decrease empathy

5:34

for them.

5:35

So can you really flip public opinion

5:37

on a question just by describing the

5:40

topic in a different way? I mean, how much

5:42

difference might this make in terms of

5:44

poll numbers?

5:45

I'll give you a couple of examples. Recently,

5:48

I did study on Southern

5:51

voters looking at

5:53

how to diffuse the the

5:55

issues of race and race baiting

5:57

that were brought up by the

5:59

the rights

5:59

attack on quote unquote, critical

6:02

race theory or CRT, which versus,

6:04

you know, it stopped being taught in any

6:06

school. It's not It's not taught in

6:08

the vast majority of of of

6:11

undergraduate universities. It's taught

6:13

in a handful of law school classes. In

6:15

fact, there's there's one law school class

6:17

at Emory on it. And

6:19

and the professor asked BD Guest teach

6:21

on how to talk about it. So that's the

6:24

extent to which children, quote,

6:26

are being exposed to critical race thing. But

6:28

but what the right did was it

6:30

was completely unethical, but very

6:32

smart. And they're really open about

6:34

it. They basically said, alright.

6:36

How can we take

6:37

take anything

6:39

that's being taught in

6:41

about race

6:42

or racism

6:44

in elementary and high schools,

6:47

middle schools, how do we turn that into

6:49

something that sounds really scary? Well,

6:51

let's call it critical race

6:54

theory. Why? First of all, it's

6:56

critical of America. Now that's an

6:58

unconscious association. They say critical

7:00

They don't say of America, but that's

7:02

part of that network of associations that's

7:04

activated unconsciously. So you get in

7:07

there, it's critical of America, critical

7:09

of white people. It's

7:11

it's it's about race and it's

7:13

just a theory. No

7:15

facts. Just a theory promulgated

7:18

by those socialist communist people

7:20

who just hate white people and

7:23

can't stand white privilege and all that kind

7:25

of thing. So that's the right side of it.

7:27

It turns out that you can

7:29

diffuse that really,

7:31

really easily, but Democrats

7:33

tend to use the wrong language. They'll say,

7:35

we must fight we must

7:37

fight systemic racism. Well,

7:39

that would be great except

7:41

that as I as I actually found

7:43

in that particular survey, less than

7:46

twenty percent of people, including twenty

7:48

percent of people of color, can define

7:50

critical race there. They have no idea what you're

7:52

talking about. So And when you

7:54

when you talk to someone is like,

7:56

I often say to to leaders, if

7:59

you're speaking to someone

7:59

who's a native Spanish speaker, don't

8:02

talk to them in English. speak to

8:04

them in the in the language that they use

8:06

and the litmus test for me on language

8:08

that I always try to tell people is

8:10

if this isn't how ordinary normal

8:13

Americans would speak about this,

8:15

I don't care how you activists speak about it.

8:17

This is not this is that ordinary

8:19

voters speak about this, just don't use

8:22

it. So instead of saying critical

8:24

race theory, for example, or instead of

8:26

saying systemic racism, If

8:28

you simply describe it, if you say, hey, look,

8:30

we all know that back in the fifties when

8:33

Tresilizer was developing our

8:35

our interstate highway systems. if

8:38

a highway was gonna had to be

8:40

built between one of two neighborhoods.

8:42

One of them was a poor black neighborhood. The

8:44

other one was white neighborhood. we

8:46

all know which one was gonna go go through

8:48

because back then that was just

8:50

seen as that was acceptable, racism

8:52

was was acceptable in a way that

8:55

We've had some politicians who've made it acceptable

8:57

again, but it wasn't acceptable for about fifty

8:59

years. So what you say is,

9:01

look, fact that we know which way we go.

9:04

And it's easy to say that that's history,

9:06

but here's the problem. The problem is

9:08

that fifty years later, think about

9:10

the value of the houses on

9:13

the two sides of that of that

9:15

highway versus the value

9:17

of the houses in that white neighborhood.

9:20

white the white people's houses have gone

9:22

up skyrocketed value, and the people

9:24

and the people of those black neighborhoods, but they've

9:26

been passing on to their kids isn't worth much

9:28

at all. And then you ask, why don't these

9:30

poor black kids have all these problems with asthma?

9:33

What do you think happens when you have fumes

9:36

coming off the highway? If you say that and

9:38

then you say to a white working class

9:40

voter, you know, we just passed a trillion

9:42

dollar bipartisan infrastructure

9:44

act. Why

9:45

don't we fix this? And they'll

9:47

say, absolutely, that's not

9:49

fair.

9:50

But if you say to them that,

9:53

you know, we have this problem with systemic racism.

9:55

their immediate responses to get defensive.

9:58

Just one more quick example like

9:59

that is if you say,

10:02

you know, when we teach about history,

10:04

we

10:04

need to teach about the history of racism

10:06

because

10:08

you will

10:09

breakeven or do a little better than breakeven

10:12

with the average voter on that. If

10:14

instead, you say, we need to teach

10:16

about the history of race and racism

10:19

because you'll

10:21

kick up an extra fifteen points in the polls.

10:23

And the reason for that, we I mean,

10:25

it's a tiny change from racism

10:28

to racism. What you've

10:30

just done is You've you have

10:32

blocked white people from getting

10:34

defensive. The second you say, we need to

10:36

teach about the history of racism. immediately

10:39

it feels accusatory if you're

10:41

white.

10:42

And and do you know it's not

10:44

You you can understand what

10:46

people feel that way because racism, you

10:49

hear it and you hear like, oh, I'm

10:51

about to be attacked. Instead, if you

10:53

say the history of race and racism people go,

10:55

well, of course, we should teach about that.

10:57

There's

10:57

been a lot of discussion of how increasingly

11:00

polarized our political landscape has

11:02

become. Does that affect

11:04

the way people respond to political messaging.

11:07

I'm I'm wondering if it's possible these

11:09

days for a Democratic politician

11:11

to connect emotionally with a Republican

11:14

voter or vice versa or do

11:16

people just tune out, whatever comes

11:18

from the other side? You

11:20

know, it really depends on how

11:23

far to the other side, the other side is.

11:25

I actually I actually don't agree with

11:28

with many of my colleagues

11:30

on the on the left who were who

11:32

were pollsters about who

11:34

they think is movable because who's

11:37

movable depends on how you talk to them.

11:39

You know, if if on on for example,

11:41

on unabortion.

11:44

If you say if

11:46

you say to to voter to say

11:48

suburban independent

11:51

or suburban Republican

11:52

voters. Or

11:54

you say that even a lot of rural

11:56

voters as we learned in Kansas

11:59

where you'd get these bright red counties

12:01

where forty percent of people would say no, I

12:03

want I want the right to abortion. If

12:05

in a polling question, you ask

12:07

people, do you believe in

12:09

abortion? Well, in those suburban

12:11

Republican areas, you're gonna

12:13

get a mix of feelings. Well, you'll you'll

12:15

get more positive than negative. You'll get about

12:18

two thirds of Americans will say yes to that.

12:20

But if you ask instead, are

12:22

you pro life or pro choice? People

12:25

have split evenly. between those two

12:27

things for the last twenty five years. Until

12:29

the Dobbs decision, the decision that over

12:31

row and which led the pro

12:34

choice side to go to go way up in the polls.

12:36

Well, if you look at that, you might think those

12:38

are really conflicting results. Right? Like,

12:40

two thirds of people say that they're for

12:42

abortion. for abortion rights,

12:45

yet under half say

12:47

their pro choice. Well, if

12:49

instead of using language like

12:52

Even even Pro Choice, which is pretty

12:54

common. Pro Choice Pro Life suggests

12:56

no matter what, I

12:58

believe that that

13:00

that from the moment of conception, you're

13:02

killing babies. And that's the position that

13:04

the rights now taking and it's taken up

13:06

really extreme version of that of

13:08

that position. So, you

13:10

know, why is it that that that people

13:13

reject the language of pro choice half the

13:15

time when they believe in abortion rights.

13:17

It's because Democrats and

13:20

progressives are offering them a position that's

13:22

not equally untenable to the right

13:25

but sounds untenable, which is anytime

13:27

you feel like that you can abort. But the

13:29

reality is most of us don't actually feel

13:31

that way. I mean, what they feel is

13:34

early on in pregnancy, when you

13:36

look at what a fetus or embryo

13:38

looks like, it

13:39

doesn't look anything like us. You know,

13:41

for weeks, you can't tell the Chicken

13:43

embryo than a human embryo. That's

13:45

why most of us intuitively feel like

13:48

you need better and better reasons,

13:50

the further on that you are. You know,

13:52

it early on, it

13:54

is clearly it's not a question

13:56

between a mother's rights and the rights

13:58

of fetal

13:59

tissue.

13:59

because that's what it is. We don't say,

14:02

oh, when's your baby coming? When when you're

14:04

not even showing yet? We say that towards the

14:06

end though, and that says a lot about how we feel.

14:08

with the point I was getting I was getting to

14:10

about this is if you were to use language

14:13

like

14:14

reproductive justice, It's

14:17

again one of those abstractions. First of

14:19

all, no one has any idea what you're talking about.

14:21

What does reproduction have to do with

14:23

justice? It's like when people use words

14:25

like

14:26

like environmental justice. I've

14:28

tested that one as well. Less than

14:30

ten percent of people can accurately find

14:33

environmental justice. People I

14:35

don't know. Like, you're good to the earth.

14:37

You know? And and that's actually that's

14:39

actually not what it is about. But so if you

14:41

say reproductive justice, not only

14:44

are you turning something that's really deeply

14:46

personal and that you feel

14:48

when you hear about, say, that ten year old

14:50

girl who was raped and

14:53

couldn't get an abortion in her own

14:55

state. You know, Democrats

14:57

should be referring to that as a moral

14:59

issue. You know, there's a moral choice

15:01

between two sides and I

15:04

I would I would urge Democrats to

15:06

say, yeah, they believe that

15:08

every rapist has the right to choose the

15:10

mother of his child. we believe that

15:12

every woman has the right to choose the father

15:14

of hers. That's

15:15

the difference in our moral world views.

15:18

But,

15:18

see, that's a long phrase. And

15:21

I'm thinking, you know, pro choice was

15:24

poll tested before it ended

15:26

up in common use. And

15:28

pro life has been poll tested, and they're

15:30

both handy and short. So but what

15:32

if pro choice doesn't work, then

15:34

what's the shorthand alternative

15:37

that will work?

15:39

That's also a great question because the

15:41

left tends to have more nuanced positions

15:43

on things than the right. The right

15:45

will simply say,

15:47

no gun. Second

15:49

amendment. Wow. You know, that's the

15:51

you know, that's their that's their position. Or

15:54

or You're chillin' babies.

15:57

I mean, that that's, you know, those are the

15:59

those are the

15:59

or or the the free market

16:02

can't interfere. Yep. There you

16:04

go. It's pretty it's pretty simple. Whereas it's

16:06

it's not that easy on the left because the

16:08

left is defined by having

16:10

more nuanced views. So you might have to get

16:12

up to a few more words, like something like this,

16:14

instead of talking about reproductive justice

16:17

or pro choice. If

16:18

you say, this is about the

16:20

freedom to decide when and whether

16:22

to have a kid. That's

16:24

pretty much it. Where

16:25

where if you wanna expand that the freedom to decide

16:27

whether when and who'd have a child

16:29

with or who'd have a family with. Everyone

16:32

understands exactly what that means. And

16:34

if you notice When I say the freedom,

16:36

I'm not I only emphasize I'm

16:38

emphasizing the value that is

16:40

core to what this

16:42

whole thing is about. It's not a justice It's

16:45

not really about health so much. It's

16:47

first and foremost about This is

16:49

about our freedom one of the most essential

16:52

freedoms we have to decide

16:54

who and when and whether to have

16:56

a child. But the other thing

16:58

about it is, you know, so I can put information in

17:01

my voice when I say it. If I say,

17:03

I'm pro choice. No

17:05

feeling in that. You

17:06

could you could say a louder, you could say, I'm

17:08

pro choice, you know, or you could

17:10

say, I'm pro joyce and I'm proud.

17:13

Well, you know, actually not that many

17:15

women feel like

17:17

they go into an abortion clinic or

17:20

to plan parenthood because they

17:22

have an they have an unwanted pregnancy.

17:25

They're not going in. They're thinking,

17:27

I'm proud. they're

17:29

not necessarily thinking I'm not

17:31

proud, but they're not thinking it's not about

17:33

pride. It's about freedom. It's about

17:35

this wasn't the right time or this

17:37

isn't what I wanted or this was a

17:39

tender date for God's sake.

17:41

Now

17:41

you've done work using FMRI

17:44

to study people's brains while they

17:47

absorb political information. And

17:49

I'm just wondering, do we absorb

17:51

political information differently from

17:53

other types of information, particularly

17:56

information that maybe doesn't comport

17:58

with our preconceived notions. Yeah.

18:01

That's a real problem. This is a

18:04

was a design flaw built into the

18:06

human brain by if you're

18:08

on the left, natural selection, if you're on

18:10

the right, God messed up. And

18:13

and that is that, you know, we

18:15

learned from skinner

18:16

the

18:17

seventy five, eighty years ago that

18:19

People are well, he didn't like to use feeling

18:22

words, but but that we're

18:24

essentially drawn to things that that

18:26

that we associate with. with

18:28

reinforcement or with positive positive

18:31

outcomes for ourselves, for our families, for

18:33

the communities that we care about. and

18:35

we either fight or flee things that do

18:37

the opposite. That makes complete

18:39

sense from an evolutionary standpoint, organism

18:42

that didn't do that. We wouldn't be knowing that organism

18:44

today. it would have it would have gone extinct,

18:47

you know, millions of years ago.

18:49

The problem is that we as humans can

18:52

do exactly the same thing with ideas.

18:54

and that is that we are drawn

18:56

towards ideas, towards

18:58

beliefs that make us feel

19:00

good, that are reinforcing,

19:01

and we repel beliefs that

19:04

make us feel the opposite. So

19:05

if you wanna know how that work actually works in

19:07

the brain, we did a study back in in two

19:09

thousand four and in the election

19:12

between John Carey and George W. Bush,

19:15

where we looked at the brains of strong

19:17

partisans as they listened to

19:20

information and we ask

19:22

them to perform a reasoning task with

19:24

that information about their candidate

19:26

or the other cat. And what we found

19:28

was if you looked at the, say,

19:30

one thousand or fifteen hundred prior

19:33

studies using neuroimaging

19:34

techniques like functional

19:36

neuroimaging I guess MRI. If

19:38

you look at the, say, one thousand studies before

19:41

that have recent tests, they all found

19:44

activation in an area towards

19:46

the top of the front of the brain

19:48

called the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex,

19:51

which is involved in

19:52

conscious, rational, thinking,

19:55

in holding things in mind consciously

19:57

so you could make decisions about them

19:59

in

19:59

more abstract thinking.

20:02

And that's what when people reasoned

20:04

they use those circuits which made a lot

20:06

of sense. Well, we had a suspicion

20:09

that on in politics, when

20:12

it got to be about your candidate and you

20:14

had an emotional investment in your candidate,

20:16

we didn't

20:16

think any of those circuits were gonna turn on

20:18

at all. We expected that what was really

20:20

gonna happen So here's an example.

20:22

And this is a this was a slightly altered

20:25

example. So we we did alter examples

20:27

that they were They were most of them were very close

20:29

to things that the canons actually said are done.

20:32

So here's an example that was a care example.

20:34

It was it was people

20:36

are lying in the scanner They're reading

20:38

this, they're listening to this, and they're

20:40

about to make a rating. And they they hear the first

20:42

slide comes up. It says, in nineteen

20:44

ninety six, John Carey was on Beat

20:46

The Press.

20:47

discussing Social Security. And he

20:49

said, we

20:51

have generational responsibility to put

20:53

everything on the table here. whether that's

20:56

means testing, whether that's affecting

20:58

the changing the

21:00

automatic cost of living adjustments.

21:03

because we have to make sure this program is solvent

21:05

for all this, you

21:06

know, decades down the road. So

21:09

that thing seems

21:09

pretty reasonable. Well,

21:11

then the next slide comes up. It says,

21:13

this

21:13

year, two thousand four, I meet

21:15

the press. John Carey, who's

21:17

asked about Social Security and said, we

21:19

should never touch Social Security. We have a generation

21:22

responsibility to our seniors to leave just

21:24

as just as as as as it has

21:26

been. So

21:27

then the next slide comes up and says consider

21:29

mister Carey's words are words

21:31

and actions are inconsistent. Well,

21:33

obviously, they are. Right? I mean,

21:36

you know, nineteen ninety six says one thing,

21:38

two thousand four now is playing the scene, usually

21:40

says a different thing. And and again, let me just

21:42

stress. This was not a this is not a completely

21:44

real example. It had elements

21:46

of truth. It was not entirely real. So

21:48

so

21:49

it

21:50

it we then have them right on a four point

21:52

scale. the extent from

21:55

one,

21:56

not inconsistent at all,

21:58

for completely inconsistent. And

22:01

their finding was that

22:03

Democrats had no trouble seeing the

22:05

inconsistencies for George W. Bush.

22:08

Republicans

22:08

had no trouble seeing the inconsistencies

22:11

for for John Carey. out,

22:13

but here's where there was a difference. The difference

22:16

was when they were looking at their own candidates,

22:18

we saw no activations in the

22:20

reasoning circuits whatsoever. we

22:22

saw what we expected, which was a bunch

22:25

of first activations of

22:27

emotion circuits, negative emotion circuits

22:29

that we're saying who

22:30

are just pinging, pinging, pinging,

22:32

saying, uh-oh,

22:33

this doesn't feel good. How am I

22:35

gonna get out of this? Then these are activations

22:37

in in parts of of the frontal

22:40

lobes right around

22:42

our eyes or between our eyes or just

22:44

above of above our eyes or the ventromedial

22:46

prefrontal cortex. which we had

22:48

hypothesized would be involved in

22:50

people unconsciously regulating

22:53

their motions, trying to figure out how to shut

22:55

them off. And then there was a huge activation

22:58

in part right behind those eyes called

23:00

the anterior cingulate, which

23:02

is involved in among other things

23:04

monitoring and trying to figure out what to

23:06

do about conflict. And the prior

23:08

studies that, you know, focus on cognitive

23:10

conflict, like, we were given emotional conflict.

23:13

So all of those circuits were just

23:15

wildly off. Then about

23:17

twenty seconds later, they started

23:19

to all turn off as people came up with

23:21

rationalizations give their candidate. Oh,

23:23

no. Not inconsistent at all. And

23:27

once they did that, this was the part

23:29

we did not expect.

23:31

they got bursts of dopamine

23:34

in reward surgery in the brain.

23:36

And essentially, they were getting reinforced

23:39

for coming to a bias conclusion.

23:42

And that's the part that's

23:44

scary. And was scary

23:46

back in two thousand four when we did the

23:48

study when you

23:50

know, we were still in the in the

23:52

post Watergate era where not

23:55

not quite, but we we had moved out of

23:57

the but, you know, back in the Watergate era,

24:00

Republicans were the ones who went to

24:02

went to Richard Nixon and said, you gotta resign,

24:05

buddy. We just can't support

24:07

you in the Senate because you obstructed justice.

24:09

I mean, I mean, it seems like

24:11

that

24:12

was two hundred years ago because you can't imagine

24:14

happening now. The problem now is

24:16

that on top of that designed effect

24:19

in the brain, we

24:20

have a designed effect in the media, which

24:22

is that we have now most people getting

24:24

their news from social media. and they're

24:26

getting it from sources that have no

24:28

fact checking.

24:30

And who are largely the

24:32

sources who are sending them information

24:34

because they're like minded. So now we don't even

24:36

share similar facts. Let alone have

24:38

to reason about facts in ways that

24:41

are differently. that

24:42

you started out as a personality in

24:44

clinical psychologists, and you still do

24:46

academic research in in those areas.

24:49

But what made you turn your attention to

24:51

politics and how do those two parts

24:53

of your career fit together? It's

24:55

really funny story. It started

24:58

first during the Clinton impeachment trials. And

25:00

it's really struck by the fact that

25:02

you'd have all of these commentators coming

25:04

on television from the right and from the left.

25:06

They would be marshaling quote unquote

25:08

evidence. You know, they've been talking about

25:10

facts. They've been talking about, well, what

25:12

did Hamilton and and and

25:15

Adam has been when they were, you know,

25:17

when they were they were crafting this

25:19

language on impeachment and the

25:21

constitution, etcetera. And

25:24

they're talking about that and they're talking about

25:26

the fact of what happened with Lindsay, what

25:28

didn't happen with with Lindsay, etcetera.

25:31

And they all seemed to come down

25:33

on the side of what they wanted to

25:35

believe in the first place. It is clear that the

25:37

facts were making no difference whatsoever. So

25:39

I actually started doing a little bit research

25:42

back then, and I found that there were

25:44

actually

25:44

three predictors of how people

25:47

how

25:47

people which side people came down

25:49

on pro impeachment or against impeachment.

25:53

One was their feelings towards the

25:55

parties, that was primary.

25:57

Second was their feelings towards Bill

25:59

Clinton.

26:00

there were Democrats who didn't like them and

26:02

their Republicans who did. And

26:04

then the third was their

26:07

feelings about feminism.

26:09

And if if they had very strong

26:11

feelings about feminism, they were more

26:13

likely even beyond their feelings of book

26:15

Clinton. to believe that this was an

26:18

impeachable offense. And

26:19

the the the point of it all was when

26:21

you got down to their knowledge of the facts,

26:24

about either the constitution or about what

26:26

had happened that had led to this,

26:29

what what had Clinton done or not done?

26:32

The facts predicted one percent

26:34

of the variance in people's voting, and

26:36

the rest was controlled by by

26:38

people's emotional reactions. to

26:40

the parties to build Clinton into feminism.

26:43

And so what that led me to think with wait

26:45

a minute. And and it actually it predicted eight

26:47

out of the nine judges on justices on

26:49

this report. and how they voted in Bush

26:52

Igor. The only one who is unpredictable

26:54

who frankly has been my favorite

26:56

justice in my lifetime

26:58

with David Sweeter And I say

27:00

that not because I've agreed with his politics,

27:03

it's because I never knew which way he was gonna

27:05

come down because he seemed like No. He was

27:07

a justice who did what he was supposed to do with

27:09

justice. You know, look at the facts

27:11

of the case. Don't start out with your own

27:13

values, your own preconceptions, your own

27:16

politics, but just look at the facts of

27:18

the gays. They were actually on this line. I really

27:20

have to tip this way. I really have to really have

27:22

to tip that way. But the thing that was really that

27:24

kicks me over from being you

27:26

know, mild mannered clinical psychology

27:29

professor to be a an

27:31

ill mannered political consultant was

27:34

watching first Gore

27:36

throw an election

27:39

in two thousand by speaking

27:41

like a Democrat, Listing

27:43

is ten point plans, not

27:46

speaking enough about his values, never

27:49

speaking about the one thing that his consultants

27:52

told them not to speak about, which

27:54

was

27:55

typical Democratic

27:58

typical Democratic

27:59

consulting. Don't talk about

28:02

what matters to you because it's not high in

28:04

the polls, and that was energy and climate.

28:06

Imagine if Al Gore

28:08

had gone to gone to

28:10

Florida. And

28:12

he had given speeches on the coast

28:14

of Florida, and he had said, look,

28:16

there are lot of you who are parents and grandparents.

28:19

and who worked really hard for this land

28:21

that we're standing on right now, that

28:23

you want to pass on to your kids and grandkids.

28:25

You know,

28:26

I know lot of you are not sure whether or not

28:28

there's anything to this idea about climate change.

28:31

I understand it, although it's kind of

28:33

a lot a lot like what we saw when

28:35

the tobacco quote, scientists and

28:37

their white coats were saying, oh, you

28:39

can breathe this black blood this this

28:41

black blood into your nose.

28:43

And don't worry, but it's not gonna do anything to you.

28:46

It's kinda like these hear these people

28:48

saying in white coats for the old company

28:50

saying,

28:50

oh, yeah. You can you can

28:52

bring this pollution into your nose. are

28:54

you there? And then it goes up into the air and there's trillions

28:56

of tons of it up there. Don't worry. It won't

28:58

affect the air. It won't affect the atmosphere.

29:00

But even if you don't believe any of that,

29:03

even if you don't believe what the vast majority

29:05

of scientists now do believe, do

29:07

you want to gamble with the land

29:10

and the homes that

29:12

you have worked so hard to leave for your

29:14

kids and grandchildren. Do you really wanna

29:17

do that? It's not a gamble I'd wanna

29:19

make, because I could be wrong about

29:21

this. But

29:22

you know, people

29:23

on the other side could be wrong about this

29:25

too. And if they are you're

29:27

not gonna be leaving anything to your grandchildren.

29:29

Now he lost by five hundred

29:31

votes. In Florida,

29:33

imagine if in Florida yeah. If he

29:35

had done that in Florida, Yeah. So

29:38

just to wrap up, you wrote your

29:40

book the political brain fifteen years

29:42

ago and a lot has happened since then.

29:44

And you're working on a follow-up book. So can

29:46

you give us a little preview of what

29:48

might be in in the next book?

29:50

Yeah. Sure can. It's based on

29:53

You know, when I wrote the last book,

29:55

I'm being totally honest here. I had

29:57

no idea

29:59

before the

29:59

before and when the reviews came

30:02

out whether they were gonna come out saying,

30:04

this guy's a total fraud.

30:06

He's a he's a psychologist. who's,

30:09

yeah, he's done a bunch of reading on elections.

30:12

He's gone back and I I am headed

30:14

to maybe

30:15

go

30:15

all the way back to to FDR

30:18

and the study is convention addresses all

30:20

the way on up. But I hadn't done

30:22

any work in practical politics before.

30:24

I'd never get a speech to a political

30:26

political audience, I might have

30:28

given one academic talk

30:31

at a political psychology conference

30:33

once. I don't even think I'd done that by that

30:35

point. So so, you know, I'm thinking I

30:37

have no idea how this is gonna be received because

30:39

it was advancing what at that time was

30:42

Believe it or not, you're gonna laugh as a radical

30:44

thesis. Then emotions are central

30:46

to politics. because at

30:47

that time, democrats

30:49

were all running

30:51

on this. All their they were being taught

30:53

was and and they were running on campaigns

30:55

on the idea that a campaign is

30:58

a debate on the issues. So what you

31:00

wanna do is you wanna spell out where you

31:02

are in the issues and your ten plan plan

31:04

on every one of them. And, you know, the

31:06

thesis in my book was no actually no

31:08

one wants to see your back election. That's

31:10

not what you're what what they're interested

31:12

in. And if you look at the history of elections,

31:15

that's not how people vote at all.

31:18

you know, if you look at at Barack Obama

31:20

versus Hillary Clinton, I

31:22

don't think they differ on anything

31:25

in their politics, in their policies. but

31:27

they ran really different campaigns, say,

31:29

in two thousand seven, two thousand eight,

31:32

where he could speak to people

31:34

emotionally talking about the same

31:36

issues,

31:37

and she just had a much harder

31:39

time, much harder time doing it to the

31:41

average person, to speak to the speak that

31:43

emotional way. So anyway, the Brooke was advancing this

31:45

kind of radical thesis that not

31:47

only was that democratic strategy wrong,

31:50

but so were political scientists models

31:53

which were virtually all rational choice models

31:55

at that point. You know, oh, let's see.

31:57

I weigh abortion. This percent

32:00

Iweigh the economy. This percent

32:03

Iweigh

32:03

immigration. This

32:05

percent, you know, I have this whole list of

32:07

twenty five issues that I'm keeping in my mind, that

32:09

I'm weighing, how much do I like them, and how much do I

32:11

like each candidate, parties position, each one?

32:13

Well, you know, in in psychology, we call

32:15

that doing multivariate statistics, and

32:18

it requires really, really

32:20

well worked out statistical programs

32:22

and software. And it's

32:24

a involves hundreds

32:27

of thousands or millions of split

32:29

second calculations that our brains

32:31

cannot do. Most of us cannot do

32:33

multivariate statistics in our heads.

32:35

So what do we do?

32:37

We simplify the equation by

32:40

asking those two questions. Does

32:42

this person understand,

32:44

care about people like me and does this person

32:46

share my share my values. So that's

32:49

where was coming from at the time. I

32:51

had no idea how the political

32:53

community literally save it. And

32:55

and I also really wasn't entirely

32:57

sure I was to fraud. And and

32:59

and then I

33:02

actually got a call that two weeks after

33:04

the book came out from this

33:05

person call this person says,

33:09

is this doctor Weses?

33:11

Yes. And I'm in a Starbucks in my,

33:13

you know, in my sweats.

33:15

in Atlanta and says, we would

33:17

you hold for president Clinton?

33:20

And this was two thousand and seven.

33:22

And I've I think yeah. And a hole

33:24

from Mahatma Gandhi too, you know. And then

33:26

maybe Martin Luther King while we're at it.

33:29

But I didn't say that, but that's what I was thinking.

33:31

So that's him. Next

33:32

thing, you know what? This voice comes on.

33:35

It's

33:35

Bill Clinton. Say,

33:37

you know, I'm I'm in Iowa

33:40

right now with with Hillary, and we're you know,

33:42

we're doing stuff where she's campaigning. And

33:45

I'm reading her reading her your

33:47

book and reading

33:47

her passages from it that think are

33:50

particularly useful for. and he said,

33:52

you know,

33:53

those things that you said, Aldur should

33:55

have said in his debate against

33:58

George W. Bush.

33:59

said that

33:59

stuff was spot on. And

34:02

alright.

34:02

If

34:03

this guy's saying this, maybe I'm not completely

34:06

fraud. in clinical work, you're doing the

34:08

same thing. You're kind of threading the needle. Someone's

34:10

got a conflict about something. You're trying

34:12

to figure out how do I talk with this person

34:14

about this in a way. won't make them defensive,

34:17

but will allow them to consider possibilities

34:19

that they might not have considered before and

34:22

consider changing in one way or another. Well,

34:24

you know, and what I realized was when

34:26

I started to do political consulting, I was

34:28

doing psychotherapy with sixty million people

34:31

at a time. it it the skills were

34:33

really not all that different. The the

34:35

only thing that was different was that

34:37

I wanted to make sure that if

34:39

I generated, say, nine

34:41

different ways of talking about

34:44

about an issue, whether it was

34:47

back then the Iraq War, whether it was

34:49

whether it was immigration, whether it was

34:52

trade policy, whether it was

34:54

taxes, whether it was How do we help

34:56

working people? Whether it was abortion?

34:59

And most of these issues, by the way, has really

35:01

stayed the same in the sense I

35:03

started working on this stuff. fifteen years ago.

35:06

I didn't wanna just do this

35:08

by the seat of my pants. I wanted to test

35:10

those messages against each other and

35:12

against the absolute toughest

35:14

message I could write from the

35:17

other side. So what I said was,

35:19

yeah, I'll do this. but only if I

35:21

can do the quantitative work along with it,

35:23

which at first met working with pollsters and

35:25

then I eventually started doing that myself. But

35:28

this is a long winded way of saying that what

35:31

I often told people when they said, well,

35:33

that's gonna be a lot more expensive, you

35:35

know, to to do all that pulling along with

35:37

us. I said, yeah. But I said, you know,

35:39

The best antidote to

35:41

you

35:42

narcissism

35:44

and especially male narcissism is

35:47

empiricism. You you

35:49

can think you have the greatest ideas of how

35:51

to talk about this thing and then you

35:53

test them and you learn that Well,

35:55

it that one beat the opposition, but

35:58

there was another message that I didn't

35:59

realize was gonna do even better.

36:02

let's

36:02

go with that one or let's offer people

36:04

several messages that they could

36:06

use because they're actually all beating

36:08

the opposition, but you know, I'd catch

36:11

all kinds of words and phrases that I was

36:13

using that I thought, oh, jeez, how

36:15

did I make that stupid error? Well,

36:17

I learned that I made the stupid error by testing

36:19

it. So in the meantime, since the political

36:21

brain came out fifteen years ago, I've

36:23

tested about a million messages

36:26

with over one hundred thousand voters. And

36:28

so this textbook is gonna have the benefit

36:30

of not only the background in psychology

36:33

and neuroscience, but having actually

36:35

tested these things in real politics with

36:38

real voters in focus groups,

36:40

in online testing, in regular

36:42

opinion polls by telephone surveys,

36:46

you know, with thousands of voters. So

36:48

I actually now can tell you, you know, there's an old

36:50

adage in advertising. which is that

36:53

that half of our advertising dollars

36:55

are a complete waste of money and the

36:57

other half work. The

36:59

problem is we

37:00

don't know which or which. And

37:02

I'm now at the point having done this, that

37:04

I'm up to about seventy five, eighty

37:06

percent getting it right. but

37:08

that still means I'm twenty five, twenty,

37:10

twenty five percent getting it wrong. And

37:12

if I wanna work for nonprofits or

37:15

for a party or for a candidate,

37:18

in the US or somewhere else whose

37:20

values I share, I wanna

37:22

do the best possible job for them I

37:24

can rather than just assuming that because

37:26

I thought that it must be right.

37:28

So

37:28

is this book going to give away all your trade

37:30

secrets then?

37:32

It's

37:34

gonna get it's gonna give away a lot of them.

37:37

And and, you know, just to get I

37:40

will give a plug now. You know, this is

37:42

a non partisan podcast. I will get

37:44

a plug for someone on the other side who

37:47

he and I were often pitted against each other

37:49

on issue after issue where he

37:51

was doing the the right wing side of

37:53

things of of how's best to talk about

37:55

this. And I I was doing it on the left

37:57

or at least from center left to left.

38:00

and and that's Frank Lutz who

38:02

was New Cambridge's brilliant word

38:04

Smith. I really like

38:06

Frank, but I didn't like the work that he did because

38:09

I didn't like the values behind it, but

38:11

but Frank is as good as

38:13

you get at this. I I taught

38:15

a course of memory for many years of seminar

38:18

called the psychology of political

38:20

persuasion in American electoral politics.

38:23

And I always assigned

38:25

Frank's book because he's got a book called

38:27

words that work. It's just absolutely

38:29

brilliant and describes a lot of

38:31

these similar kind of principles I remember when

38:34

I eventually read it. I hadn't read it until

38:37

after mine came out. They came out at pretty similar

38:39

times. But I remember reading and thinking,

38:41

wow, he's

38:42

he's really let out all the secrets from

38:44

the from the right. But But,

38:47

you know, I my my

38:48

attitude on on that is is

38:50

kind of as

38:52

opposed to let's just have a competition

38:54

of ideas, in the marketplace of

38:56

ideas.

38:57

Why don't we have both sides

39:00

present

39:00

their ideas in the most

39:02

emotionally compelling ways possible?

39:05

so that voters really know what they're looking at,

39:07

so that they really know, you know,

39:10

there are one out of every fifty

39:12

women is having a pregnancy

39:15

where

39:15

the embryo is implanting outside

39:17

her uterus in ectopic pregnancy.

39:20

That fetus or that embryo is

39:22

going to die. no matter what.

39:24

So the idea that now

39:27

doctors are afraid to take

39:30

dead fetal tissue out

39:32

of a woman's body that could cause

39:34

sepsis and killer or that could

39:36

lead her to be to

39:38

be infertile. and the other

39:40

side's calling that a culture

39:43

of life. You know, to me,

39:45

that's how you talk about it. And

39:47

voters should hear it in that form,

39:49

not the sanitized, you know,

39:51

form of, you know, some

39:53

people believe that we should have choice.

39:55

Some believe that we should be pro life.

39:58

Do you strongly agree, agree,

40:00

disagree, that's how pollsters ask these

40:02

questions, and it's not how they play out.

40:04

And,

40:04

frankly, it's not how politicians speak

40:06

about them. And I don't think it's how politicians

40:08

ought to speak about it. I think they should

40:10

speak in the most emotionally compelling

40:13

ways about things that they

40:15

believe are true that fit

40:17

their values and that there's good evidence

40:20

that they are true, and then let the

40:22

chips fall. Well, doctor Weston,

40:24

I really appreciate you joining me today.

40:26

This has been a fascinating conversation. Thank

40:28

you so much. Thanks for helping

40:30

me out. You can find previous

40:33

episodes of speaking of psychology on our

40:35

website at WWW dot speaking

40:37

of psychology dot org or on applestitcher

40:39

or wherever you get your podcasts. If

40:42

you have comments or ideas for future

40:44

podcasts, you can email us at speaking

40:46

of psychology at APA dot

40:48

org. Speaking of psychology is

40:50

produced by Lee Weinerman, our sound

40:52

editor is Chris Cannaean. Thank

40:55

you for listening. For the American

40:57

Educational Association,

40:59

I'm Kim Mills.