Start with this: "The part [of the brain] that sets off the fight or flight response gets the information before the parts that think," he said. "So we're built to fear first and think second ... At this point in our evolution, the wiring and chemistry of the brain assures that emotion and instinct can easily overpower reason in the ongoing response."
--David Ropeik, instructor of risk perception and risk communication at the Harvard School of Public Health
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/10/23/daily-circuit-worried-brain
Sarah Palin speaks in a specific way which is easy to understand if you do not try to use logic, reason, facts, or standards you were taught in school. Don’t make fun of her—she is very successful in communicating with her base. More than many of our own manage to do. Brain scientists say that effective communication starts with reaching the audience’s gut/instincts and emotions and if you use stereotypes and memes you can get your point across without even including higher brain functions. But if you START with the higher brain and don’t connect with the emotions and gut/instincts you lose. Reason and logic are the most fragile parts of the brain and can barely catch up with the faster-moving guts and heart reactions.
Here is how to translate what she MEANS when she speaks in word salads like the Front Page item “Sarah Palin Confounds Rachel Maddow—Tell me what this means: http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/9/10/1420001/-Sarah-Palin-confounds-Rachel-Maddow-Tell-me-what-this-means
(comments are closed there. <sob>):
REMEMBER—Sarah Palin is saying to her base: “I am not going to burden your brain. Instead, we are going to get jazzed up and have a little love fest together and take out our bad feelings on others. ENJOY!”
When Sarah Palin names Obama or other Democrat of color =
Dog whistle” for illegitimate, inferior, and totally annoying incompetent person who is only in office because of tokenism and/or giving free gifts to the unwashed and undeserving rabble to buy their votes. Gut reaction = Vermin. Get ‘em OUT OF HERE ASAP. KEEP THE RABBLE IN LINE!
When Sarah Palin refers to things unique to Alaska = “I and my tribe are just as good if not better than you elite snobs who disrespect us, elite snobs who went to Europe on summer vacations as teenagers and who have all that culture and polish and comfort and smugness about people they like to look down on from high places. I and my tribe might be plain folks but at least we have down-to-earth STRONG feelings, values, and traditions and we are just as worthy as anybody else.” Emotional Reaction = Resentment turned into Glory.
When Sarah Palin says “fortushka” she doesn’t mean the literal item, an air exchanger in a window, but rather she is ramping up the emotion intensity of speed and urgency. “Tiny window of opportunity and Obama & Co. can’t cope the way red-blooded, all-American non-rabble Republicans can.” Gut Reaction = Run for your lives!
When Sarah Palin says it’s up to Congress = “Republicans, Do whatever you can to hobble Obama and the Democrats.”
When Sarah Palin refers to peace = “Demonstrate military superiority. Go macho. Carry a big stick and wave it around. Peace for us, not necessarily for our enemies.” It also means that Papa will protect you.
When Sarah Palin invokes the “unapologetic” Red, White, and Blue = “Shut Up, Critics!….my memes trump your condescending and mealy-mouthed messages.”
It also means that Mama loves you. Go to sleep now.
NOTE: The better response to Sarah Palin’s word salads = What POSITIVE, ACHIEVABLE suggestion can she contribute?
Ask her for her bottom line. In one sentence.
Further Resources:
The Gish Gallop is the debating technique of drowning an opponent in such a torrent of small arguments that the opponent cannot possibly answer or address each one in real time. More often than not, these myriad arguments are full of half-truths, lies, and straw-man arguments — the only condition is that there be many of them, not that they be particularly compelling on their own. They may be escape hatches or "gotcha" arguments that are specifically designed to be brief, but take a long time to unravel. Thus, galloping is frequently used in timed debates (especially by creationists) to overwhelm one's opponent.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop
Duane Gish, originator:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duane_Gish
Explanation of Gish Gallop:
It's kind of a distributed denial of service attack on the audience's brains…
Example, Romney-Obama:
http://cognidissidence.blogspot.com/2012/10/gish-gallop-romney-style.html
Short-cuts in communicating: Stereotypes
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-19487021
Brain Science for Liberals to Catch Up With. Lots to explore.
Academic ‘Dream Team’ Helped Obama’s Effort
Published: November 12, 2012
When it comes to countering rumors, psychologists have found that the best strategy is not to deny the charge (“I am not a flip-flopper”) but to affirm a competing notion. “The denial works in the short term; but in the long term people remember only the association, like ‘Obama and Muslim,’ ” said Dr. Fox, of the persistent false rumor.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/health/dream-team-of-behavioral-scientists-advised-obama-campaign.html?hp
MSNBC TV: and Daily Kos: Please read the above and adjust your communications accordingly.
“The Science of Propaganda”
Great forum with George Lakoff and others.... view or listen online:
http://www.c-spanarchives.org/program/id/183571
The book:
http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9781586485603-3
"What Orwell Didn't Know: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics"
Edited by ANDRÁS SZÁNTÓ
Reviewed by Brooke Allen
"As Lakoff tells us,
'A few words in political language can activate large portions of the brain: War on Terror, tax relief, illegal immigration, entitlements (turned to conservative use by Ronald Reagan), death tax, property rights, abortion on demand, cut and run, flip-flop, school choice, intelligent design, spending programs, partial birth abortion, surge, spreading freedom, private accounts, individual responsibility, energy independence.
When they are repeated every day, extensive areas of the brain are activated over and over, and this leads to brain change. Unerasable brain change…. And every time the words are repeated, all the frames and metaphors and worldview structures are activated again and strengthened -- because recurring activation strengthens neural connections. Negation doesn't help. "I'm against the War on Terror" just activates the War on Terror metaphor and strengthens what you're against. Accepting the language of issue and arguing the other side just hurts your own cause.'
Drew Westen, a psychology professor and political consultant, supports Lakoff's statements as well as his contention that in America these techniques have been exploited far more intelligently by the political right than by the center and left, which are hampered by what Soros calls "the Enlightenment fallacy" -- that is, the fallacious assumption (dating from the 18th century) that freedom of thought and speech will ensure that reason will prevail. The media and the Democratic leadership, Westen says, are unwittingly "smuggling Trojan horses into popular discourse" by parroting terminology created by those in power, "essentially advertising the 'product line' of the Republican party and selling its 'brand.' "
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/bn-review/review.asp?PID=20874&z=y
George Lakoff, an author and professor of linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley who calls himself a "cognitive activist," says this: "One of the fundamental findings of cognitive science is that people think in terms of frames and metaphors – conceptual structures. The frames are in the synapses of our brains – physically present in the form of neural circuitry. When the facts don't fit the frames, the frames are kept and the facts ignored."
In other words, forget winning on the facts or the science. It's all about the story. And once stories take hold, they're hard to dislodge. "
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17034
----------------------------------
"It goes against our nature; but the left has to start asserting its own values"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/oct/11/left-values-progressive-self-interest
SNIPPET:
. . . . . Common Cause, written by Tom Crompton of the environment group WWF, examines a series of fascinating recent advances in the field of psychology. It offers, I believe, a remedy to the blight that now afflicts every good cause from welfare to climate change.
Progressives, he shows, have been suckers for a myth of human cognition he labels the enlightenment model. This holds that people make rational decisions by assessing facts. All that has to be done to persuade people is to lay out the data: they will then use it to decide which options best support their interests and desires.
A host of psychological experiments demonstrate that it doesn't work like this. Instead of performing a rational cost-benefit analysis, we accept information that confirms our identity and values, and reject information that conflicts with them. We mould our thinking around our social identity, protecting it from serious challenge. Confronting people with inconvenient facts is likely only to harden their resistance to change.
SNIP
Our social identity is formed by a mixture of values. But psychological tests in nearly 70 countries show that values cluster in remarkably consistent patterns. Those who strongly value financial success, for example, have less empathy, stronger manipulative tendencies, a stronger attraction to hierarchy and inequality, stronger prejudices towards strangers and less concern about human rights and the environment. Those with a strong sense of self-acceptance have more empathy and greater concern for human rights, social justice and the environment. These values suppress each other: the stronger someone's extrinsic aspirations, the weaker his or her intrinsic goals.
We are not born with our values. They are shaped by the social environment. By changing our perception of what is normal and acceptable, politics alters our minds as much as our circumstances.
Writing in The New York Times in 1971 and surveying the problem of intolerance and violence worldwide, Dr.[Paul] MacLean found that “language barriers among nations present great obstacles.”
“But the greatest language barrier,” he concluded, “lies between man and his animal brains; the neural machinery does not exist for intercommunication in verbal terms.”
Neuroscientist Who Devised ‘Triune Brain’ Theory
~
This Is Your Brain on Metaphors
By ROBERT SAPOLSKY
SNIP
"Jonathan Haidt, of the University of Virginia, has shown how viscera and emotion often drive our decisionmaking, with conscious cognition mopping up afterward, trying to come up with rationalizations for that gut decision. .. . ."
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/this-is-your-brain-on-metaphors/?hp
Emphases are mine.
