Over at her blog Lab Notes, Sharon Begley writes on new studies of voter behavior. An excerpt:
Most of the research on the power of emotions to sway voters has been on how
different candidates inspire fear or hope (with the former being more
powerful than the latter), or even on how likable they are. But in an essay for the online salon Edge, psychologist Jonathan Haidt
of the University of Virginia looks at something that may be even more
potent: voters’ gut feelings about candidates’ moral values. “When gut
feelings are present, dispassionate reasoning is rare,” he
writes—something every political psychologist I’ve spoken to this
election year agrees with. “Feelings come first and tilt the mental
playing field on which reasons and arguments compete,” he continues.
“If people want to reach a conclusion, they can usually find a way to
do so. The Democrats have historically failed to grasp this rule,
choosing uninspiring and aloof candidates who thought that policy
arguments were forms of persuasion.”
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