KEY #8: How your head keeps from exploding
Let's say you're a caveman or cavewoman. It's a very good day — you are an expert spear-thrower, and you throw your spear and your aim is true and you hit a wildebeest.
You have a moment of joy and you jump up and down and you make cavenoises that say, "Og win again! Og best spear-thrower in valley!"
Or let's say it's a very scary day. You're ambushed by lions and you run away screaming until you get back to the cave and build a fire to keep away predators, and you feel safe again.
You collapse in exhaustion. You tell the others, "Okay, we lose Bog. Sad. Can continue without Bog. At least Og, Sog and Mog safe."
Guess what . . .
• We feel caveman emotions from information
Now let's say you're a caveperson named Og and your cave is near Emory University and you see a flier and sign up for a study in the Psychology Department. They ask you some questions and you say you're planning to vote for George Bush in the 2004 election. You're excited.
They put you in an fMRI, which is a giant scanner that can see when parts of your brain light up. Then they do an upsetting thing — they tell you bad information about George Bush. What do you think happens next?
Would you be surprised to know that 21st century Og isn't that different from Og the caveperson?
In newsletter #4, we talked about the location of our deepest emotional core, the amygdala. You should know that the amygdala reacts very, very fast. If a spider lands on you and you jump, your amygdala did that for you before you even had a conscious thought about it. If you trip on a crack and you're falling face-first into the sidewalk, your amygdala puts your arms out to protect your head before you're even aware of it. And also . . . if you hear bad information about your favorite candidate, your emotional core goes into a panic.
That's the first thing that researchers found in a 2004 study of Bush and Kerry supporters at Emory University. And I know the feeling — when somebody tells me something bad about my side, I can actually feel my chest clench. That's my moment of panic. Are they right? Is Obama bad? Is Trump great? Is Biden letting the illegals murder us? Have I been wrong about everything? I think I'm in trouble! The lion’s gonna get me!
And what do I do next? I think of reasons why they're wrong until I feel better.
What's happening in Og's brain when Og does this trick? That's what they tried to find out at Emory.
So what happens is that the "threat" bounces around parts of Og's brain, lighting up these specific parts:
two areas of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) that handle emotion and cognition.
the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), which handles emotional influences on reasoning.
the posterior cingulate cortex, associated with social emotions, moral evaluations and judgments of forgivability.
Importantly, Og is not just analyzing the information impartially and revising Og's previous assumptions, which is what we think a rational person is supposed to do. No, Og’s emotional centers are kicking into full gear. Og is feeling scared and figuring out how to defend Ogself and worrying how Og's tribe will judge Og.
We don't have lions in our streets, but we still have the terror of lions in our heads. Our “rational” thought process is happening in the emotional centers of our brains.
• Making it all better
Then the researchers decide to give Og a break, and add a second story about how Bush's actions really had a different explanation that showed he had done the right thing after all. This allows Og to intake the exculpatory information and eliminate the mental conflict.
What happened in the brain?
The new information passed through the emotional-cognitive areas of the brain we mentioned earlier, and then led to a large activation in the ventral striatum, an area where we feel a sense of reward for our thinking patterns, as in reinforcement-based learning. ("What do we call this in French?" "Un cheval." "Great job!")
Great job! Og told Ogself.
Takeaway: People experiencing cognitive dissonance want an alternative narrative to make it better.
• Hey, I get it — this exact thing happened during the last presidential election!
In fact, the Republicavemen got themselves into exactly this kind of a jam. Back in 2016, they said there was a rule that the Senate could never confirm a Supreme Court nominee in an election year. But then in 2020 that was the opposite of what they wanted to do. They were going to look like total hypocrites! They felt terrible!
So they created some exculpatory information. That rule was only for when the president and the Senate were of different parties, you see. A whole different rule applies now. This rule has always applied. They referred to it as "precedent," citing no precedents.
Great job!
Republicans have done (had to do) a lot of this in the Trump era. You remember the "Grab 'em by the pussy" tape. That looked bad, but within days they had created the "locker-room talk" explanation, and soon they were all saying it and the problem went away. In the Mar-a-Lago case, we got the "Trump actually declassified all the documents"/No he didn't/"Well, he did it in his mind" rationale, and we found ourselves in an argument about what the proper declassification procedures are. Same with January 6. Maybe the FBI did January 6! Same with every mass shooting. There’s always some other factor they tell us to focus on.
We talked about "motivated reasoning" yesterday, and here we have a closer look at how it works in politics. Let's look at the thought structure that made this possible. I'm going to call it the South Park Rule.
We know:
(1) The facts we started with.
(2) ???
(3) The conclusion we want to arrive at.
It's clear that all we need is a story — ANY story — that gets us from (1) to (3). This is where spin-doctoring, crisis PR, and Fox News all operate. They make up something that can be put in box (2) and circulate it until it's implanted in the national conversation. Then people argue about the validity of rationale (2), not the problem of outcome (3).
The ensuing debate only lasts a few days and then goes away into I Guess We'll Never Knowland. More importantly, it relieves Og of his cavenitive dissonance.
Takeaway: Do not engage with your opponent’s alternative narrative.
• Okay, so how does this help me?
Two quick things:
1. I guess you could use this.
What this technique is best for is lying. But even among honest people, like everyone reading this newsletter, there's a lesson: If you need to explain something away, don't go into self-defense mode. Create a new belief structure that makes it okay, and repeat it shamelessly.
2. Make this about your opponent's dishonesty.
Rather than engage with story (2) and get stuck in a debate over that, stay focused on outcome (3), which your opponent is trying to evade.
“It’s not the school doors, it’s the guns. It’s the fucking crazy dudes with guns.”
"The congressman has given a lot of excuses but he hasn't given back the $200,000."
"Okay, so I guess keeping top-secret documents in the bathroom is normal in Congressman Smith's America. Somebody should check Congressman Smith’s bathroom."
You should also home in on the fact that your opponent is lying.
"Yeah, he says that because he’s scared of the truth."
"Nobody believes what he says."
“He can be a weasel about it, but people know the truth.”
Most of all, be relentless in sticking to your main point. Keep making it about that.
Joshua Tanzer
jmtanzer@gmail.com
Los Angeles, California
Takeaway Toteboard
- KEY #1: Republicans are from Mars, Democrats are from Swarthmore. (Feb. 23):
• Democrats run an intellectual campaign to voters who are emotional creatures.
• Instead of running an intellectual campaign, we need to use our intellect to create an emotional campaign.
- KEY #2: What does the Democrats’ hat say? (Feb. 26)
• The Republicans’ philosophy fits on a hat. Democrats don’t have one.
- KEY #3: Love isn’t rational. (Feb 28):
• Politics is emotion.
• If you find yourself trying to argue intellectually, stop! Find the emotional argument.
- KEY #4: You’re an animal! (March 1):
• Our attitudes come from our identity.
• You are speaking to the voter's animal brain.
- KEY #5: Don’t take away my _____! (March 4):
• Don't get into a fight with people's way of life.
• When you talk about change, find the “win.”
- KEY #6: You are this boy and life is this marshmallow. (March 6):
• Find ways to affirm people's way of life.
• Don’t just campaign; build community.
- KEY #7: Motivated reasoning (aka “Remember this friggin guy?”) (March 8):
• People believe what they need to believe.
- KEY #8: How your head keeps from exploding (March 11):
• People experiencing cognitive dissonance want an alternative narrative to make it better.
• Do not engage with your opponent’s alternative narrative.