You can tell it’s an election year when ... - Denyse O’Leary

Some psychology researchers are demonizing or marginalizing voters with opposing views and calling it “science.” ... when psychologists try to explain why people vote as they do. Most of the time, it’s harmless, but recently, a new, nastier tone can be detected. It’s something to keep an eye on because, as commentator David Brooks explains, it involves a key change in how human decision-making is understood:

“The cognitive revolution of the past thirty years provides a different perspective on our lives, one that emphasizes the relative importance of emotion over pure reason, social connections over individual choice, moral intuition over abstract logic, perceptiveness over I.Q.”

The term “hardwired” is a frequent shorthand for this new approach. For example, commenting on negative political advertising, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, remarked that “there appears to be something hard-wired into humans that gives special attention to negative information… I think it’s evolutionary biology.” When emotion is considered to be “hardwired” to prevail over reason and experience, it is no surprise if some researchers demonize or marginalize voters with opposing views and call it “science.” More. Denyse O’Leary is the author of The Spiritual BrainThe Spiritual Brain and By Design or by Chance?