Psychology and Ideology. How Could Anyone (Except the Rich) Vote for George Bush? By Peter Prontzos (2/6)

Pure reason does not exist because, as Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Eric Kandel has written, “a great deal of what we experience – what we perceive, think, dream, fantasize – cannot be directly accessed by conscious thought,” (Kandel, 1999).  Lakoff writes that 98% of our thoughts and emotions are unconscious (2008).  Daniel Goleman guesses that the figure is actually “over 99%” (2008).  Either way, there is not a lot of room for pure, dispassionate logic.

Moreover, our “cognitive unconscious…is reflexive – automatic, uncontrolled” (Lakoff, 2008).  A classic example is fear, which has long been used to manipulate people.  From Athens to Rome to Bush, the powerful have used fear to reinforce their power and to make people do what they would normally not do.  When told that their very lives are at stake, people are more likely to follow orders without much thought.  As Daniel Siegel described:

Deep in the brain lies the amygdala, an almond-sized region that generates fear…Before you are even consciously aware that you are afraid, your lizard brain responds by clicking into survival mode. No time to assess the situation, no time to look at the facts, just: fight, flight or freeze.
And when we are afraid, we are biologically programmed to pay less attention to left-brain signals - indeed, our logical mind actually shuts itself down. Fear paralyzes our reasoning and literally makes it impossible to think straight (Huffington, 2004).

This automatic reaction is reinforced by our instinct to look to parental authority figures to comfort us and keep us safe.  Siegel was discussing how the Bush regime inflated the fear of terrorism to win the 2004 election (with the deliberate help of Osama bin Laden).

Another significant factor is the practice of seeing the world in terms of “us” versus “them”.  While group bonding and cooperation was necessary for the survival of our hominid ancestors (as it is for us today), it also reduces those outside of one’s group to the “Other”, shutting down our natural empathy, thereby dehumanizing them as outsiders and making it easier to treat them badly, even to kill them.

Paul Slovic developed the concept of the “affect heuristic”: people tend to make judgments and decisions “in which the answer to an easy question (How do I feel about it?) serves as an answer to a much harder question (What do I think about it?)” (Kahneman, 139).
When it comes to politics, for example,

voters seem to be heavily influenced by a candidate’s appearance, and in particular the kinds of personality traits that a politician’s face projects (Olivola and Todorov, 2009).

“Elections”, in the view of Drew Westen, “are decided in the marketplace of emotions, a marketplace filled with values, images, analogies, moral sentiments, and moving oratory, in which logic plays only a supporting role” (2007).  These are only a few of the potential pathways for unconscious and/or irrational ideas to distort one’s thinking, and one’s worldview, political and otherwise.


II – The Politics of Childhood

We rarely perceive just how much of our personal world, even our sense of “self”, is determined by our culture and our experiences.  One reason for this blindness is that so many of the influences that shape us occur when we are too young to understand what is happening.  In addition, most of the events that impact us are below the level of consciousness.  Einstein observed that person’s identity depends

so much upon society – in his physical, intellectual and emotional existence – that it is impossible to think of him, outside the framework of society.  It is “society” which provides man with food, clothing, a home, the tools of work, language, the forms of thought, and most of the content of his thought (Einstein, 1998, emphasis added).

“Neuroplasticity” refers to the finding that the structure and functions of our brain are physically shaped by our interactions with other people and our environment throughout one’s life.

The results of such shaping can be profound for a child; that maternal stress during pregnancy may have consequences for the child such as slower development, learning and attention difficulties, anxiety, depression, and possibly autism “has long been observed by behavioral and biological researchers” (ScienceDaily, Oct. 29, 2008).

Babies and children are obviously at greater risk during earlier stages of development, and their vulnerability to toxic environments illustrates the principle of “outside/inside”.  We tend to absorb what is around us and then to internalize it, both physically and emotionally.  Our brains and bodies are dynamic, open systems in relation to whatever is near.  As Louis Cozolino explains in The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: the brain is an “organ of adaptation”:

built and sculpted, neuron by neuron, through the interaction of our genetic programming and environmental influences…
The brain continuously changes to reflect aspects of its environment (Cozolino, 2002).

Our brains are affected, not only by toxic chemicals or inadequate diets, but also by our social experiences throughout our lives.  Daniel Goleman puts it this way in Social Intelligence:

Our key relationships can gradually mold certain neural circuitry.  In effect, being chronically hurt or angered, or being emotionally nourished, by someone we spend time with daily over the course of years can refashion the brain (Goleman, 2006).

Both “nature” and “nurture” determine what we become.  They interact in a complex and dialectical manner so that neither can be ignored.  While some parenting styles can contribute in a positive way to a child’s healthy emotional development, harsh practices may cause enough emotional trauma to seriously damage a child, sometimes to the point of making its brain and central nervous system dysfunctional.