Nausea
Posted on 01/18/2008 7:47:49 AM PST by shrinkermd
The truth is that many of the theories we come up with are bogus. They are based on the assumption that voters make cold, rational decisions about who to vote for and can tell us why they decided as they did. This is false.
In reality, we voters — all of us — make emotional, intuitive decisions about who we prefer, and then come up with post-hoc rationalizations to explain the choices that were already made beneath conscious awareness. “People often act without knowing why they do what they do,” Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize winner, noted in an e-mail message to me this week. “The fashion of political writing this year is to suggest that people choose their candidate by their stand on the issues, but this strikes me as highly implausible.”
Nobody really knows how voters think, especially during primary seasons when the policy differences are minute, but it wouldn’t be surprising if the cognitive chain went something like this:
After seeing a candidate for 100 milliseconds, voters make certain sorts of judgments based on expressiveness, facial structure, carriage and attitude. Alexander Todorov of Princeton has found that he can predict 70 percent of political races just by measuring peoples’ snap judgments of candidates’ faces.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Brooks is right on this one. Unfortunately.
A new election cycle and a new political guru claiming to be able to explain the unexplainable. Using this standard, John McCain should be near the bottom of the heap and Mitt Romny running away with it.
Nausea
This is interesting, because it’s always driven me crazy, seeing how the polls make “undecided” voters seem so fickle. It’s as if those voters aren’t concerned with any one set of issues, as they are with how the candidate appears on “Letterman” or “The Tonight Show.”
He is right. I recall a study years ago which claimed tall people earn more then short people, attractive more then unattractive, and slim more then fat. This, according to the study goes for promotion frequency and getting the job to begin with.
It’s no wonder a few years ago when it was floated that Warren Beatty was thinking of running for president, a poll taken showed that about 60% of those polled would vote for him.
You’re assuming that polls are somehow grounded in reality.
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This time around...
Voters should NEVER FORGET that...
With the Congessional support of friend Sen. JOHN McCAIN:
Sen. KERRY / Communist Vietnamese Killing Off Christians in Central Highlands...
http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/675016/posts
.
The voter trait that really gets my goat is from those voting for “change” no matter how they may agree or disagree with their candidate on important issues.
Do strict party line voters “THINK” at all??
Nope! They are part of the 2/3 brain dead Americans when it comes to politics. Both sides! Cutesy is more important than substance.
This sounds a lot like Malcolm Gladwell’s theories from his book “Blink”.
It’s why it’s hard to pull people off a decision once they make it, and why it’s even harder for a candidate to get someone back if they previously were supporters but then turned against the candidate.
People believe “attractive” witnesses in court cases as well.
emotional = unprincipled.
sad.
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