Posted on 11/14/2012 8:09:31 AM PST by rightwingintelligentsia
President Obama's re-election team has already been lauded for its mastery of data and organziation, but a feature in today's The New York Times looks at another secret, and more subtle, weapon: Behavioral science. Reporter Benedict Carey talks to some of the members of the campaign's "COBS" team, an informal group of unpaid advisors who shared their knowledge on the latest academic research and theories on how to influence the public's knowledge behavior.
Publicly, the group—which it gave itself the name of "consortium of behavioral scientists"—where just friendly volunteers offering advice. None of the social scientists and psychologists who took part in the discussions actually worked for the campaign, but it's clear that their ideas were appreciated and taken seriously by campaign strategists who deployed their best techniques in advertisments and voter mobilization efforts.
The tricks are sublte[sic] and don't work on everyone, but in the all-important ground game every little bit helps. Among the insights that were share are the fact the people like conform to social norms, both in the community and in their own past. So telling voters that their neightbors have already voted or reminding them about their past support, makes those voters more likely to take action. Volunteers might ask people if they've made a plan for voting on Election Day, because studies show that creating even a simple plan increase the chances that a person will follow through. Research has also shown that it's better to combat a negative story, by promoting a different, more positive trait. For example, instead of constantly denying the rumors that the President is a Muslim, his campaign instead reminds people that he is Christian.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
The Democrats play chess. The Republicans play checkers.
Herr Goebbels is wiping a tear from the corner of his eye.. His students have over-achieved .. again.
True enough."Behavioral science did play a vital role.First,any Rat candidate starts out with public "workers" unions,the welfare parasite class and the guilt ridden trust funders,which brings you to about 47%.Add the "behavioral science" behind a billion dollar ad campaign containing the chant "Romney's a Nazi" and you'll pick up just enough of those remaining so you can get 50.005% of the vote...only to see your approval ratings dip below 50% a couple of days after the election.
No,the Reichmarshall would have no use for Osama Obama.Wrong color,don't you know! Now OTOH,Mao Tse Tung....
It’s called marketing and it’s perfectly legal. Now the fact that they use a lot of the same tricks as psyops is just because they’re really the same thing. It’s just all about who’s doing it, and it’s only psyops if it’s done by a military or intelligence organization, for everybody else it’s marketing.
The “psychologists” who work for the DIMs should be brought up on ethics charges and have his/her licenses revoked. The “psychologists” are just like the docs who worked for the Nazis doing “experiments” on the Jews and other unfortunates. How unprofessional. How completely irresponsible.
Interesting, but these community organizer techniques are not exactly profound and could be applied to any group Admittedly, they have greater marginal effect when you are dealing with low-IQ voters for whom “planning ahead”, etc. are new concepts.
I think the decisive factor in 2012 was not the “missing” 2008 McCain voters, or get-out-the-vote psy-ops, but the missing 2008 Obama moderates. Obama’s campaign was designed for Moderate Voter Suppression, and it worked. Obama’s handlers knew they had lost support from millions of independents and moderate Democrats who voted for him in 2008. Most people will go to all sorts of mental games to avoid admitting they have ever been wrong. Voting for a Republican in 2012 would require such an admission. Not voting at all avoids the psychological pain. Obama’s negative campaign provided nothing to make the ex-Obamans return to the fold. Instead they provided a menu of mental excuses to help the ex-Obamans stay home.
Obama’s base of leftists and dependency voters was enough to win. Romney’s campaign focused on turning out the Republican/conservative base, and he was mostly successful on that. This base isn’t enough for victory by itself. But his campaign did not seem to reach out to the ex-Obamans, and provide a justification to vote for Romney this time — that doing so was not a betrayal or racist or an admission of a mistake, but a patriotic duty during a time of crisis. (This is not the same thing as pandering or selling out on issues).
Mastery of data and organziation, felons always come up with cute names for their actions.
Democrats have done it for years.
This only touches the surface of how they used psychiatry. When you combine the above with their data-mining operations that’s when it gets scary. They have inside tracks to the information from google searches and the information from facebook due to the political leanings of these companies. They know what you’ve searched for, what groups you and your friends belong to, what games you play, what you buy with your credit card. They can then identify those groups of people that aren’t likely to vote but can be convinced to vote through psychology. Once they have a target group they can take it down to almost the individual level and develop a psychological profile and use specific emotional triggers to get that person to vote. I’ve seen it work and it is powerful.
If you want an example I wrote about it here post 45: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2958583/posts
This may sound expensive but Obama spent almost 1 Trillion dollars which doesn’t count all the other groups. That is over $7,000 for every person that voted this year, with that kind of money it is only a matter of time before the campaigns realize that they can afford to target individuals and stop spending money on all of the junk mail that no one reads. You can only buy so many ads and they only have so much impact.
There were help wanted ads for data miners for the Obama campaign posted for years before this election and I believe it will be a bigger and bigger part of how elections are won. You only need to target a few hundred thousand people in the right states to tip a close election. They can afford to spend quite a bit per impressionable voter. We need to catch up on this big time. Younger people in this country have been trained to react to emotional arguments, not logic. Like it or not that’s the only way to win over the majority of them.
Additionally, Democrats lose better than Republicans win.
There were a lot of Romney ads that said “It’s OK” to let Obama go. They were fairly soft and gauzy ads. So, they were at least aware of the issue.
sfl
Rebumping your old post, Bigjimslade, since you are no longer here but were spot on:
To: rightwingintelligentsia
This only touches the surface of how they used psychiatry. When you combine the above with their data-mining operations that’s when it gets scary. They have inside tracks to the information from google searches and the information from facebook due to the political leanings of these companies. They know what you’ve searched for, what groups you and your friends belong to, what games you play, what you buy with your credit card. They can then identify those groups of people that aren’t likely to vote but can be convinced to vote through psychology. Once they have a target group they can take it down to almost the individual level and develop a psychological profile and use specific emotional triggers to get that person to vote. I’ve seen it work and it is powerful.
If you want an example I wrote about it here post 45: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2958583/posts
This may sound expensive but Obama spent almost 1 Trillion dollars which doesn’t count all the other groups. That is over $7,000 for every person that voted this year, with that kind of money it is only a matter of time before the campaigns realize that they can afford to target individuals and stop spending money on all of the junk mail that no one reads. You can only buy so many ads and they only have so much impact.
There were help wanted ads for data miners for the Obama campaign posted for years before this election and I believe it will be a bigger and bigger part of how elections are won. You only need to target a few hundred thousand people in the right states to tip a close election. They can afford to spend quite a bit per impressionable voter. We need to catch up on this big time. Younger people in this country have been trained to react to emotional arguments, not logic. Like it or not that’s the only way to win over the majority of them.
12 posted on 11/14/2012, 12:51:09 PM by Bigjimslade
Well their voodoo shit didn’t work on me.
Our large cities are run by a party that’s proved they can turn prosperous low crime areas into violent hellholes... and yet that party keeps being elected to ‘do the job’...
Obviously they’re not running on achievement...
And they use tried and true ‘talking points’... looks like PSYOPS to me.
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