Why do conservatives fall for Trump? It's because of errors in our thinking and

[Akamai]

perhaps because of our brain structure.

For example, Trump benefits from "availability bias" effects -- eg, "If it's in thenews, it's in our thinking!"

Our minds have only so much room to consider different things, and so our brains are constructed to overvalue startling things, things we have heard recently about. For example, as Nobel Prize Winner Daniel Kahneman pointed out in his book, "Thinking, Fast and Slow," if we suddenly hear about two airplanes crashing about the same time, the public greatly overestimates the risk of air travel. (I would add that the media greatly fans the hysteria and this leads to additional exaggeration of the risk -- e.g, the New York bombing of 9-17-16 which didn't kill anyone, etc.)

Kahneman describes very wonderfully in his book two different processes that go on in our brains, System 1 -- or fast thinking (in which we react without thinking and which helps us navigate the world more easily -- such as in driving a car, brushing our teeth, etc.) and System 2 -- slow thinking (this the more ponderous system that uses logic, carefully assess facts, etc.).

Most of our everyday thinking is in the realm of System 1. Kahenman says that most of our immediate reactions to thinks happen before we are aware of what is going on, before our System 2 thinking has a chance to analyze, consider, etc., the issues. And frankly, most of the time System 1 works perfectly well, such as in driving a car or riding a bike. Indeed, if you had to describe every action you took while you were riding a bike, you probably would quickly fall.

So when Trump mentions immigrant crime repeatedly, and the media repeats his lies on a continuous loop, people fall pray to the effects of "availability bias" because the logical side of their brain is off, and also because appropriate facts and good arguments have not been presented to them.

Add to this process what researchers have discovered about "terror management." (See the wikipedia article on this matter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory)

In his 2-14-12 blog post, "Thinking, Fast and Slow... About Staying Alive — What’s Missing From Kahneman’s Classic," David Ropeik wrote:

"If you want to know what goes on in your brain as you “think”, and you can only read one of the flood of recent books on the subject, you can not do better than Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow. It is a fascinating, rich, and eminently readable compendium of what Kahneman and others have learned about how the mind works. Truly a landmark book. But something’s missing....

"Beyond what is so richly reviewed in Thinking, Paul Slovic (a colleague of Kahneman) and Baruch Fischhoff (a student) and Sara Lichtenstein and many others have revealed several specific subconscious risk perception ‘feelings factors’ that guide our perceptions of possible peril. A few of them are simplified here;

"Control — The more control we feel we have, the less frightening a risk will feel. The less control we feel, the more afraid we’ll be.

"Dread — The nastier the nature of the risk — the more pain and suffering it involves - the scarier it is. (This goes a long way toward explaining why cancer, the number two killer in America, is far and away the disease people fear most.)

"Is the risk Natural or Human-made — Natural risks, like cancer-causing radiation from the sun or the toxic effects of some herbal medicines, scare us less than human-made risks, like cancer-causing radiation from nuclear power or industrial pesticides on fruits and vegetables.

"Personification — A risk represented by a name or a face (the starving child, a dead soldier in a flag-draped coffin) affects us more powerfully than a risk that may be much larger but is only represented by impersonal numbers (“millions of starving children”, statistics of battle deaths).

"Catastrophic risks (lots of harm from one large event, like a terrorist attack) worry us more than chronic risks where the harm is spread out over space and time (major killers like heart disease and drunk driving).

"Risks imposed on us (radiation from a nuclear power plant leak) feel worse than the same risk if we take it voluntarily (a chest x ray or CAT scan).

"Risks that are more immediate scare us more than risks that may be much larger but which are delayed (climate change... OOPS!)"

(See his excellent and still extraordinarily important blog post at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-ropeik/thinking-fast-and-slowabo_b_1147447.html)

Trump plays to our System 1 thinking processes with fears he conjures up regularly. These fears hit the part of our minds that are not logical -- the System 1, unconscious fast systems that do not rely on logic. And for far too many people -- aided by a cynical media and a wealthy over-class that does not want it's goodies reduced -- analyzing Trump's pronouncements through the lens of objective logic history is too time-consuming and effortful to be regularly done. With Trump, bumper-sticker logic
cements in our minds the fears he wants to implant, the fears that Republicans have been planting for the last 50 years.

Chris Mooney in his excellent book "The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science — and Reality", notes that by the time youngsters are about 5 years old, one can predict which of them are more likely to be conservative and which are more likely to be liberal. The frightened ones are more likely to be the Republicans and the more laid-back ones are more likely to be Democrats. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Republican_Brain)

At any rate, the ideas of Fast and Slow Thinking, of Terror Management, and actual differences in brains between Republicans and Democrats explain why conservatives are much more likely to fall prey to the lies and invented dangers created by Trump and repeatedly endlessly by our mainstream media, also viciously enhanced by FOX, Drudge, every national Republican leader, etc.

[underpants]

1. Very interesting info

Marking for later read.

[Akamai]

11. Underpants -- very good to mark for later reading. very powerful factors at work.

I sure as heck hope Hillary and her people are paying attention to them, and also to the approach of George Lakeoff and his focus on metaphors, e.g., the Strict Father versus the Nurturant Mother. (For a good explication of this, download from the Hidden Brain podcast, the "Our Politics, Our Parenting" episode. (Thom Hartmann talks about this issues

Another person to read is Jonathan Haidt in "The Righteous Mind." Although been too conservative lately, his insights on the human condition as described in this book are very good.

Lots of other wonderful neurologists, psychologists, etc., bringing insights on these topics.

[underpants]

15. Akamai - I'll return the favor. Great read from Politico -Trumpology

Sorry I can only hyperlink on my iPad.

5 seasoned NYC writers/reporters who've know Trump and his father for decades have a sit down. Really interesting stuff the Clinton team could unhinge him with - hell anyone whose ever talked trash could turn him into rubble with this stuff.

Trumpology

[onecaliberal]

2. It's something in their brain.

[Akamai]

12. Seems to be, to some degree. makes sense for it to be survival enhancing, at least in

the olden days. One could summon up followers to be part of an army and take over things, etc. Nowadays, not so good a survival strategy, to go along with the most powerful person.

With the power of science, our growth in empathy as we realize we are all in this together, major violence, stripping away the rights and belongings of others, is not to be permitted.

[onecaliberal]

16. It certainly cannot be permitted.

[justgamma]

3. Trump is just another

example of Obama Derangement symptom. He is the exact opposite of President Obama. He who can hurl the greatest insults at our President wins over the Repubs who have been programmed to hate all things Obama.

[Chico Man]

4. Why do kids rally around bullies?

Same reasoning here.

[Akamai]

13. Yup! Also over time they learn to be less empathetic to people in need, I think.

[Major Nikon]

5. There's a reason why demagoguery works so well with Republicans

[unblock]

6. this helps explain why polling is potentially problematic.

studies have shown that poll responses can be manipulated (quite possibly unintentionally) by many circumstances.

please of du'ers, of course, will say we're voting for hillary regardless, and there are plenty of right-wingers who will say trump.

but a significant number of people can be influenced by the exact phrasing of the question or even the previous questions.

pollsters know this and often use it deliberately, partly to get the result they want, and partly to test the effectiveness of certain lines of attack that campaigns might want to use in ads.

for example, if you lead in with a question about some "scandal" relating to one candidate or another, and follow it with a which candidate would you vote for question, you'd very likely get lower results for the candidate involved in the scandal than if you hadn't mentioned it. this is true even if the respondent knew about the scandal.

i.e., you're invoking "system 1". problem is, actual voting usually relies more on "system 2".

[Akamai]

14. Yup! And it can be very subtly applied. For example, if one shows pictures of graveyards,

or if one has bottles of hand sanitizers on the table of voter registrants, this tends to make people vote Republican as it very, very subtly reminds them of their mortality. Look at the literature of "terror management" research to see how far reaching this can be.

[Stargleamer]

7. He still supports their main 2 policy tenets. . .

1) Tax cuts for the super wealthy
2) spending cuts that adversely affect the poor

these 2 tenets are the essence of conservatism. Belligerence (getting involved in foreign incursions) are just to distract us from the harm of these 2 tenets. Also the tacit racism expressed in his campaign resonates as well.

[Runningdawg]

8. Conservatives ultimately like Trump

for one reason. He represents their best chance at civil war in this country. They couldn't care less about his policies or lack of them, he pisses of liberals and that's all he needs to do to make him a hero in their eyes.

[lindysalsagal]

9. This is one of several contributing factors: Bewilderment being one of them

When you have always had trouble understanding the world, and you always feel confused by the contradictory messages spewed on "news" shows, something snaps, and you just cling to the one you can understand: The bumper-sticker slogan that immediately relieves your inner frustration with the world and yourself:

Just like schrub: You identify with the one who tells you it's OK to feel the way you do: Resentful, angry, self-righteous, whatever. Anyone who offers you the simple, one-step relief from your bewilderment and channels your anger wins, details are irrellevant.

The left gives long, foreign-sounding oblique, opaque answers that are not satisfying. They only contribute to the confusion and bewliderement. They may be the honest answer, because nothing is simple in the 21st century. But they are not able to absorb it, so it (the left) becomes part of that great big cloud of confusin and frustration: The Enemy.

There isn't rational thought, here. It's just an emotional reflex, and therefore, you can't correct it.

We've got to hold on and hope the smarter among us gotv, and the confused stay home. That's it.

[flying rabbit]

17. +1 nt

[FigTree]

10. Because the encoded meaning of his slogan is "make america white again."

That's why it's so resistant to logic, common sense or average critical thinking. It has strictly nothing to do with anything else. He established this underlying connection with his birth rumour and continued by associating his slogan with a racist diatribe on his initial announcement. He does whatever he can to maintain such connection, whatever the topic at hand. Content aside from this one is completely irrelevant to his supporters. The deplorables are just more outspoken than the other "half". Maybe because they are dumber or more damaged.