Next, the discussion about the criteria u. S. Voters are using to pick a president ial candidate. From washington journal, this is just under one hour. Rick shenkman is the History News Network founder and author of political animals how our stoneage brain gets in the way of smart politics. Henkman, do shark attacks affect elections . Guest 100 years ago in 1916, the worst fear of shark attacks struck southern new jersey. That everyones had seen was based on the story of what happened then. Weeks, four people were killed in shark attacks. What does that have to do with politics . Woodrow wilson was up for reelection. But in thejersey, small beach towns devastated by the shark attacks, people heard shark and everyone went home. He was a devastating Economic Development for that area. , the peoplee vote in those towns voted against Woodrow Wilson in overwhelming numbers. In the same proportion that those people voted against Herbert Hoover at the height of the great depression. Why . Woodrow wilson could not have done anything to help those people solve their shark problem. That was beyond the powers of the president. People are irrational when they vote. Particularly, political scientists have found, when bad things happen to them they take angst on the incumbent party whether they are responsible or not. The book is about how our brain works. 40 years ago we did not have an idea of how the brain works. Today we do because of nero silence numeral science neuroscience, anthropology, and that changes how we think our brain operates on politics. Host what do you mean by stone age brain . A lesser for 2. 5 million years. The human brain mainly involved. It evolved to help hunter problems address the that they faced as hunter gatherers. Evolve to help us in the 21st century address problems that we are facing. Our problems are different. And you live in a Small Community of 150 people, you know and work with everyone. You know your leaders. You are living with them. Today, there are millions and billions of people. We do not meet our leaders. We see them on tv. We often read them wrong and do not understand when they are lying or manipulating. The book is about how you have to protect your self against your own brain. It will trick you into thinking youre living in a Small Community and you know these people. You dont. Host in the introduction you write that im going to tell you the stories of people that have been paid in ways that seem absurd. Beingcus on behavior disengaged from politics and apathetic. Not correctly sizing up our leaders, punishing politicians that tell us hard truths, and not showing empathy in circumstances that cry out for it. , is there a general impression that you can give of what voters are like in america . Guest i dont know what to do with that question. Give me more. Host are voters curious . Guest good. Voters are curious about what is happening in their immediate circumstances. That is what the human brain is designed to do, be curious about things that you can see. Half of the brain is devoted to visual tasks. We are responsive to what we can see and what we can feel. When youre in a group of people, you can size them up, read their body language, get a sense of who they are. The ability to have an assess that of who they are and what they are like. You cannot do it in the modern political world, because most of the time you see them on tv. Not coming system is into play and you are not focused. If you cannot see someones eyes and how they are really looking at you, it is hard to read them. In any case, our brain is playing a trick on us. In the stone age, when we read peoples emotions if you are going on a hunt and you wanted to look toward the leader, you could tell in a particular moment if he was feeling courageous or frozen by fear. You could read that a motion. You had a deeper understanding of that person because you lived and worked with them. In the modern world, we do not have that personal experience with our leaders, but our brain makes us think that we know them. Are we curious . There has never been an example of hunter gatherers not curious about who was leading them. What the human beings do all day . We gossip. Whosps us to understand up, down, if someone has made a mistake. Motives. Ng about their we are engaged as human beings in our local politics. In the multicultural world that we live in with millions of people, we do not have that natural nervous system reaction to people that live far away from us. You are in washington the c, washington, d. C. I live in seattle. That is far away from washington. And things happen there, it is hard for me in seattle to get excited. Do he hadandidates out in a political debate, i can get excited momentarily, but that feeling quickly evaporates. I am a political junkie, so i am paying attention. Most americans are not paying that much attention. They seem to display in difference and a lack of curiosity. That is because of the way the human brain works. It is an indictment of human beings. Our brain was not devised for television politics. It was devised for small intimate groups. We are good at those politics, not so good about things happening a long way away. Host should we trust our instincts when it comes to politics . Caller no. That is the main part of the book. In our daily lives we trust our instincts because they prove they are good. If you are walking on the tireslk and you hear screech, your instinct is to look around and pull back to make sure you are not about to get run over. That is the same as if you were a hunter gatherer 100,000 years ago and you heard a tiger in the woods. He would have a flight or flight response. In our personal lives, often, our instincts work. Argue, you can almost never unquestionably go with your instincts, because they are not suited to the problems that we face in the modern world. Host you look at the work of psychologist drew weston. You write about some of his work. Here is his explanation of what goes on in our brain when we turn a blind eye toward explanation we find objectionable. When confronted with potentially troubling political information, a network of neurons becomes active that registers the conflict between data and desire and searches for ways to shirt off this big it of unpleasant emotion. Notice what we do not do. We do not expend Cognitive Energy to digest the information. We immediately try to reconcile partisanur preferences. Can you give an example . Guest lets take the example of what drew weston was talking about. In 2000 four, john kerry versus george w. Bush. He put kerry voters in an mri and told them information about john kerry that was not laddering. Was not flattering. What happened . They briefly registered a reaction that was shock and disfavor with what they were hearing. Immediately, their brain shut off that information and the neurons went quiet. The same thing happened when you mri. Ush voters in the they had an initial reaction then went quiet. Scientistst social refer to as our immune system. We do not like to find out that a belief that we hold about someone that we like it turns out that here is contrary information to what we believe. Hat creates dissonant it makes us feel anxious and bad. It quickly tries to figure out a way to get rid of the information. It does it by closing the door on the information so that the. Eurons go quiet our psychological immune system improves and we restore our feeling of wellbeing. When youre talking about trump voters, donald trump has been called out by politico and all of these other Fact Checking organizations for telling one lie after another. Like, when he debuted his campaign and started talking about how thousands of muslims were dancing on the rooftops of apartment buildings in new jersey as they watched the twin towers fall. That was not true. What did trump voters make of that . Their brain, just like other voters it is true of all of us, we do not want to hear bad information. They ignored it. Their brain shut off the information. This is how the human brain works. That is what drew westons research shows. Host political animals how our stoneage brain gets in the is themart politics book. The numbers are on the screen. Democrats, 202 7488000, republicans 202 7488001, independents 202 7488002. You can dial in and we will take your calls. You can participate on social on twitter. Panwj lets begin with robert from massachusetts. He is on the democrats line. Caller i do not know at this guys talking about, but the average person does not know. Politicians know that the average person is almost ignorant. Tide commercial on tv, and it says it will take the ring off of your husbands neck, the next day that same woman will buy that because of that powerful commercial. People are not voting with their heart. They are voting with their head. You have to put them together. You have to have a head and heart. When you let the politicians speak on the pulpit, that is the sentence. Never let a politician walk into your church and speak on the pulpit. This is for all of you black people from down south. Host lets get a response. Rick shenkman waited to hear . Guest the cholerae is right that the American People do not know a lot of fat the caller is right here that the American People do not know a lot of facts. We have 100now that u. S. Senators. The majority of the American People do not know that we have. Hree branches of government a lot of them believe on the eve of the iraq war that Saddam Hussein was behind 9 11. That the reason we were invading iraq was to take revenge for him having destroyed the World Trade Center and attacking the pentagon. Are a low information voter, which is unfortunately the majority of the American Voters low information are more easily manipulated because they do not know enough. If a politician is articulate, enthusiastic, can make a case and connect with you as one person to another person looking through a tv camera if im excited, passionate, and you are impressed with my passionate enthusiasm, and what im saying makes sense, you do not have the toependent basis evaluate my argument and information. You are going with your gut. That is what i argue in my book is a mistake. Host tweeting to you that i respectfully disagree. You cannot read politicians from watching them on tv body language is all telling. Guest body language is important. No question. How fast do we make evaluations of candidates . Eyesight in the book i site in the book that we make up our minds about politicians and anyone we encounter in 167 milliseconds. Faster than you can blink your eyes. If you give people more time to make an evaluation, they double initialtheir impression. Your brain is playing a trick on you. In the stone age, when we were making superfast evaluations, it was important. If you encountered a stranger you had to quickly size them up. Most of the time, that meant this was a person that was a hostile threat to your life. That you should probably run or kill they guy. For a hunter gatherers and their communities sizing people up, it was not on the basis of body language or facial expression it was on the basis of deep knowledge. You are living and working with them. You have an overreliance on body language and you think you can tell if someone is lying to you or telling the truth based on body language, you are deceiving yourself. I may go one step further. When a politician is telling you something, and they believe it you youre cheater that connecting system doesnt work. It only works if those telling the lie think they are buying. Politicians are like used car salesman. There good at telling you something. In that moment they can convince themselves that they believe it. You cannot rely on body language. If they are sincere, and politicians are always sincere, your detection system doesnt work. Democrat,ara, marthas vineyard. Caller thank you. This is the best news ever. The first day of the new era, which i am christening paleo politics. Theres is our brain on the drugs of politics we dont understand how the brain works. I have a home rigged assignment. A homework assignment. You need to assemble evolutionary biology and psychology, get them together with richard, and you assemble them at a book fair somewhere. His is the story the other thing to do, i want to look back at an email i sent her democrats only in the last segment. It has no text, only visuals. The subject line is just vote blue. This is my message to how the democrats have to unify. It has a visual pun that i want to see if richard config throughout. This man is walking the walk and talking the talk. Last thing, keep using the emphasis you are using. Just like im deliberately using it now. There is a penetrative quality. O assertion we are not thinking or hypothesizing, this is the dawn of the new age. Host thank you. Rick shenkman, in a response to barbara . Caller well. She was very complimentary and i will not disagree. Lets talk about another aspect of how our brain works. Neuroscience we have learned that we have two ways of digesting information. System one and system to areas with system one you are taking in information. Your matching it with other information that you already have. If there is a close match, your brain doesnt think hard, it just thinks the new information is like the old information and is treated the same way. System to is higherorder cognitive thinking. Guess what we want to do with politics. Politicians do not want you to use system to, higher order cognitive thinking. Wordsill use red meat that will get your system one juices flowing, so you are not thinking just reacting. Republican audience, they will see they they will say things like scary muslim terrorists. Orn you are acting fearful angry. Youre not thinking, just reacting. Democrats do the same thing. Story to tell a sob get you to feel empathetic to go with their program. You are not thinking about it. You are reacting. What i am arguing in the book is that the only way to safeguard yourself against manipulation by politicians is to always secondguessed your automatic reaction. You have to secondguess your automatic reaction. Do not trust yourself in politics. That goes against what we learned in the 1960s when it yourself. And personal life, trust yourself. In politics, and dont. Connecticut on our democrats line. What is the name of your town . Connecticut. Ic, i wanted to call and say that i called the debate. I dont think that there should be any more debates. I hate to see things deteriorate to the level of a gop side. I was very proud of her performance. I think senator sanders did very well also. I hate to see them hurt each primary. The im disappointed in senator sanders. I think that him running as a continues tohe criticize hillary to the extent, or each other, that it could hurt us in the long run in a general election. Host lets leave it there. Rick shenkman, given that there was a debate last night, i dont know if you watched it but i know that you have watched some, how would your book guest let me tell you what i recommend in the book, which is when you are sitting and watching a political debate, basically you are in the same role as somebody who goes and attends a broadway show. What you wind up doing is evaluating the performance of the candidates who are arguing with each other. I do not think that is terribly helpful. What is helpful even if you are not a political junkie like most americans, you do other things so youre not really following politics all that closely. You can still gain tremendous, real insight into what is going on in these candidatess campaigns by monitoring your own emotional reaction. Pull out a pen and paper when you are about to sit down and watch one of these debates. Every time you feel a strong emotion of some kind fear, anger, enthusiasm, patriotism, whatever you are feeling. Jot it down next to the candidates name. The debate,f instead of evaluating their performances, look at how you emotionally reacted to what they were saying and you will now have a roadmap to these candidatess campaigns. You will understand how they are trying to manipulate you by the emotional buttons they were trying to push during the debate. It is no accident when they take a certain line at the debate. They have a lot of Advisors Ahead of that debate telling them that if you say this, the voters will have this reaction. If you say this, the voters will have this reaction. Study yourself and you will have a very keen understanding of what the politicians campaigns are about. It is much more helpful than sitting back like you are at a broadway show and saying this person did well in this person didnt. We play the game, but it is not very helpful. This approach that im outlining is more helpful. Host springfield on the republican line, go ahead with your question or comment calle. caller i have a comment the guest something made about donald trump saying he saw muslims dancing in the street after 9 11. He is not lying. I have seen this with my own eyes. Host mr. Shankman . Guest you did see it with your own wise, because in the middle east, they were dancing and there is videotaped. After 9 11 muslims in the middle east and other parts of the world, people were happy to see the United States, the big, bad superpower, as it is viewed in some parts of the world, getting knocked down a little bit. People were dancing in the streets, but it was not muslims in america and it was not american muslims doing this, but our brain confuses visual information that it is taking in. At that time, you are seeing this, a registered powerfully on your brain. One of the big shocks on 9 11 besides the attacks themselves, the other big shock was that people hate us to the point where they are happy to see us killed by the thousands. Impression powerful on your mind, but you do not see american muslims dancing in the streets. That did not happen. Host pardon me. The next call for Rick Shenkman comes from suzanne on the independent line. Go ahead, suzanne. Caller hey, rick. What you just said about the politiciansadvisors telling them how to go ahead and say what they are supposed to say instead of really answering the question that sort of not really in the stone age. Everybody is in the reality tv age. What the advisers are telling them to do is how to get the out of theesponse viewers. Aboutd of really thinking what the politicians are saying on all these different programs, we are being taken to the reality tv world where everybody kind of floats along and we dont care about real stuff. We just care about what we think is happening. I dont think the stone ages here. We have progressed a lot from the stone age because we are at the state where we can sit there with a completely empty mind. Host all right, let us get a response from mr. Shenkman. Guest we are not living in the stone