Political ads; every election we are bombarded with them. During a presidential election, it is impossible to tune into a single TV channel without catching sight of one. Politicians spend boatloads of money on political advertising, and with good reason. After all, a study by Joseph Grush[1] and his colleagues has shown that politicians who spend the most get the most votes. But why is this? What makes a political ad so persuasive? As it turns out, social psychology has nailed down an entire list of techniques that are used to persuade people, and there are several general persuasive techniques that are used in this political ad in particular that are especially effective. The four techniques that underlie the persuasive power of this ad in particular are conditioning, identification, use of a vivid example, and trustworthiness.
First off, conditioning through repetition is the first persuasive technique this advertisement abuses. In 1904, Ivan Pavlov received the Nobel Peace prize for his research on the physiology of saliva and digestion in dogs[2]. This was important research because it allowed the first scientific study of classical conditioning. It began when Pavlov noticed one day that his dogs tended to salivate when they heard the footsteps of the assistant who fed them. He learned that he could train the dogs to salivate to the sound of a bell by pairing the bell and food enough times, as to teach the dogs that the bell signaled the arrival of food[2]. As it turns out, dogs are not the only ones susceptible to this sort of repetitive conditioning. We are too, and political propaganda takes advantage of this fact! In this advertisement, the clip of Obama stating the phrase “the private sector is doing fine” is mentioned at the beginning of the ad, followed by the testimonies of people who have lost their jobs. Afterwards, the phrase “the private sector is doing fine” was repeated multiple times. This serves a two-fold purpose. Firstly, it uses repetition to get the phrase “the private sector is doing fine” stuck in our heads, thereby making the ad more memorable. Secondly, it pairs the scene of Obama saying the phrase “the private sector is doing fine” with scenes of people talking about losing their jobs and being poor. This frame of conditioning casts Obama in a negative light (Obama is seen as causing the loss of jobs) and, thus, conditions the viewer to view Obama negatively. In this way, this ad attempts to condition you to dislike Obama without you even noticing!
The second factor this ad takes advantage of is that it banks on our personal notion of trustworthiness; we tend to side with those we agree with. In this advertisement, we feel empathy for the people who have lost their jobs or are struggling financially. Because of this empathy factor, we also tend to side with their point of view. This is shown in an experiment by Alice Eagly, Shelly Chaiken, and colleagues[1] . They found, simply, that likable communicators are more persuasive. That is to say, the more we empathize with the people speaking in this ad, the more we want to adopt their point of view. What is this view, you may ask? According to the advertisement, the common factor that connects all of these people’s testimonies is the statement at the end of the ad; “No, Mr. President. We are not ‘doing fine’”. In this manner, this advertisement is trying to subtly get us to “side” with the people in this video and vote for Mitt Romney.
Thirdly, this advertisement uses multiple vivid examples of people who are in a challenging situation economically in order to sway us to Mitt Romney’s side. According to research by Richard Nisbett and colleagues (1976) [1], Shedler and Manis (1986) [3], and Taylor and Wood (1983) [3], a vivid example is more persuasive than a non-vivid example. However, the limits of this finding have been tested in more recent literature (Punam A. Keller and Lauren G. Block, 1997). Their findings indicate that the extent that we are persuaded by vivid and non-vivid information depends on the extent that we distribute our resources. The theory behind this idea states that our judgments of things are affected by the balance between the resources required to process a message and the resources attributed to the task. For vivid information, if the energy required to process a message is greater than the energy we attribute to processing the message, persuasion is low. However, they also found that if the energy we distribute to process a message is higher than the amount required, we are also less persuaded. The only time, therefore, that a vivid message is highly persuasive is when the energy required to process the information approximately equals the energy we set aside to process said information.
When is this most likely to happen? When we are distracted! This makes sense; when we don’t have enough energy to process the information presented, we aren’t persuaded, we are overwhelmed. Additionally, if we spend large amounts of energy paying attention to a vivid example, we are likely to see the flaws in a vividly persuasive argument and overlook them in favor of non-vivid facts. However, when we are distracted, aka when we are watching television, we are likely to be in a state of mind where our ability to process vivid information (which already takes less energy than non-vivid information) equals our ability to set aside the energy we distribute, because we are likely to use less energy to distribute the information than normal because we are tired or because our mind is performing multiple tasks simultaneously. The personalized stories in this ad are vivid to just the extent that they are most persuasive for the mindset you are likely in watching this advertisement at the time it airs; no more, no less. By using multiple examples of personal, vivid anecdotes (as well as Pavlovian conditioning and hijacking our sense of trust), this political ad takes advantage of our probable mindset when watching the ad and, therefore, uses the method of argument that we (based on our resources at the time of watching) are likely to find most persuasive.
[1] Aronson, E. and Aronson, J. (2012). The Social Animal (11th ed.) New York: Worth Publishers
[2] Gluck, M. A., Mercado, E. and Myers, C. E. (2008). Learning and Memory. New York: Worth Publishers
[3] Keller, P. A. and Block, L. G. (1997). Vividness Effects: A Resource-Matching Perspective. Journal of Consumer Research, Inc., 24, 295-304
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Tyler Davolt (tdavolt@hotmail.com)
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