Watching Sarah Palin’s self-delusional interview this morning caused me some very uncomfortable flashbacks. It was impossible (for me, not her) to forget the drama of her rallies last fall, and the images of mindless Gop-bots chanting lines they had been fed by the party puppet-masters. It took me months to realize why those rallies seemed so familiar.
They are oddly reminiscent of an experience I had a decade ago, when a group of very bright young people dragged me to a midnight showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show. The GOP audiences at the Sarah Palin rallies were not just far right nuts, they were programmed to recite, react and vote by a script.
And unless we want to see the same Rocky Horror Picture Show in two years in Iowa, it’s important we understand what makes these folks so attracted to such mass rallies.
There are some fascinating clues to the psychology of Republicanitis in current science–come along with me to learn to understand:
First, there’s the “science of gullibility”, a fascinating new book by psychologist Stephen Greenspan, who was featured on NPR’s Science Friday today. Greenspan (whose name is oddly incongruous) admits he’s lost a significant portion of his own retirement funds because he gullibly bought into a Madoff fund. His work is one of many that offer a peek into Republican psychology.
A second glimpse into the conservative mindset appeared in a book published in the last few weeks of the election, two social scientists, D. Sunshine Hillygus and Todd G. Shieldsm, published a high level analysis of how campaigns succeed. (Not surprisingly, no one had much time to read it.)
The[ir] book advances the important point that although campaigns [do] not change a voter’s predispositions, that does not mean that all such predispositions favor the same candidate. Instead, many voters are ambivalent because their partisanship and issue positions conflict. For example, there are a sizable number of pro-life Democrats and pro-choice Republicans. Campaigns can persuade these voters to favor one candidate over the other by altering the level of importance they place on their party and their issue positions.
In The Power of Cross Pressures, these authors present ample evidence that a campaign like Obama’s changes votes, but not underlying attitudes. So to really achieve change “we can believe in” we have to look under the vote–forget the celebration, and figure out what will be working next time around.
A third study: a deeper look at conservative psychology appeared in Science 3 October 2008, where Canadian psychologists Whitson and Galinsky showed data that the “need for control” was an important and vital source of motivation for many, who see social situations (like democratic and progressive cat-herding) as terrifying uncontrollable threats to their personal structure. This research fits well with the general assumption that Republicans need paternalistic and even dominionist structures. The authors recommend “self-affirmation exercises to bring their illusory perceptions under control.”
October surprise! For many people, their 401K statement just before the election was terrifying! So they went to the calmest “daddy” figure (Obama) for reassurance.
In that same issue of Science, two other authors, Norenzayan and Shariff, published a high level synthesis of a number of articles showing how religion could serve as a structure to reduce anxiety and improve social behaviors in such folks
Experimentally induced religious thoughts reduce rates of cheating and increase altruistic behavior among anonymous strangers. Experiments demonstrate an association between apparent profession of religious devotion and greater trust.
The stricter the religion (or the preacher) the more faithful the flock:
Sociological analyses are consistent with the idea that religious groups imposing more costly requirements have members who are more committed.
There is no better example of a person using religion as an avenue to political power than Palin.
The study also explains how the mindset fosters agreement within by fueling hatred for those who aren’t “in:”
The same mechanisms involved in ingroup altruism may also facilitate outgroup antagonism
So now for my personal nightmare–the Rocky Horror Picture Show scenario. If Obama is anywhere near effective, October, 2011 won’t be as terrifying economically or politically as October, 2008. Yet fear is needed for folks like Sarah Palin to succeed. She’s got to have enemies, so that her friends can unite. She’s got to convince them (not us) that the reason she didn’t win the 2009 election was that “scary people” (like Keith Olberman) conspired against her.
Unless we understand why Palin’s 15 minutes of fame occurred last fall, and why her audiences were so rabidly partison, we are destined (like “Groundhog Day”) to see the same show at a stadium somewhere near Des Moines in just a few years from now.
So don’t celebrate too hard next week. We have work to be done. We need to spend time both listening to and reassuring the Republican at the water cooler or the local donut shop. Science tells us that despite a nearly hundred electoral vote majority, there is still a significant segment of the American population who can be motivated by fear and insecurity. Their votes may have changed, but their insecurities have not.
Palin began with her interviews played on YouTube and the media today. “Be afraid–be very afraid”–of the media and the liberal elites. Her whining about Caroline Kennedy being “upper class” was a dog whistle–“Lower class folks, unite around me!”
Hopefully, the next four years will welcome an evidence-based revolution. We can understand and treat the pathological psychology of the far-right. And we can avoid another series of replays of the far right “Horror Picture Show” that ran ad nauseum last fall.
