Posted April 21st, 2016 @ 8:51am in #Trump
I have been writing about Donald Trump’s powers of persuasion for months and yet many of my readers are still persuasion doubters. I get that. We like to think of ourselves as creatures of reason.
But we are not creatures of reason. We aren’t even close. Science has known this for a long time.
0 CommentsPosted April 20th, 2016 @ 10:05am in #Trump
By now you know Trump won big in the New York primary. Bigger than most people expected.
According to a Fox poll, Trump leads nationally with Republican “men, women, every age group, every income group, and among those with a college degree and those without.”
So, if somehow the GOP nominates a candidate other than Trump, the only Republicans who will be angry about it are …“men, women, every age group, every income group, and among those with a college degree and those without.”
0 CommentsPosted April 19th, 2016 @ 8:21am in #Trump
Anderson Cooper of CNN says he probably won’t vote in the coming election. He says voting would bias him when he covers political news. I agree.
I call it the joiner problem. The minute you take a side, you start acquiring confirmation bias to bolster your sense of rightness. Objectivity is nearly impossible once you commit to a team.
0 CommentsPosted April 18th, 2016 @ 8:31am in #Trump
With the New York State primary tomorrow, let’s see how the chess board is set up for Trump.
The Lead
Trump has the lead in delegates for the Republican race and that lead will grow with the upcoming primaries.
Momentum
After Trump wins the New York primary he will be the one with momentum for a few weeks.
0 CommentsPosted April 14th, 2016 @ 8:21am in #Trump
In Iran you can vote for anyone for President so long as that person has been approved by the Ayatollah Khameini. We Americans call that system a dictatorship.
Voters in America recently discovered that they live under an Iranian type of system and didn’t know it. In the primaries, voters participate in some sort of ritualistic placebo voting while party leaders select the candidates. In the general election, the richest and smartest of the elite use money and psychology to brainwash the masses into imagining they have independent opinions and that their votes matter. We call that a republic.
0 CommentsPosted April 13th, 2016 @ 10:28am in #bono #ISIS #Trump #persuasion
Bono suggests using comedy to fight ISIS. The idea is completely stupid except for the fact that it is totally genius. I agree with Bono that psychology (persuasion) is the key to beating ISIS. I wrote about it here.
You shouldn’t be surprised when Bono is right. He has a genius-level IQ. Or to put it another way, if you think Bono makes no sense – about anything – the odds are good that the problem is on your side.
Bono is the real deal – a Master Persuader all the way down to his DNA.
Bono’s suggestion to send in Chris Rock, Amy Schumer, and Sasha Baren Cohen to defeat ISIS is pure Trumpian hyperbole by design. Bono made it visual so you would remember it, and so you would quote it. He isn’t seriously suggesting we send stand-up comedians to war zones. The fact that you think he MIGHT be serious is the genius of it. That’s what makes you talk about it.
Listen to Bono’s quote about maleness, and about the power of mocking. He’s spot on.
How powerful is mocking as a tool of persuasion? It’s hard to say, but if you look at the growth of business books in the 1990s you might find that the growth stopped at about the same time Dilbert came on the scene and mercilessly mocked the industry. Maybe the business book industry had just run its course. Maybe it was a coincidence. But I can tell you I have gotten hundreds of email messages from managers and authors who say they cancelled plans because they imagined how those plans would sound when mocked in a Dilbert comic.
Mocking is powerful force. And it has special power among the young.
Could we mock ISIS out of existence, thus killing it as an idea?
I say yes. I’m with Bono. Take him seriously.
0 CommentsPosted April 12th, 2016 @ 1:31pm in #Trump
I just finished a Trump AMA on Reddit here.
0 CommentsPosted April 7th, 2016 @ 8:48am in #Trump
I’ve said a few times in this blog, and elsewhere, that my political views don’t match up with Donald Trump’s views, or anyone else’s.
How’s that possible, you ask? Let me give you a taste of it.
0 CommentsPosted April 5th, 2016 @ 9:12am in #trump
I don’t expect this to happen. So consider it a thought experiment in persuasion.
Let’s say Donald Trump promises that when he gets elected President he will pardon Hillary Clinton of any future convictions regarding her email server situation. I’m sure he could come up with a plausible reason for the promise, such as healing and uniting the country and whatnot. And let’s say he makes the promise often and convincingly, so you start to think he means it. Maybe he even puts it in writing and has it notarized. That gives him a piece of paper to wave around when he talks about it. Trump likes to keep his persuasion visual, as in “The wall,” because visual persuasion (including imagined images) is the strongest.
0 CommentsPosted April 4th, 2016 @ 10:35am in #Trump
Donald Trump has made some big mistakes lately. On top of that, his opponents improved their game. As a result, he finds himself in an enormous hole of disapproval, especially with women. If you have been reading my Master Persuader series, you might be interested in why Trump’s persuasion suddenly stopped working.
It’s more interesting than you think.
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