Your father taught you WHAT? Part 2.

Wood engraving by John Charlton, 1890 cover of Graphic Magazine entitled “Of Danger All Unconscious.” In the public domain.

A recent post introduced an analysis by cognitive psychologist George Lakoff regarding supporters of Donald Trump.  Lakoff stresses the arch conservative’s  investment in a “strict father” authoritarian, white male supremacy moral code. Today’s post shares Lakoff’s psychological analysis of How Trump Uses Your Brain to His Advantage.”

Lakoff’s basic argument is that conscious thinking is a tiny portion of what goes on in the brain, and that indeed an estimated 98 percent of all mental activity is unconscious. (Think of times when you started driving to see a friend on Saturday and all of a sudden realized you had passed your exit and were on your way to work—conscious enough to drive safely but led unconsciously onto the route to work.)

Unconscious thought, Lakoff maintains, is influenced by certain basic mechanisms that Donald Trump and his team manipulate with finesse. These mechanisms include:

  1. Repetition. Words have links in the brain to circuits that give them meaning. Think about what you do when you are learning a new word or name—you repeat it and repeat it and perhaps also repeat its definition or its connection with something familiar.  Those repetitions strengthen the neural connections associated with the word and make it easier to activate them. So, when Trump says over and over again that “I am the only one who…”,  our brains tend to fill in the rest of the message whether we consciously believe it or not (“…can make America great again.”
  2. Framing. One of the mantras of the Trump campaign is “crooked Hillary,” framing Hillary Clinton as a crook who deliberately perpetrates crimes for her own benefit. Framing her this way evokes a common myth in the minds of conservatives—that is, what is illegal is also immoral according to Strict Father Morality (making, for example, a lot of anti-war and pro-environment activism “immoral”). Thus, at Trump rallies, we increasingly hear “Lock her up, lock her up!”
  3. Well-known examples. Trump repeatedly refers to examples of “Muslim terrorists” widely amplified in the popular media to maintain and exacerbate fears, which unconsciously activates desire for a strong no-nonsense father to fix everything. And they are told exactly who can play this role for them.

Lakoff goes on to describe other forms of mind control used by the Trump campaign. Read them for yourself and decide whether you think he makes his case.  And, given what you have learned about Lakoff’s analysis, what kinds of connections do you think human minds, particularly conservative minds, will make when they get swamped with photos and stories concerning the infidelities of former President William Clinton? Do you think the promulgators of those photos and stories are conscious of their effects?  How about the recipient of those messages?