How Behavioral Psychology Has Hacked Mr. Issenberg’s Brain

Sasha Issenberg

Mr. Sasha Issenberg just came out with a new book titled “The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns”. The Wall Street Journal published his article titled “5 Ways To Hack Voter’s Brains” in the Review section on 9/15/2012. He was also featured in a lengthy interview on past Friday’s edition of Jim Lehrer’s News Hour.

The Language Is Revealing

Excerpts from the Wall Street Journal article (Emphasis added):

• “Welcome to the modern science of politics, where voters have become lab rats in an ongoing cycle of controlled trials informed by principles from behavioral psychology.” [Ah, voters are now lab rats. Well, maybe I am a monkey.]
• “It is now standard practice for canvassers in the days before an election to ask what time a respondent plans to vote and what he or she will be doing immediately beforehand. But the volunteer never writes down the answers. … a concept known as "the plan-making effect": that people who are induced to rehearse an activity are more likely to follow through.” [Really, they never write down the answers. Very clever, indeed. So, if I as voter am made to rehearse something it is a plan making effect.]
• “… statistical "microtargeting" models—the political world's version of credit scores.  . These scores now stick to voters as indelibly as credit scores.” [He only wishes it was that easy and simple. To compare political attitudes/behavior, which can shift on a dime to something as narrowly focused as credit scores is more than a stretch.]
• “… with tactics like … [a] threat to expose nonvoters to their neighbors, because it looks a lot like blackmail. But campaigns have figured out how to soften such approaches.” [Ah, as a voter I am only being soft blackmailed. What a relieve!]

 Presumption Of Knowledge

Mr. Issenberg is trying to sell us voters on the supposedly exact science of psychology and statistical microtargeting models and big data analysis. He suggests that this trickery what he calls “secret science” can win election campaigns. Nice try!

Well, in the real world there are self-fulfilling as well as self-defeating prophecies; empirically observed rules about human behavior that break down as soon as they are understood by an increasing number of people and so on.

Fact is that human behavior has been unpredictable for millennia and will continue to be unpredictable for decades to come.

Or Abraham Lincoln said it best: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”