The Obama Campaign Used Psychologists to Exploit Human Nature

Data mining, micro targeting based on that data and an unprecedented GOTV effort, all helped the Obama campaign in their efforts to reelect President Obama. However, and what the media has not told you, is that the Obama campaign used behavioral psychology to exploit our human nature, specifically the negative aspects to our nature.

I have argued, specifically and comprehensively in “Our Virtuous Republic,” that:

As it relates to politics, specifically concerning domestic policymaking, the social science field of psychology has long been overlooked and understudied.

You might be inclined to say to yourselves: of course, that is what politics is all about. But there was so much more to the Obama campaign strategy than this superficial assessment, and the implications of such an undertaking is nothing short of an unAmerican threat to liberty.

Sounds like a strong condemnation doesn’t it? Well, in truth, it might not be strong enough and I will now explain.

There are three major schools of psychology, which when considered in relation to politics and society, help us to understand our human nature and how and why we strive for tangible and intangible needs. One-by-one I will give a brief assessment, explain why it is relevant, and in the end we will discuss what the implications of each mean to and for American citizenship.

The Freudian School of Psychoanalysis

Freudian psychologists emphasize that which is both innate and developed major internal desires, urges, and so on. Of course, for Freud, the laws of morality that hold together the very fabric of society were nothing more than cultural artifacts. Freud wrote:

In the course of his development toward culture, man acquired a dominating position over his fellow creatures in the animal kingdom. Not content with this supremacy, however, he began to place a gulf between his nature and theirs. He denied the possession of reason to them, and to himself he attributed an immortal soul, and made claims to a divine descent which permitted him to annihilate the bond of community between him and the animal kingdom.

 The Behavioral School of Cognitive Psychology

Because we will discuss this school of psychology more in detail, I will only briefly bring up that while Freud offered insight to the inner-influences of human nature and behavior, behaviorists believe that our personalities are nothing more than a compilation of our reactions to external influences, or as the father of behavioral psychology John B. Watson put it:

Personality is the sum of activities that can be discovered by actual observation of behavior over a long enough time to give reliable information…In other words, personality is but the end product of our habit systems.

Much of the behaviorist school of psychology is based on laboratory experiments on animals, notably the white rat.

Here, as with psychoanalysis, the connection to the animal kingdom is strong, thus behaviorism as well discounts the study of virtue, morality, ethics and the like.

But the most disturbing aspect to the Obama campaign strategy, which was based on cognitive dissonance theory of behavioral psychology, is the fundamental restraint that progressive behaviorists place on human potential. From OVR:

The ultimate drawback, and our Founding Fathers would have agreed, is that Behaviorism is the antithesis to our founding principles. If humans are nothing but a passive product of our environment, then free will and self-determination is a product of our imagination. The supposition that humans are not naturally free is essential to the behaviorist theory.

This is the essence of progressive big government philosophy. We are gullible, fallible creatures only to be exploited and ruled, while self-determination and betterment are to be discouraged so that the “rich and well-born” shall have “a permanent share of government.”

The Humanistic School of Psychology

However, as a matter of truth and not for purposes of rule, other psychologists such as Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers and others, found that the latter two schools of psychology quite simply were selling humankind short. Maslow wrote:

The use of animals guarantees in advance the neglect of just those capacities which are uniquely human for example, martyrdom, self-sacrifice, shame, love, humor, art, beauty, conscience, guilt, patriotism, ideals, the production of poetry or philosophy or music or science. Animal psychology is necessary for learning about those human characteristics that man shares with primates. It is useless in the study of those characteristics which man does not share with other animals, or in which he is vastly superior, such as latent learning.

The truth, in total, is that we do experience influences observed by both Freud and Watson, internal and external forces that can be wicked in nature and exploitable by despots. However, there is a “third force” that can lead us to a higher form of human behavior.

Unfortunately, progressivism is based on an ideology that appeals to only those basic physiological and safety needs. It exploits our fears associated with the inability to meet our needs, ensure our safety, and plays on our envy and hate of those who have managed to secure them more effectively.

Progressivism exploits our fears associated with the inability to meet our needs, ensure our safety, and plays on our envy and hate of those who have managed to secure them more effectively.

The Obama campaign worked with behaviorists Robert Cialdini and Susan Fiske, along with other psychologists from business schools, behavioral economists and political scientists, to drum up “fairness” arguments designed to inspire a hatred of our fellow-citizens; an envy and fear of economic disparity and inadequacy pitting us against each other; and of course, all behind a backdrop of a damaged economy that he is largely responsible for its inability to recover.

Robert Cialdini, professor emeritus at Arizona State University and author of the social science classic, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, and the University of Chicago‘s Richard Thaler, coauthor of Nudge, worked diligently to suppress our natural tendency and notorious American characteristic to strive for betterment.  

So what does any of this have to do with politics, and what are the implications of our leaders strategizing to appeal to our superficial animal, rather than our “God-like” qualities. The end goal, although it was reelection in this case, is to prohibit and discourage personal and societal betterment, because they want us to be dependent on them – not each other – to meet our “hierarchy of needs.” Again, from “OVR”:

The reason that psychology is so important for us to understand, is that our entire form of government is based upon our ability to exhibit higher forms of behavior, and therefore, legitimately govern ourselves.

Can we even be true to ourselves when we say that we are free in our pursuit of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness if progressive big government utilizes their structural power to “nudge” us into the direction they want us to move in? Looking at it from a different perspective:

What is a healthy society if it is not, at its core, a collection of mentally healthy individuals?

In a follow-up article I will discuss how the different means by which we pursue of our needs impacts ourselves, our communities, our whole society and nation.

Richard D. Baris is the author of the new book, “Our Virtuous Republic” – and this article was based on Chapter 1 Section 3 entitled, “The Psychology of Virtue”