How our stone-age psychology explains our love for lies and demagoguery in modern politics.

By KATELYN FOSSETT December 16, 2015

If f you’re naturally a little bored by national politics, but still attracted to candidates who lie, shout and make you a little angry and scared, like many American voters are today, you have evolution—and the brain it created—to thank.
The modern human brain formed during the Pleistocene epoch—a period from about two and a half million to 11,000 years ago when the southern Andes were covered by an ice sheet that extended to Antarctica. Built to rely on instinct over reflection—instincts more suited to hunting saber-toothed cats than making public-policy decisions—our brains have changed very little since. According to Rick Shenkman, the author of Political Animals: Why Our Stone Age Brains Get in the Way of Smart Politics, this goes a long way in explaining the baffling state of politics today. Why do we believe politicians when they lie? Why do we shun nuance and flock to demagogues? Why do many of us never go to the polls? Do we have any hope of changing?

Trump’s supporters don’t particularly care whether he’s lying or not. Our brain doesn’t really care—I know that’s appalling. Our default position is we simply want to be right.
This is why our brain rationalizes our actions even when they’re at variance with our principles—that’s what cognitive dissonance is all about. So Trump supporters—when they hear Donald Trump say thousands of Muslims celebrated 9/11, and that turns out to be a lie, that obviously creates a conflict. Our brain tries to get out of these types of conflict in any way it can. One of the standard ways is to discredit the messenger—we say the mainstream media is full of it, for example. That’s true for Hillary Clinton supporters and true for Donald Trump supporters. All of us, Republicans, Democrats, we are all afflicted with this inclination to believe what we believe, and it doesn’t matter what the facts say. It took 11 months before public opinion started going against Nixon during Watergate.
By nature, human beings are meant to be believers. We aren’t skeptics. We believe, and only at the second step do we subject our beliefs to scrutiny—this is all based on research by Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert. That inclines us to deceptive politicians: We are inclined to believe them unless we have a previous reason not to believe them.
It’s not just buying other people’s lies, though, right? You also have the chimp story, about how lying comes naturally to us.
Human beings are deceivers by nature; you can’t go through the day without practicing some form of deception.
How deep is this in human nature?
When you read primate studies of chimpanzees, they show that chimpanzees are also by nature deceptive. Roger Fouts, a primatologist, was the first to teach chimps how to use sign language. One day, he sees that one of the chimpanzees he was studying had defecated in the middle of someone’s living room. He confronts Lucy, his chimp—they are using sign language—and she responds instantly, “It’s not me! It’s you!” And he says, “No it’s not me.” And then she blames it on a graduate student. And finally, after a heated exchange, she admits, “Yes, it was me,” and she turns sheepish.
It’s more than likely our common ancestor was deceptive by nature, which is why humans and chimpanzees have that trait. We like to think we’ve created the ideal community by encouraging people to be honest; the problem with that is that one traitor can take advantage of everybody. That is what happens in an honest community. Cheaters have the run of the place.
In order to protect against that, we have cheater detection software. It’s a very sophisticated: With most humans (except psychopaths, who don’t show signs), when someone is standing face-to-face with you and lying, they’re twitching, the pitch of their voice might increase, their use of language becomes less detailed—and our unconscious brains take over to identify them as a liar.

The problem in politics today is that our candidates are not face-to-face with us. We’re seeing them on TV, so our cheater detection software doesn’t work so well.

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There’s another side of this that politicians take advantage of. If politicians believe their own lies, they get away with it. It’s how they can get past the cheater detection software. A politician who is good at deception and really believes his own lies can really get away with lying—until he develops a reputation for lies. So, Donald Trump lies. But at some point he gets caught so many times that he develops a reputation for lies, and that’s when he’s got a problem.

You hear the term “outsider” a lot this election season. Does being an outsider have anything to do with not having a reputation as a liar yet?
That’s one of the advantages that outsider candidates have—they don’t have a paper trail. Donald Trump has been in the public eye for decades, but not as a politician. If people had read these books and exposés about Donald Trump, they would have a good sense of who he is. But most people haven’t been following him that closely; they’ve just seen him on TV.

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http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2...4#ixzz3vOlj9yPT

This article really isn't worth reading. "Trump’s supporters don’t particularly care whether he’s lying or not." This is an example of how Lefties think about the idiots who disagree with them. Nevermind that they've supported Bill the Philanderer/Liar and Hillary the Queen of liars. And nevermind they've just supported 7 years of being lied to by King Obama.

The reader is supposed to believe that Donald Trump is a demagogue and there's a [fictional] caveman mentality in those who support him, Trump the Demagogue and his Neanderthal followers. TM

I also note that apparently, our very own Rufus T. Firefly wrote in the comments section under this lame article. Rufus, doing battle with the Lefties.

Quote: Rufus T Firefly wrote in post #3

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Zitat

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I also note that apparently, our very own Rufus T. Firefly wrote in the comments section under this lame article. Rufus, doing battle with the Lefties.

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T'aint me, TM. The "T's" are different - I'm from the "Tiberius" side of the Fireflys (T as in James T Kirk. We're related too, y'know.); he must be from the Terwilliger side. Also, take note of the pictures. He's the black sheep of the family - we all KNEW that he'd never amount to anything.

(Black sheep. Ohhhh - can I say that?)

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Well it didn't seem like the real McCoy. the language was too "colorful" for our Rufus! [but the Obama avatar? I could believe that was you]

Quote: Cincinnatus wrote in post #5

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This piece is a Leftist farce.

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