Feelings decide elections. This is the argument made by Drew Westen in his book The Political Brain. Westen, a clinical psychologist, has accumulated extensive evidence from history, behavioral psychology experiments, and neurobiology in an effort to understand what makes voters tick. When it comes to politics, we often hope voters will be little information processing machines, taking in all the available data on the issues, weighing the evidence of every side, and computing a well-thought out, rational voting choice. When it comes to actual voting behavior, we tend to be anything but "fair and balanced". As Westen points out, people vote with their guts. Psychology, among other things, explores perception, feeling, and behavior. Politicians who want to stand a chance of getting elected had better be effective at shaping their public perception in order to arouse a positive emotional response in voters, who will be guided by those emotions in the behavior of voting. In plain English, candidates (and/or their political party) better look good in a way that makes you feel good about them so that your vote turns out good for them.

There are tons of different methods that candidates use to be emotionally appealing, and psychologists have studied methods like these for decades. One way is the "we are so much alike!" approach. A basic human motivation is the need to belong (a topic Roy Baumeister has written about extensively). Generally, we tend to feel greater belonging with people we perceive as similar to us in some way. Presidential candidates go out of their way to try and seem like just "one of us folks". We have seen them go bowling, chug beers, or strap on hunting rifles. They have talked about being a hockey mom, understanding Joe Six-Pack, or growing up in a working class family from Scranton. They use phrases like "we are all God's children".  Sometimes our brains notice very subtle similarity signals which we are attracted to, without even consciously thinking about them. In conversations, for instance, two people will often unconsciously match body postures during times of increased understanding or connection. If a campaign team is smart, they will capitalize on these associations. Following a victory speech where President-Elect Obama spoke about ending partisan divisions and looked to earn the support of Sen. McCain's supporters, did you notice the ubiquitous presence of the color red in the Obama family wardrobe? Many people have certainly paid much attention to Mrs. Obama's dress.

Wait a second...throughout campaigns, it seems as if Democrats more often wear blue while Republicans more often wear red.

Has Barack Obama pulled a Joe Lieberman on us and switched parties??  No.  Still, with as much care as is put into candidate wardrobe decisions, it is hard for me to believe that such a colorful selection was entirely incidental. It's possible it was a subtle effort to seek out Republican voters and implicitly say "we can share your values, too" which seemed to have complemented the speech like an instrumental score contributes to the tone of a film.

Candidates work hard to shape your perception of their opponents.  One of the ways we deal with our motivation to belong is that we strengthen our sense of belonging in a group by asserting how we are dissimilar to (and sometimes how much we don't like) some other group. Behavioral studies illustrate how groups become extremely united when they have a common enemy. Candidates tap into this concept through saying their opponents are "not at all like us!" or "they don't share our values!". Social class is an extremely divisive issue, and attacks on this front were frequent throughout the campaign for this very reason. Sen. McCain was frequently accused of being "out of touch" with the American people. Much was made of his not knowing how many houses he had (seven, for those of you counting at home), as if to accuse him of how little he would care about the plight and values of middle class voters. While Gov. Palin was trying to be a good ole' hockey mom, she was slammed for having on a $150,000 wardrobe. The McCain campaign attempted to label President-elect Obama as a Hollywood celebrity. Of course, having a stadium arena convention speech with a Greek column backdrop and explosive pyrotechnics didn't exactly help to counter that image. Democrats are often branded as "Ivy league liberal elites" even as Republicans come from similar educational and wealthy pedigrees: last I checked, both Kerry and Bush went to Yale. Accusations of President-elect Obama's "otherness" were perhaps particularly disturbing as they seemed tinged with fear-mongering racist overtones. The New Yorker magazine stirred up controversy in publishing a cover attempting to satirize the politics of fear. Other examples include his being called "that one" during one of the debates, insinuations about his middle name (Hussein), and McCain ads stating that "Obama worked with terrorist Bill Ayers" (suggesting not just a relationship with a terrorist, but a statement sufficiently vague enough to imply that they worked together concocting terrible terrorist plots).