This piece made me recall a fundraiser back in 2011 when a prominent, wealthy Democratic donor was explaining to me in detail how the party could win back working-class voters by telling them all of the ways they were going to help them. I, who grew up in a blue-collar family that struggled financially, looked her straight in the eye and told her that working class people don’t want you to pity them; they don’t want long explanations about the hows and the whys; they just want you to tell them how great they are. Just a few years later Trump did exactly that with “Make America Great Again.” After all, our society has been raised on commercial slogans that sell us everything from cars to prescription drugs—schema appealing stuff that sticks to the brain and creates that impulse to buy.
Totally getting the picture- and working to re-frame key issues in terms that resonate with “low information voters” is HARD WORK. The sooner D elites figure out why THEIR voters are mad at them the better.
1. Asking us constantly for money concedes the point that we do not now have a democracy and that “both parties” are ok with oligarchy.
2. Insisting that we focus on the next election frames the conflict as ordinary partisan competition rather than an attack on shared values presenting immediate harm.
3. Claiming that they are powerless to resist because they are the legislative minority ignores all the tools that R in minority positions used effectively, feeding into the frame of weakness and submission that allows compliance with bullying.
4. Calling Trump names (Cheeto, Orange orangutan, etc) no matter how clever, personalizes the conflict and suggests that there are not institutional problems allowing this moron to make dangerous policies. Trump’s name-calling (Little Marco etc) was a personalization of his opposition candidates which works in a campaign where the dominant US schema is you vote for “the candidate” and not for a party. Putting Trump in a frame of unique and personal malevolence and incompetence fails to tap the anger directed at concerted policies of theocracy, kleptocracy, oligarchy that tie his agenda to his elite supporters and funders. If he dropped dead of a heart attack tomorrow, the corruption and incompetence would not disappear when Vance (or Mike Johnson) was sworn in.
5. D frames coming from the grassroots are more powerful because they focus on systemic threats being realized right now. But they tend to be abstract captures of the problem: rule of law rather than punishment without a trial and evidence, democracy rather than valuing voters interests over profits and dollar-power, separation of church and state rather than dominance of one religious viewpoint (american Sharia will be “christian”).
I don’t have the ability to test and refine these messages but this is where D “leaders” need to be investing their time. A few “get it” but Bernie and AOC are only speaking to those already infuriated about oligarchy. Cory Booker did a great job of framing the problem as immediate and moral but offered few specific routes for those he inspired to “be like Cory” (a sign in some demonstration I have been at).
this is so important to grasp in order compete in politics. but how do we do it without harm, like trump does (so well)? also, i became a paid subscriber today bc you helped make some sense of the insensible. ty Brian.
Welcome! You don’t have to be dishonest to use schemas - you just have to find out how to message to people by constructing categories of meaning that “cut through.” Fifty point policy plans never work for messaging — they’re necessary to govern but not to win. And authenticity matters a ton in politics too. But it definitely is possible to consider how to message with these concepts in mind without becoming Trumpian.
something like- let’s not argue over whether or not global warming is real, let’s spend money to help farmers be more resilient due to changing weather! #HelpFarmers!
It was nice to see the quote from Sir F.C. Bartlett. I have his 1940 book, Political Propaganda, and often share this quote from it to show how the speed of information is relative: “People, the elements of culture, the media of economic existence, ideas—all these can move with a freedom never before matched in history.” (Depending on the context, I'll also use an 1898 statement from Charles William Eliot, then the president of Harvard University, warning of “a phenomenon new in our country, and perhaps in the world.” Changes, he wrote, in the “formidable inflammability of our multitudinous population, in consequence of the recent development of telegraph, telephone, and bi-daily press” could make the US population “more inflammable than it used to be, because of the increased use in comparatively recent years of these great inventions.")
Puts in clear focus any conversation with my father-in-law that veers into politics. He’s a die-hard, MAGA-embracing former arch-conservative who is convinced that everything Trump and his ilk are doing is akin to the word of God as written by Milton Friedman. He insists on using facts in a debate but they can only be “his” facts, not necessarily legitimately sourced facts. I’m going to attempt to inundate him with schemas and see if I can get him to budge a few millimeters. Wish me luck.
This analysis leaves poorly trained and incentivized journalists and social media echo chambers too much off the hook. When lies and lazy thinking are related ad nauseum, they burn grooves that go deeper than mere “schemas.” It’s less energy to sit on the couch all day, but millions of people exercise regularly to counteract that. Humans are quite capable of doing that with their minds, given the right inputs and encouragement.
I agree, but you also live within the world you have in a political campaign, while governing is about building the world you want. I would much prefer for people to take policy seriously, but when I worked as the deputy campaign manager on a political campaign for governor and wrote the policy platform for, say, education (for the entire state!) it was viewed on our website a few dozen times. We got over a million votes—and won. There’s also a major bifurcation in populations. Some people, if given better information, will lap it up - and journalists are part of that. But some people won’t, no matter how amazing the information environment. Those people still vote.
Been there, done that. Need to something more inclusive of his cruelty, his lies, and his grifting. Not to mention his really bad taste. If I had to compare Trump to a vegetable, it would be the last potato in the bin after a really long winter.
Thanks for this. It echoes my long time fascination with how we perceive the world and how we process, and remember, it.
It also echoes the fact that the Dems don't tell good stories. "[R]ather that facts are most effective when they’re nestled within a ready-made intellectual framework for how to make sense of the world" --you call them schemas, I call them stories, narratives. Schemas seem to me to be the reason stories WORK.
It seems to me that we ALL have to start concentrating not on how "evil" trump is, but on how WEAK he is. "You mean he doesn't have the power to tell the President of El Salvador what he wants Bukele to do?"
A while ago he denied signing the proclamation on the Alien Enemies Act. Calling him a "liar" gets us nowhere. But there is a story there. "Well, it's possible he didn't even know what he was doing. Miller just gave him a document to sign and told him it would help his immigration position. He's way too trusting, didn't ask anyone else whether it could cause him trouble. And now he just can't admit he was wrong, that we are not in fact at war with Venezuela. He has to try to defend those who mislead him."
And so on. A lot of people are doomsaying "the courts won't save us." That isn't actually their function at this point. Their function is to point out over and over and over again that what his administration is doing is wrong. Poor man, SO misled by his evil advisors, unable to resist breaking the promises he made that you believed when you voted for him. Why isn't he RESISTING all that bad advice? Well, he IS getting old.
The defiance of the courts is icing on the cake. Most people want others, at least, to obey the courts. If someone owes you money and the court orders him to pay you, don't you think it is important that he has to comply with that order?
This is so good. It really helps me get a better grasp of what’s going on. I’m a fan who’s been around for a while.
I wrote something that reminds me of your understanding earlier today in comments on an NYT article. I’d be interested in what you think.
Asking a MAGA to suddenly realize that Trump really is trying to destroy what makes their life good/livable, would cause cognitive dissonance. Most times, people just rationalize cognitive dissonance away rather than change their beliefs and actions.
Schema in the hands of political operatives is simply the production and refinement of propaganda, directed to a vulnerable population readily open to take on board and internalize, a skill mastered by the GOP and its MAGA successors. Democratic Party consultants and operatives are too dependent upon rational argumentation to segmented slices of the electorate, and clever tricks such as "triangulation", in order to gain majorities.
However, that's not what moves voters in contemporary electoral politics, and the GOPer approach is constitutively impossible for the Democrats, as that's NOT how they are hard-wired, neither the politicians nor the voters to whom they appeal. And therein lies the difficulty of surmounting easily manipulable masses and their induced schema, and why we've got tRump 2.0, full stop.
"...portraying Democrats as out-of-touch socialist elites who think the solution to every problem is government intervention."
The left and the right both present schema for buy-in; the GOP --trump in particular-- are oustanding as Sellers of Schema, underlining and repeating the Outrageous ( 'they want tampons in boys' bathrooms' and 'want illegal aliens in the US because it means votes') until it obscures all else...but the GOP's Audience assists by being especially susceptible to schema shortcuts; especially uncurious to discover if 'that's really true'.
Bold pronouncement here: the conservative mind often appears more motivated by Validation than Exploration. Bold, bald generalization: I often find conservative people to be uncurious.
I'm curious if you've wondered about how Curiosity works in us/ on us: why, for example, do we seek out 'useless knowledge'? Is that unique to us as a species?
This is so refreshing and somewhat horrifying because it's so true. In my less articulate way I've seen this working for quite awhile and been advocating that we 'make fun of Trump' at every opportunity, because nothing pops an overblown balloon like a pinprick. Here's the challenge that troubles me the most, though: how do we work around peoples embedded opinions? Some Trump voters are so imbued with so-called Christian imagos that they apparently project them onto his fat criminal ass, mistaking him for a savior, for example. Shaking that tree is not going to fill any fruit baskets, IMO. So I get that the less ardent and convinced voters are who we need most to shift into our column. But honestly, what can compare with a Willie Horton image that reinforces what racists already believe about black people? Let's invite some ideas about this, please.
" Effective political movements use facts to reinforce schemas, but they understand that the schemas are what matter most."
Isn't that the basic reason for Zombie Social Science? Theories that assume Reality has some direct effect on behavior never die, because schemas mediate the effect in not at all linear ways. A strong statistical relationship might exist and last as long as a particular schema is being evoked, then disappear if the schema loses popularity. And the relationship might not be reproducible if for some reason a different sample or experimental situation evokes different schemas.
Tariffs as a policy tool are an example. In a "foreign company dumping products below cost to destroy a domestic industry" schema, imposing tariffs makes sense. In a "we've lost market share because of our greed/incompetence and we want to be great again" schema, imposing tariffs doesn't address the real problem.
I suspect something like that (but more complex and subtle) is going on with the divergent results in Breznau's immigration study discussed in the Zombie post. But AFAIK no one has yet developed the tools to model or collect data on the schemas whose complex interaction with reality and perceived reality determine how immigration affects support for social programs.
I suspected that was what we needed to figure out when I got disillusioned with quantitative social science in grad school in the 1970s and dropped out to pursue less "hard science" problems in the software industry . I had hoped technology + social science theory would have advanced beyond linear regression and p-hacking by now, apparently not. Sigh.
@BrianKlass This might be a silly—or maybe even difficult—question to answer, but I’m genuinely curious:
What’s a good way for an ordinary person (like me) to gently challenge someone’s schema—whether it’s a friend, coworker, or family member?
How do you spark that moment of pause—the one that makes them wonder, reflect, or question the mental gymnastics they may be doing to avoid cognitive dissonance?
In other words, how can someone begin to pierce the protective bubble of a belief system they’ve built around themselves…
This piece made me recall a fundraiser back in 2011 when a prominent, wealthy Democratic donor was explaining to me in detail how the party could win back working-class voters by telling them all of the ways they were going to help them. I, who grew up in a blue-collar family that struggled financially, looked her straight in the eye and told her that working class people don’t want you to pity them; they don’t want long explanations about the hows and the whys; they just want you to tell them how great they are. Just a few years later Trump did exactly that with “Make America Great Again.” After all, our society has been raised on commercial slogans that sell us everything from cars to prescription drugs—schema appealing stuff that sticks to the brain and creates that impulse to buy.
Totally getting the picture- and working to re-frame key issues in terms that resonate with “low information voters” is HARD WORK. The sooner D elites figure out why THEIR voters are mad at them the better.
1. Asking us constantly for money concedes the point that we do not now have a democracy and that “both parties” are ok with oligarchy.
2. Insisting that we focus on the next election frames the conflict as ordinary partisan competition rather than an attack on shared values presenting immediate harm.
3. Claiming that they are powerless to resist because they are the legislative minority ignores all the tools that R in minority positions used effectively, feeding into the frame of weakness and submission that allows compliance with bullying.
4. Calling Trump names (Cheeto, Orange orangutan, etc) no matter how clever, personalizes the conflict and suggests that there are not institutional problems allowing this moron to make dangerous policies. Trump’s name-calling (Little Marco etc) was a personalization of his opposition candidates which works in a campaign where the dominant US schema is you vote for “the candidate” and not for a party. Putting Trump in a frame of unique and personal malevolence and incompetence fails to tap the anger directed at concerted policies of theocracy, kleptocracy, oligarchy that tie his agenda to his elite supporters and funders. If he dropped dead of a heart attack tomorrow, the corruption and incompetence would not disappear when Vance (or Mike Johnson) was sworn in.
5. D frames coming from the grassroots are more powerful because they focus on systemic threats being realized right now. But they tend to be abstract captures of the problem: rule of law rather than punishment without a trial and evidence, democracy rather than valuing voters interests over profits and dollar-power, separation of church and state rather than dominance of one religious viewpoint (american Sharia will be “christian”).
I don’t have the ability to test and refine these messages but this is where D “leaders” need to be investing their time. A few “get it” but Bernie and AOC are only speaking to those already infuriated about oligarchy. Cory Booker did a great job of framing the problem as immediate and moral but offered few specific routes for those he inspired to “be like Cory” (a sign in some demonstration I have been at).
And ain't that a shame, touching as it does the heart of the matter?
this is so important to grasp in order compete in politics. but how do we do it without harm, like trump does (so well)? also, i became a paid subscriber today bc you helped make some sense of the insensible. ty Brian.
Welcome! You don’t have to be dishonest to use schemas - you just have to find out how to message to people by constructing categories of meaning that “cut through.” Fifty point policy plans never work for messaging — they’re necessary to govern but not to win. And authenticity matters a ton in politics too. But it definitely is possible to consider how to message with these concepts in mind without becoming Trumpian.
something like- let’s not argue over whether or not global warming is real, let’s spend money to help farmers be more resilient due to changing weather! #HelpFarmers!
What do you think of Gov. P's barnstorming in NH yesterday?
One of the most interesting and illuminating articles about politics I’ve ever read. Thanks!
It was nice to see the quote from Sir F.C. Bartlett. I have his 1940 book, Political Propaganda, and often share this quote from it to show how the speed of information is relative: “People, the elements of culture, the media of economic existence, ideas—all these can move with a freedom never before matched in history.” (Depending on the context, I'll also use an 1898 statement from Charles William Eliot, then the president of Harvard University, warning of “a phenomenon new in our country, and perhaps in the world.” Changes, he wrote, in the “formidable inflammability of our multitudinous population, in consequence of the recent development of telegraph, telephone, and bi-daily press” could make the US population “more inflammable than it used to be, because of the increased use in comparatively recent years of these great inventions.")
Puts in clear focus any conversation with my father-in-law that veers into politics. He’s a die-hard, MAGA-embracing former arch-conservative who is convinced that everything Trump and his ilk are doing is akin to the word of God as written by Milton Friedman. He insists on using facts in a debate but they can only be “his” facts, not necessarily legitimately sourced facts. I’m going to attempt to inundate him with schemas and see if I can get him to budge a few millimeters. Wish me luck.
Good luck!
This analysis leaves poorly trained and incentivized journalists and social media echo chambers too much off the hook. When lies and lazy thinking are related ad nauseum, they burn grooves that go deeper than mere “schemas.” It’s less energy to sit on the couch all day, but millions of people exercise regularly to counteract that. Humans are quite capable of doing that with their minds, given the right inputs and encouragement.
I agree, but you also live within the world you have in a political campaign, while governing is about building the world you want. I would much prefer for people to take policy seriously, but when I worked as the deputy campaign manager on a political campaign for governor and wrote the policy platform for, say, education (for the entire state!) it was viewed on our website a few dozen times. We got over a million votes—and won. There’s also a major bifurcation in populations. Some people, if given better information, will lap it up - and journalists are part of that. But some people won’t, no matter how amazing the information environment. Those people still vote.
Excellent explanation and illustration - thank you!
Been there, done that. Need to something more inclusive of his cruelty, his lies, and his grifting. Not to mention his really bad taste. If I had to compare Trump to a vegetable, it would be the last potato in the bin after a really long winter.
Thanks for this. It echoes my long time fascination with how we perceive the world and how we process, and remember, it.
It also echoes the fact that the Dems don't tell good stories. "[R]ather that facts are most effective when they’re nestled within a ready-made intellectual framework for how to make sense of the world" --you call them schemas, I call them stories, narratives. Schemas seem to me to be the reason stories WORK.
It seems to me that we ALL have to start concentrating not on how "evil" trump is, but on how WEAK he is. "You mean he doesn't have the power to tell the President of El Salvador what he wants Bukele to do?"
A while ago he denied signing the proclamation on the Alien Enemies Act. Calling him a "liar" gets us nowhere. But there is a story there. "Well, it's possible he didn't even know what he was doing. Miller just gave him a document to sign and told him it would help his immigration position. He's way too trusting, didn't ask anyone else whether it could cause him trouble. And now he just can't admit he was wrong, that we are not in fact at war with Venezuela. He has to try to defend those who mislead him."
And so on. A lot of people are doomsaying "the courts won't save us." That isn't actually their function at this point. Their function is to point out over and over and over again that what his administration is doing is wrong. Poor man, SO misled by his evil advisors, unable to resist breaking the promises he made that you believed when you voted for him. Why isn't he RESISTING all that bad advice? Well, he IS getting old.
The defiance of the courts is icing on the cake. Most people want others, at least, to obey the courts. If someone owes you money and the court orders him to pay you, don't you think it is important that he has to comply with that order?
Abrego Garcia is a really primo narrative.
The Left should use “Don the Con.”
Could you please send this to all Dems in congress? Thx
This is so good. It really helps me get a better grasp of what’s going on. I’m a fan who’s been around for a while.
I wrote something that reminds me of your understanding earlier today in comments on an NYT article. I’d be interested in what you think.
Asking a MAGA to suddenly realize that Trump really is trying to destroy what makes their life good/livable, would cause cognitive dissonance. Most times, people just rationalize cognitive dissonance away rather than change their beliefs and actions.
Schema in the hands of political operatives is simply the production and refinement of propaganda, directed to a vulnerable population readily open to take on board and internalize, a skill mastered by the GOP and its MAGA successors. Democratic Party consultants and operatives are too dependent upon rational argumentation to segmented slices of the electorate, and clever tricks such as "triangulation", in order to gain majorities.
However, that's not what moves voters in contemporary electoral politics, and the GOPer approach is constitutively impossible for the Democrats, as that's NOT how they are hard-wired, neither the politicians nor the voters to whom they appeal. And therein lies the difficulty of surmounting easily manipulable masses and their induced schema, and why we've got tRump 2.0, full stop.
"...portraying Democrats as out-of-touch socialist elites who think the solution to every problem is government intervention."
The left and the right both present schema for buy-in; the GOP --trump in particular-- are oustanding as Sellers of Schema, underlining and repeating the Outrageous ( 'they want tampons in boys' bathrooms' and 'want illegal aliens in the US because it means votes') until it obscures all else...but the GOP's Audience assists by being especially susceptible to schema shortcuts; especially uncurious to discover if 'that's really true'.
Bold pronouncement here: the conservative mind often appears more motivated by Validation than Exploration. Bold, bald generalization: I often find conservative people to be uncurious.
I'm curious if you've wondered about how Curiosity works in us/ on us: why, for example, do we seek out 'useless knowledge'? Is that unique to us as a species?
This is so refreshing and somewhat horrifying because it's so true. In my less articulate way I've seen this working for quite awhile and been advocating that we 'make fun of Trump' at every opportunity, because nothing pops an overblown balloon like a pinprick. Here's the challenge that troubles me the most, though: how do we work around peoples embedded opinions? Some Trump voters are so imbued with so-called Christian imagos that they apparently project them onto his fat criminal ass, mistaking him for a savior, for example. Shaking that tree is not going to fill any fruit baskets, IMO. So I get that the less ardent and convinced voters are who we need most to shift into our column. But honestly, what can compare with a Willie Horton image that reinforces what racists already believe about black people? Let's invite some ideas about this, please.
" Effective political movements use facts to reinforce schemas, but they understand that the schemas are what matter most."
Isn't that the basic reason for Zombie Social Science? Theories that assume Reality has some direct effect on behavior never die, because schemas mediate the effect in not at all linear ways. A strong statistical relationship might exist and last as long as a particular schema is being evoked, then disappear if the schema loses popularity. And the relationship might not be reproducible if for some reason a different sample or experimental situation evokes different schemas.
Tariffs as a policy tool are an example. In a "foreign company dumping products below cost to destroy a domestic industry" schema, imposing tariffs makes sense. In a "we've lost market share because of our greed/incompetence and we want to be great again" schema, imposing tariffs doesn't address the real problem.
I suspect something like that (but more complex and subtle) is going on with the divergent results in Breznau's immigration study discussed in the Zombie post. But AFAIK no one has yet developed the tools to model or collect data on the schemas whose complex interaction with reality and perceived reality determine how immigration affects support for social programs.
I suspected that was what we needed to figure out when I got disillusioned with quantitative social science in grad school in the 1970s and dropped out to pursue less "hard science" problems in the software industry . I had hoped technology + social science theory would have advanced beyond linear regression and p-hacking by now, apparently not. Sigh.
@BrianKlass This might be a silly—or maybe even difficult—question to answer, but I’m genuinely curious:
What’s a good way for an ordinary person (like me) to gently challenge someone’s schema—whether it’s a friend, coworker, or family member?
How do you spark that moment of pause—the one that makes them wonder, reflect, or question the mental gymnastics they may be doing to avoid cognitive dissonance?
In other words, how can someone begin to pierce the protective bubble of a belief system they’ve built around themselves…