Wednesday, June 14

I've been reading an article in Psychology Today which is entitled How Do We Pick a President?  The explanation is a little worrying.  The author starts by looking at the human  brain and what he calls the 'old' brain and the 'new' brain.  The new brain, the cortex, is what differentiates us from the apes.  It's the part of the brain that makes judgements after rational thought; the old brain, the limbus lobe, responds more intuitively to external stimuli.

Of course, the burning question is 'why would people vote for Donald Trump?  Maybe this quote from the article starts to answer that.

"Our old brain looks much like a chimpanzee's. The rapid rise of Donald Trump is not too difficult to understand if you think of the 10 candidates on the stage for the first Republican debate as chimpanzees struggling for alpha male status. The day after the debate, newspaper columnists almost unanimously declared Trump dead, unsuited for office—a blowhard bully with no grasp of the issues.    Viewers, however, saw the proceedings through their limbic lobe; there was Trump, hooting, beating his chest, throwing dirt at his opponents—bigger, louder, prouder, more aggressive and energized. They thought he won."

One important point made in the article is that what we want in a political leader and what we need in a political leader may be two different things.  The most important attribute of the right kind of leadership is judgement, and that is centred in the cortex.  If we choose the alpha male, who depends on the primitive aspects of his chimpanzee brain, we're not likely to get that.

So, to try and answer the riddle of why 30% or more of Americans still support Mr Trump, they're not looking at his intelligence or diplomacy, they're impressed by his overt displays of his alpha male status.  God help us all.