Politics

10 Psychological Methods for Politicians

Politicians use various tactics to achieve what they desire most from their electorate. Most of these are usually psychological methods cleverly devised to disguise some information as something else. We take a look at 10 of these methods and how they apply in the modern political arena.

1.     Spinning

A spin is a form of propaganda that politicians achieve through providing the electorate with a biased interpretation of something often in order to gain favor for or against another person. It is seen as making use of deception and manipulation to achieve the desired outcome.

2.     Factoid

A factoid is an entirely false statement but that has been nonetheless presented to people as a true fact and has been believed to be one. In politics, factoids basically evolve from minor unreliable pieces of information that are repeated so often that with time they become accepted as facts.

3.     Demonization

In politics, demonization is a tactic used by politicians to characterize an individual or group of people as evil. In its earliest usage, the Knight Templar ruin came after they were accused of worshipping Baphomet often though in Christianity to be Beelzebub due to the horned image.

4.     Cult of personality

This is widely used by politicians and occurs when a politician uses mass media and at times other methods to create an ideal image through excessive praise and flattery. This works perfectly in totalitarian regimes and the state achieves a cult of personality in a chosen individual by controlling the media.

5.     Doublespeak

It is perhaps the most used psychological method by politicians all over the world. Doublespeak is basically the deliberate distortion of words or their meaning. Perhaps the best example is the corporate term ‘downsizing’ which means there is going to be layoffs. Doublespeak is designed to make actions seem more acceptable to the public.

6.     Bandwagon

The bandwagon idea is basically an appeal aimed at persuading a certain audience to join or take part in a certain course of action since everyone else is doing so. There is the inevitable victory and join the crown facets of this technique.

7.     Beautiful people

The beautiful people tactic is aimed at changing the perceptions of people by associating a certain political ideology to famous people. This makes people see the ‘happy person’ as a representative of the ideology and therefore see the ideology as right or good.

8.     Common man

The common man tactic is used by politicians to convince a particular audience that his/her positions reflects or represents that of the common person or the plain folk. This works by making the audience feel that the politicians speak their language and is therefore best suited to represent their needs.

9.     Dictat

This is used by politicians especially during campaigns to apparently make decision making easier for the audience they are targeting. For example, by creating an image or poster that says kick out the current government, the audience does not have to process much information since all they have to do is kick the said government out.

10.  Slogans

Slogans have been incorrectly used to appeal to the emotions of the target audience rather than to reason. Politicians cleverly phrase slogans to justify certain causes of action even though without the phrases, the actions would be deemed unreasonable.