Release date: Aug. 27, 2004

Kerry Campaign Needs Higher Emotional IQ

Contact:
Elaine Justice, 404-727-0643, elaine.justice@emory.edu
Beverly Cox Clark, 404-712-8780, beverly.clark@emory.edu

To win an election, a candidate must be able to read people's emotions and to translate issues into feelings that motivate voters – a challenge so far for Sen. John Kerry's campaign, says Emory University psychologist Drew Westen. The campaign has had difficulty in finding its emotional compass, he says, by not knowing when and how to deliver a positive message or to attack, and when to lay back and let the Bush campaign make its own mistakes.

"This reflects a longstanding problem in Democratic strategy: A failure to appreciate the power of emotion," Westen says. A striking example of this lack of "emotional intelligence" was the campaign's initially muted response to the President's unwillingness to condemn an advertisement attacking Kerry's war record.

"What the Kerry campaign initially did not appreciate was the emotional significance, particularly among Southerners and working class men, of not responding directly to an attack on one's honor," Westen says. "What they were trying to convey was integrity. What they inadvertently reinforced was the public perception that Kerry is weaker than Bush when confronted with aggression."

Kerry made the right move by finally striking back and linking the ads directly to the President, but he allowed weeks to pass in which voters formed negative emotional associations to him, Westen says. The Kerry campaign's "accentuate the positive" strategy ignores a body of psychological research on how people form positive and negative feelings, he says. Data suggests that a successful candidate needs not only to create positive associations with himself but negative associations with his opponent, Westen explains.

Westen suggests that the Democrats follow a few basic psychological principles:

Rule 1: If you have an issue, turn it into a feeling. The average voter doesn't care that we have a deficit. But people would care if they realized that their kids are being saddled with enormous debt so that wealthy people can get tax breaks.

Rule 2: To win an election, you need to manage both positive and negative feelings, toward yourself and your opponent. People won't turn an incumbent out of office unless they simultaneously associate him with the problem and you with the solution. It's not enough to let Abu Ghraib speak for itself. You have to articulate the link.

Rule 3: Polls can tell you where people stand on issues. They cannot tell you how to run your campaign. People will always tell you they don't like attack ads. But, this does not predict their voting behavior, which largely reflects their feelings, not their theories about what causes them to like or dislike a candidate.

Rule 4: Never let an attack linger without responding to it. This creates a "sleeper effect" in which people associate the candidate with the feeling long after the reason for the feeling has been discredited.

Rule 5: Three years after 9/11, the appearance of weakness is a cardinal sin. There is no better way to show how you respond to evildoers than by the way you respond to your opponent's evildoings. People register the way you respond as much or more than your verbal response.

Rule 6: Hollywood is on your side. Use it. There are plenty of willing acting coaches who could teach John Kerry how to deliver lines like Ronald Reagan and how to hold his body to convey strength. Nonverbal cues are as important in shaping voters' emotional associations to a candidate as what he says—as the Republicans recognized in 2000 when they wiped the smirk off candidate Bush's face.

Rule 7: You cannot be all things to all people. It looks insincere. If you change your mind on an important issue, plan your response in advance and stick to it. There's nothing wrong with saying, "I was wrong on the war. Where the President and I differ is that I can be honest with the American people and I can learn from my mistakes."

Rule 8: Turn your opponents' attacks into your strengths. If the President portrays you as a flip-flopper, portray him as a black and white thinker whose inability to see complexity and to recognize data that don't fit his prior beliefs (e.g., about weapons of mass destruction) is dangerous in a dangerous world.

Rule 9: What wins elections are people's feelings toward the candidates. In an era of cable television, what people will remember most about a candidate are his one-liners. Every speech should have two or three memorable moments--including well-delivered jokes--that voters will see over and over.

Rule 10: Take a page from the Republicans' book on talking points and spokespeople. When people hear the same words over and over (e.g., "The most liberal member of the U.S. Senate," "flip-flopper," etc.), they form strong associations between those words and the candidate that are hard to break. And when you put spokespeople on television, you need to attend as much to their affability and nonverbal skills as their substance. If they can't make the average working class male smile, laugh or get angry, they need to be behind the scenes.

Westen is director of clinical psychology at Emory University and holds a joint appointment as a professor in the departments of psychology, and psychiatry and behavioral science. He can provide a psychological analysis of political issues, including the psychology of voter behavior and the influence of non-verbal communication on their decision-making. Reach Westen at 404-727-7407 (w), 404-375-6639 (cell) or dwesten@emory.edu.

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