By Santhosh Babu

Campaigning for Saturdays Delhi assembly elections ended on Thursday. This time, due to nationwide protests and rallies related to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, the polls can be crucial to study how voters respond to the campaigns.

In the 2015 film, Our Brand is Crisis, a fictionalised account of how political campaign experts influenced the 2002 Bolivian presidential elections, the oppositions political strategist says, You know, when Adlai Stevenson was running for president, a woman came up to him on a rally one night and said, Every thinking person will be voting for you. Stevenson said Ma'am, thats not enough. I need a majority.

In other words, the thinking people may not be enough to make a majority. Then who are the majority? If the majority is not using its thinking skills, what are these people using to choose whom to give their vote?

Let us look at the campaigns and strategies of the three political parties during the Delhi elections from a behavioural science perspective. To analyse the impact of the campaigns of BJP, Congress and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), one needs to examine three parts of the human brain. These three parts are not, of course, independent entities and there is some overlap and a collective way of functioning.

1. The Reptilian Brain: Humans share this with birds and reptiles. This part of the brain is in control of our innate and automatic self-preserving behaviour patterns, which ensure our survival and that of our species. Instincts of feeding, fighting, feeling and reproduction are influenced and controlled by this brain. So, defending territory, flight and fight responses, and aggression are based in this part of the brain, sometimes called the unconscious brain.

BJP campaigns are usually designed more to appeal to this part of the brain. Protecting territory, aggression, self-preservation, and safety from perceived enemies become the most predominate messages in the campaign. BJP is not alone in this strategy. Donald Trumps presidential election campaigns leading up to his victory in January 2017 also focused on this part of the human brain. National security, safety from other religions and cultures not similar to ones own, and a stark either a friend or an enemy attitude appeal very well to a reptilian brain.

2. The Emotional Brain: While self-preservation and aggression in the reptilian brain can create powerful emotions, the centre of emotions resides in the mammalian brain that humans share with other mammals. For instance, While rationally people know smoking is injurious to health, the positive feelings we associate with smoking most often overcome our rational thoughts.

Many reptilian brain focus areas like self-preservation, fighting and reproduction are also related to strong emotional experiences. An easy way to differentiate them is to look at sex for lust or reproduction, and sex as an emotionally bonding activity. The first could be closer to the primitive reptilian brain; the second closer to the emotional one. The Congress campaign on TV has tried to create a positive emotion about Delhi, connecting it to the party.

3. The New Brain (Neocortex): This part of the brain is responsible for abstract and rational thought, foresight, hindsight, insight, reasoning, decision-making and logical problem-solving.

So, in an easy (although oversimplified) way, we could say the reptilian brain is our primitive, instinctive brain, the mammalian one is our emotional brain, and the neocortical one is our logical brain. AAPs claims about focus on health and education, and its appeal to votes based on the work the government and party have done is an appeal to the new brain.

In his 2011 book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, 2002 economics Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman writes that fast thinking often relies on prior experiences to make decisions. Fast thinking relies on the limbic system -- the emotional part of the brain, and to the reptilian brain that works with stimulus and response.

On the other hand, slow thinking takes place in the neocortex, the rational part of the brain. Slow thinking is hard work and takes a lot of brain energy. But this process is what allows us to solve complex problems.

So, which part of the brain is likely to be most effective in Delhis election campaigns? The advertising fraternity will say that addressing the reptilian and emotional brain is most effective. As the quote from Our Brand is Crisis has it, in elections, every thinking person voting for you is not enough. You need a majority to win, something that BJP has been most aware in previous elections.

The writer is CEO OrgLens, a social network mapping company

See more here:
Delhi elections: Which campaign brain will win? - Economic Times