Campaigning for Hearts and Minds: The Case for Emotional Appeals
If you read my post: Top 50 books for Political Operatives, you can probably tell that I take my political reading seriously. I recently stumbled upon an interesting new book that examines, one of my favorite topics, the use of emotional appeal in political advertising.
The book, titled, Campaigning for Hearts and Minds: How Emotional Appeals in Political Ads Work (Click here), is a must read for anyone interested in political media communications and advertising.
Author, TED BRADER, provides an in-depth analysis of varying political advertising strategies, with specific attention to non verbal cues, an aspect of political media rarely touched by others in academia. Â He references and discusses well-known and obscure political advertising campaign tactics, which played an important role in recent and historical elections.
In his thorough examination, Brader makes a strong argument; that carefully crafted audio and visual elements used in political advertising effectively create an emotional appeal which has an intrinsic dramatic effect on viewer/voting audiences.
In 2006, I wrote a piece for Politics Magazine(aka Campaigns & Elections), which I similarly argued that emotional appeals are the strongest form of political communications and advertising.
While my piece dealt more specifically with the use of images and symbolism related to September 11th in political advertising, I held that content and techniques used to create emotion is critical for maximizing moving voter opinion and creating action.
Here’s some relevant highlights from my piece:
Provoking emotion is one of the most important aspects to any political activity.Â
Successful campaigns usually create a situation or series of situations that draw emotion from audiences – constituents or voters. Emotional connections made in speeches, press releases, direct mail pieces or television spots are fundamental to controlling the message and the issues in an election.
Emotional appeals almost always trump rational appeals when attempting to gain political support or create negative views about an opponent. Voters are more apt to create positive or negative feelings about an issue or candidate through emotions and sentiments rather than rational or logical arguments.
Campaigning for Hearts and Minds goes into much greater depth in making this argument.
Below, I’ve included a few well crafted reviews, by other readers as posted on Amazon:
Ted Brader’s “Campaigning for Hearts and Minds: How Emotional Appeals in Political Ads Work” drives yet another nail into the coffin of academic wisdom that voters are either rational decision-makers or complacent habit-following creatures by providing compelling evidence for the role of emotions in political campaigns…Â In sum, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in learning how emotions influence politics by substantially advancing our understanding of how emotions drive our political thoughts, decisions, and actions. (Patrick A. Stewart)
The general audience may find the statistical discussion somewhat slow going, but this is not a turgidly written academic tome. At the same time, it is a solid academic work. His takeoff point (page 2): “. . .the motivational and persuasive power of campaign advertising depends considerably on whether an ad appeals to fear or enthusiasm.” He contends that emotional appeals built into campaign ads makes them more effective–the mixture of a political message plus emotion can be powerful if crafted well….The book is also worth looking at because of its notice of the relevance of psychology and the neurosciences for understanding why emotional elements in political ads can have such an effect. This demonstrates powerfully the importance of cross-disciplinary research.
