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Originally Posted by ZenGum
(Post 833298)
The following is taken from a politician's brain-log:
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Audience member: blah blah blah keyword blah blah blah?
Politican: Oh, keyword? Paraphrase blahblah question into scripted easy question, regurgitate party talking point vaguely related to keyword.
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It's barely worth the time to listen, certainly not fifty grand. But we know that kind of money is buying something, and it isn't dinner.
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So true, and that is how it gets done. To the degree that I can detect it, I find it frustrating and informative. I know some stuff, and if I know enough about a subject to ask an informed question, I can probably tell if the answer I'm given is on target, an answer that expands my understanding. I can also probably tell if the answer is nothing like that, from which I can deduce that the speaker won't or can't tackle the subject.
Sometimes it's just a weak answer, fluff or handwaving, not real substance.
I say probably, because as this article discusses, "The Pivot" can be subtle.
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If you have watched a debate, you have watched a pivot. "The pivot is a way of taking a question that might be on a specific subject, and moving to answer it on your own terms," O'Donnell says.
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Todd Rogers, a behavioral psychologist at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, got interested in looking at pivots, or dodges, or whatever you want to call them, after watching the 2004 Bush-Kerry debate I quoted earlier.
To him, the dodging on both sides of that debate was enraging, and he couldn't understand why others didn't feel the same.
To figure it out, he decided to do a study that tried to replicate what typical viewers see when they watch a debate.
He recorded a moderator asking candidates a series of questions.
In the first question, the moderator asked the candidates about health care in America, and the politician answered with a health care answer — a long disquisition on why Americans could not afford the care they needed.
Rogers then took that answer and used it as a response to a totally different moderator question, this one about the problem of illegal drug use. So one set of people saw a candidate answering a health care question with a health care answer, while another group saw an illegal-drug use question answered with a health care answer. Essentially, the second group saw a relatively subtle pivot, from drug use question to health care answer.
Finally, he had a third group view the moderator asking a question about terrorism, which was answered again with the exact same health care answer — a much more blatant shift.
At the end of this he asked the different groups two things:
Can you remember what question the person was asked?
How honest, likable and trustworthy is this person?
'Exploiting Our Cognitive Limitation'
What he found was that when a politician answered the health care question with a health care answer, viewers could recall the question and thought the candidate was likable, honest and trustworthy.
When the politician pivoted a little bit and answered the illegal drug question with a health care answer, viewers could not recall the question — but they didn't penalize the politician at all. "Listeners thought he was just as honest, trustworthy and likable as the guy who actually answered the question," Rogers says.
It was only when the politician answered the terrorism question with a health care answer that people could actually tell. "Everyone noticed, and they thought he was a jerk," Rogers says.
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"Politicians," he says, "are exploiting our cognitive limitation without punishment."
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