This is the text of an op-ed piece published by the Wisconsin State Journal on May 16 (and can be found at this link: https://bit.ly/2Th4Mfb).
The opinions expressed are those of the author and not of any professional institution with which she is affiliated.
Winning elections in Wisconsin these days takes far more than persuading people to vote for a platform that polls indicate a majority already endorses anyway. In an era of extreme partisanship, winning elections also relies on learning two lessons from social psychology. One lesson is to enhance voters’ feelings of intelligence and relevance by allowing them to define the conversation. About anything. The second lesson is to take control of the communication of social norms.
President Trump has learned the first lesson and brought it to Wisconsin. He has been successful at establishing a base among previously neglected voters because he appears to take an interest in their expertise and in engaging in conversation on their terms. That makes them feel good, and it is a nonpartisan fact that people like to feel good about themselves. In contrast, when speaking to these same voters, Democrats often appear to conspire to make them feel stupid. Democrats do this by controlling the conversation so that it remains solidly on their own turf.
In a classic study, Lee Ross, a social psychologist at Stanford University, and his colleagues brought experimental participants into the laboratory in pairs. One participant was randomly assigned to generate general knowledge questions and pose them to the second participant. The questioners were free to write esoteric questions based on their own knowledge.
Unsurprisingly the answerers struggled to respond correctly. Does that mean the questioners were smarter than the answerers? Of course not. However, the researchers found that both the questioners and answerers rated the questioners as more intelligent.
The first lesson from social psychology is that by controlling the conversation topic, you can make people feel intelligent and relevant because you provide them the opportunity to shine in their own area of expertise. Or you can make them feel stupid and irrelevant because you keep the conversation on your area of expertise. Telling people that they are voting against their own best interests, for example, denies them expertise even in their own lives. Use of the former strategy wins votes.
The second lesson is about social norms. Descriptive social norms are defined as what most people in a society are doing, believing and valuing. Perceptions of social norms strongly influence people’s behavior; people like to think and do what most other people around them are thinking and doing.
Over the past decade, the Republican party has controlled perceptions of political norms in Wisconsin. Their use of billboards and advertising deftly manipulates the perception of “most people’s” political leanings in the state. Strategic use of generalizations such as Northern Wisconsin’s being a “Republican stronghold” denies Bayfield, Douglas and Ashland counties their recent voting records entirely. And to great effect.
Gerrymandering influences perceived norms because people use simple logic to draw conclusions. The legislature has a Republican majority, so most Wisconsinites must vote Republican, right? Wrong. In 2018 Democratic candidates received more votes than Republicans in Wisconsin’s U.S. House and state Assembly races. But Republicans won five of the eight U.S. House seats and 64 of the 99 state Assembly seats.
Democrats have been less energetic at taking control of the narrative about political norms in the state. Wisconsin has progressive roots, a strong relationship to public education and a concern for small business and agriculture. Documenting and communicating Wisconsinites’ beliefs about education, guns, natural resources, immigration and health care would go some way in correcting perceptions that have been constructed on the basis of ideology (often by the national GOP) rather than democracy.
But scolding won’t work. The average Wisconsinite is intelligent and expert in some domain. Empiricists by nature, the people of this state are able to understand honest information about social norms. When they learn that most people think as they do, democracy will prevail.