Rules: Use Emotion & Set The Agenda

Some of the quotes in this Washington Post article are very consistent with my book, Teaching Elephants to Talk (political candidates should use emotion to sell their message -- and set the agenda). Here are some of the best quotes from the article:

George E. Marcus, president of the International Society of Political Psychology, said modern research confirms that unless political ads evoke emotional responses, they don't have much effect. Voters, he explained, need to be emotionally primed in some way before they will pay attention.

... It is comparatively difficult to persuade anyone to change their mind on an issue. What works much better, because it influences people at an emotional and subtle level, is to get people to focus on a different issue -- the one where the candidate is the strongest.

"The agenda-setting effect is what we are talking about," said Nicholas A. Valentino, a political psychologist at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. "The ability of a candidate not to tell people how to feel about an issue, but which issue they should focus on -- that is the struggle of most modern campaign managers."