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If you wonder about the connection between religion, politics, and persuasion, read the story published by the Washington post about Barack Obama.
“Obama rumors fly in Flag City USA,” by Eli Saslow, Washington Post, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25447998/
The story is not really about Barack Obama, but about persuasion. How do you believe what you believe? Why do you believe what you believe? How do you decide what is true and what is false when you are confronted with radically different claims about the same person?
The central figure of the story is Jim Peterman, who lives in Findlay, Ohio, and doesn’t know what to believe about Barack Obama.
The reason for his confusion is that the news he hears about Barack Obama in the news conflicts with the stories he hears from people he has known for a long time.
The news media say that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii and is Christian. The local stories say that he was born in Africa and is a radical Muslim. And just to make the stories juicier, the stories also suggest that Obama might also be gay.
This story demonstrates the power of what is called “social proof.” It is similar to the old story of the emperor and his new clothes. If “everyone” says it, it must be so. You can be persuaded to believe something contrary to what you see with your own eyes.
“I’ll admit that I probably don’t follow all of the election news like maybe I should,” Peterman said. “I haven’t read his books or studied up more than a little bit. But it’s hard to ignore what you hear when everybody you know is saying it. These are good people, smart people, so can they really all be wrong?”
This story also demonstrates the power of “urban legends.” Urban legends usually have some truth to them, but turn false as they get embellished and told and retold. When urban legends take hold on the internet, they become impossible to kill.
And so Jim Peterman, a man who wants to vote responsibly, is confused by the conflicting stories and is not sure whether he ought to vote or not, because he doesn’t know whom or what to believe. Confused people don’t act. This is another way of saying that Jim Peterman is considering surrendering his power to vote, because he doesn’t know who is telling the truth.
“I don’t know. The whole thing just scares me,” Peterman said. “I’m almost starting to feel like the best choice is not voting at all.”
This is a story worth studying because this is how persuasion and manipulation work. If you have enough people repeating the same story, and if the people who tell the story are people you know and trust, you can be persuaded to deny what you see in front of you.
Jim Peterman is right. It is scary. The real point of this story is not Barack Obama, but all of the rest of us. How do we separate truth from lies, real facts from urban legends? How do you know when you are being manipulated by lies? How do you recognize the truth? How often do we surrender our power to act because we don’t know whom or what to believe?
Dr. Kalinda Rose Stevenson
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