Part 2 of the series: Propaganda for Beginners. Part 1 available here.
(Editorial note: This article appeared first in German on NachDenkSeiten)
More than ten years ago, I watched a lecture by the American neurologist Dan Gilbert on the neuropsychological aspects of climate change communication (“Our brain on climate change”, as part of the series “Harvard Thinks Big” from 2010). It is worth watching, a very entertaining and interesting lecture. Dan Gilbert explains, using neuropsychological insights, why climate change is not taken seriously enough by most people and why too few countermeasures are taken. In my opinion, climate change communication has evolved since then, as have debates over its politicization, and it seems that some of his insights have been taken into account.
However, I recently remembered something about his lecture in a different context and it made me think about how what he says there about neuropsychology also explains a lot about the way propaganda, and in particular war propaganda, works. By war propaganda, I mean both propaganda during times of war and communication intended to motivate the public, the vast majority of whom are always against a war, to support another country’s war or to join a war.
Hereinafter, I will present the basic aspects of Dan Gilbert’s lecture and show parallels to the techniques of war propaganda. Dan Gilbert begins his lecture by pointing out that our brain is very good at perceiving and responding to threats. This is only natural from an evolutionary biology perspective, as it ensured our survival. Everyone knows the effect that our attention is much less occupied with the ten compliments we received in an evening, than with a single personal criticism. He goes on to explain that we do not react equally strongly to all threats. People react particularly strongly to threats that have the following four characteristics:
- Intentional
- Immoral
- Imminent
- Instantaneous
Threats that have these four characteristics particularly strongly activate our archaic alarm system and also trigger clear impulses to act. As Gilbert further explains in his lecture, climate change as a topic does not possess any of these characteristics.
- Intentional: Threats that are intentional have such a strong impact on our psychology and on how we react because entire areas of our brain are designed to perceive and understand how other people think, feel, what they strive for, and what they intend in regards to us. Other humans have always been one of the greatest dangers to a human being’s safety and survival. Therefore, we perceive any danger that comes from humans as greater and more threatening than, for example, one that arises from nature. If it is also intentional and the intent to harm us is predominant, this grabs our attention the most and leads to the strongest reaction. It works like an optical illusion of the brain: A danger to us, behind which we suspect intent, seems much more threatening and dangerous than one that has natural causes or occurs unintentionally, as a side effect. Gilbert gives the example that people are more afraid of the “Underwear Bomber” (a young Nigerian suicide bomber who unsuccessfully tried to detonate a bomb hidden in his underwear on a US passenger plane in 2009), who caused zero deaths, than of the flu, which claims about 40,000 deaths annually. The lecture obviously dates from before the Covid crisis and its accompanying communication, as the communication surrounding the pandemic actually “succeeded” in making a disease be perceived as similarly threatening as a terrorist attack. What we can take away from this: This fact, namely that intentional threats trigger a stronger fear reaction in people than natural or unintentional threats, is also known to communication strategists. This means that whenever a strong reaction to an act is to be provoked, the malicious intent behind it is particularly emphasized, and whenever a minimal reaction is desired, any possible malicious human intent is hidden or disguised. Current examples of this can be found daily in our newspapers, news, and statements from politicians, for example in the context of the Ukraine war or the conflict in Gaza. Thus, reports of terrible human rights violations or war crimes are either described as deliberate, systematically planned, perfidiously used, or as accidental, unintended consequences, in passive form (without naming perpetrators) or even without verbs, described as events or natural disasters, depending on which side our media and politicians is currently supporting.
- Immoral (violating moral norms) Adjacent to the first point, there is a second characteristic of threats to which we react particularly strongly. And that is when the threat involves a violation of our moral or ethical rules or convictions. We react particularly strongly to threats that have a sexual connotation or involve the violation or threat to children. This is, of course, not to downplay the horror of sexual crimes, rapes, or the injury or even killing of children in conflicts, but it is nevertheless interesting how strongly the focus is placed on, for example, rape accusations or child abuse against geopolitical opponents in the media and communication, as communication strategists who consciously use these reports for propaganda purposes know exactly how strong and emotional the reaction will be (keyword: atrocity propaganda). Especially when it comes to motivating a population to go to war or adopt a warlike stance, this aspect is gladly used. The emotional reaction not only amplifies the impact, so that the actual or supposed threat receives a lot of attention; it also has the “advantage” from the propagandists’ point of view, that the strong emotionality triggered temporarily by these accusations or depictions largely switches off our critical thinking and reflection ability, so that this information is not critically questioned and examined for plausibility. Such news and images also lead to a strong emotionalization of the discourse overall, which prevents critical voices from being heard that could question the accusations. This prevents an analytical discourse in which the credibility of these accusations could be clarified and, in the case of actual crimes, effective and meaningful countermeasures could be taken. We remember the – retrospectively unprovable – allegations that soldiers of the Libyan army under Muammar al-Gaddafi were given Viagra to prepare them for systematic rapes against opponents (see above 1. Intentional), which found wide dissemination especially in the especially Western public and played an important role in morally justifying the US attack on Libya in 2011. Or the story about Iraqi soldiers who allegedly threw babies out of incubators in Kuwait, which also contributed significantly to garnering support for the attack on Iraq in the US and Europe and which turned out to be fabricated in hindsight.
- Imminent: Our brains are also particularly geared towards responding to imminent threats. Dan Gilbert therefore calls our brain a “get out of the way” machine, which allows us to dodge a baseball, for example, in milliseconds. Only a small part of our brain is designed for planning and preparing for the future, but a large and archaic part is responsible for dangers that threaten us right now and immediately. What is a problem, for example, with organizing a pension plan, preventive medical check-ups, or climate change, can also be used for propaganda purposes, by portraying any danger that one wants to present as particularly threatening as imminent. An example can be the fear, strongly addressed by Donald Trump and currently very relevant again, in the USA of being overrun by migrants crossing the border from Mexico (we remember his slogan “Build the Wall!”). This is not to say that there couldn’t actually be a danger from or a loss of control by state authorities over the extent of immigration, but it’s about the fact that people who have an interest in arousing particularly great fear or strong reactions portray the danger posed by these migrants as imminent. They will therefore not say that the high number of migrants or immigrants can become a long-term problem for the social system or endanger the cultural cohesion of the country, but describe an imminently threatening situation and thus appeal to archaic fears: “The hordes are at our walls and threaten to flood our country.” The same applies to war propaganda or propaganda motivating for war with threat scenarios about the enemy who is about to attack or invade (e.g., “the Russians are coming”).
- Instantaneous: Our brains react very sensitively to change. The speed of change is crucial here. If a change happens slowly enough and in small steps, we hardly notice it and it rarely triggers impulses to act. In the context of slow or gradual change in small steps, we accept changes that we would never accept with an abrupt switch. This had been a problem with climate change communication for a long time, as the changes occurred so gradually and incrementally that people could get used to them bit by bit (at least those of us in the global North, where the impacts were much less pronounced and hit us less hard than in the global South). However, this is also an important neuropsychological insight that can be used to manipulate the population. Any change known to meet great resistance is therefore either implemented in the context of a shock-and-awe tactic shortly after an emotional and traumatic shock event (see my article on the Primacy Effect), or step by step, constantly pushing the boundaries of what is socially acceptable, then waiting until this step is accepted as a “new normal,” to then take the next step (keyword: salami tactic). Often these methods are also combined, by using a shock event to give the starting signal for a big change (keyword: turning point), and then proceeding in small steps. Current examples are the arms deliveries to Ukraine by Germany, which started with helmets and has now reached long-range rocket systems) or the gradual increase in power of the European Commission in relation to foreign policy.
Conclusion
Our brain has since ancient times been incredibly well adapted to protect us from dangers posed by attackers who mean us harm, threaten our social cohesion, and violate our social rules, especially if this danger is imminent and causes massive change. When we are confronted with such threats, we react just as our ancestors would have, with fight or flight, with an immediate activation of all our attention and power. This is a problem with threats that do not have these characteristics but can become just as dangerous to us. Dan Gilbert jokingly says in his lecture that we would react very differently to the climate change topic if it were a threat from “bad men with worse moustaches” and shows pictures of Hitler, Stalin, and Saddam Hussein. However, there is also the danger that we can be manipulated when these particular triggers are exploited by communication strategists to provoke particularly strong reactions from us or to lull us into inaction. So stay vigilant, especially in times of war and conflict or in matters of war involvement, when these four aspects are particularly emphasized repeatedly and try to breathe through your first emotional reaction and then, when you have calmed down, use your critical thinking to assess whole situation calmly and react prudently.
(Featured Image: “Protests Against War in Ukraine 059 – Three Tyrants Stalin Putin Hitler 2” by Amaury Laporte is licensed under CC BY 2.0.)
