| One of the earliest demostration of the idea that emotion is connected to "facts" is the story of Archimedes in the bathtub expressing his emotion over discovering the principle of displacement volume, the volume of the king's irregularly shaped crown being equal the volume of water it displaced, the realization of which supposedly sending Archimedes into the streets yelling "Eureka, eureka!"
More subtle is the registration of a fact like the racial identity of a perp into the pre-existing matrix of prejudice one might be carrying around. Upon finding that the murderers were Italian (and confirming the suspicion that more Italians mean more crime ... or certainly less rigor in the public morality) Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted and executed.
"Loaded words" are words that carry around an connotation that is sure to evoke an emotional response. Thus the word "ho" no longer is an innocent part of the Santa Claus tradition, but a reference to the underclass of American Black women whose sexuality is suspect among poorly educated and sexually active Black men. But a word like "welfare" can also be loaded with connotations, depending on the context and the intent of the user. Similarly the word "liberal" has been used as a term of derision by association with unsuccessful social programs.
There are many levels of understanding the emotional content of factual information. When Hillary accused Barack of being naive about signaling his intent to speak with foreign leaders whose ambitions and policies seem to be counter to our own, she played on Obama's lack of experience in foreign affairs, harkening back to the innocent statement someone made about NOT defending Korea, which many think led to the encouragement of North Korea to attack the South in 1950. The fact is that the President can talk to whomever he (or she wishes), and this fact was lost in the emotional content of Hillary's attack.
Hillary also attacked Barack on the idea that moving our troops into Pakistan uninvited to pursue Osama bin Ladin would be against American policy and law, not to mention international observance of sovereignty. Again she was playing on the emotional content of Obama's presumed naivete. The fact is, and it was brought out in the following day's news coverage on Countdown the U.S. Congress had already authorized the use of American troops in such a situation as a part of the authorization for the war in Afghanistan!
You see, the play of emotion against fact is more a matter of being on one's toes with factual responses that also appeal to common emotions. A good example of this is the use of the expression "Pro-Choice" against the expression "Pro-Life." Both slogans appeal to emotional content and the result is pretty much a draw in vacuo, but in a context where the "sanctity of life" is dominant, then the Pro-Life slogan wins, whereas when we are in a context of rights and liberties, the Pro-Choice slogan wins.
ABC News and some of the rightwing columnists are beginning to play with the so-called "facts" about human cognition with the end in mind of decreasing the respect that factual information should be given. It is a ploy to give themselves permission to be slanted and biased in their reporting, relying on the idea that everyone will take away something slightly different because of the wide range of emotional predispositions. You should believe only a fraction of what you read about emotion v. facts. I can assure you that functional MRI research has many decades of work to do before we have a firm grip on the mechanisms of ratiocinative behavior of our brains.
JB |
