by John Anderson

Created on: October 23, 2008

True, negative ads have worked in the past, but I believe there is evidence that they are beginning to fail and even to backfire. Both presidential campaigns have had to pull back their attacks in the past couple of weeks. When it crosses an invisible threshold, it generates sympathy for the victim. Now, why would that be? In 1949, a Harvard research study demonstrated that we have a strong tendency to actually "see" what we already believe.

In that study, playing cards were flashed in front of students for a fraction of a second. They were asked to identify what they had seen as quickly as possible. After a while, some of the cards presented were the wrong color, such as a red 3 of spades. The students took 4 times longer to identify the cards, but they did not notice the switched color.

When we make snap decisions, we use a snap decision mechanism that is designed to act without thinking too long. It happens that this type of thinking is easy to manipulate into making fear based decisions. For almost a hundred years, this weakness has been studied and turned into a series of very lucrative industries. Negative campaign ads are hardly different in concept from a hair care product that shows how much more popular you will be after using it.

Now, here's how the situation will change. There is another kind of thinking that takes place in a deeper part of a human being. It is the part that conceived of America's system and fascinated our forefathers and foremothers to come and take part in this profound experiment. It knows that America wouldn't be what it is without the whole tapestry of views and values that every culture on earth has brought to our shores. It knows that Republicans and Democrats want exactly the same thing, a safe and happy life for their family. They just have different ideas of how to get that and our deeper thinking part knows that we need all those opinions in the mix to come up with the innovations our world needs now.

Why do negative campaign ads work as well as they do? Because we have been trained to believe we are the snap decision thinking capacity. But we are not that and I think that's what Eckhart Tolle has been saying, that we are waking up to realize we are something deeper. I predict that we are getting fed up with the habit. If Obama is indeed elected, I for one, hope and pray that he actually incorporates some Republicans and any other Type into our government, based on the quality of the person only, and let us see what happens if we listen respectfully to people with very different opinions from our own.

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