I watched the 10 top political videos on BBC and asked myself the question: which one could potentially change my behavior? If I could vote, which video did the best job in tipping me more in favor of one candidate over the other?
My favorite is Yes We Can by rapper will.i.am of Black-Eyed Peas. The music video was inspired by a speech Barack Obama gave after the New Hampshire primary. It had more than 11.2 million hits in one YouTube link. In another, it showed 5.8 million hits.
I liked it best and by a wide margin because the music video appealed to some deep-seated region of my brain that is governed not by thinking but by feeling, in the Myers-Briggs sense of the term. To judge situations and arrive at decisions, people either use the thinking or feeling functions, and “those who prefer feeling tend to come to decisions by associating or empathizing with the situation, looking at it ‘from the inside’ and weighing the situation to achieve, on balance, the greatest harmony, consensus and fit, considering the needs of the people involved.”
The music video appealed to me because it validated my penchant for acting based on gut feeling. According to Ap Diksterhuis, a Dutch psychologist, thorough and conscious deliberation does not always produce the best choice. Although simple choices (such as from among different cafeteria items) can lead to better results after some conscious thought, choices in complex matters—such as electing a President—should be made through “deliberation-without-attention” and left to unconscious thought.
Marc Ambinder was really saying these same things when he wrote that “…debates aren’t usually won on points. They’re won on valence and visuals. Emotions and body language.”
