Leading Emotional Response Polling Used to Predict Candidate Viability

GAINESVILLE, FL — October 2, 2007 — More voters feel that former New York City Mayor Rudolph Guiliani is the “hottest” presidential candidate, according to a new type of non-verbal poll conducted by the leading company for predicting consumer behavior based on “Emotional Temperature.” Only Guiliani, Sen. Hilary Clinton and Sen. Barak Obama arouse enough visceral excitement in voters to sustain them through the long primary process, concludes the SenseUS™ poll conducted by AdSAM® and Itracks, conducted September 15-21, 2007.
“Our poll correctly shows how intensely voters feel about each candidate, both positively and negatively,” said Jon Morris, PhD, president of AdSAM® and professor of advertising at the University of Florida. “Guiliani leads all candidates in terms of Emotional Strength, which is most important now to the GOP as only 31% of Republican voters are enthusiastic or excited about their party”
Proven Method for Disproving Conventional Wisdom
The viability of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is called into question by the poll. Although he performs strongly in many traditional preference polls, 56% of Republicans feel “ambivalent” or “uninterested/unexcited” about him.
“To sustain a long campaign, a candidate must inspire strong feelings in voters,” Morris said. “In addition to Guiliani, Obama and Clinton, the only other candidates to register positive Emotional Temperature were Sen. John McCain and former senators Fred Thompson and John Edwards.”
The SenseUs™ candidate poll used the same AdSAM® methodology the company employed in 2006 to prove that ads that use sexy models in national women’s magazines are not compelling or effective at motivating female readers to buy. To measure the Emotional Response the participants were asked “How does (name of each candidate)make you feel? . The participants were then shown three rows of manikins – an icon-like figure - that represented their emotional reaction. Then they were asked to select one on each row. The first group of manikins represented pleasure, the second arousal or engagement, and the third control or dominance.
What Most Polls Miss
According to Dr. Morris, most polls focus heavily on rationale measures, which only reveal half the story, as every human response is a combination of rational and emotional processing. Previously, the AdSAM® method has been used in over 600 proprietary studies worldwide and incorporated into research of many FORTUNE 500 companies.
About AdSAM®:
AdSAM® specializes in Emotional Response measurement. The cross cultural technique has been used in over 26 countries in communications, marketing and other research.

About Itracks:
Itracks is a leading provider of data collection for market research. Information on the company and industry trend summaries are at http://www.itracks.com and http://www.itracksnews.com.
Media Contact:
For a copy of the Executive Summary of the SenseUs poll please contact Conrad Morris at (800) 563-8654 or email conradmorris@adsam.com

in the absence of training to allow reason to rule, that the emotions tend to dominate

And really his research wasn’t on all emotions, but specifically on fear. It has to do with the pathway from afferent stimuli reaching the brain and routing through the amygdala; once the fear pathway is initiated it is difficult to extinguish it (and for some people, the wiring makes it exceptionally difficult, which is his thesis for a basis for anxiety disorders).

An example would be seeing a snake and having a visceral fear reaction almost before you are cognitively aware that you saw anything at all; and then your brain processes the visual image further and realizes it’s really only a stick. You understand that at the cognitive level but the primitive part of your brain has already set off the physiological reactions of fear so your heart continues to race for a few moments.

In other words, it does take a conscious effort to override the fear and to some extent, the imprint of it is still there even when you “know better”. So I’m not suggesting that the hardwiring means that we can’t be trained, as you say, to override the emotional brain. From the way you initially stated it though, I inferred that you meant that the dominant emotional reaction itself had been trained into us, when really it would be more a matter of lack of training on how to allow our cognitive brains to dominate.

As I noted in my own post on this subject, we have been trained since babyhood to give our emotions free rein and put reason into the back seat.

Actually we’re hard wired that way. When emotions are triggered, it’s very hard for the cognitive part of our brains to override them. Joseph LeDoux is a neuroscientist who studied this; his book The Emotional Brain is a pretty good read.

State of the Natio

Actually that’s So Goes The Nation. with the 04 election movie title.

Really stellar stuff.

No, its real point is to persuade us that:

a) All Republican victories of recent times have been due to their better manipulation of cheap emotional appeals, and the Democrats’ “too-good”-ness to follow the GOP into this gutter.

b) In future elections, Democrats will start to imitate the GOP’s cheap emotional appeals and will go into the gutter when necessary, and if anybody has a problem with it, remember, the Republicans started it, and Democrats only took it up when they were left with no choice to remain competitive.

c) However, despite the gutter attacks to be expected from Democrats, it’s okay because Democrats stand for rationality, while Republicans have cheap emotional appeals and nothing else.

I think it’s those themes that insult readers’ intelligence. I’m surprised that, as a moderate site, you aren’t more sensitive to this kind of sophistry. As someone else implied in a comment before mine, all politics involves a mix of appeals to emotion and appeals to reason — and always has, since pre-history.

Republicans didn’t invent dirty politics, and Democrats hardly have clean hands. The fact that this writer pretends there is this clear moral divide between the two parties makes him a disingenous partisan with a low opinion of his readers, not someone who should be taken seriously.

As I noted in my own post on this subject, we have been trained since babyhood to give our emotions free rein and put reason into the back seat. Politicians and marketers of all stripes recognize this and cultivate it.