Framing the Debate

This week I chose to talk about framing as it relates to the upcoming Presidential debates and election. It has always stuck me, how President Trump has consistently maintained his base of supporters regardless of absurd comments and non-conformity to conservative values and beliefs. After reading Lakoff (2009) we understand the importance of playing to the unconscious emotional triggers of one’s constituents. He does this in many ways.

First, he breaks down an argument that is easily digestible in a cognitive context, he is good, they are bad – he is right, they are wrong. He does this in a manner that doesn’t necessarily even touch on policy initiatives. Lakoff (2009) states that framing, by necessity, oversimplify reality. They will take away your guns – The police will not respond to your emergency. The details of the framing tend to fall outside the application of System 2 thinking (Kahneman, 2011).

The success of his political strategy comes from what Lakoff (2009) calls the strict father figure narrative which implies direct social responsibility as opposed to the left’s more nurturant parent narrative – where we all work as community.

I would say President Trump's messaging is a good example of a central route of persuasion (Petty & Cacioppo, 1994) through what Gardner (2004) would call the resonance factor of appealing to the cognitive aspects of the human mind.

The coming Presidential Debate

The coming Presidential debate is one area where I believe there is an error in the use of framing by the Trump Administration. The Trump Administration have set the narrative as former Vice President as a bumbling idiot that can not put together a coherent sentence. One would think this is an inefficient way of setting one’s reference point as to the potential outcomes of the debate (Kahneman, 2011).

This is a dangerous strategy as it sets the reference point far too low for Mr. Biden and sets it too high for President Trump.

There are many friends that I speak with that are expecting Mr. Biden to be drooling on himself and walk off stage mid-way through the debate for being completely and utterly out-witted by his opponent. I personally do not believe this will be the case. The fact is that the reference point has been set so low that Mr. Biden only has to do a mediocre performance and still exceed expectations.

Equally detrimental to the Trump Administration is the narrative that President Trump will easily out-wit his opponent. He has set that bar too high and, in my opinion, will most likely not dominate the debate as expected. A mediocre performance on his part will likely be a disappointment.

Because he is the incumbent, he has something that he can lose so a victory may be more important cognitively due to endowment effect and loss-aversion (Kahneman, 2011). Given these biases of loss and improper framing of the coming debate, I believe this was a misstep on behalf of this campaign team.

Thanks for listening.

Joseph S. Kalinowski, CFA

Gardner, H. (2004). The contents of the mind. Changing minds (pp. 1-22). Boston: Harvard Business School Press

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Lakoff, G. (2009). The Political Mind: A Cognitive Scientist's Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics. New York, NY: Penguin Books

Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1994). The effects of involvement responses to argument quantity and quality: Central and peripheral routes to persuasion. In T. F. Pettijohn (Ed.) Sources: Notable selections in social psychology (pp. 121 - 128). Guilford, CT: The Dushkin Publishing Group.