hypnolibertarian

I was just watching (re-watching) Cabaret, and it struck me that this movie (and the show, if done well) is one of the best examples of changing frames that I know.  You are led into the cabaret, the affair between two young people, and all is happiness and laughter.  They all dance, they all sing, they all laugh at the MC.  He sings a song as he dances around with someone in a gorilla suit, saying “If only you could see her through my eyes,” as the audience laughs uproariously.  Then the last line: “If you could see her through my eyes, no one would know she is Jewish.”  Suddenly a delightful romp become racist from end to end.

Changing frames in this sudden way can be extremely effective, either in drama or in commercials.  I just posted on unconscious responses, and how patterns, or models (some people call them memes) are activated by what we see and hear.  I’ve already spoken of the AT&T commercial.  This is another way of looking at what they do there: they set you up with a frame from a horror show and suddenly change frames to make it rather silly.  The effect is a “clunk” and a change in how you think about what was presented.  It might not get you to buy their product, but it will make you think just a bit differently about AT&T’s cell phone service, which is what the commercial is intended to do.

Another from Cabaret: a handsome, even beautiful young man, blond hair, blue eyes, at a picnic starts to sing a song of optimism and hope: “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.”  Gradually the camera pulls away, and you see the young man is in a Nazi uniform.  As the camera pulls back farther, you see he is surrounded by other Nazis.  Then, in the last moments of the song, all of their right arms rise in the Nazi salute.  What was a beautiful moment has become terrifying, and that confusion is uncomfortable.

Changing frames is a good way to cause confusion, and sometimes to take one set of patterns and cross-connect them to something you want to sell.  I will talk about other aspects of changing frames later, but this one aspect of making a large change after you have set up a situation is often used to make those connections.  Another example is the Target commercials, back when they had the little dog as their mascot; a series of glamorous, beautiful scenes would suddenly resolve to the dog (who looked rather silly) and the Target logo.  This particular switch was not well thought out; it took the glamorous image they were trying to create and brought it down to the level of a cute, but ugly dog.  And that is why you don’t see it any more.  The results weren’t what they wanted.

A famous hypnotist, Milton Erickson, said, “All good inductions are based on confusion.”  Confusion is caused when something we don’t expect happens, or when something we do expect happens in a way to overload our normal conscious processing.

Confusion is  a very uncomfortable state for almost all of us.  Confusion in trance depends on the automatic and natural tendency to escape the confused state, even into trance.  Many commercials and political ads depend on confusion to get their message across.

An example is the recent Obama ad against McCain, attacking him on energy.  It starts with one of those pictures of McCain that shows him under stress.  It then lists the various mechanisms of alternative energy that it claims McCain has voted against.  As it does, the sound speeds up and the names flash faster and faster on the screen.  It becomes harder and harder to keep track, to read the words and hear what is said, especially as they both speed up more and more.  As a result, unless you read very quickly, and in fact even if you do, you become confused.  The squeal of the fast voice is annoying and incomprehensible.

Suddenly it all stops, and everything returns to normal.  We grab onto what follows like a life raft, as it tells us how McCain gives huge tax breaks to Big Oil — and we are so very, very ready to believe it because it gives us relief from the confusion.

None of this is clear from the ad —  it is just one more negative campaign ad.  But because it acts on our dislike of confusion and a knowledge of how to induce confusion, it is much more effective than a plain text ad claiming that McCain is a nasty fellow with respect to energy.

Watch for other ads that use confusion, fast images, uncomfortable sounds.  They are not rare at all.

Visual Rhythm

Note that knowing what is happening doesn’t keep the technique from working.  The images are still there.  But keeping track of yourself, and what you remember, and how it affects you will teach you much about how this kind of technique works.  So pay attention today, maybe for a few days.  What is the average image change speed?  Is it fairly consistent across commercials?  Can you determine two or three common speeds?  What do you think each one accomplishes?

Have you ever seen an interview with a celebrity or (especially) a politician where the answer to each question seemed to have no relationship whatever with the question that was asked?  This scene is endemic on the political scene, and is a game that reporters and politicians know well.

To an extent, this is an example of different frames; however, more specifically, it is an example of different outcomes.  The reporter wants to catch the politician in an embarrassing or newsworthy sound bite; the politician wants to get his message out to people and become more familiar as a figure to the public.  Therefore, the two often duel concerning their outcomes.  The reporter accuses the politician of dodging or not answering the question.  If the politician were being honest, his answer would be something like “D’UH!!!”  Instead he usually makes some tenuous connection between his answer and the question.

A wonderful example of changing outcomes is the history of the Iraq conflict.  At first, we were going in to protect ourselves from horrendous weapons that might be used, not just on our allies, but also on us.  Then we were in Iraq as part of a strategy in the overall Middle East (which is also a change of frame size; see the posting on frames).  Then we were there to help the Iraqi people who were under the heel of Saddam Hussein.  Now we are there because a too rapid withdrawal would leave the Iraqi people vulnerable to looting, deprivation, and civil war.

Whether you agree with our policy in Iraq or not, the pattern here is very clear; whenever the war grew too unpopular, there was a change of perceived outcome, and the Bush administration gained a bit of breathing space.  Those who were unalterably opposed rejected the outcome change; those who were unalterably in favor didn’t need it, but didn’t mind; however, those who were undecided or uncertain had another opportunity to support our troops and our government.

Changing outcomes, or goals, can be very subtle.  Watch for it in the campaign.  Can you identify where Obama has changed outcomes on some subjects?  How about McCain?  Did it help or hurt the candidate?

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st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } &lt;![endif]–> A familiar whine in politics is, “I was taken out of context!”  This complaint comes when some reporter believes that he or she has “caught out” the politician saying something that the public will not like, and often it is true.

In psychological areas, what “context” is in “out of context” is called a “frame”.   Frame is an entire set of assumptions, agreed presuppositions, and connotations assigned to words that are used during conversations.

We all share frames when we communicate.  Many arguments happen when the two speakers have mismatches between their frames.  Therapeutically, hypnotists and therapists manipulate the frames of their clients in order to produce beneficial change.

All of us are, to an extent, chameleons.  We change depending on the people around us.  Politicians do this more than others; it is important for voters to feel that a politician is “one of them.”  Thus, “out of context” is usually not just something as obvious and reprehensible as leaving out the “not” in a statement “I do not believe in flag burning.”  The frame is the entire situation.

If a politician, a candidate, or a business can control the frame of a discussion or subject, then he controls the vast majority of reactions to the subject.  Was the Exxon Valdez a simple accident, or the inevitable damage to the ecology from an oil based economy?

Frames of small groups differ from what might be called the “national frame.”  This is fodder for reporters; they take statements made in small groups and broadcast them in the more general national frame, with damaging results.  Suppose Obama had said, “The people in Pennsylvania have a hard life.  Their faith, their families, and their ability to feed themselves and protect themselves with their guns are what get them through.”  There would have been little controversy, except perhaps to the firearm statement.   Instead, in a frame shared by rich Democrats that don’t know the concerns of poor people in Pennsylvania, he spoke of “clinging” to religion and guns.

In the frame in which he was talking, the first statement would have seemed maudlin and emotional.  Obama used the language necessary to reach his audience.  However, that audience was a small one, and the statement in a national frame was offensive, to say the least.b

In later posts, we’ll discuss how frames can be changed, and how this can change the reaction of the public to various issues.  I’ll mention one now: when McCain talks about Iraq, he talks about the specific gains that have been met and the plight of specific people should the US pull out “too early.”  When Obama talks about Iraq, he talks about Afghanistan and North Korea and the necessity of meeting obligations there.  McCain wants the frame as small as possible, because he can point to specific results and specific dangers that people will react to.  Obama wants the frame as big as possible to point out just how small those gains are against our needs elsewhere.  Compare this to when casualties were higher: Bush did his best to expand the frame to the entire Middle East.

Control the frame and you control the thinking of the people around you.

One of the comments from my early posts (well, this is still an early post) asked about rhythm, influence (hypnosis), and the political process. Rhythm is amazingly hypnotic; we have all heard of the drums of voodoo priests and the rituals at places like Bali and the jungles of Jamaica.

The most common use of rhythm in political conventions is not to convert the uncertain, but to energize the converted. For this, rhythm is very effective. Remember the chants of the Democratic convention: O–BA–MA!! this continued for minutes, hours. The chant was deafening, and extremely hypnotic. The beat was about 90 to 120 per minute, which matches the brain in high activity.

Let us take a brief tangent to explain this. The brain has a tendency to use frequencies in the “brain waves” that occurs around it. This phenomenon is called “entrainment”, and is used in a variety of ways. When the brain waves of a mob — and there is no other word for people knit together by such powerful rhythms — coincide at a high level, they are extremely suggestible, and it is easy to arouse emotional reactions within them.

The trance caused by such a shared rhythm is much deeper than the trance caused by (for example) The occasional use of language patterns. The brain under that form of entrainment is open to suggestions ways that the person may not have experienced before. In the days of the British Empire, travelers from the west continually were amazed by (and wrote about) the way they were overcome by the rhythm of the drums and the atmosphere they created.

The Republicans were a bit underwhelming in their use of rhythm this year. After all, chanting, “McCain! McCain!” just doesn’t have that same powerful rhythm as “O–BA–MA!!!” Perhaps there is something in a name. But the Republicans did what they could with rhythm in the songs, clapping, stamping together in rhythm.

This does not tend to bring in those outside, who are not ready to participate in the ritual (but keep in mind those British explorers). For the faithful, it is a high that cannot be duplicated by any drug, and one that is addicting. Rhythm is part of any personal appearance, and if it is not, someone on that campaign staff should be fired.

In our exploration of hypnotic communication in politics, let’s start with what has been called “negative campaigning.”  Many pundits have decried negative campaigning as something divisive, polarizing, and an example of the character of the candidate.  If they can sink so low as to just call the other candidate names, then they are just exposing their own lack of character and answers to the complex problems that face our country.

The inevitable response is a very pragmatic one: negative campaigning works, and works better than any other technique.  However, if we are examining the use of communication to influence the voters, we must ask, “Why?”

When I was trained as a hypnotist, I learned that it is important to construct suggestions carefully.  In particular, pragmatically (I know of no academic research that verifies this, but it is taken for granted as true by clinicians) that there are two ways to motivate people.  One is to present a goal and ask them to  move towards it.  The other is to present a bad result and ask them to move away from what they dislike, at makes them uncomfortable, what they fear.

A quick example is found in the suggestions to stop smoking.  One way is to create a wonderful reality where the client is enjoying good health, easy breathing, scents that they had not smelled in years.  The second is to create a horrible reality of dying of lung cancer, clothes smelling of smoke, gradually diminishing abilities to play sports, run, walk, and even breathe.

The point is not that one is intrinsically better than the other; each is effective given the client.  One of the first things to find out is how the client  motivates him or her self, then adjust your communication accordingly.  Good car salesmen do this all the time; do you buy for the wonderful car, or to avoid costly repairs and breakdowns?

The reason negative campaigning works is that it reaches that portion of the electorate that is motivated by moving away from a bad situation: “away people.”  For this, you need a villain (at least most easily), and the other candidates are the most obvious choices.  There are others, beloved of some politicians: “Big Oil”, the rich who don’t pay their share, terrorists, black people, Jews, whatever.  The mixture above is deliberate; “black people” and “terrorists” could not be farther apart from each other (nor could Jews).  What matters is that the person receiving the communication regards that result negatively.

To avoid negative campaigning is to avoid fully half (my clinical experience indicates more than half) of the electorate who are motivated away from negative things.  Negative campaigning works because it appeals to that motivation pattern, and to promise never to engage in negative campaigning is to pass by more than half your audience.

Appealing to your motivation pattern is inherently unconscious communication.  The logical message is there, but so is the unconscious one: run away from this or move towards this.  I spoke in the introductory material about suggestions that fit the patterns of the unconscious mind, and this is one of the most basic patterns in our personality.

Which kinds of ads do you react to?  When you get out of bed in the morning, is it because you want to experience what is coming or is it because you will “get in trouble” if you sleep another hour?  Neither is better than the other, but knowing how you motivate yourself is valuable in trying to improve yourself and in observing how politicians (and others) try to appeal to your basic motivation style.  Look for it in the next few days.