http://airforceamazons.blogspot.com/2008/06/motive-3.html

i am aware of the dangers in stereotypes, still i love to use them…

after all our world largely consist of opposites and the tension between them (doesn’t it?)

thanks for feedback

You speak of “emotional” and “rational” methods of decision-making as if these two approaches were opposites of one another. On the contrary, no decision can be considered truly rational if it ignores emotional aspects, as Antonia Damasio has argued very well — see his book: “Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain” (Putnam Publishing, 1994).

Even venture capitalists know that it is their personal gut feelings (about the marketplace, about the technology, about the management team) which are more important to a potential investment decision than any allegedly scientific or objective factors.

i guess it is safe to say that emotions and empathy have strongly made their way into our economical system. – evaluating the gratification potential of a future investment has never been purely rational. and in a dynamic world it gets ever less so – it gets more risky and also more irrational and thus more ‘emotional’. the identification of potential – of any potential – is always a bet on a by definition uncertain future. – you have to see or feel the sweet promise (or not).
so as markets get more complex and dynamic economy opens itself stronger for for emotional factors.

in consumer markets it is the same thing since a long time. consumers chose with their emotions – is this offer for me? / is this offer like me? – and empathy has become the key element in consumers’ purchase processes. – as a reaction to this people like grant or designstudios like ideo get their seat on the corporate table. corporations know they cannot without playing the emotional game – the empathy game (also of course in financial communication).

now in our ‘flat world’ what is the number one skill a personal assistant sitting in bangalore and organizing the day of a young new york entrepreneur via internet and phone need – besides full command of the english language? – empathy, of course. – it is empathy that enables him to navigate his client through a culture he does not know in a country he has never set foot on.

so as a general rule we can say: the more complex and dynamic our world gets, the more empathy gets intertwined with everything else.

and it is not only that economics and emotions are an interesting pair of words to think about today. also the ‘known’ vs. the ‘unknown’is pretty damn intersting to look at.
we find that in our world today we are surrounded by the unknown. the unknown (technology that we do not understand, cultures that are not ours, cause and effect relations that are too complex to understand or explain while being on a global speed trip) has become our natural habitat and it leaves us little other chance than to increasingly use – and rely on – our empathy.

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and then of course – coming back to politics – the hardliner with the emphasis on economics tends to rely on proof (that is the then known) rather than finding ways of dealing with the permanent and multidimensional presence the unknown.

the world is changing. the american democrats’ position is much more in tune with our daily lives where the unknown can less and less be ignored or kept out, but has long become our natural habitat. – the space in which we move and interact. the place where we shop, where we find joy, hope, friends – and last but not least: the place where we find ourselves.

Alan wrote: “A claim to competence can come from a display of emotion . . ”

Argumentation theorists talk about epideictic arguments, arguments whose validity and acceptability (to a particular audience) depend on their form. The classic example given (due to William Rehg, a philosopher at St Louis University) is that of a doctor advising an ill patient on his or her future possible treatment options. If the doctor presents the patient’s choices in a clear, coherent and structured way, the patient is likely to be more confident about the doctor’s competence and hence more likely to accept the doctor’s claims and arguments as valid, than if the doctor presents the patient’s choices in a muddled, roundabout or unstructured way. In other words, the patient may assess the logical content of the doctor’s argument according to its rhetorical form, and this process of assessment-of-content-by-form is a perfectly rational reasoning process for the patient to undertake. (Much of traditional argumentation theory was devoted to finding fault in the everyday reasoning processes of ordinary people, but this particular reasoning process deserves no such disparagement.)

I think that arguments or statements which use emotions to indicate authenticity are further examples of epideictic arguments (one I had not considered before, so thank you!), and it would be quite rational for a listener to also assess the validity of the content of these arguments on the basis of their emotional form.

Certainly this is true of individual campaigns, even those on the grand scale of presidential politics. The best political consultants will admit that election outcomes are truly outside their control, as much as they want to be puppet masters. (And who exactly are the puppets? The candidates? Or the voters? Or both?)

Why did Obama’s historical moment trump Clinton’s? It is not only because Hillary Clinton failed to proclaim her historical moment, and therefore, claim it publicly. That was a strategic error in her campaign. But why did she make that mistake? Obama had no hesitation to proclaim his moment and transform it it into a historical moment for America. The reason why, in my opinion, is to be found in the difference between the civil rights movement and the equal rights movement for women. The equal rights movement — the womens’ movement — has always moved in the overlapping territory of emotion and commerce. And we have seen now in Hillary Clinton’s historic campaign the personal and political price that confusion has exacted.

Is there a further historical context for your thoughtful proposition that the Democrats are the “party of emotion” while the Republicans are the “party of commerce?” I think there is and you can find it in the speech making by politicians. (I’m not sure I would go so far back as 1932, though Peter makes a sound case. I think we need to look in the age of television and mass marketing, post-Eisenhower, whose television commercials are worth watching today.)

What would you make of Bobby Kennedy’s speech to the City Club of Cleveland on April 5, 1968?

He is simple and direct, declarative, questioning, and yes, deeply emotional. Bobby Kennedy (and Martin Luther King) invested their speeches with a subtext of deeply felt emotion at a time when America was still visibly and tensely uncomfortable with emotional displays.

But listen to RFK begin … “This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today, to speak briefly to you about the mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.”

Wow!

How would Americans react to that today? Would they be uncomfortable with such directness? Do we prefer, as a culture, the coded and coddling language of practiced politicians? Is Barack Obama equally direct?

A claim to competence can come from a display of emotion — that is by asking uncomfortable questions that everyone wants to ask. That is why Bobby Kennedy ignited crowds he spoke to and campaigned in. And that is why Barack Obama is igniting crowds today. Sometimes a display of emotion is a compelling argument of competency.

I would say that this difference in US politics goes back at least to the Hoover versus FDR campaign of 1932. From his earlier public career organizing humanitarian relief efforts during and after World War I, it is probable that Herbert Hoover could empathize with the best of them. But his ideological blinders (always opposed to Government intervention or regulation) and his 19th-century public rectitude (formal and uncomfortable in public, refusing for example to make radio broadcasts or to address Congress, even for the annual State of the Union) made it easy for the Democrats to portray him as unsympathetic to the plight of ordinary people suffereing from the Great Depression. Roosevelt, having been afflicted as an adult by polio, was more sympathetic to people hurt by circumstances beyond their control.

For a good account of this campaign, see: Donald A. Ritchie [2008]: “Electing FDR: The New Deal Campaign of 1932″ (University Press of Kansas).