Emotion and Public Policy

Read our blog post "Emotions in Politics" on TVO.org: http://bit.ly/ca20tU

Think politics is the reasoned and rational practice of policy and ideas? Guess again. Politics is an emotional minefield.

Guests:

Christina Tarnopolsky is assistant professor in Political Philosophy at McGill University.

David Pizarro is assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University. For more information go to his website.

Michael Valpy is a senior writer with The Globe and Mail.


Richard Gwyn is a columnist for the Toronto Star. His book, John A: The Man Who Made Us won the 2008 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction.

Category:

Education

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[tedkanode123]

fantastic report .. congrats =)



[herose89t1]

I believe emotion and politics go hand and hand. Chris Stockwell spoke a lot about politicians being rational while voters are more emotional. His comment is partly true. Politicians have to be rational and play on the emotions of the people, because people are emotional beings. But Christina Tarnopolsky was right in saying that politicians also use emotion in deciding what side they are arguing on and the policies that they will implement according to their choice.

[herose89t1]

I believe emotion and politics go hand and hand. Chris Stockwell spoke a lot about politicians being rational while voters are more emotional. His comment is partly true. Politicians have to be rational and play on the emotions of the people, because people are emotional beings. But Christina Tarnopolsky was right in saying that politicians also use emotion in deciding what side they are arguing on and the policies that they will implement according to their choice.

[Nworb213]

i agree with Christina Tarnopolsky it is impossible for individual not to use emotion when establishing a public policy. You have to think, usually when you make a policy you have to get a group of people together that group of people are always gonna base their decision off of what they feels is morally just.

[HaloLvl43Legit]

@mavaddat Yeah, well that's just like, your opinion, man...

[mavaddat]

Wow, this debate is painful to watch because of the conflation of the multivalent concepts of "irrationality," "reasoning," "emotion," "rationality," and "feelings." As a philosopher, I must say shame on Christina Tarnopolsky (the philosopher in the group) for not making the important distinctions clear!

[MarmaladeINFP]

The motive for why politicians are manipulative is b/c they're not rational themselves. People try to convince others in order to convince themselves. Everyone, including politicians, want to think they're good people. It's not to the politicians advantage to encouraging voters to be rational, critical-minded & well-informed. Politicians like to think they're more rational than voters & that it's their job to do the thinking for voters, but politicans are just deceiving themselves.

[MarmaladeINFP]

There are several responses to psychological research. You can deny it & continue to have faith in rationality. You can use it to compassionately understand human nature & to help people to become better informed. Or you can cynically use this knowledge to manipulate people. A lot of psychological research has been done by corporations for advertising & by govts for propaganda. For anyone who wants to manipulate the public, it's easy to do & I think that is what most politicians do.

[MarmaladeINFP]

The guy in the middle made the common mistake of confusing rationalization w/ rationality. I find it strange that people are surprised that humans are psychologically motivated. The ironic part is that the most irrational aspect is our faith in rationality. Everyone wants to think they're not irrational in the same way that everyone wants to think they're not racist. I wonder why this is becoming popular now. This kind of research has been going on for decades.