The neuroscience of effective political action
Assessing whether actions are salient, visible, and long-lasting. Also: what to do this weekend.
Editorial note: the previous column gave erroneous information about key targets for Congressional protest in central New Jersey. A corrected version is here.
The illegal and disruptive actions of the last month have gotten the attention of large swaths of the American population. Although many institutions and politicians are caught flatfooted by the self-coup (autogolpe), citizens can still take personal action. Some proposed actions include marches, boycotts, and lobbying of legislators. Which of these are worth doing?
Let me analyze some possible actions in light of a discipline I know well, neuroscience. There are those with considerable experience in organizing, and I would not presume to tread on their expertise. But we are in fairly unfamiliar territory. The convergence of modern social media and extreme governmental disruption is unfamiliar to nearly anyone in the United States. So it seems worthwhile to take a fresh look, especially since so few levers of influence are currently available.
I argue that it’s worthwhile to ask four questions about any proposed action:
Is it salient?
Is it relevant?
Is it visual and social?
Is it longlasting?
Saliency: Will anyone notice what you did?
To be effective, an action should be noticeable. In sensory neuroscience, an event has to stand out from background activity. There are two ways to do this: it has to be large enough to be noticed, and it has to have a sudden onset. A slow increase in the wind may escape your attention, but a loud noise makes you turn your head.
An example of an action that may fail to capture attention is a boycott. In my inbox, several people have called my attention to a proposed national one-day boycott of goods and services. This appears doomed to fail. For such an event to be noticeable, it would need to be taken up by substantial fraction of the US population. Does anyone seriously think that more than a tiny fraction of people will avoid making purchases on that date? Against the backdrop of 100% of daily spending, a decrease of 5% is not going to attract news coverage.
Relevance: Are you acting against the correct target?
Our brains connect stimuli to relevant responses. If I hit your knee, you move your leg, not your head.
In the context of producing a result, an example of an irrelevant action is most student protest. Consider campus protests against ongoing military action in Gaza. Universities have no control over this event. Presumably students protest because they are used to petitioning for relief from authority figures in their lives.
This is not to say that student protest is without value. Protests serve an educational purpose, by making people think about what is happening. Universities are places where knowledge is produced and people become more informed. Similarly, large demonstrations play a role in mobilizing populations. I will come back to this.
Visual/social: Does the action activate the primate brain?
Primates are visual mammals. Approximately 40% of the primate brain is dedicated to the direct processing of visual information. We are primates.
Humans are also among the most socially complex of animals. Combining these two principles, our brains have invented television, cable news, and TikTok. You may have noticed that other animals are not moved by these inventions in the way that we are.
An action that is social and visually appealing is likely to make an impact and be amplified. Examples would include an interview with a person who is fired by the government or hurt by the loss of Medicaid. If that interview is local, then it appeals directly to the members of the community.
Long-lasting action: Will the action have long-term impact?
Actions can have impacts in a variety of ways, generally depending on the target. The target can be a member of Congress, a leader in your community, Elon Musk - or you. Here are examples.
Members of Congress. Members of Congress are politicians, and therefore exceptionally social animals. They live on human contact. A protest at a congressional office will be noticed by them. If enough people show up, they will form the fear that they may lose their next election. And fear is a more powerful response than a cognitive response.
Making a phone call is still OK, because it is social. But sending an email or signing a petition will have little impact. Emails and petitions are generally ignored.
If you’re a scientist, writing a long statement about the importance of scientific research and its role in discovery and economic growth…sorry, I believe I’ve already put you to sleep. This information is of course important, but better saved for month/year-scale deliberations such as budgetmaking.
Leaders in your community. Your local and state leaders can be petitioned, but it would be good to have a specific action in mind. Examples include:
protecting noncitizens and minorities from ICE action;
providing relief to those who lose jobs or benefits;
filing a federal lawsuit;
adhering to existing diversity policies, which this general-counsel memo argues are highly legally defensible;
Elon Musk. One of the least popular figures in the spectacle of the last month is Elon Musk. He has revealed himself as a white nationalist, a neo-Nazi, and occasionally manic. The sabotage of government functions, disguised under a false claim of eliminating unnecessary spending, is also unpopular. This recent survey by Justin Wolfers and the Economist asked people what department they would most likely see eliminated. In first place: the department that is not really a legally-existing department at all.
Musk is the richest person in the world. But most of his wealth is paper, consisting of his partial ownership of Tesla. Tesla is overvalued, with a price-to-earnings ratio of 99 (car comparison General Motors=6; tech comparison Apple=39).
Reducing the appeal of the Tesla brand would likely reduce his wealth substantially. Demonstrations at Tesla dealerships would create highly salient visuals. They would require a smaller fraction of the population than the proposed mass boycott I mentioned before. Action by 0.1% of the population would be 350,000 people, which is a pretty big demonstration. A few repetitions would damage the Tesla brand and potentially reduce Musk’s wealth by many billions of dollars.
You. Boycotts may be of limited practical impact. In the same vein, undirected mass protest movements can be ineffective, as my colleague Jan-Werner Mueller’s new column today points out. But performative group actions can still play an educational role, as well as help people feel that they are part of something larger. Think of them in the same vein as prayer or meditation: whether or not anyone hears, these activities make you a better person.
Find an action near you
Now that you have some criteria for selecting what to do, take a look at Mobilize.us, which lists actions near you. Also, see TeslaTakedown.com, which targets Tesla and lists protests (you can also text MUSK to 51905).
Here in New Jersey, if you miss the Tesla Takedown protest today (Saturday February 22) at 12:30pm in Cherry Hill, there is another one Sunday, February 23 at 2:00pm in Trenton.
