While one can never escape such emotional influence, it would help the cause of logic (and the political parties themselves, probably) if people made an effort to avoid thinking of themselves as Democrat or Republican.

In fact, it probably wouldn't hurt if individuals tried to stop thinking of themselves as part of any group, except during a situation in which group membership exerts an inescapable influence (pulled over for being black, detained for being an Arab, beat up for being gay, etc.).

While I greatly enjoy Salon, and am a liberal, Bush-hater myself, this has got to be the worst post I have ever read on a lefty-blog. Don't you see you are proving these researchers points by only going after Bush, and not the Democrats who say stupid things, flip-flop, or make entirely inaccurate statements...oh that's right, a Democratic politician has neevvvvveerrrrr done that.

When a study is able to prove a problem that exists in our societies thinking and reasoning, please try to this site part of the solution, not just another example of the problem.

"For an individual to override his own biases, Westen tells the New York Times, he has to 'engage in ruthless self reflection, to say, "All right, I know what I want to believe, but I have to be honest."'"

Or, a candidate knowing this is the playing field, can anticipate it and ask the public to engage in such reflection: "All right, I know what you want to believe, but you must be honest, for so much depends on your honesty in this matter."

When we can anticipate this response, why is it so hard to get thinking candidates plan for it?

I agree with Jon, Democrats, Liberals...no group or party is perfect, and that post did seem a bit biased! Let's challenge ourselves to prove the study invalid by reflecting on our own beliefs using logic, reason and candor.

Gee, thanks for nothing! Now science confirms that which we already know, i.e. there's a GOOD reason why Rove and Co. play the fear card. Appeal to the base emotions! Democrats should cease their boring, reality-based speeches, and instead repeat something obvious and emotion-inspiring very rapidly many many times. Then and only then will they take control of the country!

Remember the amazingly intellectual speeches of Lincoln? Neither does anyone else! Thing O' The Past (tm), ladies and gentlemen. We live in the New Stone Age, where information is imparted through short, but succinct, monosyllabic grunts.

Ug want Kerry! Ug want Kerry NOW!

While I understand where you're coming from, Jon, one of the main reasons Republicans have been so successful is because they don't have the same value system we do. Liberals value being correct, viewing things in a nuanced, complicated way that matches reality. Conservatives want to win and will say anything to achieve their objective. While at times I find War Room's commentary to be a bit too partisan, at the same time we've been trying to fight "black and white" with "shades of gray" and getting our asses handed to us. It's nice to see a liberal fight back with some "black and white" of our own.

I've seen for a long time that many people are short on the rational, critical approcah to politics - on any side of the equation, including the 'moderates'.

The closest analogy I could see was what I call cult-like 'thinking', where the process is almost automated. It's a dangerous situation, undermining the idealism of the 18th century enlightment which believed in mankind's ability to reason and come to the right decisions if only artifical limits to the facts were removed.

In fact, we can see that all over the place, it's possible for public opinion to reach views other than the ones supported by a rational approach.

Worse, we have increasing expertise in how to take advantage of these gaps from rationality, from sellers of everything from products to politics. There was an interesting 60 Minutes segment a bit ago on a man who sells his services to many industries where he captures a sub-concious theme for marketers to use to bypass rationality, such as "dominance" for SUV's, which works it way into the product and the advertising.

More unfortunately, these weaknesses, where expert approaches are effective, are dependant on money to develop and distribute messages, so that any 'honest citizen' who tries to discuss an issue competing with the well-funded (dis-)information campaign, for example in the manner of 'The Federalist Papers' is bringing a knife to a gunfight.

The only thing going for us now mostly is the frequent incompetence and lack of public acceptance of such Orwellian approaches in many areas, preventing the techniques from being more broadly exploited, but we're on the road - the 'shock' of such things largely began in the 1950's, in a more innocent time, but today, who blinks an eye to hear of the nefarious manipulations applied by a Karl Rove or a Coca Cola to persuade people to injest an unhealthy, costly liquid rather than near-free and healthy water?

I think it'd good for people to consciously battle these things - reduce the intake of marketing, and so on - but then again, I admit it's tilting at windmills.

But evidence such as this article's is very valuable to us to better understand the processes by which we people operate, to protect ourselves.

And it's not just 'the other side'. When's the last time you heard a liberal who supports abortion rights say a word about the objective quality of the Roe decision legally? I can't recall one. It's a straight jump from supporting the result to supporting the decision, and they would hardly approve of the other side doing the same, being tolerant of putting the desired result ahead of following the constitution.

(I don't mean to open the can of worms on what the quality of the decision is, rather I'm pointing out that the quality is not rationally, critically considered by the proponents; they're behaving the same way the article describes. Given the process, it's more luck who happens to be 'right' on the issues. Instead, people are operating on earlier judgements: many liberals may equate themselves as 'caring about people', and auto-map every opinion to that view, seeing right-wingers as essentially thoughtless, selfish people who are unwilling to support the common good, while many right-wingers may equate themselves as 'standing up against evil', and this is why they frame so many issues as protecting ourselves from Hitler or the USSR, seeing liberals as the weak people who would allow evil to triumph.)