Rick Shenkman does a decent job of confirming that when it comes to politics, we think and behave irrationally. Unfortunately, Shenkman inadvertently also confirms that there isn't much we can do about it.
Rick Shenkman’s Political Animals: How Our Stone Age Brain Gets in the Way of Smart Politics (2016) was coincidentally published in the same year that Donald Trump pulled off an upset (and upsetting) presidential election victory. The election and its results are arguably Exhibit A that we have Stone Age brains and that this gets in the way of smart politics, and Shenkman’s attempt to diagnose our condition is more than welcome. As informative and enjoyable as the book is, however, the feebleness of the solutions Shenkman proposes only compounds this reader’s skepticism of our species’ capacity for rational political behavior.
Political Animals is about the various deficiencies of the American voter, to put it bluntly. Shenkman cites research that demonstrates that many voters cast their votes based on such irrelevant factors as the prevalence of shark attacks, the occurrence of droughts, or how their favorite sports team is faring. Americans also sometimes stubbornly persist in absurd beliefs, such as that Barack Obama was born in Kenya or that Richard Nixon was innocent. Many are also deeply uninformed, believing in 2010, for instance, that Barack Obama raised taxes on the middle class, whereas in reality he lowered them. (10) We mistakenly believe we can determine people’s intent and sincerity despite only seeing and hearing them through a television. (44) We make snap judgments about politicians based on such superficial features as having a broad jaw. (62-3) Obviously, the list goes on.
Political Animals tries to explain these problems by drawing on evolutionary psychology and concludes that our irrational political behavior is the result of a “mismatch” between our evolved psychological traits and modern political life. “We were designed for the Pleistocene,” Shenkman notes. (xiv) Why are voters apathetic and ignorant? Because “We no longer live in groups of the right size for us.” (32) Why do voters make snap judgments based on superficial features of candidates? In part because “…evolution teaches us to think quickly.” (53) Also, making decisions about candidates is difficult, so we use the substitution heuristic, by which we assess a candidate by the things they remind us of. (54) Why do we often lack empathy for victims of atrocities? Because “Empathy doesn’t scale.” And that’s because we evolved the capacity to empathize with members of our hunter-gatherer band, but not with distant victims. (194)
Finally, Political Animals is about the solutions to these problems. At least, Political Animals aspires to also be about the solutions to these problems. In the introduction, Shenkman writes, “We are not the prisoners of our evolutionary past. As I emphasize in the Conclusion, there are concrete measures we can take to help free ourselves. Science is giving us that opportunity—if we can only seize it.” (xxx) “Science suggests there are ways we can navigate politics well even at a distance and even given the limitations of a brain that was designed for a Pleistocene world, not ours,” he writes in the conclusion, which is entitled “A Way Forward.” (216)
Unfortunately, the solutions Political Animals proposes are disappointing, to say the least. First, the problem with which Shenkman opens the book goes undiscussed in the conclusion. This was the problem posed by the shark attack voters, as I’ve taken to calling them, though we are all, presumably, potential shark attack voters. He proposes no solutions to the problems these voters represent. As discussed below, he did not clearly identify the problem these voters posed anyway, so it’s hard to see how he could have identified a solution.
The solutions Shenkman does propose are marked primarily by their ordinariness. For instance, he proposes that people attend more events in which they can meet politicians. (216) He proposes that when you vote, you should let your close friends know that you did so. (225) He proposes that if a politician appeals to our emotions, “We should hit the pause button….” (220) We should try to interact with people with different views. (228) And ads should be used to “…make voters feel anxious about climate change.” (234) We should go to the library. (246) These are all fine ideas, but Shenkman has led the reader to imagine that the novelty of his evolutionary psychological approach to understanding our political problems would culminate in correspondingly novel solutions. It didn’t.
One of the most frustrating dimensions of Political Animals is that Shenkman’s own statements undermine the case for even these banal proposals. For instance, Shenkman writes, “If you have a chance to see a candidate up close and personal, grab it. If you can snag a ticket to a political convention—local, state, or national—make use of it.” (216) This is supposed to provide an antidote to being deceived. Yet, the two most memorable instances that Shenkman provides of people meeting politicians “up close and personal” suggest that intimate familiarity with politicians may actually make you more susceptible to being deceived. He describes how his own mother had an irrational affinity for JFK as a consequence of attending one of his campaign events. He writes, “As Kennedy drove by he briefly caught her eye, looked straight at her, and smiled. In that moment he won the loyalty of that mother for life.” (xii, 48) And he also notes that most of the journalists who covered the Nixon administration failed to recognize that they were being lied to during the Watergate scandal, at least according to Shenkman. This is despite the fact that the Nixon officials were “lying to their faces.” (214, 216) Perhaps these contradictions can be reconciled. Shenkman does caution us not to “get caught up in the moment” if we meet a politician. (216) But attempting to reconcile such contradictions requires the reader to piece together statements from throughout the book and interpret them in excessively charitable ways.
Shenkman’s greatest strength is probably his ability to tell a captivating story. Here, he excels. This is true when he is recounting the shark attacks along the Atlantic seaboard in 1916, and it is also true when he narrates the unfolding of the Watergate scandal in chapter 7. Another strength is his obviously deep familiarity with US presidential history. Among the presidents mentioned: John Quincy Adams, Buchanan, both Bushes, Carter, Clinton, Grant, Reagan, Polk, and LBJ, among others.
However, this strength is associated with another weakness of Political Animals—Shenkman draws exclusively on US presidential history for examples of our “Stone Age brains” impeding our ability to engage in rational and informed political behavior. This narrow focus juxtaposes strangely with book’s reliance upon a school of psychology dedicated to explaining universal human attributes that transcend racial and cultural affiliations. Furthermore, even consigning ourselves to American politics, consider the range of elections that go unremarked upon in Political Animals: mayoral and gubernatorial elections; city council elections; sheriff elections; elections for state representatives, senators, and judges; elections for US congressional representatives and senators; elections for union representatives; student government elections; mock elections in middle schools and high schools, etc. I suppose it would be impractical to expect Shenkman to have drawn on more than a couple of these types of elections. However, it’s worth being cognizant of just how narrow a range of electoral history Shenkman actually draws from.
Political Animals occasionally lacks clarity and coherence. For instance, Shenkman says that people are too “disengaged” and “apathetic” to educate themselves. (xii-xiii) This is confusing because apathy is usually used to refer to people who don’t participate in the political process. Shenkman seems to use these terms to describe people who participate but who are poorly informed. He point to birthers as a segment of the population who are “disengaged” and “apathetic.” Obviously, that’s quite misleading. Birthers were politically engaged. To compound the confusion, he brings up apathy in both chapters one and two. Chapter one is about how “…tens of millions of Americans…are so disengaged that they don’t’ know enough about political to be able to cast an informed vote.” (xiii). Chapter two is about our ability to “read” people. Yet, in chapter two Shenkman writes, “When we watch our leaders on television, therefore, we are not as engaged as we would be if they were in close proximity to us. The word for this is apathy.” (52) And “Thanks to the power of images, we can be ignorant about our politicians without feeling ignorant.” (56) But if television explains apathy and ignorance, why wasn’t it discussed in chapter one? Why is it introduced in a chapter on a different topic? These are the sorts of questions that plague the critical reader of Political Animals.
Another example of the lack of clarity and coherence to Political Animals concerns examples of political problems Shenkman describes in the introduction. Shenkman says that there are four big problems. These are apathy, an inability to correctly size up leaders, an inclination to punish those who tell us hard truths, and a failure to feel empathy. But his book kicks off with the examples of voters basing their votes on shark attacks, droughts, and the fortunes of sports teams. Under which of Shenkman’s four categories of problems would he place the problem of shark attack voters? I think he would place them in the first category, apathy/ignorance/disengaged. As I’ve already indicated, this is confusing because apathy is usually used to describe people who don’t vote, not people who vote for bad reasons. But even putting that aside, the shark attack voters couldn’t be categorized here. The people basing their votes on shark attacks, weather, and sports teams don’t realize that that’s what they are doing. Their behavior is based neither on ignorance nor apathy. They can’t be placed with people who are voting based on conscious-but-absurd beliefs, such as that Obama was born in Kenya. What this means is that Shenkman began his book with examples of political problems that are separate from the problems he identifies, explains, and purports to offer solutions to in the rest of the book. It’s understandable that Shenkman discussed the shark attack voters up front. They are arguably the most interesting phenomenon described in the book. That only make It all the more disappointing that the rest of the book has nothing to do with them.
Also, in the introduction Shenkman seems to propose that voters actually move their residences to a “diverse” community in order to keep their political instincts in check. He writes, “By choosing to live in a community (a group) composed of people who are drawn from diverse backgrounds and ideologies, our thinking can become more diverse. You have heard of voting with our feet. This is thinking with our feet.” (xxix) First, it’d be nice if Shenkman provided an example of a politically diverse community. Second, the idea that someone is going to move to a community with whom they are less politically aligned in order to check their political biases seems unlikely, to put it very mildly. And finally, Shenkman mentions this proposal in the introduction but not in the conclusion. We never hear about it again.
Shenkman is a great storyteller. He is highly knowledgeable of US presidential history, and he seems to have familiarized himself with the work of a number of psychologists and political scientists. However, Political Animals feels half baked. It is not tightly argued or organized, and its proposals fall far short of what the reader is led to expect.
Rick Shenkman’s Political Animals: How Our Stone Age Brain Gets in the Way of Smart Politics (2016) was coincidentally published in the same year that Donald Trump pulled off an upset (and upsetting) presidential election victory. The election and its results are arguably Exhibit A that we have Stone Age brains and that this gets in the way of smart politics, and Shenkman’s attempt to diagnose our condition is more than welcome. As informative and enjoyable as the book is, however, the feebleness of the solutions Shenkman proposes only compounds this reader’s skepticism of our species’ capacity for rational political behavior.
Political Animals is about the various deficiencies of the American voter, to put it bluntly. Shenkman cites research that demonstrates that many voters cast their votes based on such irrelevant factors as the prevalence of shark attacks, the occurrence of droughts, or how their favorite sports team is faring. Americans also sometimes stubbornly persist in absurd beliefs, such as that Barack Obama was born in Kenya or that Richard Nixon was innocent. Many are also deeply uninformed, believing in 2010, for instance, that Barack Obama raised taxes on the middle class, whereas in reality he lowered them. (10) We mistakenly believe we can determine people’s intent and sincerity despite only seeing and hearing them through a television. (44) We make snap judgments about politicians based on such superficial features as having a broad jaw. (62-3) Obviously, the list goes on.
Political Animals tries to explain these problems by drawing on evolutionary psychology and concludes that our irrational political behavior is the result of a “mismatch” between our evolved psychological traits and modern political life. “We were designed for the Pleistocene,” Shenkman notes. (xiv) Why are voters apathetic and ignorant? Because “We no longer live in groups of the right size for us.” (32) Why do voters make snap judgments based on superficial features of candidates? In part because “…evolution teaches us to think quickly.” (53) Also, making decisions about candidates is difficult, so we use the substitution heuristic, by which we assess a candidate by the things they remind us of. (54) Why do we often lack empathy for victims of atrocities? Because “Empathy doesn’t scale.” And that’s because we evolved the capacity to empathize with members of our hunter-gatherer band, but not with distant victims. (194)
Finally, Political Animals is about the solutions to these problems. At least, Political Animals aspires to also be about the solutions to these problems. In the introduction, Shenkman writes, “We are not the prisoners of our evolutionary past. As I emphasize in the Conclusion, there are concrete measures we can take to help free ourselves. Science is giving us that opportunity—if we can only seize it.” (xxx) “Science suggests there are ways we can navigate politics well even at a distance and even given the limitations of a brain that was designed for a Pleistocene world, not ours,” he writes in the conclusion, which is entitled “A Way Forward.” (216)
Unfortunately, the solutions Political Animals proposes are disappointing, to say the least. First, the problem with which Shenkman opens the book goes undiscussed in the conclusion. This was the problem posed by the shark attack voters, as I’ve taken to calling them, though we are all, presumably, potential shark attack voters. He proposes no solutions to the problems these voters represent. As discussed below, he did not clearly identify the problem these voters posed anyway, so it’s hard to see how he could have identified a solution.
The solutions Shenkman does propose are marked primarily by their ordinariness. For instance, he proposes that people attend more events in which they can meet politicians. (216) He proposes that when you vote, you should let your close friends know that you did so. (225) He proposes that if a politician appeals to our emotions, “We should hit the pause button….” (220) We should try to interact with people with different views. (228) And ads should be used to “…make voters feel anxious about climate change.” (234) We should go to the library. (246) These are all fine ideas, but Shenkman has led the reader to imagine that the novelty of his evolutionary psychological approach to understanding our political problems would culminate in correspondingly novel solutions. It didn’t.
One of the most frustrating dimensions of Political Animals is that Shenkman’s own statements undermine the case for even these banal proposals. For instance, Shenkman writes, “If you have a chance to see a candidate up close and personal, grab it. If you can snag a ticket to a political convention—local, state, or national—make use of it.” (216) This is supposed to provide an antidote to being deceived. Yet, the two most memorable instances that Shenkman provides of people meeting politicians “up close and personal” suggest that intimate familiarity with politicians may actually make you more susceptible to being deceived. He describes how his own mother had an irrational affinity for JFK as a consequence of attending one of his campaign events. He writes, “As Kennedy drove by he briefly caught her eye, looked straight at her, and smiled. In that moment he won the loyalty of that mother for life.” (xii, 48) And he also notes that most of the journalists who covered the Nixon administration failed to recognize that they were being lied to during the Watergate scandal, at least according to Shenkman. This is despite the fact that the Nixon officials were “lying to their faces.” (214, 216) Perhaps these contradictions can be reconciled. Shenkman does caution us not to “get caught up in the moment” if we meet a politician. (216) But attempting to reconcile such contradictions requires the reader to piece together statements from throughout the book and interpret them in excessively charitable ways.
Shenkman’s greatest strength is probably his ability to tell a captivating story. Here, he excels. This is true when he is recounting the shark attacks along the Atlantic seaboard in 1916, and it is also true when he narrates the unfolding of the Watergate scandal in chapter 7. Another strength is his obviously deep familiarity with US presidential history. Among the presidents mentioned: John Quincy Adams, Buchanan, both Bushes, Carter, Clinton, Grant, Reagan, Polk, and LBJ, among others.
However, this strength is associated with another weakness of Political Animals—Shenkman draws exclusively on US presidential history for examples of our “Stone Age brains” impeding our ability to engage in rational and informed political behavior. This narrow focus juxtaposes strangely with book’s reliance upon a school of psychology dedicated to explaining universal human attributes that transcend racial and cultural affiliations. Furthermore, even consigning ourselves to American politics, consider the range of elections that go unremarked upon in Political Animals: mayoral and gubernatorial elections; city council elections; sheriff elections; elections for state representatives, senators, and judges; elections for US congressional representatives and senators; elections for union representatives; student government elections; mock elections in middle schools and high schools, etc. I suppose it would be impractical to expect Shenkman to have drawn on more than a couple of these types of elections. However, it’s worth being cognizant of just how narrow a range of electoral history Shenkman actually draws from.
Political Animals occasionally lacks clarity and coherence. For instance, Shenkman says that people are too “disengaged” and “apathetic” to educate themselves. (xii-xiii) This is confusing because apathy is usually used to refer to people who don’t participate in the political process. Shenkman seems to use these terms to describe people who participate but who are poorly informed. He point to birthers as a segment of the population who are “disengaged” and “apathetic.” Obviously, that’s quite misleading. Birthers were politically engaged. To compound the confusion, he brings up apathy in both chapters one and two. Chapter one is about how “…tens of millions of Americans…are so disengaged that they don’t’ know enough about political to be able to cast an informed vote.” (xiii). Chapter two is about our ability to “read” people. Yet, in chapter two Shenkman writes, “When we watch our leaders on television, therefore, we are not as engaged as we would be if they were in close proximity to us. The word for this is apathy.” (52) And “Thanks to the power of images, we can be ignorant about our politicians without feeling ignorant.” (56) But if television explains apathy and ignorance, why wasn’t it discussed in chapter one? Why is it introduced in a chapter on a different topic? These are the sorts of questions that plague the critical reader of Political Animals.
Another example of the lack of clarity and coherence to Political Animals concerns examples of political problems Shenkman describes in the introduction. Shenkman says that there are four big problems. These are apathy, an inability to correctly size up leaders, an inclination to punish those who tell us hard truths, and a failure to feel empathy. But his book kicks off with the examples of voters basing their votes on shark attacks, droughts, and the fortunes of sports teams. Under which of Shenkman’s four categories of problems would he place the problem of shark attack voters? I think he would place them in the first category, apathy/ignorance/disengaged. As I’ve already indicated, this is confusing because apathy is usually used to describe people who don’t vote, not people who vote for bad reasons. But even putting that aside, the shark attack voters couldn’t be categorized here. The people basing their votes on shark attacks, weather, and sports teams don’t realize that that’s what they are doing. Their behavior is based neither on ignorance nor apathy. They can’t be placed with people who are voting based on conscious-but-absurd beliefs, such as that Obama was born in Kenya. What this means is that Shenkman began his book with examples of political problems that are separate from the problems he identifies, explains, and purports to offer solutions to in the rest of the book. It’s understandable that Shenkman discussed the shark attack voters up front. They are arguably the most interesting phenomenon described in the book. That only make It all the more disappointing that the rest of the book has nothing to do with them.
Also, in the introduction Shenkman seems to propose that voters actually move their residences to a “diverse” community in order to keep their political instincts in check. He writes, “By choosing to live in a community (a group) composed of people who are drawn from diverse backgrounds and ideologies, our thinking can become more diverse. You have heard of voting with our feet. This is thinking with our feet.” (xxix) First, it’d be nice if Shenkman provided an example of a politically diverse community. Second, the idea that someone is going to move to a community with whom they are less politically aligned in order to check their political biases seems unlikely, to put it very mildly. And finally, Shenkman mentions this proposal in the introduction but not in the conclusion. We never hear about it again.
Shenkman is a great storyteller. He is highly knowledgeable of US presidential history, and he seems to have familiarized himself with the work of a number of psychologists and political scientists. However, Political Animals feels half baked. It is not tightly argued or organized, and its proposals fall far short of what the reader is led to expect.
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