So . . . we had our debates last week, and as usual not much exciting came out of them. I had already committed to making my Monday posts about the election campaign before I knew the debates were scheduled for Tuesday, and now I feel pretty silly writing about a current event that hasn't been current for almost a week. Oh well. I can still snipe at the leaders (except the poor, excluded, irrelevant Elizabeth May) and give some general commentary. This is more a post about what the debates showed us about the election than about anything specific that happened in them.
I noticed two things in the debate that got my academic decision-making spidey-sense tingling (and said tingling wasn't even dampened by Harpers bloodless, sleepy-eyed droning into the camera). The first has to do with how people respond to the debates. Most people think that their preferred party leader won, which points to confirmation bias. We like what we saw of them, what we didn't like (or what they screwed up) we ignore.
This is why debates rarely change people's minds; if we already think that Ignatieff is an egg-head, then no matter how much high dudgeon he gets up to (and he was really, really trying at times), anything remotely egg-heady will confirm our beliefs about him. If we think that Layton is a slimy snake-oil salesman, then everything from his creepy mustache to his slick one-liners will back that up, and we'll not listen to the content of his answers (which, to be honest, is really not worth listening to unless you like the sound of a man promising the moon and farting rainbows).
The second thing I noticed has to do with believability. One of the useful questions (and it was *gasp* asked by the moderator, not some "ordinary citizen" via youtube) had to do with how the leaders would pay for their promises. Harper got accused of overpromising, that he was offering everything without cutting anything (I think by Duceppe, who for some reason seemed to be wearing a suit made of vinyl). I don't think Harper really has to worry about that, because even if we don't believe him, we'll still act as though we do.
There was academic paper a little while back that looked at inflated reference prices - you know, when they say the regular price is $1000 but you can get it for $200. The results showed that as the fake "regular" price got higher and higher, people believed it less, but at the same time they increasingly expressed interest in purchasing. So maybe we don't believe, but we want to, and hey, that's a great deal!
Anyway, as a closing remark I'll give the movie that each candidate most reminded me of in his performance. Duceppe: Scanners, because he was so red-faced at times I thought his head would pop. Layton: Raising Arizona - c'mon, he is Nathan Arizona, and I'm wrong, my name's not Nathan Arizona. Ignatieff: Dead Poet's Society, or any other movie that teenagers think is extremely deep but as you get older you realize just isn't that important. Harper: Silence of the Lambs, if Hannibal Lecter had nothing interesting to say.
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