MAGA Thinks Like Children Do #psychology #politics #lucasbean #trump — Transcript

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1. 0:00Why the Trump cult thinks like children
2. 0:01do. There's a psychological reason for
3. 0:03that. Before age 11, the human brain
4. 0:06can't think abstractly. It processes the
5. 0:08world in concrete terms. One cause, one
6. 0:12villain, one answer. This is a
7. 0:14developmental stage most people grow out
8. 0:16of, but most people aren't Trump
9. 0:18supporters. Psychologist Jamie Luguri at
10. 0:21Yale University studied what happens
11. 0:23when you shift people between concrete
12. 0:24and abstract thinking and then measure
13. 0:26their political beliefs. What he found
14. 0:29was wild. He found that when
15. 0:31conservatives are thinking concretely,
16. 0:33they are significantly more intolerant
17. 0:35than liberal people are. They're more
18. 0:37tribal, more hostile to anyone outside
19. 0:40their group. Psychologists call this
20. 0:42construal level theory. It measures how
21. 0:44the brain shifts between concrete and
22. 0:46abstract thinking. But when researchers
23. 0:48forced conservatives into abstract
24. 0:49thinking, basically the way adults
25. 0:51think, that lack of tolerance
26. 0:53disappeared completely. Political
27. 0:55orientation stopped predicting
28. 0:57intolerance. This prejudice was not a
29. 0:59deeply held belief. It was just a
30. 1:01setting. It only existed when
31. 1:03conservative brains were operating at
32. 1:04the level of a child. But here's the
33. 1:06problem. Conservatives don't shift into
34. 1:09abstract thinking on their own.
35. 1:10Researchers had to force them into
36. 1:12abstract thinking. Without that push
37. 1:14from the researchers, conservatives
38. 1:16default thinking mode is that of a young
39. 1:18child. Listen to that again. Unless
40. 1:21someone forces them to think abstractly,
41. 1:23they never think like an adult. Not
42. 1:25because they can't think like an adult,
43. 1:27but because they are lazy thinkers. They
44. 1:30default to the simplest cognitive mode
45. 1:32the brain has available and they never
46. 1:34leave that mode. That's why propaganda
47. 1:36works on MAGA and nobody else. Trump
48. 1:38says, "Immigrants are destroying the
49. 1:40country." That is a concrete sentence.
50. 1:43One cause, one villain, a 10-year-old
51. 1:46could understand it. And that's the
52. 1:48point. Trump speaks exclusively in child
53. 1:50mode. Every sentence, every rally, every
54. 1:54post. One enemy, one solution, one
55. 1:57leader. He's speaking to adults the way
56. 1:59you speak to children, and they love him
57. 2:02for it.
58. 2:03Trump is the first politician who makes
59. 2:04the world as simple as their brain needs
60. 2:06it to be. These people would rather be
61. 2:08told what to think than do the work of
62. 2:10thinking for themselves. MAGA isn't a
63. 2:12political party. It's a cognitive
64. 2:14disability.