Emotion and public policy: a synopsis

On a day where our southern neighbours await their potentially historic healthcare vote, it feels fitting to share summaries of the excellent symposium on emotion and public policy held at the University of Toronto last week.

The first portion was a public lecture, anchored on a poll that showed Canadians overwhelmingly reject the notion that emtion is a good thing in political leaders, or that emotion plays much of a role in their own political decision-making. Even the administering pollster acknowledged the results were "delusional," but they provided a good starting point for the event. The upshot of the public lecture was that it's pretty much impossible to be emotionless when dealing with public issues, and that the trick is to apply reason to emotion. Rather than ignore emotional impulses, we should strive for, as one panelist suggested, a "reasonable passion," and learn to develop, as another argued, the capacity for rational debate. Clearly, one sentence does not do justice to the discussion, which you can watch in its entirety here. Alternatively, you can watch a debate on the topic here.

My personal highlight was Day Two of the symposium, a smaller group discussion featuring two incredible panels. While I await the availability of the podcasts, I'll briefly highlight three panelists here:

• Trina McQueen, a journalist and broadcast executive, on the use of the inherently emotional work of storytelling in journalism and how it influences the way we understand public policy issues. Today, the public mood is formed in ways we don't understand. For example, is this Tim Horton's commercial (or this one) about coffee, or about how immigration should be seen by the public? And what might having one's disease on ER do to the public's understanding of it?

• Peter Byrne, an advertising executive, on how to make people care. Involved, directly or less so, in some memorable Canadian campaigns, and some less memorable ones,* he was optimistic for public policy (i.e., people do care), and that the challenge instead is to involve and inform.

• Jane Freeman, a professor of rhetoric, who shared a most informative 101 on public communication based on tools from we owe to Aristotle and Plato. She talked about using the right mix of pathos (emotion), logos (logic) and ethos (ethical character, needed to ensure the other two are used responsibly), audience analysis (learned versus the mob) and occassion (is a decision required or not?). Today, pathos is on the rise because of speed in the media (appealing to emotion is quick, versus the "let me tell you about my research" approach required for logos and much beloved by many public policy folks). To prove the point, she highlighted how, in the past generation or so, the average soundbite has gone from 45 seconds to a whopping nine. For more, she suggests this article on trends in Presidential rhetoric.

For those left yearning for more, the links should keep you busy.  And if that's not enough, one of the panelists, in an interview with The Agenda, recommends Drew Weston's book The Political Brain. Weston was in Ottawa last year speaking to the Canada2020 group; a copy of his presentation and an interview with him are available here.

*The original seems to have been banished from YouTube.