Want to radically improve your public speaking? You could go to a class where they will tell you to speak slowly, summarize your points at the end, and a thousand other things. But the real secret is getting the opening of the speech right. A great speech treats the first opening seconds like the scarce and valuable commodity that they are.
Great orators in history understood this. Consider the very first words of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Or take the opening of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech:
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Neither Lincoln nor King was a neuroscientist. Yet they both understood the first priority in making a good impression on others: Don’t blow your opening lines.
Note, by the way, how Lincoln and King used their opening lines. As our previous habits have made clear, a compelling pitch needs to be explicitly moral and focus on fighting for people. Lincoln spoke in his opening seconds about liberty and equality for all men. King spoke straight to the need for universal freedom. That is why these men were iconic communicators. That is why these speeches changed the nation. Still today, these speeches affect the deep brains of all those who listen to them. And all that is possible because each man’s first thirty seconds keep us eagerly listening.
Today’s leaders must remember this. Each of us has ancient regions in our brain that make us decide if that politician on TV is a friend or foe. If our brain says he or she’s a friend, we’re going to keep listening. If it says he or she’s a foe, we’re going to tune out. We’re going to make our decision very quickly, and we’re not even going to know why.
Some object that you can’t make a compelling political case in that short a time. Yes, you can. In the 1990s, the Democratic strategist Paul Begala was trying to get his candidate Harris Wofford to do it. Wofford, who was running for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania on a platform to reform health care, told his advisor, “My health-care plan is too complicated to explain in a sound bite.” So Begala pulled out a Bible, turned to John 3:16, and asked Wofford to read it aloud. Wofford took the Bible and read:
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
The verse took just eight seconds to recite. Triumphantly, Begala told him, “If God can explain Christianity in eight seconds, you can explain your health-care plan.”
If God can explain Christianity in eight seconds, thirty seconds should be more than enough for us to explain what animates the conservative heart.
7. BREAK YOUR BAD HABITS.
For a long time, the list of tactics I’d share with congressmen, senators, and other conservative communicators used to have only six items. But then I noticed a pattern. Policymakers with whom I had worked were coming back to report in, and they often said some version of this: “I wrote down those things you said. I went out ready to use them. But then, when I got into a debate, I panicked and went back to all my old arguments and attacks. I guess I’m just no good at this stuff.”
Can they really learn to communicate in new ways? Indeed they can, and so can we. But to change old habits, we need one last assist from the world of neuroscience, and a part of the brain called the basal ganglia. It’s a nub of neurological tissue that until recently scientists did not understand very well. But now researchers believe it may play a huge role in how we form habits.
In his fascinating book The Power of Habit, science reporter Charles Duhigg of the New York Times shows that good habits—from brushing our teeth to concentrating on our work—are emphatically within our reach. Bad habits like smoking and cussing are all breakable. It’s not even that hard.
Duhigg details dozens of brain studies. They show that habits are behaviors that bypass our conscious thought and are processed by the basal ganglia. To illustrate, he points to work back in the 1990s, when researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology examined rats in a maze who were looking for chocolate. When the animals are first put into the maze, their little brains go crazy. The rats sniff the air, make wrong turns, go down blind alleys, and have to start over—the learning parts of their brains are in overdrive. But as they learn the routine, their brains calm down and the basal ganglia take over. The rats train themselves to race straight for the chocolate without any conscious activity. More reward, less work, no conscious thought. That’s a habit.
The basal ganglia work the same way in humans. There are documented cases of brain injury in which patients became unable to remember simple tasks and facts, such as being able to name where they live. Yet in practice, they are perfectly capable of finding their way home from any point in the neighborhood. That’s because their habit center is in charge, not their memory or executive function.
Conversely, when the basal ganglia are damaged, the results are catastrophic. Cases of this make people’s lives impossible. Even if unimpaired in all other ways, they can’t figure out how to turn a doorknob or tie their shoes. They can’t figure out facial expressions or discern cues from others.
So the key to quitting bad habits and building good habits is to reprogram the amazing basal ganglia. Want to quit smoking? It’s not easy, but conceptually it is pretty simple. Use your executive brain to interrupt your routine and substitute a good habit for the bad one. When you have a desire to light up, you should still get up and head outside—but once you’re there, just walk around. Do this a few thousand times and you will be an ex-smoker with new programming deep in your brain’s habit center. You won’t even have to think about it anymore. I know because I have personally lived this example. At first I thought it was impossible. Today, I almost never think about smoking.
So it will be with you, too, as you adopt a new way of thinking and talking about the issues you care about. When you are about to argue that the main benefit of free enterprise is that it creates economic growth, you just pulled out a rhetorical cigarette. Bad habit. Catch yourself and substitute your new argument in its place—one that starts with a moral statement, fights for people, and maybe trespasses on the other side’s traits. Sooner than you think, you will be the person who automatically appeals to compassion and fairness in the first thirty seconds. And you will start winning the argument.
THE CONSERVATIVE HEART
We’ve covered a lot of dimensions of the conservative heart in this book: the pursuit of happiness, the solution to poverty, the blessings of work, the fight for social justice, the need for a social movement. And in this chapter, the keys to effective communication.
We are almost done, but I need to make one final point. This book—especially this chapter—can easily be mistaken for a manual of rhetorical tricks to fool and dazzle: “Get anyone to do anything!” But that is manifestly not what I’ve argued. The point is not to fool people into voting against their interests, but to make us better at expressing the content of our own characters so we become better servants for people in need.
The world needs us to stop losing. There are too many people in America who are being left behind. There are too many people overseas who don’t enjoy the benefits of democratic capitalism and free enterprise. There are too many people everywhere who have been denied the happiness that comes with earned success. Those people need us. If we want the chance to help them, we’ve got to improve the way we make our case to the American people.
We have to share what is written on the conservative heart.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people helped make this book a reality, but none more than my AEI colleagues Marc Thiessen and Andrew Quinn. Many sections of this book started as conversations with Marc, who expanded, improved, and converted them into written prose. And if readers find the book entertaini
ng, I have Andy’s research and editing artistry to thank.
I am indebted to Adam Bellow, my editor at Broadside Books, and to Lisa Adams, my literary agent at the Garamond Agency. Several of the key ideas in this book—especially the chapter on happiness—were developed on the pages of the New York Times, and I am grateful to my editor Trish Hall. Thanks also to John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine, where the chapter on social justice began its life.
My AEI colleagues—my fellow warriors for freedom and opportunity—are a constant source of inspiration. Leading AEI is the greatest honor of my professional life. Special thanks for their help on this project go to my colleagues Jason Bertsch, John Cusey, Sadanand Dhume, Robert Doar, Nick Eberstadt, Cecilia Gallogly, David Gerson, Kevin Hassett, Justin Lang, Rachel Manfredi, Charles Murray, Mark Perry, and Michael Strain.
I am grateful for the trust and support of my friend and AEI’s Chairman, Tully Friedman, AEI’s outstanding board of trustees, and its steadfast and generous donors. For support on this project, all of us at AEI would like to thank the Kern Family Foundation, the Anschutz Foundation, the Marcus Foundation, the Doug and Maria DeVos Foundation, the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation, the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation, the Morgridge Family Foundation, the Charles Koch Foundation, the Triad Foundation, George Roberts, Seth Klarman, Kelli and Allen Questrom, Jack and Pina Templeton, and Art and Carlyse Ciocca.
I am particularly indebted to my intellectual partner and wife, Ester Munt-Brooks. As an American by choice instead of by birth, Ester constantly reminds me why our American society and system are a gift not to be taken for granted. And I owe thanks to our three children, Joaquim, Carlos, and Marina, who have gotten used to that haunted look Dad gets when he is working on a book.
This book is dedicated in memory of James Q. Wilson, a great patriot, scholar, and mentor. Jim was a motivational and generous force at each juncture of my career, and a living example of the Conservative Heart.
All royalties from the sale of this book go to support the work of the American Enterprise Institute.
NOTES
Introduction
1Maxim Pinkovskiy and Xavier Sala-i-Martin, “Parametric Estimations of the World Distribution of Income,” NBER Working Paper No. 15433 (October 2009), doi:10.3386/w15433.
2“Global Poverty Is on the Decline, but Almost No One Believes It,” Barna Group, accessed March 27, 2015, https://www.barna.org/barna-update/culture/668-global-poverty-is-on-the-decline-but-almost-no-one-believes-it.
3“Satisfaction with the United States,” Gallup, accessed January 8, 2015, http://www.gallup.com/poll/1669/general-mood-country.aspx.
4“The AP-GfK Poll,” GfK Public Affairs, accessed December 8, 2014, http://ap-gfkpoll.com/main/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/AP-GfK-October-2013-Poll-Topline-Final_VIEWS.pdf.
5This is a central theme of Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Pantheon Books, 2012). See also Jesse Graham, Jonathan Haidt, and Brian A. Nosek, “Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different Sets of Moral Foundations,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 96, doi:10.1037/a0015141.
6Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination (New York: Viking Press, 1950), ix.
Chapter 1: America’s Pursuit of Happiness
1Much of the material in this section was initially developed in four of my New York Times essays. See Arthur C. Brooks, “Abundance Without Attachment,” New York Times, December 14, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/14/opinion/sunday/arthur-c-brooks-abundance-without-attachment.html; Arthur C. Brooks, “Love People, Not Pleasure,” New York Times, July 18, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/20/opinion/sunday/arthur-c-brooks-love-people-not-pleasure.html; Arthur C. Brooks, “A Formula for Happiness,” New York Times, December 15, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/opinion/sunday/a-formula-for-happiness.html; Arthur C. Brooks, “Capitalism and the Dalai Lama,” New York Times, April 18, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/18/opinion/capitalism-and-the-dalai-lama.html.
2Thomas Jefferson to Henry Lee, May 8, 1825, in The Basic Writings of Thomas Jefferson, edited by Philip S. Foner (New York: Halcyon House, 1950), 802.
3These figures are remarkably consistent in wave after wave of the General Social Survey (GSS). For more in-depth discussion of these GSS data, see Arthur C. Brooks, Gross National Happiness (New York: Basic Books, 2008).
4Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness,” NBER Working Paper No. 14969 (May 2009), doi:10.3386/w14969.
5The author’s analysis of 2012 GSS data. For particular discussion of these figures, see Andrew C. Quinn, “Sex, Politics, and Happiness in the General Social Survey,” AEI Ideas blog, December 20, 2013, http://www.aei.org/publication/sex-politics-and-happiness-in-the-general-social-survey/.
6David Lykken and Auke Tellegen, “Happiness Is a Stochastic Phenomenon,” Psychological Science 7, no. 3 (May 1996), accessed December 7, 2014, http://www.psych.umn.edu/psylabs/happiness/happy.htm.
7Ibid. See also Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, James H. Fowler, and Bruno S. Frey, “Genes, Economics, and Happiness,” CESifo Working Paper No. 2946 (2010), accessed November 15, 2014, http://hdl.handle.net/10419/30746.
8This is my original approximation based on the available literature. The finding that about half of happiness is heritable is a mainstream finding; see note 7 above. Lykken and Tellegen also state that the heritable portion of overall happiness (roughly half) equals about 80 percent of the stable component of happiness; the underlying math, then, leaves about 60 percent of total happiness that is not stable. This ballpark conclusion is supported by other research in the field, such as Richard E. Lucas and M. Brent Donnellan, “How Stable Is Happiness? Using the STARTS Model to Estimate the Stability of Life Satisfaction,” Journal of Research in Personality 41, no. 5 (October 2009), doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2006.11.005. These authors estimate that roughly 37 percent of happiness likely derives from “contextual circumstances.”
9Philip Brickman, Dan Coates, and Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, “Lottery Winners and Accident Victims: Is Happiness Relative?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 36, no. 8 (1978): 917–27.
10Author’s calculations; data from the 2012 GSS.
11Brooks, Gross National Happiness, 122.
12Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton, “High Income Improves Evaluation of Life but Not Emotional Well-being,” PNAS 107, no. 38 (September 21, 2010): 16489–93.
13Author’s calculations; data from the 2012 GSS.
14Cristobal Young, “Losing a Job: The Nonpecuniary Cost of Unemployment in the United States,” Social Forces (2012), doi:10.1093/sf/sos071.
15Dean Baker and Kevin Hassett, “The Human Disaster of Unemployment,” New York Times, May 12, 2012, accessed November 1, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/opinion/sunday/the-human-disaster-of-unemployment.html.
16Richard Fletcher, Moorish Spain, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 53–54.
17Quote retrieved from “Happiness,” Bartleby.com, accessed March 3, 2015, at http://www.bartleby.com/349/223.html.
18Interested readers can take the quiz for themselves at https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/testcenter.
19“Discrimination Is Associated with Depression Among Minority Children,” American Academy of Pediatrics, May 3, 2010, accessed February 7, 2015, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100502080240.htm.
20Colleen M. Heflin and John Iceland, “Poverty, Material Hardship and Depression,” Social Science Quarterly 90, no. 5 (December 2009), doi:10.1111/j.1540-6237.2009.00645.x. Vijaya Murali and Femi Oyebode, “Poverty, Social Inequality, and Mental Health,” BJPsych Advances 10, no. 3 (May 2004), doi:10.1192/apt.10.3.161.
21Daniel Kahneman, Alan B. Krueger, David A. Schkade, Norbert Schwarz, and Arthur A. Stone, “A Survey Method for Characterizing Daily Life Experience: The Day Reconstruction Method,” Science 306, no. 5702 (December 2004), doi:10.1126/science.1103572.
22Christoph
er P. Niemiec, “The Path Taken: Consequences of Attaining Intrinsic and Extrinsic Aspirations in Post-College Life,” Journal of Research in Personality 43, no. 3 (June 2009), 291–306.
23Donna Rockwell, “Mindfulness in Everyday Life—So You Want to Be Famous? What You Need to Know About Celebrity,” Huffington Post, accessed March 15, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/donna-rockwell-psyd/mindfulness-in-everyday-l_2_b_4818606.html.
24David G. Blanchflower and Andrew J. Oswald, “Money, Sex and Happiness: An Empirical Study,” Scandinavian Journal of Economics 106, no. 3 (September 2004), 393–415.
25Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton, “High Income Improves Evaluation of Life but Not Emotional Well-being,” PNAS 107, no. 38 (September 21, 2010): 16489–93.
26Researchers have vividly measured the principle of adaptation using a method called the Leyden Approach: They ask people what income levels they would consider to be “very bad,” “bad,” “insufficient,” “sufficient,” “good,” and “very good.” The studies find that, no matter what your income, the level halfway between insufficient and sufficient (your “required income”) is about 40 percent higher than what you make right now. If you earn $50,000 per year, your required income is $70,000. But if you get a raise to $70,000, your required income will very quickly jump to about $98,000. See Bernard M. S. Van Praag and Paul Frijters, “The Measurement of Welfare and Well-Being,” in Well-Being: The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology, edited by Daniel Kahneman, Ed Diener, and Norbert Schwarz (New York: Russell Sage, 1999), 413–33.
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