fear factor: appealing to our lizard brains

You find this is refering to the R-Complex part of the brain which is indeed Reptilian in all of us.
-Anunnaki

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FEAR FACTOR: APPEALING TO OUR LIZARD BRAINS

By: Kaspel Tue 26 Oct 2004


Thanks to the Bush campaign's unremitting fear-mongering, millions of voters are reacting not with their linear and logical left brain but with their lizard brain and their more emotional right brain.

What's more, people in a fog of fear are more likely to respond to someone whose primary means of communication is in the non-verbal realm, neither logical nor language-based. (Sound like any presidential candidate you know?)

And that's why Bush is still standing. It's not about left wing versus right wing; it's about left brain versus right brain.

Deep in the brain lies the amygdala, an almond-sized region that generates fear. When this fear state is activated, the amygdala springs into action. Before you are even consciously aware that you are afraid, your lizard brain responds by clicking into survival mode. Fight, flight, or freeze.

And, boy, have the Bushies been giving our collective amygdala a workout. Especially Dick Cheney, who has proven himself an unmatched master of the dark arts of fear mongering. For an object lesson in how to get those lizard brains leaping look no further than the vice presidential debate.

"The biggest threat we face today," said Cheney in his very first answer "is the possibility of terrorists smuggling a nuclear weapon or a biological agent into one of our own cities and threatening the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans."

More
http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/20168/

It's widely acknowledged that the "music" of the campaign is more important than the "lyrics." The Bush campaign has been playing the fear card from day one. Willie Horton, meet Osama bin Hussein. The music is what makes us comfortable and happy; it's what lulls us to sleep or gets us revved up. The lyrics? They make us think.

A recent column by Arianna Huffington nailed the single most important aspect of the music: The defining dynamic of this campaign is fear.

Quite astutely, Huffington's column "Appealing to Our Lizard Brains" quotes the research of Harvard neuroscience professor Daniel Siegel on how fear affects the brain. Among other things, fear makes it very hard to think logically and clearly – meaning that non-verbal cues become especially important.

More:
http://www.alternet.org/election04/20290/
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