Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior by Mlodinow Leonard

Author:Mlodinow, Leonard [Mlodinow, Leonard]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307907448
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2012-04-23T16:00:00+00:00

AT A QUARTER to eight on the evening of September 26, 1960, Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy strode into the studio of the CBS affiliate WBBM in downtown Chicago.26 He appeared rested, bronzed, and fit. The journalist Howard K. Smith would later compare Kennedy to an “athlete come to receive his wreath of laurel.” Ted Rogers, the TV consultant to Kennedy’s Republican opponent, Richard Nixon, remarked, “When he came into the studio I thought he was Cochise, he was so tan.”

Nixon, on the other hand, looked haggard and pale. He had arrived fifteen minutes before Kennedy’s grand entrance. The two candidates were in Chicago for the first presidential debate in U.S. history. But Nixon had recently been hospitalized for a knee infection, which still plagued him. Then, ignoring advice to continue resting, he’d resumed a grueling cross-country campaign schedule and had lost considerable weight. As he climbed out of his Oldsmobile, he suffered from a 102 degree fever, yet he insisted he was well enough to go through with the debate. When judged by the candidates’ words, Nixon was indeed destined to hold his own that night. But the debate would proceed on two levels, the verbal and the nonverbal.

The issues of the day included the conflict with communism, agriculture and labor problems, and the candidates’ experience. Since elections are high-stakes affairs and debates are about important philosophical and practical issues, the candidates’ words are all that should matter, right? Would you be swayed to vote against a candidate because a knee infection had made him look tired? Like voice and touch, posture, facial appearance, and expression exert a powerful influence on how we judge people. But would we elect a president based on demeanor?

CBS’s debate producer, Don Hewitt, took one look at Nixon’s gaunt face and immediately heard alarm bells. He offered both candidates the services of a makeup artist, but after Kennedy declined, so did Nixon. Then, while an aide rubbed an over-the-counter cosmetic called Lazy Shave over Nixon’s famously heavy five o’clock shadow, out of their view Kennedy’s people proceeded to give Kennedy a full cosmetic touch-up. Hewitt pressed Rogers, Nixon’s TV consultant, about his candidate’s appearance, but Rogers said he was satisfied. Hewitt then elevated his concern to his boss at CBS. He, too, approached Rogers but received the same response.

Some seventy million people watched the debate. When it was over, one prominent Republican in Texas was heard to say, “That son of a bitch just cost us the election.” That prominent Republican was in a good position to know. He was Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., Richard Nixon’s running mate. When the election was held, some six weeks later, Nixon and Lodge lost the popular vote by a hair, just 113,000 out of the 67,000,000 votes cast. That’s less than 1 vote in 500, so even if the debate had convinced just a small percentage of viewers that Nixon wasn’t up to the job, it would have been enough to swing the election.

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