Testosterone and Politics

As far back as 1910, political scientist A. Lawrence Lowell argued that we "need men with a scientific knowledge of the physiology of politics." In his day, the idea seemed preposterous, a concept perhaps more suited to science fiction than scholarly activity.

It would be a long time — well over a century later — until Lowell would be proven to be something of a visionary. The advent of sophisticated fMRI brain scans and other medical technologies have fuelled the emergent fields of political physiology and neuro politics, with political consulting firms the world over now harnessing the power of physiology and neurology as key weapons in the fight for your vote.

Weaponizing Your Emotions

Using your social media feeds, for example, neuropolitical marketers use sophisticated AI-driven algorithms to microtarget you, invoking a required emotion of, say, sadness, fear, or anger. The purpose of this neuropolitical microtargeting is to influence your emotions because scientific studies show that emotions—particularly fear and anger—drive us to make political choices.

Testosterone molecule

Source: Image by MARIO OLAYA from Pixabay

The Power of the Alpha Hormone

Here's one amazing example of a recent scientific study on testosterone and voting preferences: Researchers at Claremont Graduate University hypothesized that manipulating voters' biological states by giving them supplemental testosterone could influence Democrats to switch preferences to Republican presidential candidates. Using a sample of 136 males, subjects were given a colorless hydroalcoholic gel that contained either 10 g of Androgel or a placebo.

What did they find?

Startlingly, they confirmed their hypothesis. Specifically, they found that weakly affiliated Democrats were
physiologically persuadable, while strong Democrats and all Republicans were not. Weakly affiliated Democrats were more likely to be swing voters in the sample than weakly affiliated Republicans.

Was It Really Your Idea?

How might this play out in the real world? Well, think of the last time you've been riled up by political arguments or ads recently on your social media feed. If you're a weakly affiliated Democrat, it might just have been part of a neuropolitical marketing campaign (particularly if it was close to an election) designed to increase your testosterone levels in the hopes of swinging your vote.

Targeting our emotions in this way is meant to make us feel that we have reached our new voting decisions completely organically (a form of reflexive control, first conceptualized in the Soviet era), which is what makes the approach so deceptively effective. That's why the political content you'll often see online is so emotionally loaded; it's to achieve maximum emotional effect.

Politics: True Lies?

Don't expect much of this emotive, microtargeted, content to be real, though; the Internet remains largely unregulated when it comes to political content, with cable TV a closely unregulated second. As Tom Wheeler, former chair of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has noted, when it comes to political content, "Unfortunately, you're allowed to lie." And those lies target our emotions with truly devastating effect.

A sign saying Big Data is Watching You

Source: Photo by ev on Unsplash

Big Brother Is Watching

In sum, George Orwell's seminal dystopian novel 1984 famously invoked the idea of government as an all-seeing Big Brother. But it seems that this title might be inferred just as easily, these days, to the myriad, anonymous web of companies, political parties, hostile governments, and domestic online marketers that run orchestrated campaigns online by foreign, or domestic actors, to win (or to prevent) your vote. And that is a chilling idea, indeed.