The Poison Parasite Defense: How Neuroscience is Reshaping the Political Ad Game
By: Jim Zyko
Tags: Cognitive Science, Politics, 2020 Presidential Race, Science, Neuroscience

The Poison Parasite Defense: How Neuroscience is Reshaping the Political Ad Game

And its potential to level the playing field.

Photo by Lucrezia Carnelos on Unsplash

The 2020 general election is fast approaching and, with it, the ad battles are heating up. Unfortunately, many candidates often lack the money needed for these ads and find themselves in lopsided challenges where they are excessively outspent by their opponent — something many would consider as a flaw in our democracy. The “Poison Parasite Defense” (PPD), however, exploits the inner workings of human memory and allows struggling candidates to neutralize their rival’s money advantage.

The goal of the PPD is to facilitate a strong link, referred to as the “parasite,” between a prominent rival’s mass communication, like TV ads, and a less fortunate candidate’s counter-message, which acts as the “poison.” If implemented correctly, every time someone views a rival’s particular ad, they recall the counter-message — rendering the ad practically useless.

Specifically, the PPD approach is founded on the power of associative memory, or the ability to link two or more items. This link allows one of the items to act as a retrieval cue for the other. Similar to how walking or driving by a certain building may remind one of a memory vaguely related to that object.

This link can be achieved through relatively simple means. For example, superimposing a rolling script of the counter-message on the rival’s ad will suffice. Simple efforts, like this, have proven to be more effective because the closer the PPD ad remains to the rival’s original, the stronger the link that forms.

Researchers at Harvard compared the efficacy of this method to traditional response ads, in part, by gauging participants’ likelihood of voting for the rival after exposing them to the two different types of ads. After multiple studies, they found that the PPD ads have a stronger initial effect than the traditional response ads and a longer-lasting impact, overall. The PPD approach continued to subvert the rival’s message over the two weeks of one of the studies, while the traditional response ad gradually lost its effect after six days.

Still, it’s important to note that this approach works best if the well-off rival runs the same ad numerous times, as is the custom now. However, it is conceivable that once the PPD becomes more common, prominent campaigns will adapt and introduce more variety to their mass communication — meaning there is an incentive to be one of the first to employ this method.

As of now, though, no major political campaign has implemented this approach, despite it showing a lot of promise. This could be due to the lack of research behind it, but candidates who are lagging in the 2020 money race could benefit from experimenting with it.

According to the March FEC report, the Trump campaign has $244 million of cash on hand compared to the Biden campaign’s $57 million. These amounts do not reflect the aid provided by outside groups and they do not necessarily suggest that Biden will not be able to catch up. However, in the case that Biden struggles to match Trump, his campaign would be wise to adopt the PPD approach.

Moreover, with the economy approaching depression-era levels, many new candidates and grassroots campaigns are struggling to raise small-dollar donations. Others are going up against powerful incumbents. Regardless, the PPD offers them the chance to do more with less.

Ads are not the most important part of a campaign, but they play a crucial and often expensive role in expanding a candidate’s voice and access to voters. The PPD has the potential to substantially democratize this process.