A UJI study warns of the need for more transparency and control of political neuromarketing to avoid voter manipulation



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## A UJI study warns of the need for more transparency and control of political neuromarketing to avoid voter manipulation

15/06/2017 |
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Researchers from the Ethics and Democracy Group at the Universitat Jaume I warn in a study about the need to increase transparency and control in the application of political neuromarketing techniques to avoid the risk of manipulation of the voter. This novel discipline studies the brain bases on which the political language of the human being is based in order to connect in a deeper way with the emotional level of the voter in order to capture electors. In the article "Debates éticos en torno al neuromarketing político: el avance tecnológico y su potencial incidencia en la formación de la opinión pública” [“Ethical debates around political neuromarketing: technological progress and its potential impact on the formation of public opinion"] published in the journal *Veritas*, the researchers from the Ethics and Democracy Group at the UJI Ramón Feenstra and Daniel Pallarés-Domínguez warn of how discoveries in the field of neurosciences and their application in the field of marketing and political communication today arouse suspicions about the possible ability to activate the "vote button" in voters, putting at risk the principle of autonomy on which democracy is based.

The introduction of brain scanning techniques makes it possible to explore the brain and deepen the knowledge about its way of proceeding. Political neuromarketing contributes to discarding citizenship models based on rationality by increasing the weight of emotions in beliefs, ideas, decisions and behaviours in the realm of political life. "It seeks to adapt the political message, appealing to emotion through sound, smells, colour, etc., to penetrate the most influential areas of the brain, driving the rapid and emotional decisions of the limbic system, also called *emotional brain*, to the detriment of the rational or neocortex brain, slower and less manageable," explains Feenstra. The researcher also points out that “this is a new way of making communication campaigns that seek to increase advertising effectiveness through the use of information that comes from neuroscientific development.”

The study highlights how many of the concerns about political neuromarketing derive from the lack of information about the implementation of this discipline, its operation, its real effectiveness or its more concrete methodology. “This opacity only leads to generate more misgivings about this discipline,” says Pallarés, so the researchers claim a more transparent use by companies specialized in neuromarketing and the parties and politicians who hire them. According to Pallarés, “a transparent use of this type of technique could lead to a broader understanding of neuromarketing, not focusing solely on the purpose of capturing votes, but on its potential as a scientific discipline, as with the so-called *neuropolitics*, which is consolidating itself as a useful discipline to better understand citizens in their political dimension.”

**Brains that ignore the messages of corruption**

Studies on neuropolitics allow us to appreciate the potential of this discipline when it comes to exploring and knowing the citizenship as a political subject. The way of processing political messages, potential brain differences between people of different ideologies or the various responses to candidates and political representatives are some of the lines of research open. As an example, Feenstra points out that through brain scanners “neuroscience has shown how people discard information that contradicts their ideas, which leads to some people, and their brains, in cases of corruption or abuse of power, not to channel these messages and listen only to what reinforces their position.”

Unlike neuropolitics, which seeks to explore the behaviour of the brain in politics, the problem of neuromarketing arises, in the opinion of the researchers, if it focuses only on the objective of persuading the voter and, in addition, it does in an opaque way. However, many authors question the effectiveness of neuromarketing and its real ability to manipulate behaviour, according to Pallarés, noting that in any case it is a very new discipline that is still being developed. However, from the ethical point of view it is possible to reflect already on its possible consequences. In this sense, researchers consider that “only by incorporating mechanisms of transparency and control in political neuromarketing, which allow to know their real possibilities and their technical and moral limits, it will be possible to ensure that the technological advance of neurosciences allows to understand, not to manipulate, an essential pillar of the democratic system such as public opinion.”

**Bibliographic reference:**

Feenstra, R.A., Pallarés-Domínguez, D. (2017) «Debates éticos en torno al neuromarketing político: el avance tecnológico y su potencial incidencia en la formación de la opinión pública» in *Veritas*, Issue 36, April 2017, Pages 9-28.

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