How Politicians Pull Four Mental Levers to Avoid Our Scrutiny

The Use of Fear, Identity, Repetition and Emotion in Politics

August 17, 2025

Politicians in India, as in many other countries, often rely on universal psychological tactics to divert public attention from their failures in governance, or from issues that could damage them politically or reduce their popularity. These tactics draw their strength from four mental levers deeply rooted in how the human mind responds to fear, identity, repetition and emotion.

Since psychological tactics work through mental levers, we will first examine those, and take up the strategies in a separate news briefing.

The human brain relies on shortcuts to process information quickly. Psychologists call these shortcuts heuristics. They help people make fast judgments without examining every detail. This kind of thinking is automatic and effortless, and it dominates most of our daily decisions. The brain can switch to slow, careful thinking when needed, but only when a person is alert, motivated or trained to reflect more deeply.

Politicians take advantage of this by feeding messages that trigger fast emotional responses rather than thoughtful analysis. The most powerful triggers are fear, identity, repetition and emotion. These influence how people understand events, what they believe and what they choose to notice or ignore.

(1) Fear activates the brain’s built-in survival system. It makes people focus sharply, react quickly and care mainly about staying safe, rather than weighing their options, analysing the situation or checking the facts. Politicians use this by sending messages that portray certain groups or events as threats.

A speech that talks about enemies at the border, secret plots or dangers from a particular community triggers this response. People then pay less attention to how the government is performing and instead concentrate on protecting their own group. Once fear takes hold, strong and even harmful actions, such as limiting rights or stopping criticism, start to feel acceptable. People believe they are defending themselves from danger, not making a political judgement.

For example, fear-driven messaging around alleged “love jihad” claims that Muslim men are systematically targeting Hindu women to convert them through marriage. These claims, made mostly by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have been widely circulated despite the absence of credible evidence supporting any organised conspiracy. The term itself has not been recognised by any law or court, yet it was used to justify new legislation like the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance, 2020, which criminalised religious conversion by marriage under vague and sweeping conditions.

The fear created by this narrative has served multiple purposes. It has reinforced communal division, painted a specific minority group as a threat to cultural identity and turned attention away from economic and social issues. It has also allowed leaders to present themselves as protectors of Hindu women and family values, building emotional loyalty while avoiding policy accountability.

(2) Identity works in a similar way by triggering the brain’s reward system. People feel secure, recognised and strong when their group identity is supported. This could be based on religion, caste, region or language. Politicians often use these identity signals to build loyalty, presenting themselves as protectors of the group’s pride or way of life. These signals can push aside facts.

A leader who is seen as “one of us” may still get support even if they govern poorly, because voting for them feels like standing by one’s own community. In this way, identity makes political choices more about emotion and group belonging than about ability or performance.

For example, the Congress party backed the 1985 anti-South Indian sentiment in Mumbai, which had already been cultivated by the Shiv Sena in earlier decades. Instead of countering this divisive identity politics, sections of the Congress party used Marathi pride and “sons of the soil” rhetoric to protect their political base.

Congress leader Rajni Patel and others in Mumbai politics aligned themselves with local Marathi-speaking interests at the cost of linguistic minorities, particularly South Indians and Gujaratis, who were portrayed as outsiders occupying jobs and spaces in the city.

(3) Repetition influences belief through a mental effect known as the “illusory truth effect.” When people hear the same thing many times, it starts to feel true, even if there is no real proof.

Political parties use this by repeating slogans, claims and accusations until they sound familiar. Familiar things feel easier to accept and less likely to be questioned. Over time, repeated messages can start to feel like general knowledge. This is why widely shared misinformation is hard to remove. It fits how the brain stores and recalls information. Voters may feel certain that something is true, even if they cannot remember where they heard it or whether it was ever confirmed.

For example, in the lead-up to the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, BJP leaders repeatedly used the slogan “UP mein bulldozer chalega” (the bulldozer will roll in UP) and promoted Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s image as the “bulldozer baba.” The image of the bulldozer, used against alleged criminals and illegal properties, was repeated across rallies, media interviews, posters and social media. The term became a symbol of “tough governance,” projected as swift justice and strength.

However, this repeated image served another purpose, to divert public focus from long-standing issues such as unemployment, rural distress, the state’s poor handling of the COVID-19 second wave and incidents of police violence and custodial deaths. The narrative shifted from policy performance to a spectacle of force. Instead of asking whether jobs were being created or healthcare was improving, public attention was drawn to demolition drives, often targeted along communal lines.

(4) Emotion ties all these effects together. It strengthens memory, makes people pay less attention to facts that do not match their feelings and influences how events are understood. A speech that triggers anger or pride stays in the mind longer than a list of facts. Emotional stories, such as those about sacrifice, betrayal or victory, connect more deeply than technical explanations. Politicians understand that a powerful story can convince people more easily than data. This is why even policies that have failed can still be popular if they are framed as acts of courage or love for the nation. The emotional effect keeps belief alive even after the facts are forgotten.

For example, amid rising public anger and media scrutiny over lawlessness, poor infrastructure, and collapsing public services in the mid to late 1990s in Bihar, Lalu Prasad Yadav responded not with explanations or plans, but with emotional appeals based on his identity as a poor, backward-caste leader who was being unfairly targeted by the “elite” and the “media establishment.” He portrayed criticism of his governance as a personal attack on his background and community. He frequently said things like “hum gaon ke aadmi hain” (I am a man of the village), using that image to claim moral superiority and connect emotionally with rural voters.

Even during the fodder scam investigations, where he was directly implicated, Lalu continued to present himself as a victim of an upper-caste conspiracy. He would joke publicly, stage folk performances and invoke his humble origins to deflect attention from the scale of corruption and administrative failure. His messaging shifted from policy defence to emotional drama, where being “one of the poor” became a shield against all accountability.

Good news is that these four mental levers can be resisted. We need to pause before reacting and ask questions. What is being avoided here? What is not being said? Does this message stir emotion to cover up poor performance? Slowing down our response, checking facts and comparing actions with promises can interrupt the effect of these tactics. The more voters stay alert to these patterns, the harder it becomes for politicians to distract them from real accountability.

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