People often measure a government’s success on fulfilled campaign promises. And, most people want their government to address domestic problems first, such as: unemployment, inflation, taxes, along with health and safety. Yet, in reality, a government is only able to fulfill some of its promises because at the end of the day, it never did perfectly align its goals with what voters believed they would do. Governments have agenda's of their own.
Really? Yes, and those agenda's have to do with power, prestige and money. The average 'Joe/Jane' do not like that idea because they idealize the whole process of the campaign and voting as essential to their democratic dream come true. Sure, in theory, elections appear as opportunities for people to make a choice as to what happens in their government and who represents them in terms of what happens - outcomes.
This implies that a political system, wherein the masses vote and get their voices heard, is composed of honest parties, an informative unbiased media and civil society. This is, in fact, most desirable in a democracy. Yet, all too often, not just today but in the past, way too many citizens are disgruntled with politicians and campaign promises let alone any kind of satisfactory outcome from their voter participation.
Psychology today pointed back in 2010 that voters are the eternal optimists who can't learn from experience. We want to believe that our politicians will improve our lives. But when post-election reality hits, we forget how unrealistic we were in believing that somehow "this time," the outcome would be different. In 2008, many Obama supporters and independent voters alike got caught up in this sort of mass delusion of inflated expectations. Supporters sought miraculous results from Obama and the Democratic Congress who they voted into office and when the miracle failed to materialize, they reacted with outrage and contempt. Tea Partiers capitalized on the angry mood of disillusioned voters, many of them basing their candidacies on the premise that their candidates would fulfill a new set of largely unrealistic promises.
Research in marketing psychology provides intriguing insights into why broken campaign promises "hurt so bad." The effect known as "negative expectancy disconfirmation" has been demonstrated in studies involving consumer products that fail to deliver on their promised effects. According to this research, we have a bias toward being more angry when a product fails to perform than to be happy when it lives up to its claims.
If politicians are ever to be able to lead, there will have to be an end at some point to the negative expectancy disconfirmation effect. We have to learn to trust again. Great leaders require not only the ability to take bold action, but the willingness of citizens to allow them to try to win without having to make wild and unrealistic promises. On the morning after, it would be nice to wake up and be able to feel that whoever won or lost, the change is one we can truly "believe in."
ONLINE SOURCE ~ https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201011/promises-promises-when-politicians-don-t-deliver
COMMENTARY: Well, its sad isn't it. What? The whole darn thing is sad... campaign promises and actual outcomes. Even sadder is that the so called psychology here is right but confused. How? Looks like at key phrases: voters are eternal optimists, we want to believe so we have a high expectation... and the so called solution is to learn to trust. Trust in 'great leaders'? Who is that, who decides who is great and who is not? Basically, the best advice here is to set the bar low (trust only that you have set the bar low enough) and you will not be disappointed.
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