Donald Trump's Debates: 5 Mental Tricks You Didn't Notice

[Turborama]

Hopefully, whoever could be debating him in the presidential debates (if he makes it that far) has been taking notes...

Donald Trump has proven himself to be a master persuader. His unlikely rise to prominence in the Republican primaries has riden on the fact that he knows how to work the media during interviews as well as his performances in the GOP debates against the likes of Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz.

When watching the debates, many of his detractors criticize Trump's apparent lack of substance. For instance, he ducked Megyn Kelly's question about sexism with a joke about Rosie O'Donnell. He seems to repeat buzz words more than other candidates and often justifies his positions by referring to other people who support his stances, rather than defending them outright. While this may seem like weak arguments, Donald Trump's debate strategies actually align perfectly with the way humans think and process information. For that reason, Trump's arguments tend to sink in more than his opponent's (like Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz) do.

In this video we'll look at the top 5 relatively unknown psychological truths that Trump exploits to get his point across during interviews and debates.

[Turborama]

1. Here's another similar analysis from Dilbert Creator Scott Adams.

Some very insightful observations, but I don't agree with his scary prediction...

on Donald Trump's "Linguistic Kill Shots"

Donald Trump has a way with words—and with people. Yet despite his popularity, he has been a mystery to the media, which have mostly derided his campaign as consisting of nothing more than random insults and ignorant bluster.

Scott Adams, prolific author, blogger, and creator of the massively popular comic strip Dilbert, has a different theory. He tells Reason TV's Zach Weissmueller that the media are being trolled by a skilled manipulator, or in Adams's parlance, a Master Wizard. So exquisite does Adams believe Trump's skills to be that he predicts The Donald will go on to win the presidency.

"What I (see) in Trump," says Adams, is "someone who was highly trained. A lot of the things that the media were reporting as sort of random insults and bluster and just Trump being Trump, looked to me like a lot of deep technique that I recognized from the fields of hypnosis and persuasion."

One such technique is what Adams describes as a "linguistic kill shot," in which Trump uses an engineered set of words that changes or ends an argument decisively. According to Adams, when Trump describes Jeb Bush as low energy, Carly Fiorina as robotic, or Ben Carson as nice, he's imprinting a label you already feel about these people. They're not random insults, but linguistic kill shots that you can never get out of your mind.

Similarly, where the media see random insults, Adams sees Trump creating a significant polling gap between those who attack him and those who compliment him, resulting in chilled aggression from his opponents. Trump, says Adams, uses "anchors," which are big, visual thoughts that drown out any other argument. Think, for example, of the billionaire's florid descriptions of a Mexican border wall.

Adams also describes Trump's use of "linguistic Judo," vagueness, and a carefully developed persona to defend himself against attack and promote the image he desires. "You see apple pie and flags and eagles coming out of his ass when he talks," says Adams.

[zebonaut]

2. Spot on; and it's especially easy to fool Baggers