Video: Gun Debate between Alex Jones and Piers Morgan; the Behavioral Perspective

Marquez-Pacquiao move over: Alex Jones of the Infowars.com and PrisonPlanet.TV and CNN’s Piers Morgan in an impassioned debate over gun control at the CNN  (hat tip: Bob Wenzel)

Video 1 

Video 2 

Many will be turned off by the mercurial stance of Mr Jones in handling the debate.

But from the behavioral point of view, the debating tactic employed by CNN’s Piers Morgan’s seems hinged on the devious ploy called the “power of suggestion” or the "priming effects". Mr. Morgan repeatedly attempts to oversimplify what truly has been a complex issue through the selective use of statistics or by framing the argument on specific instances. This is an example of a debate where people talk past each other.

Writes Daniel Kahneman in Thinking, Fast and Slow (p.128) “our behavior are influenced, much more than we know or want, by the environment of the moment”, such that priming makes the audience “susceptible to the biasing influence”(p.127).

In short, by anchoring the debate on issues of the moment, Mr. Morgan’s technique appeals to the emotions of the gullible audience.

How to deal with this negotiation or debating strategy?

Mr. Kahneman advices (p.126)

If you think the other side has made an outrageous proposal, you should not come back with an equally outrageous counteroffer, creating a gap that will be difficult to bridge…Instead you should make a scene, storm out or threaten to do so…

This seems exactly how Mr. Jones deftly eluded Mr. Morgan’s traps.

This debate reminds me of the chilling words of Germany's Adolf Hitler whose Nazism was responsible for the death of about 25 million people during World War II (including the Holocaust),

The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed the subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty...