Pressing The Narcissist’s Buttons – Practical Debate Tactics for the Modern Liberal- Additional Research

In “Touching the Raw Amygdala,” we discussed how to trigger the dysfunctional Liberal amygdala in casual debate with Narcissists, and Liberals. We asserted that Liberals are not arguing to create a cogent case for their position, but rather they are trying to manipulate social hierarchies to advance their own relative advantage over others. On brain scans, researchers have found two distinct patterns of brain activities, one associated with competition and reward and the other associated with social behaviors and self-awareness. These two patterns are associated with dopamine activity, which relates to all facets of ideology through dopamine receptor allelic variation.

In the series, we maintained that an unemotional countenance is vital to upsetting the Liberal’s brain function. I was bothered as I wrote that particular section, because I, myself, would have doubted that aspect of the piece in my less experienced past. Without concrete experience, it can be difficult to understand some concepts, and this is one. Nevertheless, it was, in my now experienced opinion, among the most important pieces of information within the series, so I want to briefly revisit it here.

In psychology, one definition of the word “affect” is an expression of emotion in response to the provocation of another. From the time we are babies, we are programmed to seek an emotional response from others, and if we do not get it, we will tend to develop a compulsive desire to seek it. It is this innate desire for affect, from others, which can become distorted by the intense malleability of the young developing mind, and produce aspects of certain personality disorders and psychologies, Liberalism among them.

Those reading this who don’t care if others pay attention to them or not are probably, in part, that way because when they wanted to elicit emotion in their parents as an infant they were immediately satisfied by a smiling and cooing parent. This satisfied the urge for attention, ending it, and short circuiting the type of long lasting desire and frustration produced by a parent’s ignorance in that circumstance.

In contrast, a long lasting period of desire for affect, and frustration when not receiving it, would have burned into the brain a Hebbian neurological foundation of a lifelong compulsion to desperately seek attention from those around you, by any means necessary, even if self destructive. I firmly believe this desperation for affect is a foundational Liberal (and Narcissist) trait.

We maintain here that Liberalism, as an r-strategy, is partly produced by low-attachment/low investment parenting. Often this form of parenting would likely involve a single mother being less than immediately responsive to their baby emotionally. (ie. “I’m in the middle of my mani/pedi – the baby can wait.”) How would this reduced supply of reliable maternal affect condition the developing Liberal, if at all?
Here, in this video, we see what is known as the “Still Face Experiment,” by Dr Edward Tronick. This is a difficult video to watch, as it involves a baby being placed under conditions which cause it extreme emotional distress. Were we not about to see our society destroyed by Liberals, and if I didn’t feel it important for Conservatives to be aware of this facet of Liberal psychology, I would not present this video to you. For those who don’t wish to view the video, I will summarize it’s contents below.

In this experiment, a mother removes all emotion from her face, and looks at her baby blankly. The baby first becomes curious as to why the mother isn’t showing emotion, and supplying it with affect. The baby very quickly progresses to trying to elicit emotion from the mother by crying and waving its arms. When that doesn’t work, and the mother continues to look on with an expressionless gaze, the baby begins to freak out, until it actually begins having muscular convulsions twisting it’s body, as it screams. At that point, the mother grabs the baby, smiles, and coos it back into a state of relaxation with an aggressive supply of smiling, cooing affect.

Notice how being confronted with an unemotional face, unresponsive to the baby’s efforts to elicit reaction, trips the baby’s stress pathways (probably through the amygdala), and this produces a whole raft of physiological responses, culminating in involuntary muscle contractions and a raw, emotional agony.

Given the Hebbian nature of neural synapses, if this were to occur repeatedly, these behaviors would find themselves burned into the neurological pathways of the brain. As a result, the emotional and physiological effect would gradually increase, requiring less stimulation to provoke, and producing a more accentuated effect. I suspect this is what occurs, to some degree, in the low-investment model of r-selected parenting, such as manifests in every aspect of Liberal psychology, even down to preference for the smell of coffee over the smell of babies. (To see the study, scroll the page all the way to the right-most column, then scroll down to the section titled, Conservatives and Newborn Babies.)

In r-strategists, the low-investment parenting behaviors produces a low level effect in developing Liberals similar to this “Still Face” effect. This conditions the Liberal individual to seek to see emotion in those around them, and this effect ends up being present, even into adulthood. This is why Mike Wallace went mad in that courtroom as a lawyer unemotionally explained what an untrustworthy sleaze he was, and it is why Colonell Connell’s rebuke of him was so traumatic that he could no longer argue on behalf of his debate position.

This effect probably also serves some sort of adaptive function as well, in the adult Liberal. Perhaps it makes them hyper-driven to elicit emotion in those around them, thereby enhancing their drive to perpetually manipulate the emotions of others while they pursue a strategy of navigating social hierarchies. This would jibe with the study here showing that individuals with low dopamine function (as the Liberal likely possesses), tend to have brains which are more active in areas associated with social behavior and self-awareness than reward/motivation.

Interestingly, Eric Berne also hypothesized that many of the destructive behaviors he saw in his practice arose from a failure to reliably acquire attention from the mother, or “strokes,” as he referred to them, during the earliest years of life. In it’s most extreme form, this psychological urge to elicit affect becomes a personality disorder such as Borderline Personality Disorder, where an individual will seek any form of drama, by any means possible (from argument, to malicious action, to infidelity), all in an effort to simply acquire affect from their partner, regardless of the longer term effects of their behavior.

Of course the salient point to draw from this is that if someone is Liberal, they probably have a dysfunctional brain. As a result, they are very likely to have been conditioned to experience some form of amygdala reactivity, just as the baby in this video does, in response to an unemotional countenance, unresponsive to provocation. If that is the case, you can produce a similar reaction within the Liberal, making them feel a sensation of anxiety similar to that experienced by the affect-deprived baby. Combined with additional amygdala stimulation, such as public humiliation and out-grouping, one can often overwhelm the amygdala, triggering a neurological fireworks show unlike anything you would have thought possible while viewing human interaction in purely personal terms.

I know, because I have precipitated a far worse response than the baby exhibited myself, using the unemotional countenance while interacting with an adult Liberal. And I have made the amateur’s mistake of trying to exhibit visibly exciting emotions, so as to further excite them into stratospheric levels of overstimulation, only to see the counterintuitive effect of the Liberal/Narcissist calming down, and regaining their physiological footing. Although it was confusing at the time, in light of this work, it now makes perfect sense. Of course, you have to moderate the unemotional countenance to comport with social expectations in personal interactions, but the principle is the same. No matter how much the Liberal waves their arms and cries like a baby, you really don’t care. You just look on, unemotional, and explain to them how pathetic they are.

Thus one is probably best served by combining an out-grouping stimulus designed to stimulate the Liberal amygdala with an emotionally unaffected countenance designed to perpetuate the agitated psychological state, and the amygdala stimulation producing it. If done correctly, parts of the Liberal brain will become so overstimulated they may even shut down entirely.

I encourage you to experiment with it yourself in your next debate with a Liberal.