Geoff W. Sutton Blog

Originally published 10 July 2015 Today, July 10, marks the 75th anniversary of the  Battle of Britain . German Luftwaffe attempted to destroy the British Royal Air Force (RAF) before invading Britain in 1940.  Timeline . The failure was a turning point in the war. Many have analysed the event in terms of German air superiority-planes, pilots and experience. There are mentions of British radar as helpful. I take a look at psychological factors. COUNTING ERRORS People make mistakes. Germans underestimated the number of British planes. The British overestimated the number of German planes. It’s always better to underestimate an enemy. MOTIVATION Defending your family, friends, and homeland is much more motivating than risking your life to attack an enemy-especially one you expect to defeat later in the year. EMOTION trumped cognitive strategy By all accounts Hitler was angry over British  counterattacks on German towns . He began pummeling Lo...

On the Psychology of Politics “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” The forgoing quote is from John Ehrlichman in 1994. Dan Baum includes it in his April 2016  Harper's   article: "Legalize It All: How to win the war on drugs." I came across the piec...