Can Science Explain the Rise of Bernie Sanders?

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This July, I stopped by Bernie Sanders' town hall meeting in Houston, Texas. Everything went as one would expect. Building security checked us in. Bernie volunteers gave us pins and directions. One of the Bernie volunteers had a weird kind of continuous Mohawk/goatee combo, because of course he does. We took our seats, and Bernie Sanders finally started speaking.  The crowd hung on every word--scarce was a line not followed by applause. My hands were getting sore, and the beer I inexplicably thought was a good idea before a town hall meeting decided it was ready to leave my body.

On my way back from what could generously be called a toilet, I spotted her—one of the security guards, completely unaffiliated with the event, staring at this wild-eyed old man, silently nodding along as he spoke about healthcare. I could spot a faint, tearful glint her eyes. Something had moved her.

But what?

That woman had just encountered a meme.

The Power of Memes Now 40% Stronger Than The Power of Love

Let's back up, what I am talking about when I say the word "meme?" Here's a hint: I'm not talking about those image macros your twelve-year-old nephew thinks are the pinnacle of humor—although in their own way, those can be memes, too.

I'm actually talking about a unit, or replicator, similar in concept to that of a biological gene. Following me so far? No? Good. A meme is like a gene in that it is a replicator that plays a key role in evolution. But here's the thing: memes aren't biological replicators. They're not biological at all.

No, memes are purely conceptual, but they help explain phenomenon relating to the transmission of ideas. In other words, they're a way to look at the ideas and behaviors that help human culture evolve.

Emotional Selection in Memes

A Bellhop Shoves A Toothbrush Up His Ass For Science

But what do memes have to do with Bernie Sanders? It's all about the emotional reaction they provoke.

There is strong evidence suggesting memes may be most successful at replicating when they provoke a strong emotional reaction from their "host" brain. This can be demonstrated with the following thought-experiment:

You are told two stories, back-to-back. Both of them are about a man taking a trip to the DMV. In the first story, the man waits a long time and is finally called up to the front desk. He renews his driver's license, takes a new picture for his ID, then heads home.

The second story likewise has the man waiting for a long time before being called up to the front desk. He renews his license and goes to take a new picture for his identification card. This time, however, a humorous detail is added: the man sneezes mid-photograph, contorting his face into a ridiculous arrangement. The woman at the front desk tells him he is only allowed one picture, so the man takes to contorting his face grotesquely when showing others his ID.

Which story would you be more likely to repeat? When you do repeat the story, the details may change, but the meme which says "You're only allowed one picture at the DMV" may now have a very good chance of replicating, or spreading to other people. This "essence" of the story will be passed along in various forms.

This principle was demonstrated beautifully in a 2001 study entitled Emotional Selection in Memes: The Case of Urban Legends. In that study, researchers compared the reactions of participants who were read increasingly "disgusting" stories, including—and this is really in the study—one of a bellhop shoving a toothbrush up his ass.

The results? The more grotesque the story, the more it spread.

Bernie Sanders And Emotionally Resonant Memes

It might seem to be common-sense that a populist candidate like Bernie Sanders would be, well, popular. But this ignores the question of why his ideas, in particular, have suddenly spread so rapidly. We'll discuss more of that later on, but here let's address a crucial component of Sanders' success: emotionally resonant memes.

Of course, I have no real way of knowing what that security guard was thinking. But for the sake of argument, let's assume she was reacting to Bernie's stump line about "healthcare for all." I shouldn't have to tell you that impending death, illness, and disease is a common cause of human distress. To hear a political candidate promise healthcare to those who can't afford it would naturally provoke a strong emotional reaction in somebody who had experienced that kind of hardship. That's a rather verbose way of saying "it hit close to home."

Our subject's brain is a particularly good place for this meme if she hadn't previously formed an opinion on universal healthcare, or had previously formed one favorable to it. Our subject may very well have been a non-committed agent.

Wait, there I go again—what the hell do I mean by "non-committed agent?" There's only one way to find out, isn't there?

The Bubble Theory Of Memetic Replication Because What Could Be More Fun Than Bubbles?

We may think the internet has created a "golden age" of sorts when it comes to the spread of information. The old human standard of confirmation bias and ignoring dissenting viewpoints is still fully at work, however. People seek out spaces on the web where they can speak with others who think like they do. They do this through their choices of friends on social networks, the websites they interact with, and the forums they post on.

This creates little ideological "bubbles," where certain ideas will either gain traction or die out. If one hundred conservative-leaning people all belong to a right-leaning Facebook group, for example, a meme of Bernie Sanders' plan for universal healthcare probably won't gain as much traction as one of Trump's plan to halt illegal immigration. A post suggesting the minimum wage must be raised won't gain as much traction as a post about libertarian-style economics.

I call this the "Bubble Theory" because what could be more fun than bubbles? In any case, it's sexier than "Visual Metaphors For Understanding Memetic Behavior Within Social Networks."

Although, maybe that second title is more accurate. After all, my "theory" isn't really a theory in the scientific sense, but rather provides an easy way to visualize memetics at work. The work has already been done by memeticists, but here it is my intention to organize that research into a coherent visual narrative.

Wow, now I'm starting to bore myself. Let's get back to it, shall we?

The 10 Percent Rule

In 2011, researchers from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute published "Social Consensus Through the Influence of Committed Minorities." In it, they lay out the results of a study that measured how popular opinion was affected by so-called "randomly distributed, committed agents."  In other words, they measured how people tend to react when they encounter others with unwaveringly strong beliefs.

The results are telling. When just ten percent of a given social network (or group of people in contact with one another) espoused a strong opinion, the rest of the people in that network rapidly followed suit. In other words, when ten percent of a society believes something, everybody else rapidly adopts that minority view, quickly making it the majority opinion.

If, then, ten percent of our hypothetical Facebook group suddenly adopted the view that a minimum wage raise would benefit conservatives and liberals alike, that idea has a statistically high chance of gaining traction—with the caveat that the others in the group must be open-minded enough to change their mind. In other words, they can't be "committed agents" themselves.

I'll Be Honest With You Here

Bernie Sanders is the catalyst to our discussion today. He's a good subject for several reasons, principally his popularity in a political environment that should have been quite hostile to a self-described Democratic Socialist. There are obviously a myriad of factors involved in his success, and here I propose that highly successful cultural replicators may be one of them.

But this discussion is about more than just Bernie Sanders, it's about the way information is spread.

Battle Of the Bubbles Soon To Be A Hit Reality Show On FOX

Jeremy Corbyn, Justin Trudeau, Bernie Sanders, and even Donald Trump all have something in common: nobody was expecting them. All four are part of a populist phenomenon that's sweeping political circles in this worldwide election season. For Corybn and Trudeau, their respective chances at victory were largely shrugged off by political pundits and the media, and yet both of them defied all expectations and led their parties to decisive electoral victory.

So too is the case with Sanders and Trump. They're pretty far away from each other politically, but they are likewise defying expectations and building enough political momentum to be considered viable contenders in the 2016 race. The reasons why may have to do with how ideas are spread.

The problem with introducing controversial ideas, of course, is that they take root slowly in their given social network. As such, we're left with self-reinforcing "echo-chambers" of opinion. These little ideological bubbles do battle every time a Trump supporter calls a Bernie supporter an "idiot" on a Facebook thread. They compete and out-survive each other much like genes do.

War of Memes Memetics And The War Of Information

People like Sanders and Trump have large sets of memes on their side. The ideas they espouse further reinforce ideas in their ideological bubbles. Remember, bubbles are social networks—both online and offline. Bigger bubbles "absorb" smaller ones, giving outsider candidates like Sanders and Trump an edge in creating robust, politically active movements.

Early on, Trump adopted opinions which unified disparate conservative memes into a strong ideological bubble. Sanders, likewise, naturally taps into memes being spread by younger left-leaning people and unifies them under one ideological bubble.

So why aren't more traditional candidates, like Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush, enjoying the same kind of political momentum as Sanders or Trump? Well, they are. Candidates like Clinton simply dominate meme pools of a different demographic, one less likely to organize through grassroots means. Her ideological bubble, likewise bristling with memes, must contend with that of Sanders, whose bubble contains a host of anti-Clinton memes being spread and shared by his supporters inside that bubble.

Finally, Sanders' and Trump's "bubbles," or social networks comprised of their followers, act as petri dishes in the creation of new memes. Some of these memes work to protect the "bubble" in which they've formed. They're not conscious beings, of course, but are driven by a Darwinian-style process of adaption and replication. Both Trump and Sanders benefit from widespread belief within their bubbles about the nature of mainstream media. Spend any amount of time reading internet comments from either candidate's supporters on Facebook and one thing becomes immediately clear: the meme which says "mainstream media gets it all wrong" is very strong, indeed.

Being protected from the tepid atmosphere of mainstream media, where both Trump and Sanders are routinely marginalized as outsider candidates, may be a major memetic advantage for both of them. It effectively creates strong ideological bubbles which actively spread their memes to others. A strongly pro-union Facebook group may very well become pro-Bernie Sanders if the ideas his supporters help spread are successful at replicating inside the group. Remember that we're not talking specifically about online social networks, but they relate the complex subject of human social interaction in a familiar and easily understandable way.

All of this points to one, inescapable conclusion: politics is a war of information, and only the most successful cultural replicators will ultimately prevail. In a loose sense, the 2016 presidential race could be called a war of memes, so it's no surprise that populist candidates like Sanders have been so successful in organizing them into a robust and powerful ideology.

Featured Image: Bernie Sanders by AFGE under a Creative Commons Attribution Generic 2.0 license, via Wikimedia Commons. Light bulb by Jacob Hnri 6 under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, via Wikimedia Commons.