Obama In Your Heart

Ele­va­tion is one of a class of emo­tions that we feel when other peo­ple do good, skill­ful, or admirable things. These emo­tions are unusual in that they are not pri­mar­ily about our­selves, our goals, and our nor­mal petty con­cerns; rather, they make us feel like bet­ter peo­ple. Jonathan Haidt, who coined the term ele­va­tion, writes, “Pow­er­ful moments of ele­va­tion some­times seem to push a men­tal ‘reset but­ton,’ wip­ing out feel­ings of cyn­i­cism and replac­ing them with feel­ings of hope, love, and opti­mism, and a sense of moral inspi­ra­tion.” Barack Obama is appar­ently an off-the-charts ele­va­tion inducer. Haidt’s research shows that ele­va­tion is good at pro­vok­ing a desire to make a dif­fer­ence but not so good at moti­vat­ing real action. But he says the ele­va­tion effect is pow­er­ful nonethe­less. “It does appear to change peo­ple cog­ni­tively; it opens hearts and minds to new pos­si­bil­i­ties. This will be cru­cial for Obama.”