According to research presented at the 2016 American Psychological Association convention, curiosity can help individuals make smarter and healthier decisions.

“Our research shows the piquing people’s curiosity can influence their choices by steering them away from tempting desires, like unhealthy foods or taking the elevator, and toward less tempting, but healthier options, such as buying more fresh produce or taking the stairs,” explained Evan Polman, Ph.D., an author of the study and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Polman went on to note: “Our results suggest that using interventions based on curiosity gaps has the potential to increase participation in desired behaviors for which people often lack motivation. It also provides new evidence that curiosity-based interventions come at an incredibly small cost and could help steer people toward a variety of positive actions.”

Applying it to politics

Based on this research, it’s easy to see how Donald Trump was able to defy all odds and defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election – he successfully piqued the curiosity of the American voter. It’s not exactly a secret that Donald Trump was seen as an outsider from the second he announced that he was running for president. Each and every time he spoke to the media or held one of his rallies, he made it clear to the entire country that he wasn’t interested in being your typical politician running for office. In order to pique the curiosity of the American voter and prove that he was going to be a president that ran against the status quo, Trump did two things: he spoke radically different than most other candidates running, and he proposed policies that weren’t the norm for American politics.

Unlike most other candidates in the 2016 presidential race, and virtually every politician that’s ever walked the halls of Congress, Trump didn’t take abuse from the mainstream media. He didn’t let networks like CNN and MSNBC get away with lying about him and the policies that he was proposing, often referring to them as “fake news.” Because of the fact that this attitude was so different and ran against the status quo, the American people became curious about Trump’s candidacy, which ultimately gave him a tremendous advantage.

Similarly, many of Trump’s ideas for the country were radically different than anything that had been proposed in the past. For example, even though past candidates have talked about securing the border, Trump was really the only one that has made a serious push to get a wall built along the southern border. Trump stood out when it came to foreign policy as well, at one point saying that he would deal with the Islamic State by “bombing the hell out of them.” This sort of straight talk and outside-of-the-box thinking piqued the people’s interest and worked to Trump’s advantage in the end.

Yet even though President Trump has generated an enormous amount of curiosity in America, the liberals and the mainstream media continue to tear him down, all because he goes against the status quo. According to a study from the Media Research Center, between Inauguration Day (January 20, 2017) and the end of that year (December 31, 2017), the evening newscasts of ABC, CBS and NBC had an overwhelmingly hostile tone towards President Trump (90 percent negative versus just 10 precent positive). (Related: The purpose of the mainstream media is thought control and suppression of the truth.)

Perhaps instead of attacking the man who challenges the status quo and generates curiosity among the American people (which has been scientifically proven to be healthy and beneficial), the liberals should be congratulating the President for successfully breaking free from the system.

Sources include:

APA.org

CNSNews.com