What Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán Understand About Your Brain - POLITICO

In order to hack into the minds of the public, people need to feel fear or uncertainty. That could be caused by economic instability or pre-existing cultural prejudices, but the emotional basis is fear. The brain is designed to respond to fear in various ways, with its own in-built defense mechanisms which produce chemicals in the response pattern, such as cortisol and adrenaline. These chemical responses, which zip straight past our logical brains to our fight-or-flight reactions, are also activated by forms of language that instill fear, either directly (as in a vocal threat) or, more insidiously, by twisted facts which allay fears through lies and deceptive statements…

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/07/30/the-connection-between-political-lies-and-conspiracy-theories-00108378