I was watching this show on EWTN and there was this group of people that spent money researching how to get women not to choose to get abortions.
And they explained that getting women to intellectually realize that abortions are murder was usually ineffective.
So they decided to research how to use videos that worked on an emotional level, to get women to decide not to get abortions, more subtly instead of directly.
(If I remember correctly they gave examples like a woman fire fighter rescuing a baby from a burning building, was a video they used near the time of September 11)
If I remember correctly they would show the videos and than poll women about their beliefs about abortion or how willing they would be to get an abortion if they were to get pregnant (or something like that), after watching the videos.
They said that an emotional approach appeared to be more effective to reach to women than an intellectual approach, based on the results.
So that people do not accuse me of being sexist I would like to point out that I am not trying to stereotype all women, by blindly claiming that all or most women behave the same way as the women who I have known a significant amount of time. Also it is fact that men and women are different, so it is okay to discuss that men and women might be different.
Throughout my life, I have noticed that if people use emotions as a primary means to try to determine truth and morality and as a means to make decisions it can have very disastrous results.
I also noticed that most women (who I have interviewed about how they make their religious decisions and known a long enough amount of time) seem to make their religious decisions primarily on emotions
I noticed that most men who make their religious decisions primarily on emotions tend to go down a bad path.
It seems that if I try to explain the truth to a man intellectually it sometimes works fine, but if I try to explain the truth to a woman intellectually, they tend to have a negative response.
Now I think it is okay to reach out to people emotionally, so long as you also give them the truth. But it seems that most of the women I have known well tend to only follow religious teachers that reach out to them primarily through emotional means, both those who follow their teachings which happen to be true and those who follow their teachings which happen to be false.
I try to avoid reaching out to people through primarily emotional means (for ethical reasons, I have not devoted most of my time to emotional outreach techniques out of desire not to be a false teacher) I try to reach out to them through kindness and truth instead. Although kindness could be argued to be an emotional method, it is also something that can be in a sense objective. Furthermore a lot of the emotional methods that I am talking about that I have seen used to reach out to women, are more of a method of making you feel something is true because your emotions feel a certain way (I.E. the Mormon way to determine truth, chicken soup for the soul, stories that make you cry or give you a warm and fuzzy feeling, feelings of electricity, warmth, heat or other "spiritual sensations" (that could be classified potentially as demons, angels, ghosts, chi, or work of the Holy Spirit [depending on the persons point of view]), recreations of Bible stories that are cute but not necessarily factually accurate, etc.) rather than emotionally through a tangible act of charity.
Sometimes I have seen where a woman will adopt a religious belief because of a family member or friend (I.E. she wants to or is expected to have the same belief as her parents for instance) although this I would also consider an emotional reason. And occasionally I have also seen women choose religious beliefs based on tangible acts of charity (although this is more rare), but this is still an emotional reason, (although it is a more object reason in my opinion than the other emotional reasons and can be both an emotional and intellectual reason (assuming morality is already defined intellectually.))
So I have two questions
1. Am I correct that woman very very frequently go by emotional feelings for determining religious beliefs, or have I just happened to run into a lot of women that base their beliefs on emotions?
2. Is it a good idea to learn how to reach out to women emotionally such as was found in the research in persuading women not to get abortions, or is that a very bad idea because it encourages them to continue to base how they decide what is true on faulty premises?
And they explained that getting women to intellectually realize that abortions are murder was usually ineffective.
So they decided to research how to use videos that worked on an emotional level, to get women to decide not to get abortions, more subtly instead of directly.
(If I remember correctly they gave examples like a woman fire fighter rescuing a baby from a burning building, was a video they used near the time of September 11)
If I remember correctly they would show the videos and than poll women about their beliefs about abortion or how willing they would be to get an abortion if they were to get pregnant (or something like that), after watching the videos.
They said that an emotional approach appeared to be more effective to reach to women than an intellectual approach, based on the results.
So that people do not accuse me of being sexist I would like to point out that I am not trying to stereotype all women, by blindly claiming that all or most women behave the same way as the women who I have known a significant amount of time. Also it is fact that men and women are different, so it is okay to discuss that men and women might be different.
Throughout my life, I have noticed that if people use emotions as a primary means to try to determine truth and morality and as a means to make decisions it can have very disastrous results.
I also noticed that most women (who I have interviewed about how they make their religious decisions and known a long enough amount of time) seem to make their religious decisions primarily on emotions
I noticed that most men who make their religious decisions primarily on emotions tend to go down a bad path.
It seems that if I try to explain the truth to a man intellectually it sometimes works fine, but if I try to explain the truth to a woman intellectually, they tend to have a negative response.
Now I think it is okay to reach out to people emotionally, so long as you also give them the truth. But it seems that most of the women I have known well tend to only follow religious teachers that reach out to them primarily through emotional means, both those who follow their teachings which happen to be true and those who follow their teachings which happen to be false.
I try to avoid reaching out to people through primarily emotional means (for ethical reasons, I have not devoted most of my time to emotional outreach techniques out of desire not to be a false teacher) I try to reach out to them through kindness and truth instead. Although kindness could be argued to be an emotional method, it is also something that can be in a sense objective. Furthermore a lot of the emotional methods that I am talking about that I have seen used to reach out to women, are more of a method of making you feel something is true because your emotions feel a certain way (I.E. the Mormon way to determine truth, chicken soup for the soul, stories that make you cry or give you a warm and fuzzy feeling, feelings of electricity, warmth, heat or other "spiritual sensations" (that could be classified potentially as demons, angels, ghosts, chi, or work of the Holy Spirit [depending on the persons point of view]), recreations of Bible stories that are cute but not necessarily factually accurate, etc.) rather than emotionally through a tangible act of charity.
Sometimes I have seen where a woman will adopt a religious belief because of a family member or friend (I.E. she wants to or is expected to have the same belief as her parents for instance) although this I would also consider an emotional reason. And occasionally I have also seen women choose religious beliefs based on tangible acts of charity (although this is more rare), but this is still an emotional reason, (although it is a more object reason in my opinion than the other emotional reasons and can be both an emotional and intellectual reason (assuming morality is already defined intellectually.))
So I have two questions
1. Am I correct that woman very very frequently go by emotional feelings for determining religious beliefs, or have I just happened to run into a lot of women that base their beliefs on emotions?
2. Is it a good idea to learn how to reach out to women emotionally such as was found in the research in persuading women not to get abortions, or is that a very bad idea because it encourages them to continue to base how they decide what is true on faulty premises?
If that is a good idea, how would one go about doing that practically and ethically?
