Healthy Influence Blog

My primary persuasion Rule is, All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere.  When you really, really, really mean it, you will probably fail at persuasion because it is about the Other Guy and not your sincere feelings.  Please do not misunderstand this Rule.  Being Sincere is Bad, but that does not mean being inSincere will make it Good.

Matt Armstrong points to a video from the White Canvas Group that asserts how to win the Communication War on Terror or the “war on terror” or whatever you want to call it.  Please take 60 seconds to view it.

Who could pass a true-false test over the claims from this video?  The text Arguments move faster than normal comprehension speeds in addition to moving unexpectedly and unpredictably across the screen.  People cannot process the Arguments.  The video is a deliberately designed Low WATT dimmer switch that overloads cognitive capacity and disrupts that Long Conversation in the Head.  It also marks a decidedly inSincere tactic.

The video thus takes Arguments and intentionally obscures them with speed and movement, leaving it as a pure Cue play.  It says, Trust Me, I’m Good.  The inference is that if you use this tactic and this approach, you will bedazzle the Bad Guys in the communication version of the War on Terror, rock on to victory, and maybe win a Clio award!

Folks.  This won’t work.  It may get funded.  But, it won’t work.  Reality will kill it although if you use inSincere Metrics like, the AssSecDef2.0 LOVES it or the Cool Table guys LOVE it or some such social twiddly-dee, it will look good.  In other words, among people who have no understanding of communication in general or persuasion in particular will find this slick video, slick.  And, slick works, baby . . . at the Cool Table.

Think about this.  Just think about it.  Do a simple Cascade analysis.  Think harder and do a Standard Model analysis on it.  Or use your own Persuasion Model on it.  Sure, this attracts attention.  Slick and inSincere persuasion does that.  But, attention is not processing or responding or behaving.  It is only attention.

While the communication War on Terror should be fought with a wide variety of tactics, it will be won with strong Arguments repeatedly considered by High WATT processors.  You want change that produces persistent, resistant, and motivated action.  That comes from the Central Route, not from these Cue balls.

Sometimes, inSincere Persuasion Is Just Bad.  And . . .

Persuaders Can Be Famous or Effective, but Not Both.

There’s a Difference between Persuasion, and Smoke and Mirrors; With Persuasion the Illusion Lingers.

I have a big last name.  “Booth-Butterfield.”  And that hyphen.  Okay, mock me.  I deserve it.  The hyphen, however, does have persuasion advantages.

Today, my sweet wife, Melanie Booth-Butterfield, received a personalized gift and fund raising appeal from her beloved Arbor Day Foundation.  It gave her free trees, a free book called the Free Tree Book, a free fragrant purple lilac, and a free year of coffee, PLUS an embossed sheet of adhesive mailing labels AND an attractive, personalized Certificate of Appreciation.  All presented proudly to:

Melanie B. Butter

What a hoot!  I cannot tell you how many times we’ve spotted persuasion plays from various charitable and not so charitable organizations over the years simply because no one gets our names straight.  Here are the most common attempts.

Steven B. Butterfield
Booth Butterfield
Steven Boothbutterfie
Stephen Butterworth
Steve Boothbut

Marketers out there harvesting personal contact information obviously have trouble with both the hyphen and the length of the last name.  It appears that most simply drop the hyphen then compress the two names into one word, but then the one word contains too many letters for the field width in their database, so we get these weird truncations, mashups, and mistakes.

But, the good news is that we can spot the faux friends immediately.  Even with ones as persuasion skilled as this Arbor Day Foundation ambush. All those warm, emotional folks making the world a better place, send us such tender, sweet, and generous notes, letters, and packages and, gee, they even let us,  if we’d like, write a check.  How about it,

D.R. Boothbutt

What’s most interesting to me is that for-profit companies almost never make this error.  They almost always get it right and never let the mistake stand.  Our good close personal friends who are saving the world somehow don’t see my name and its correct spelling as that important, I guess.  And really, what’s in a name?

As long as the check clears.

Consider the many faces of Budda that all exist simultaneously, see in all directions, present to all observers, and always seems the same.

Consider this observation from Charlie Cook, a noted political observer and commentator.  He’s analyzing the Obama Administration’s struggles.

. . . And then when unemployment numbers started proving to be much, much tougher and it started becoming more clear that the stimulus package hadn’t worked properly, they just kept plowing ahead on health care. And this isn’t a communications problem. This is a reality problem. And I think they just made some grave miscalculations and as it became more clear that they had screwed up, they just kept doubling down their bet.

The interesting question here is to understand why Presidents make grave miscalculations that smart observers can see, but they cannot, then exacerbate their problems with a double down bet on the miscalculation.  We could frame this problem in other terms:  When people suffer for their choices, then tend to love that for which they suffer.  Dissonance, in other words.

Now, quickly and of course, this tentative hypothesis is not restricted to the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  Remember Mr. Bush’s miscalculation with that War of Choice in Iraq.  And, Mr. Bush certainly doubled down following his suffering from that miscalculation with the Surge.  That was, dissonance, too, right?

As outside observers, we can see the Suffering of Presidents for their Miscalculations and when we are correct, dissonance and the pursuit of its reduction is likely a strong explanation.  Why do Presidents persist in their miscalculations?  The suffering caused by the miscalculation causes dissonance, an unpleasant psychological state, and is removed by loving the source of the suffering even more which then motivates doubling down.

Of course, the analysis depends not on what the Presidents are doing or thinking, but rather upon the accuracy of our assessment of Miscalculation, Suffering, and Doubling Down.  Only the most impervious zealot argues today that Mr. Bush’s bet on the Surge failed.  Most see the Surge as the success that made following success more likely.  So, was Mr. Bush merely in the throes of dissonance when he doubled down and is supremely lucky that the Surge worked?  That’s what a dissonance analysis would support.  Or, did he simply see the problem in a different light and make the Surge as a rational solution that might actually succeed?  That’s just smart decision-making.

We should think the same way about understanding President Obama right now.  If we’re right – he Miscalculated, Suffered, and is now Doubling Down to more failure – then maybe dissonance is at work here.

But, can’t he just be rational rather than dissonant or even foolish?  He thinks his policies are Good Things and is trying to make Them happen.  Maybe his analysis of Goodness is flawed, maybe his political skills are weak, maybe his opponents are stronger, and maybe he’s like Terry the boxer in On The Waterfront, and tonight is just not his night (at 3:50 in).

All this turns on another persuasion concept, Attribution, stated in a nice turn of phrase:  Where you stand depends on where you sit.  Like Charlie Cook, we are not sitting in the President’s chair looking at the problem.  We are sitting around at our computers, perhaps in our underwear, looking at the guy in the President’s chair.  We conclude that Obama is an idiot, doubling down on a miscalculation when, if we were wearing a suit and sitting in that chair, we’d probably be doing the same damn thing, realizing that it’s always going to be a Close Run Thing that cannot be avoided.

I’ve noted before the failure of advocacy groups who appear to offer protest as a means of persuasion when it is probably better understood as mere expressiveness.  Consider now this example from, of all issues, health care reform.

An advocacy group wishes to convince us that health insurance companies are Evil and need to be controlled as part of health care reform.  Here’s how they make this point.

And here, too.

I understand the cleverness of the metaphor and it does attract broader attention, as with ABC News, for example.  I have to wonder, however, at the persuasive impact of the message.  To equate the legal actions of people with a familiar icon of criminal identification, the Wanted Poster, seems to be an unreasonable stretch.

Sure, these Posters get Reception in the first Stage of the Cascade.  But, do the Posters then generate the kind of Processing and Response that will then lead to desired behavior change (Our Kind of Health Care Reform!)?  As I noted before, advocacy demonstrates its lack of skill or interest in persuasion when it only seeks and gets Reception, but then cannot produce helpful Processing and Response.

As always, All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere.

And, can’t you find more desperate photos of the Evil Ones?  Or Photoshop them like Time magazine did with OJ?

Shocking news!

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety released a study of vehicle crashes that compared states with laws banning cell phone usage while driving to states without such laws.  Even if you don’t know much about history or time series statistics, if you just look at the figures in the report, you can see the Headline:  the Laws Have NO Effect.

Everyone is baffled.

“Absolutely, we were surprised by these results,” says Adrian Lund, president of IIHS and HLDI.

“The study raises as many questions as it answers,” says GHSA executive director Barbara Harsha.

Before we get into the merits of the case, just think about the science and the persuasion behind all of this.  We cannot randomly assign drivers to different conditions, most importantly here, cell phone usage, then observe what happens.  The absence of control is fatal to the quality of the science and the inferences we can confidently draw.  Yet, smart people persistently believe in the Observational Research Tooth Fairy and so we get Laws and Regulations, Nudges and Nags from well intentioned folks who say more than they really know; the sign of FauxItAll.

Worse still is the unscientific orientation of many researchers in Observational Research.  Most strain to confirm a hypothesis and design data collection and analysis to find anything that supports the hypothesis and almost never actively pursue disconfirming evidence.  There’s nothing wrong with entertaining alternative explanations, unless, of course, you already know the true answer and you’re just trying to convince the yokels.

Now, take uncontrolled Observational Research, a confirmation bias, and then add Small Effects and you’re ready for disappointment.  You don’t need an Excel spreadsheet to tell you that traffic accidents are extremely rare events compared to the amount of total driving and further that people drive and talk A LOT and that accidents while driving and talking are also extremely rare events compared again to the total.  Thus, people drive A LOT, but rarely have accidents; people drive and talk A LOT, but rarely have accidents.  The difference between Driving+Phones versus just Driving is a Small Effect.

Thus, we have the commonplace Perfect Storm for failure.  People using science as persuasion in their use of Observation, avoidance of contrary evidence and explanations, and those small effects.   Now, put that persuasion to work in State legislatures and you’ve got Laws and Regulations that produce no effect.

There is no doubt that conversation produces cognitive load and hence distraction for drivers.  Whether on a cell phone or just yackety-yak with a passenger, mere talk requires mental effort and capacity.  It’s just not that important for vehicle crashes.  There is a clear break in the scientific chain of effect between the obvious distraction and the actual wreck.  People tried to draw a straight line from distraction to crashing when it is clear from these data that there are intervening steps and processes that mitigate the distraction.  Nobody looked for those intervening steps.

It’s rather like the silly FDA and Food Police efforts with various kinds of warning labels – whether portion size, calorie count, any other information.  They expect that Warning Labels like this will cause people to eat less and lose weight as if a Warning Label functions like a double-wrapped strip of duck tape over a hungry mouth.  It doesn’t, it won’t, and it can’t.

But, if you’re doing FauxItAll science, nothing else matters.

Persuasion and sex have this in common:  Everyone thinks they are better at both than they are at either.  We tend to take an optimistic view of our efforts – who aims sex or persuasion toward failure?  Thus, we think we’re pretty good, yes, indeedydo, thank you Sir and Madam, when we’re not.

We clearly suspect our weaknesses at sex.  Look at the magazine covers you read.  All of them offer quizzes and tests, tips and hints from your Uncle Irv or Aunt Shirley although never with those names but rather something like Amir Rastar or Mamimi LaZimi even though the advice is the same.  So, you admit your weaknesses in bed if only to yourself.  Why not admit them about persuasion?  That’s the first step on the journey of recovery.

So, how good are you?

Take this quiz.  Respond to each statement with your agreement or disagreement on this 5 point scale.

1 = Strongly disagree
2 = Disagree
3 = Neither agree nor disagree
4 = Agree
5 = Strongly agree

1.  When I try to persuade, the Other Guy changes in the direction I seek.

2.  I have a variety of tactics.

3.  I observe the Other Guy to size up opportunities.

4.  I think about persuasion.

5.  I read persuasion sources to learn more.

6.  The Other Guy rarely realizes when I’m trying to persuade.

7.  Most people probably don’t think I’m very good at persuasion.

8.  I can control my thoughts and feelings as needed when I’m trying to persuade someone.

9.  Given a choice between persuasion and power, I’ll take persuasion.

10. Machiavelli is a misunderstood genius.

Interpreting your score.

Score under 35: You’re normal.
Score  35 to 40: You’re effective.
Score  40 to 45: I’d hire you.
Score   over 45: Who are you fooling?

At some level would an effective persuader even take this quiz?  All bad persuasion is sincere, after all.