Over the Christmas holidays a commonplace event occurred that provides me with a metaphor for understanding how to do persuasion. See, a neighbor called a couple of weeks before Christmas to request our help in putting up their tree. They had gotten a very large tree that hadn’t looked so large at the tree farm or even on top of the truck, but now was looking like something you’d use as a replacement telephone pole. So, they called in the hill reinforcements.

When I arrived at their house I, too, was immediately struck at just how big the thing was, easily 12 feet with beautiful, symetric branches. An adult could not grasp the trunk without having to stick your face deep in the needles. And while it would fit in the great room with cathedral ceilings, it was going to be a monster to install. My mind turned at the engineering possibilities. I talked with the neighbor, Dwayne, for his ideas. Now, Dwayne is a very bright physical scientist with an international reputation and while my background in quantum or mechanical physics is a bit light, I know enough about his field to know that he’s got some serious smarts in his head. (And, practical smarts, too; he had enough sense to get his wife to rally the troops to fight this tree.)

Dwayne’s idea was to haul the tree into the room and place it lying on its side on a couple of saw horses. “You mean, like we’re going to cut it up for firewood?” I asked. “Yep. And then we move the saw horse at the bottom end of the trunk up toward the top of the tree until it tips over, you know, a fulcrum.”

So, we dragged the tree into the house (perhaps another blog post someday – that tree did not go quietly into the house) and got it up on two saw horses. Then Dwayne brought out the tree stand. It was one of those big, green circular plastic jobs with the four pairs of long handled screws, but he’d customized it by nailing the stand into a 3 square foot piece of plywood for greater stability and strength. Dwayne eyeballed the tree trunk, then kicked the tree stand with his toe in line with some imaginary path he could see in his mind’s eye. “Okay, we’re set.”

Then his young son, Garrett, and I picked up the tree at the heavy end at the bottom of the tree while Dwayne moved the saw horse a bit closer to the top of the tree. We sat the tree back down. It still looked like it was ready for the chain saw. So, we lifted it again and Dwayne moved the saw horse up another couple of feet and we sat the tree down again. This time, however, the trunk of the tree was quivering like some weird wood magnet was pulling on it. Gravity had the tree in its grip and the tree was shaking just off its balance point. So, the kid and I lifted the tree one last time as Dwayne moved the saw horse, then, voila, the tree tipped effortlessly down, gravity drawing its weight and I just guided the fall of the trunk along that imaginary line Dwayne saw, the tree fell into the tree holder and we easily walked it upright while Melanie and Regina got under the tree and started turning the screws to secure the tree. It was literally the work of falling off a log.

The point of this fun story is the correct application of a scientific principle in a specific engineering circumstance. There were a lot of different ways to handle that tree, but when we put it in the thrall of scientific principles (gravity and the fulcrum), the whole process was shooting fish in a barrel. The trick, though, was not simply seeing the scientific principle, but also being able to construct an engineering solution that capitalized upon those principles.

We face the same kind of problem with applied persuasion. If you read the CIG Persuasion book, it’s fun to learn about things like dissonance or attribution or the different forms of conditioning and the two routes. But, how do you make it happen in the real world? I know many very bright and talented persuasion researchers who would starve as marketing experts or sales experts or politicians or anyone who uses persuasion and influence to make a living because they are good at science, but not so good at engineering. And the same pattern holds in reverse. Many people who try to make a living with persuasion and influence often have no idea why things work or don’t work and can’t predict very well their chances of success because they really do not understand the science behind their “engineering” attempts.

The basic trick is to know the science, then look for ways to get your receivers into an “engineering box” that capitalizes on that science. Dwayne knew the science of gravity and the fulcrum, but the trick was to get that damn big tree into an engineering box so that we could use gravity and the fulcrum. That’s why he got the saw horses and called the neighbors. The same holds with persuasion and influence. Once you understand the scientific principles, your applied engineering problem is learning how to manuever receivers into the ELM box or the CLARCCS cues box or the dissonance box and then let gravity and the fulcrum go to work. Alternatively, if you can’t figure out how to move people into a particular box, your applied engineering problem is to instead figure out what kind of box the situation naturally presents, then determine if there is a scientific persuasion principle that could be applied.

For example, it is difficult in the natural world to easily manipulate the WATTage of receivers. There’s simply so much going on and so many available sources of information out there that you can’t control them and grab the dimmer switch of a person’s WATT and turn it higher or lower. Therefore, since you can’t easily or automatically control the route of persuasion, you must have both strong arguments and strong cues available for either circumstance. Once you identify (not manipulate, just identify) the processing state of the receiver, you then move them into either the argument box or the cue box, deliver the persuasion tool and let science do what it does.

So, the next time you’re trying to do applied persuasion think with science and engineering. What are the principles and what is the box?

Merry Christmas! Happy Persuasion and Influence!

While there is much to persuasion that is art, the basic principles possess a compelling feature: science supports them. We know what we know about the Elaboration Likelihood Model or CLARCCS cues or Dissonance Theory or Classical Conditioning is based upon a wide variety of experimental studies that systematically manipulate and control persuasion variables, then quantitatively assess their impact. The Persuasion Guide chapter on Prove It! very, very briefly outlines the scientific approach to persuasion and recommends those scientific procedures as tests everyone should use when assessing any persuasion claim. I also recommend science even with its limitations as an excellent foundation for understanding the world.

This argument gets a lot of support in academic and research circles, but in the real world most people most of the time don’t have time for science and tend to go with a Darwinian approach (if I survive doing this it must be okay). I think a lot of businesses tend to operate that way. So what?

Well, today we get yet another news story about a suffering pharma that has to make huge jobs cuts to survive. Pfizer is cutting 10,000 jobs including over 2,000 sales representatives. Pharmas are often held to be prototypes of hardnosed persuasion agents who use whatever tactic that works to achieve success. They aggressively advertise and market information direct to consumers that drives people to demand pills from physicians. So why are these guys cutting 10% of their overall workforce? Have their persuasion tactics finally caught with them as consumers and physicians rise in angry protest?

Nah. They lost their patents. And they haven’t got new drugs in the anywhere in the pipeline that they can patent.

Business is easy when you’ve got the market cornered. And when you lose the corner, then all that’s left is your skill. And, I’d argue that pharmas in particular have fallen victim to several of the Rules.

Power corrupts persuasion.

Patents are “power” and when you’ve got power you don’t really need to be persuasive. When the patents expire, your power expires, and then all that remains is skill.

Great persuaders don’t need rich uncles, kindness from strangers, or third party vote splitters.

The vaunted persuasion reputation of the pharmas has to be adjusted here because it is apparent that pharma depend upon the action of a third variable to make it happen.

This is a complicated post, so let’s clarify and recap.

First, I am not gloating over the economic challenges facing Pfizer or any pharma. This is awful news. At one level it is the “creative destruction” of capitalism, but at another it is serious pain and suffering for thousands of families. Second, the “vaunted” reputation of pharmas is not solely of their own creation. I think many people in media and in the health and medicine communities have wildly exaggerated the operation of pharmas in much the same way people villianize big oil. Advocacy groups have made pharmas appear to be manipulative, deceitful, and conniving. Given these terrible economic problems of pharmas, not just with Pfizer, it’s hard to believe the evil stereotype of those big, bad drug guys when their stock prices are dropping and they’re laying off employees by the thousands.

That said, I still can point of this story as both an illustration of a scientific approach to understanding things and as an illustration of the Rules. Pharmas have taken a Darwinian approach to their sales approach and as long as they were surviving, everything was hunky-dory. Now, the sky is falling and in a very predictable way and one that a more scientific approach could foresee, forestall, and perhaps prevent. Further, that Darwinian approach blinded them to the Rules and has left them in a weakened position.

I’d expect that pharmas will now take science and persuasion considerably more seriously. Without patents, they’ll have to make money the old fashioned way.

I’ve wracked my brain for persuasion applications from my recent trip to Acapulco. Clearly, I’m getting old because nothing, but nothing, that is interesting, creative, or acceptable to the IRS springs to mind. From a business perspective the trip goes down as a total loss, an economic disaster, just money up in smoke. So, here’s some pictures.

Predinner drinks on the patio at the Pierre Marquez at dusk. Vodka Martini. Dry. With green olives. Straight up. And with a tip of the hat to James Bond, shaken, not stirred. The Pierre Marquez is part of the Fairmont group, so there’s a shuttle between it and the Princess. The Marquez is considerably smaller than the Princess and has a quieter feel.

A handsome stranger with an accent and a small child took our picture. This was his best shot. The other images show the effects of a 3 year old pulling on your leg. Everyone is friendly during happy hour at sunset in Acapulco. Of course, a vodka martini helps, too.

Melanie and I were also relatively rare Anglos on the beach. Most folks appeared to be Mexican or Central/South American. They all looked and acted like they lived in Overland Park, Kansas except they had better tans and spoke really good Spanish. iPods, cell phones, little kids with Gameboys, lots of Grandmamas. The global economy is interesting to watch. We’ve been going to Acapulco since 1981 and the positive improvements in Mexico are astounding over that time period. On our first visit the exchange rate was 25 pesos to the dollar. This time it was 10 to 1. Life is good in Mexico and getting better for more people all the time.

Dusk with palms, quiet beach, and pink sunset. You might consider the palm trees. Some have lights. Some don’t. They illustrate the ELM concept of elaboration. Perhaps there’s an IRS deduction in here after all? Wow, it just goes to show that if you keep working at it, you can come up with an excuse for about anything.

My girl gets wet in the afternoon Pacific. The sea was angry that day, my friend, except we’re in Mexico, and the sea was not angry. It was warm. The beach here is quite shallow out fifty or more feet. It creates marvelous currents.

Then she walks out where it’s deeper. I won’t let her go out farther because last time we were on this beach for our 25th wedding anniversary, she got caught in a riptide that started hauling her out to the big fishes. The tide caught me on the other side and I absolutely could not get to her. Fortunately a very tall man who was standing a few steps away from her eased over, grasped her hand, and brought her back to me. It was an interesting moment in our lives.

I found a baby sea turtle. The Acapulco Princess has a sea turtle baby farm on the beach near its sea wall. They hired an Expert who oversees the operation which consists of getting endangered sea turtle eggs from somewhere, sticking them in the sand like Easter eggs, then waiting until they hatch. At that point the Princess gathers all the WWF guests who stand in a straight line on the beach while the Expert puts the hatchlings on the beach. Everyone watches the little critters clamber to the sea. The eternal cycle . . . Of course, none of these little turtles have GPS and they get turned around a bit. Or else they like the home cooking at the Princess, so a few come back. Melanie took this one out to sea, past the major surf line, and put her in the ocean. The eternal cycle . . .

We bought three bottles of vanilla, a pair of cool cuff links, and a nice opal bracelet at this beach emporium. It’s called the Princess Cabana. If you’re there say “Hola” to George, Nacho, and Harvey Gomez Laredo. And wear sandals. The sand is hot like japaleno hot.

Mexican vanilla is to die for. The Food Police have not yet arrived south of the border. They serve cream with coffee and the cream is so brown with milk fat that it looks like it’s been seasoned with brown sugar. Don’t even ask about the bacon and ham. Try the Mexican coffee sometimes. I have a junkies sweet tooth (I still dream about cigarettes 25 years after my last one), but Mexican coffee needs no sugar or cream. And the butter . . .

Every husband has to play the fool on vacation. Here’s my clown shot. Melanie had been fumbling with the camera and I’d made some incredibly bright and clever joke about Phds, women, and technology. This is the only picture of my apology I care to share. If you think about it, this does have a persuasion application. It’s the Cascade!

The Princess stocks gorgeous and exotic animals on the property. We’ve already seen the endangered sea turtles (Global Warming and that damn George Bush), but when you stroll the grounds you’ll also see swans, peacocks, and flamingos. They seem to enjoy the Global Warming, so it appears that Mr. Bush giveth, too, while he taketh away.

When it is rare, it is good or at least that what the CLARRCS cue of scarcity suggests to the peripheral processor. The name of the tactic suggests its operation: make less of something and you make it appear more valuable. Thus, put a timer on the sale and countdown to zero making time rare. Start with a total number of products available, countdown to zero making availability rare. What else can you do?

How about the Starbuck Effect?

Starbuck comes to town and solves your problems. Tornadoes and lightning tearing up your house and home? Just buy this whiz bang whirligig, put it on your house, and you’ll never fear from rain or wind or lightning. Drought parching your land, killing your livestock, burning your crops. Pay $100 and Starbuck will make it rain. Don’t ask how, do what he says, and, brothers and sisters, you’ll be dancing in the mud. Starbuck, the central fictional character in the play and movie, “The Rainmaker,” the 1956 classic starring Burt Lancaster as Starbuck and Katherine Hepburn as Lizzie, demonstrates the skills of persuasion in classic huckster style, but wait, there’s more going on here than Hollywood.

See, the movie begins with Starbuck standing on his wagon, drumming up a crowd, then inveigling them to buy his new scientifically proven lightning rod before the next big storm hits the prairie and destroys everything. Starbuck demolishes everyone’s Midwestern skepticism with his charm, energy, and smooth line and when they’re properly primed and ready to be cooked, Starbuck runs his scarcity play, but by using more to create less.

He picks out a plain little girl staring up at him in puppy love wonder, tells her and the crowd that she’s a beautiful girl and in honor of her good looks, Starbuck will give her a whirligig for free! “Look at that folks. So light even a pretty little girl can hold it.”

“Now, folks, the next one is for sale for 25 cents. Who’ll take that? You, sir? That’s 25 cents.”

“Now, folks, the next one costs a dollar . . . ” and the scarcity trap is sprung. Act now! Or else pay a lot more. Starbuck creates a marketplace when he pulls up the wagon and hollers up a crowd. Then he creates demand with his patter. Finally, he creates scarcity by raising the price with each sale. And, you know, you just know in your bones, that when the market slows down because the price is too high, Starbuck will bring it back down and if anyone who bought at the higher price is still around, Starbuck will sell them a whirligig extension device for half price.

So, when it is rare and you’ve got a low WATT processor, it is good and you’ve got a sale. And Starbuck shows us how to create scarcity by raising prices. What a machine!

(Non-persuasion sidebar: The movie, “The Rainmaker,” is not that good. Katherine Hepburn is horribly miscast as the plain, but spunky Lizzie who discovers her inner beauty with the con man, Starbuck. Burt Lancaster, however, as Starbuck, steals the show even though he’s the minor character. Starbuck is one of those rare ficitional characters that seems to run away from the creator’s control. Classic examples of the great, unruly characters are Iago with Shakespeare’s “Othello” and Satan in Milton’s epic poem, “Paradise Lost.” If you read the plays or poem, you come away enthralled with the bad guy, Iago or Satan or Starbuck, and wish that the story was all about them rather than that boring Othello and clueless Desdemona or Adam and Eve or Lizzie and File. If you’ve never seen a Burt Lancaster movie, this is a nice part, but a poor movie. Burt was a major league and unique talent. Check him out in “Elmer Gantry” or “The Professionals” or “The Buccaneers” or, well, just about anything he did. He was as beautiful as Brad Pitt, but a bigger man with incredible charisma, charm, and honesty.)

Remember, though, the Starbuck effect. You do more to make less and create scarcity.

Okay. I’ve only been doing this for a couple of weeks, so my wealth of experience with online courses is impoverished. My work in this domain is limited to one university and one course, so your mileage may vary from mine . . . but that said, it is abundantly clear to me that online communication is a wildly different form of human communication compared to face to face interaction. (Wow, Steve! Did you need a doctorate to make that observation or did it come from years of experimental lab research?) Bear with me.

Right now I’m teaching for the first time an online advanced undergraduate course for West Virginia University in the Department of Communication Studies. I’ve been teaching (or training or leading) persuasion to adults for 20 years in just about every kind of format one can imagine. In some respects my experience in persuasion created all of my larger opportunities beyond normal academic social science. It’s hard to imagine connecting with Dr. Fred Butcher when he ran the Mary Babb Randolph Cancer Center at WVU if I hadn’t been doing persuasion. It’s hard to imagine connecting with Dr. Al Munson when he ran the Health Effects Lab Division for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Persuasion has simply been a crucial part of my success conventionally defined as a professional. So, I work hard at it, think about it a lot, seek training and guidance from experts, and in general devote a lot of resource to doing it and getting better at it. This is a long way of saying, that I think I’m pretty good at this. (And let’s keep our bearings here and ask Melanie about other skills I think I possess and she’ll give you a little laugh and a tight smile that you often see married people show when they are biting their tongues.)

And, yet, for all my experience and success in all things persuasion, this online course is surprising me almost everyday. I’m used to having a persuasion classroom completely under my control, but an online classroom is a very different animal. Beyond the obvious technology challenges (gee, you mean the university server randomly selects some emails to send and receive?), the biggest surprise to me has been the difference in the psychology of online communication. Right now, two theories seem most relevant: ELM and attribution theory.

For an online course, I think most people most of the time are considerably more high WATT when they process messages for an online course than when they are in the face to face world (f2f) or in other online activities (i.e. general surfing on the web). I’ve got no numbers on this, but based on more years of study than I care to count, it just feels that way even without a 2 X 2 ANOVA design on this.

Normally, this would be exactly the state of affairs I’d want in a teaching/learning environment. Gee whiz, if you can get high WATT processors and you’ve got strong arguments (and I think I do), then you should be in hog heaven. Yet, I see behavior in both myself and my online participants that indicate more problems where there should be fewer. My ELM interpretation of this is that while people may be more high WATT in an online course, it appears that this high WATT processing is more likely to be Biased rather that Objective. If you know ELM (or HSM) theorizing, this means that everyone is very willing and able to think about information, but Objective processors tend to go with the information given whereas Biased processors tend to make that information fit with an existing scheme, plan, or bias.

Thus, my claim here is that online courses generate Biased high WATT processing. People do not tend to ride with the bits of information they encounter, but rather actively look for information that confirms what they are looking for and when they can’t quickly, easily, and obviously find that information, you tend to show pretty hot attitudinal responses. (Look, if you’re one of my students in this online course, don’t get fired up here. I’m not saying you or anyone else is mean, crazy, or stupid. Just keep reading the ELM chapter in the Primer and in O’Keefe, okay?)

The second obvious area of influence comes from attribution theory. When you’re doing an online course, your style and content of attribution will change compared to either the f2f world or other online activities (again, surfing). I just did a quick search on PsychInfo on attribution theory and various keywords related to online activities and got no hits. (I can’t believe this application has not occurred to anyone yet. I must be using the wrong key terms.) When you have no f2f context, feedback, or comparison, and when you are in a high WATT Biased processing mode, attributions have got to change and it is unlikely that the change will be in a favorable, happy, and milk of human kindness direction. I’d predict that virtually anything you encounter that is not exactly what you expected will trigger a biased attributional process that will tend to protect you and maim the other.

In sum, then, I think that online education produces a “paranoid style” of information processing in most people most of the time, especially in early phases of the experience. And, if no one takes steps to moderate this style, then things will not get better and may get worse (again relative to f2f or other web activities). It’s an interesting practical persuasion and influence problem.