LTC Fred Kennedy offers a stronger scientific basis to the study and understanding of war.  For the past several months, I’ve done little else than read about war, almost to the point that I’m becoming a pacifist.  Let’s stop reading today and reflect on his excellent Argument.

This summary gives up the nub:

To conclude, we have attempted to describe a three-step process for applying scientific principles to the study of war theory. The steps—collection of relevant data, development of falsifiable hypotheses, and rigorous testing to disconfirm the hypotheses—is a standard paradigm for understanding physical as well as sociological phenomena.

While I applaud something more systematic than Clausewitz or Sun-Tzu, I have to wave at those who would take this Argument and ride ahead of me galloping into the scientific future.  I wish you well and await your success, but I’m cautious.

The three steps in this Argument omit a key element of the final frontier for science:  the experimental method.  That means not only data collection (shout out), falisfiable hypotheses (hallelujah), and rigorous testing to disconfirm (amen), but also random selection of participants and conditions, plus systematic control of those conditions.  Randomization and control are the hardest steps in method and separate the interesting (observational research) from the compelling (experimental research).

The practical implications of experimentalism applied to war are crazy.  As a gods-like experimentalist war fighter, I could:  1) randomly select samples of military units from the population of all such units to randomly selected missions; 2) define a theoretical set of conditions that provoke war, then randomly select and initiate these provocations to randomly selected countries to see how they react; 3) randomly assign small units (company or smaller) to pursue randomly selected weapons and tactics against randomly selected enemies; and you get my drift.  It is madness to pursue the fundamental scientific method of experimentalism with war.  But, that method is the apogee of science.

We are thus forever trapped in the limitations of observational methods.  That is not a bad thing and in many cases is a better thing than an armchair theorist approach (although Clausewitz is an exception for me; he’s a sharp social scientist and I’m still working through the persuasion implications of “On War.”).  The observational Argument would certainly help resolve raging debates where two sources consider the same data point and offer opposed conclusions.

For example, during the past few days while I finished reading John Nagl’s “Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife,” I encountered an essay from Gian Gentile also looking at counterinsurgency.  Both writers looked at the Malayan insurgency, drew conclusions, and contradicted one another.  When this happens and one or the other writer isn’t struck by lightning, you have a field of study that is a bit less than scientific.  The observational Argument would help us here, although it might be hazardous for either Nagl or Gentile or both or possibly neither.

Yet, while observational research might help resolve cases like this, it would still leave us tentative, uncertain, and conflicted over many other larger issues.  Just consider other fields of study that are restricted to observational methods.

Economics, especially macro economics, observes markets, for example, and creates highly mathed up theories.  Yet, they still cannot predict huge market changes with any kind of certainty that generates widespread agreement before the event.  Consider, climate change.  Global warming may be manmade or may not, but climatology still has trouble predicting rain much better than my greatgrandfather did one hundred years ago.  Epidemiology led the way in asserting that hormone replacement therapy was safe and effective for menopausal women until large scale experimental research demonstrated that HRT actually killed some of these women.

Again, my point here is not that more refined research methods are bad, but that we need to maintain a balance between what we know and what we think we know.  Observational research is dangerous in that regard because it does generate knowledge that is wildly better than armchair theorizing, but also because it still generates beliefs that will be proven wrong in experience.  Add to this the inherent emotionality of war and war fighting and the need for certainty and solidarity that it generates.  You cannot go to war ambivalent.  You’re either all in, you’re all dead, or you’re dumb lucky.  Take that adamatine war spirit, mix in observational knowledge, and you will get your ass kicked badly someday.

Don’t get me wrong here.  I’m not criticizing the Argument for being wrong; I’m just cautioning about limitations to it.  Smart, well trained people (myself included) often get way ahead of themselves with the value of a New New Thing and optimistically foresee its bright future.

For now, let’s remember Patton’s slave riding with the hero as he triumphs through the crowd, whispering in his ear, “All glory is fleeting.”

Paul Krugman, recent Nobel economics laureate and oracle of all things at the New York Times, offers a lament on How Did Economists Get It So Wrong.  It is a long and winding road according to Professor Krugman and you can wander along it with him.

Left unsaid, unnoticed, and perhaps unknown, is the largest problem economics of the type Krugman laments:  Its reliance on the devil of observational research.  Krugman takes a look at various schools, theories, and concepts in macro economics, but never reflects on the limitations of the research method.  Macro economics is much like climatology, evolutionary psychology, and epidemiology, fields that by definition cannot conduct experimental research, especially concerning randomization and control.

In an earlier post, I railed against a new version of this folly entitled “infodemiology.”  Some folks think that you are a scientist if you call yourself scientific and don’t bother with niceties like methodology.  The fact that you operate pretty much the way journalists do is not relevant here.  Just call it, “science,” and away you go.

Observational fields are always stuck with the problem that they first have to watch the world go by.  No matter how intense, baroque, or bleeding edge the watching is, the researchers always wait for the world to do something before they can theorize.  In contrast, experimental fields can grab the world in controlled ways and manipulate conditions.  Of course, they are still humans and do bad experiments, but the results tend to demonstrate your stupidity and you (or someone else) can learn.  Observational research rarely proves one’s stupidity with the same clarity, immediacy, and impact of experimental research.

I was tenured in a Communication department, published research reports in peer review journals that had the term, Communication, in their title, ran a Fed unit called the Health Communication Research Branch, and call myself a Communication consultant.  Note that in all of these labels, the term never has an “s” on the end of it.  Is there any difference between “communication” and “communications?”  In my neck of the woods there is.

Folks who work in communications, are communications researchers, and do communications projects tend to have a strong applied element to the work where even the research is conducted on how well a commercial or practical event worked. Communications folks tend to “do” communication.  Further, communications folks tend to focus heavily upon a technological device – TV, Internet, print – and how to use it.

Folks like me who work in communication, do communication research, and conduct communication projects tend to focus more on theory development and testing, aim at publishing in peer review scientific journals, and even when we do field projects, while they may have commercial or prosocial benefits, we are still interested in the theory part of the endeavor.  Communication folks tend to “study” communication.  We also tend to see technological devices as just examples of the channel and don’t focus our research and effort upon them simply because they can reach a lot of people.

People who are outsiders to communication or communications tend to lump us into the same category much the way outsiders might lump artillery guys with tank guys because they both shoot big guns.  While there is overlap, between the two groups folks tend to stay on different sides of the room during a premeeting mixer.  That theory versus practice is probably the biggest distinction between communication and communications.

That distinction also leads to another difference:  How we define and measure “success.”  Communications people tend to be Darwinian – if you do it and you survive, it is a success.  Communication people tend to be Experimental – if you test it in the lab with the scientific method and you can explain the results, it was a success.  Thus, if a communication project produced a huge profit, communications people would be happy while the communication people would be bitching about the lousy science and complaining, “Big deal, you made money, but you don’t know why with scientific certainty.”

That complaining normally makes communication folks the object of jokes or scorn.  “Hey, we made money, so shut up.”  Of course, when the competition starts eating your shorts and you can’t figure out how they are doing it, then all that past profit seems less useful than a good theory.  Who’s laughing now?

While I am a communication geek in good standing, my experience in the Federal government taught me to love communications, too.  If you only study, but don’t know how to do it, you have to eat the menu.  And, if you know how to cook, but don’t know how to grow, you eventually end up eating the menu, too.  With only one approach, you end up starving.

The military in particular and the Fed in general is seriously overbalanced to the communications side of things.  There is very little emphasis, effort, or resource aimed at the communication side.  You don’t need a lot of theory and research, but adding more to the mix might enable and multiply.

Experimental research is to persuasion as field exercises are to the military.  You learn just how stupid you really are by doing the thing rather than reading about it.  Doing experimental persuasion research is as difficult, messy, and time consuming as field exercises.  You can spend weeks in a persuasion lab or field setting running subjects, then analyze the data in a few minutes, and discover just how much profanity you know.  If you do enough research, you will expand both your vocabulary and your fluency.

You should start with a simple two group, t-test design of some persuasion Cue, preferably in a field setting.  Find a research report you like on sequential message request tactics (foot-in-the-door or door-in-the-face), figure out your target population, design appropriate messages for that population, then have at it.  Go ahead and use a health or safety behavior like getting particular physical exams or charitable volunteer work.  Even doing a simple two group (treatment versus control) will task you.  How do you randomize in the field?  How do you maintain control over the conditions so all participants get the same treatment?  Then all the practical issues of getting clearance, practicing a script, having strange things happen in some cases.  Persuasion research is communication with humans and they’ll surprise you.

After you do some simple two group field studies, move to a controlled setting, the “lab.”  Replicate an ELM study that has two variables, WATTage and Argument quality.  You want to produce that lovely fan effect as an elaboration moderator affects elaboration likelihood causing scrutiny of argument quality, producing variations in that “long conversation in the head” of positive or negative elaborations leading to ultimate attitude change.  Again, you’ll have a ton of administrative issues as you develop a willingness (relevance?) or ability (distraction?) WATTage switch.  Then how do you make strong and weak Arguments before the experiment?  And, then again, all the surprises that communication with humans, even in a formal experimental lab setting, can produce.

Doing experiments operationalizes all those dippy concepts you’ve only been reading about and taking true-false tests over.  You’ll really understand strong versus weak arguments and also realize the limitation in argument theory.  (Why do you have to pretest them?  Why can we figure out arguments with pretesting?)  You’ll also hit a lot of failure which means you’re an idiot because you’ve got a published, peer reviewed and heavily replicated study in front of you to copy.  Yeah, your experiment didn’t fail; it proved everyone else is wrong.

The best part of experimental persuasion research is that it teaches you to be hardheaded about your knowledge.  If you do true experiments, you will actually see people manipulated before your very eyes.  People who claim that Cues are a ridiculous academic theory will sign a petition, then show up for a prostate exam.  You’ll learn how to think and tear apart a situation.

If there is a hole in military science and art and if this hole is persuasion theory and research, we’ve looked at two ways to fill the hole.  An earlier post provided a reading list.  This post points toward experimental persuasion science.

It could work.

I offer this list as much from ignorance and a search for assistance as an expression of expertise.  What I do not know about military science and art is large, but what I do know about it leads me to claim a hole exists in current reading and thinking.  That hole is persuasion and it can be filled two ways.  First, reading.  Second, experimentation.

Today we read.

The stone cold crazy book remains, “The Psychology of Attitudes,” by Professors Shelly Chaiken and Alice Eagly.  Published in 1993 it stands as the summary of the summit of persuasion theory and research.  The book kills beginners and staggers professionals from other fields.  When you can read this fluently, the other 600 pound gorillas will play nice with you.

Climb up to “The Psychology of Attitudes” with Richard E. Petty and John T. Cacioppo’s “Attitudes and Persuasion:  Classic and Contemporary Approaches” or Daniel O’Keefe’s, “Persuasion.”  The Petty and Cacioppo book covers more theories and concepts than O’Keefe while O’Keefe takes a stronger communication approach with his text.  I’d also recommend my “Complete Idiot’s Guide to Persuasion” as a more basic survey of persuasion theories and concepts.  Finally, read Robert Cialdini’s “Influence,” the best peripheral route book available.

Once you master the range of concepts and their inter-relationships, you have established the breadth of persuasion knowledge.  Now, dig for depth with specific theories.  You must read and understand Richard E. Petty and John T. Cacioppo’s, “Communication and Persuasion:  Central and Peripheral Routes to Attitude Change.”  This is the ELM and is the single most useful theory of persuasion to date.  If you don’t get the ELM, you will not understand persuasion theory or practice.

After the ELM, go deep wherever you please with dissonance, attribution, theory of reasoned action/planned behavior, inoculation, Shelly Chaiken’s Heuristic Systematic Model, and on and on.  Many specific theories and concepts have generated dozens of research reports, chapters, and summaries.  I’m still reading the experimental persuasion literature and learning from it after twenty intense years of focus.

While not in modern persuasion theory and research three ancient texts still provide powerful insights.  Plato wrote two persuasion dialogs, “Gorgias” and “Phaedrus.”  Plato through Socrates never says what he means, so he’s a trial for practical readers.  Tough.  Read the Ben Jowett translations.  Aristotle’s “Rhetoric” comes as close to the ancient version of a persuasion primer as you will find.  Both Plato and Aristotle exemplify the Source Orientation to persuasion while the modern writers exemplify the Receiver Orientation.

Past these books there are several good sources and many poor ones.  Generally the poor ones seem to aim past science for commerce.  If you only scan the books recommended here, then find less effective ones, you’ll spot the difference immediately.  And, if you can’t tell the difference, that tells you what you do and don’t know.

The biggest problem with learning about persuasion is human arrogance.  Persuasion requires communication, we all communicate pretty darn well, thank-you, so how much more can science teach us than we already know from our successful experience?  If you can keep your own pride in check, these books can fill that hole I think I see in military science and art.

Of course, I could be wrong and you should tell me.