I’d like to direct you to perspective article that is only tangentially about persuasion, but more about how to think about research whether related to persuasion or any other human behavior.  Gregory Miller offers a strong critical and often negative look at the New New Thing in psychology, neuroimaging, and considers its implications for the scientific study of human thought and action.  For me, Miller thinks the way a scientist should and in so doing demonstrates the benefits of science for both basic research, but also for applied practice.  The first sentence of his abstract establishes everything.

We systematically mistreat psychological phenomena, both logically and clinically. This article explores three contentions: that the dominant discourse in modern cognitive, affective, and clinical neuroscience assumes that we know how psychology/biology causation works when we do not; that there are serious intellectual, clinical, and policy costs to pretending we do know; and that crucial scientific and clinical progress will be stymied as long as we frame psychology, biology, and their relationship in currently dominant ways.

Miller focuses upon a specific problem, the psychology/biology connection, but please realize that his observations and arguments hold for anyone who tries to understand any field of relationships, how things go together.  How do you know what you know?

Miller asserts, and I agree, that current neuroimaging work typically assumes well established models of psychology/biology connection when a more careful and thoughtful reading of that literature would lead to an opposite assessment:  We know very little about those connections.  Miller then notes the harms of this scientific cheerleading:  We will fail both theory and practice.

Now, let’s pivot from neuroimaging to persuasion on this Rule:  You Cannot Persuade a Falling Apple.  If you have science, which, for example some neuroimagers believe, then you have a Falling Apple.  It is self evident, as in the instance of gravity’s existence proven when you fall off a log.  Thus, there is no need to persuade Falling Apples, yet if you read much neuroimaging research there is the unmistakable whiff of persuasion in the air.  Why persuade a Falling Apple?

The generalization of this thinking immediately engulfs all those scientists who use their Falling Apples to make the world a better place whether through neuro-informed interventions for clinical mental health improvement or reducing the waistlines of overweight Americans.  This Blog reeks with those bad examples of failed science and failed persuasion usually brought on from the combination of two Rules, Falling Apples and All Bad Science Is Persuasive.

Miller’s perspective is technical and even well educated readers in other fields will doubtless find it tough going.  Simply because you have a psychology of yourself that you’ve lived with your whole life does not mean you have much understanding of that psychology whether of just yourself or of human nature.  In other words, your own human nature gets in the way of understanding yourself and others.  To read an owners manual on yourself can be more than disconcerting.

Persuasion is a powerful tool for change when you know what you’re doing.  But, you’ve got to know what you know first.

The latest persuasion news in brief from the first number of 2011 from the journal, Social Psychology.  Things are going to start happening now!

It’s a special issue on Intentionality with a wide range of approaches (theory, perspective, review, experimental) with a fairly strong emphasis upon Implementation Intentions.  Read the whole thing, persuasion mavens.

Of course, I do have preferences.

Wooden Leg

Way back in the day Transactional Analysis was the interpersonal rage with I’m Okay and You’re Okay, Parent Adult Child, and the Games People Play.  One, Wooden Leg, suggests that it’s hard to win a race when you’ve got a Wooden Leg and that people strap on Wooden Legs to explain social failure.  Handy, huh?  McCrae and Hirt explore how self handicapping (a contemporary version of Wooden Leg), self affirmation, and goals interact.

McCrea, S. M., & Hirt, E. R. (2011). Limitations on the substitutability of self-protective processes: Self-handicapping is not reduced by related-domain self-affirmations. Social Psychology, 42(1), 9-18.

doi: 10.1027/1864-9335/a000038

Abstract

Goal-striving and achievement can be undermined when individuals have a competing desire to protect a cherished self-view. When individuals are more concerned with avoiding the negative implications of a likely failure than with self-improvement, they may ignore negative information or may even go so far as to purposefully undermine their own performance. For example, self-handicapping involves creating or claiming obstacles to success in order to protect self-esteem in the event of task failure. One method to reduce such destructive behavior is to address self-protection concerns through other means. Notably, affirming overall self-integrity by drawing attention to other positive aspects of the self has been previously shown to reduce subsequent self-handicapping behavior. The present studies demonstrate, however, that these effects may not be as broad as previously assumed. Specifically, only self-affirmations in domains unrelated to the current threat seem to be effective in reducing self-handicapping. Self-affirmations related to the threatened domain may only serve to create a standard of comparison for the current performance, maintaining or even intensifying the existing threat. Thus, it appears that attempts to protect a specific self-conception can severely hamper goal-striving and subsequent achievement. Implications for understanding the motivations underlying self-handicapping and for reducing this self-defeating behavior are discussed.

Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda

When people work toward a goal, then fail, they often engage in counterfactual thinking – that woulda, coulda, shoulda – about the past preceding the failed present.  Epstude and Roese provide a nice perspective piece on the research and theory of counterfactuals with goals.

Epstude, K., & Roese, N. J. (2011). When goal pursuit fails: The functions of counterfactual thought in intention formation. Social Psychology, 42(1), 19-27.

doi: 10.1027/1864-9335/a000039

Abstract

Counterfactual thoughts predominantly occur in response to failed goal pursuit. The primary function of self-related counterfactuals seems to be correction of specific behaviors and preparation for future successful goal attainment. In the present article we describe a model that outlines this view of counterfactual thoughts. We focus specifically on automatic versus controlled processes of counterfactual thinking and their relation to the formation of intentions. We link our model to research on goal pursuit, in which the impact of counterfactual thoughts and related affective experiences (e.g., regret) has been somewhat neglected. Implications for research on motivation and goal pursuit are discussed and novel predictions highlighted.

Rules and Pink Elephants

Hard to avoid thinking about pink elephants when you’re told to ignore them.  What to do?  Use If-Then goal structures.  “If there’s a pink elephant, ignore it and stay on task!”  Frank Wieber, Antje von Suchodoletz, Tobias Heikamp, Gisela Trommsdorff, and Peter M. Gollwitzer test these planning structures with little kids as a means of enhancing implementation intentions in the face of distractions.

Wieber, F., von Suchodoletz, A., Heikamp, T., Trommsdorff, G., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2011). If-then planning helps school-aged children to ignore attractive distractions. Social Psychology, 42(1), 39-47.

doi: 10.1027/1864-9335/a000041

Abstract

Can children improve shielding an ongoing task from distractions by if-then planning (i.e., by forming implementation intentions)? In an experimental study, the situational and personal limits of action control by distraction-inhibiting implementation intentions (“If a distraction comes up, then I will ignore it!”) were tested by comparing them to simple goal intentions (“I will ignore distractions!”). Goal intentions were sufficient to successfully ignore distractions of low attractiveness. In the presence of moderately and highly attractive distractions, as well as a distraction presented out of the children’s sight, however, only implementation intentions improved children’s task shielding, as indicated by faster response times in an ongoing categorization task and shorter periods of looking at highly attractive distractions presented out of their field of vision. These findings held true regardless of the children’s temperament and language competency. Implications for research on planning and developmental research on self-control are discussed.

Too many cooks spoil the soup which also means . . . no one made an Internal Attribution.

The dogma according to Steve’s lingo says that messages influence behavior through a Cascade of stages from Reception (did you get it) through Processing (how did you think about it) to Response (what internal variables changed) until you finally reach the desired downstream behavior effect.  Failure at any stage in the Cascade dooms the change.  If you read the Primer or the Blog, you know I place considerable emphasis upon the behavior (TACT, baby), response (easy, fun, and popular, baby), and processing (the WAC, baby) but less often with reception (repetition, placement, and contrast, baby).  The reason for this disproportionate emphasis stems both from my background (experimental, cognitive, psychological) and my read of the research.  You can get Reception with a checkbook, but you’ve gotta know A from B if you want to get Processing, Response, and Behavior.  Which explains why I find this report silly.  Here’s the key quote from the New York Times article on the current uprising on the Arab Street from Tunis to Cairo to Yemen.

“The notion that there is a common struggle across the Arab world is something Al Jazeera helped create,” said Marc Lynch, a professor of Middle East Studies at George Washington University who has written extensively on the Arab news media. “They did not cause these events, but it’s almost impossible to imagine all this happening without Al Jazeera.”

The remainder of the article follows, supports, and elaborates on the idea that a channel of communication, a technological device, a key element in Reception, is driving the desire to overthrow the Pharaoh.  Of course, you’d expect journalists, even if working through your father’s Oldsmobile of a technological device like the NYT, to cheer lead for another technological device, TV, which is also more than a bit like your father’s Oldsmobile.  They all make their living and impact with Reception.

You don’t need to think that hard or that widely to realize that Al Jazeera is neither necessary nor sufficient for the current change in public opinion and action across the Arab world.  Obviously, there are other channels of communication, mediated and interpersonal, that convey crucial messages.  If Al Jazeera did not exist, this uprising would and could still occur.

You’d also get an indignant counter argument from other device acolytes who’d push aside doggy old TV from Al Jazeera and instead point to the revolutionary iGizmos as described in this prior PB post as the key player.  AJ is just America’s window on the Arab world; all this action is coming from iGizmo guerillas.

And, we can look at lessons and examples from history.  Consider just two.  How about Lenin in Russia and Mao in China?  Media except for handbills and posters played very little role.  Why would Arabs or anyone need moving pictures on a tube?

Finally, none of them would point to the work of moderate voices in the Arab world or, gosh, the presence of American and allied military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan that destroyed key Arab radical power.  Mr. Bush wasn’t playing small ball and this is what he meant.

Now, let’s pivot from this case to a more familiar one for Americans:  Web 2.0.  The New New Thing in Reception is Facebook or twitter or various iGizmos as those revolutionary devices that change the world as we know it.  Consider them as direct analogies to Al Jazeera changing the Arab world as we know it.  Notice an interesting parallel between these various cheerleaders:  They all profit from the assertion.  They make money, they enhance reputation, they get or maintain their seat at the Cool Table.  It’s all good for these proponents.

How about you?

Realize that a good Reception plan requires one absolutely crucial element:  Money.  No matter how smart your plan, if you haven’t got the bucks, you won’t get the bang.  Thus, Al Jazeera and Facebook and twitter and a clandestine network of guerillas with iGizmos are functionally the same thing for a persuasion maven, something you buy to distribute your messages.  As long as you have money, you can be stupid, unsophisticated, reckless, silly and on and on with your Reception plan.  Money (or guns) get the megaphone.  What you say, the rest of the Cascade, is what matters and that is not Al Jazeera or the Times or iGizmo networks or Facebook.

The medium is not the message and never was.  McLuhan provides interesting thinking, but his ideas never made a difference in the big marketplace of ideas, money, or change.  Sure, he got tenure and media attention and even a cameo (YouTube) in a great Woody Allen movie.  Hubba-hubba.

Read the lede from the NY Times.

DAVOS, Switzerland — The unrest engulfing Egypt caught business and political leaders at the World Economic Forum off guard, but it became the hottest topic among the Arab elite here. Most of those leaders tuned in to the dramatic events from iPads and BlackBerrys and huddled to debate how the uprising would affect the rest of the Arab world.

iPads and Blackberrys?  In the lede?

Why is the channel and the technological device relevant for this?  We’re talking about a complex political and social event and the Times writer at Davos sees the New New Thing.  And isn’t it nice to find Arab Elites?  And to find people who write like this without self consciousness?

Do you realize how easy it is to persuade the Cool Table?  Look at the logical disconnect in the first sentence.  People at Davos are surprised BUT the topic is hot among Arab Elites.  These two concepts are not related.  I’m sure that all the non-Arab Elites at Davos are also tapping away on their iPads and Blackberrys along with the Arab Elites.

Plus we are treated to the reporting of Elites WATtaping at Davos!