An enthymeme is a persuasion syllogism. It deliberately omits key elements in the Major or Minor Premise to better ensure that you fall into the persuasion Conclusion. For example, read the first two paragraphs of this Paul Krugman article.

A few days ago, I read an authoritative-sounding paper in The American Economic Review, one of the leading journals in the field, arguing at length that the nation’s high unemployment rate had deep structural roots and wasn’t amenable to any quick solution. The author’s diagnosis was that the U.S. economy just wasn’t flexible enough to cope with rapid technological change. The paper was especially critical of programs like unemployment insurance, which it argued actually hurt workers because they reduced the incentive to adjust.

Right. Krugman is the Nobel-prize winning columnist for the New York Times. He knows his stuff about economics. He read this paper that proves our unemployment problems are structural and can’t be fixed quickly. Tah!

O.K., there’s something I didn’t tell you: The paper in question was published in June 1939. Just a few months later, World War II broke out, and the United States — though not yet at war itself — began a large military buildup, finally providing fiscal stimulus on a scale commensurate with the depth of the slump.

Do you see the enthymeme, easy, ripe, and luscious? Wanna fix unemployment? Start a World War!

When you write enthymemes that attack yourself, you don’t need an opponent.

Usually we look at persuasion aimed at those Other Guys, everyone else, but you. Sometimes, however, the Other Guy is you as when you want to change a bad habit, strengthen a good one, or acquire a new routine. Self persuasion is still persuasion. Let’s consider one maven’s thoughts.

Paul Carr has a new book that describes how he broke his alcohol addiction. He disputes the method of Alcoholics Anonymous for many reasons, but persuasively employs the 12 Steps as his book’s structuring device.

Step One: Ask Yourself, “Do I Really Have a Problem?”
Step Two: Quit Publicly
Step Three: Don’t Fear Failure
Step Four: Pull Yourself Together
Step Five: Stop Lying
Step Six: Stop Apologizing
Step Seven: Rediscover Dating
Step Eight: Replace Your Ridiculous Drunken Stories With Ridiculous Sober Ones
Step Nine: Spend Money on Stuff You Won’t Lose
Step Ten: Take a Difficult Test
Step Eleven: Work Nicer, Not Just Harder and Smarter
Step Twelve: Forget Everything You’ve Just Read

As pop press self help books go, this one may not be bad persuasion advice, except for that final Step that tells Grasshopper to find a path that differs from Master Po’s. I once had a prof like this and I’d still beat him up if I saw him in public. You don’t lead students down the wrong path to help them find the right one. Call it Zen Then, Tao Now, or Tenure For Life, it’s always bad teaching in every culture, zeitgeist, or screenplay.

Past my bias for happy endings, Carr describes several persuasion principles in his renunciation of AA, most notably the principle that makes AA effective: Social norms. Carr calls this Public Quitting which is the same thing as standing up in an AA meeting and declaring, “Hi, I’m Grasshopper and I’m an alcoholic.” When you confess an identity to a group that has an interest in that identity, you are creating Norms that will pressure everyone to think, feel, and act in particular ways to the exclusion of others. Carr wants you to do this with your friends, coworkers, and family. AA adds strangers and God.

Beyond this major similarity with AA, Carr does provide other effective self persuasion plays. Most of them aim at getting you away from the past behavior – stop apologising, get new stories – that would change how you think about yourself. I also like his Self Challenge play. You need to push the boundaries and make the new habit stronger than the old one. Assuming it works, and that is a risk, you’re doing a Self Inoculation play where that which does not addict you makes you stronger.

Yet, all of his plays share one commonality: You always have to pull the trigger. Carr’s self help guidance flounders where all self help pilots hit the rocks: Will power. Hey, Grasshopper do this and that, then that and this, and you will find the way.

Truly, you will. But only if you have the will power. Most of us simply cannot summon the required self control that is required to kill a bad habit and nurture a good one. Many of the scientific and not so scientific Persuasion How-To’s we look at on the Persuasion Blog fail precisely for this reason. Yeah, you will lose weight if you buy and eat only raw veggies, soy milk, and Max Thinner Protein®. But, you’ve gotta do this under your own steam everyday for months or years and that’s will power.

Heck you don’t need to walk any farther than the nearest mirror to prove this. Just one glance and you see your failures leap off the surface. And, you know exactly why you failed and what you need to do to succeed. Look around your desk top or drawer or some computer file directory helpfully labeled, Quitting. You’ll find your plan to lose 20 pounds, quit smoking, stop gambling, and on and on with the list of afflictions we all share. So, what happened?

I smoked a pack a day for 13 years and would still be smoking if I knew it wasn’t killing me. And after 30 years of abstinence, I still get cravings to light up a filterless Lucky Strike and smoke my brains out. It took me over 5 years of failure before I quit in 1982, going cold turkey with a thick rubber band on my wrist that I snapped every time I had the urge to smoke. Pain beats impulse and after that first day, my wrist was bleeding. But, the nicotine cleared my system and by the next day, I didn’t need to snap nearly as often and by the end of the week, I was nearly clear. I wore the rubber band for several months if only as a threat. So. Why not add a thick rubber band to Carr’s list?

I don’t think I could have done it hard enough every day for a week. If the nicotine impulse had continued as strong every day as the first one, I would have run out of limbs, skin, and blood, but more likely, self control. Willing oneself to pain has limits.

There’s a voluminous literature on self control and regulation. Some of it illuminates what is politely called the Illusion of Control. I’d suggest that most pop press self help books like this operate exactly through that Illusion.

Now, Grasshopper.

Addiction is the powerful outcome of persuasion that resists change. Nothing works well, with simple steps, and easy application. When you combine substance dependence with habit you’ve got something close to Superman and Wonder Woman in your head. If you want to change, the science points to science and not self help. Realize that reading a self help book is your evil addiction’s way of keeping you addicted with the Illusion of Control.

You may recall this earlier PB Post.

Winston Churchill observed that anyone who is not a liberal when younger has no heart, but anyone who is not a conservative when older has no head. (Cool line, but do you know Winston Churchill, my pretties?) We see the proof of the Prime Minister’s belief in today’s story in the LA Times. They inspect the political data from surveys and report: That as we age we become more conservative. Just like Mr. Churchill asserted.

Except he, the LA Times, their source are wrong.

A 2007 study published in the American Sociological Review examined General Social Survey data from 1972 to 2004, looking specifically at beliefs within a given age cohort about: historically subordinate groups, like whether women should be breadwinners and why African-Americans are poorer than whites; civil liberties for groups outside the mainstream, like homosexuals, communists and atheists; and boundaries of privacy, related things like premarital sex and divorce. The authors found that a given age cohort’s attitudes changed over time — more often later in life — and that “the direction of change is most often toward increased tolerance rather than increased conservatism.”

This according to an NYT writer.

So as we get older we get both more conservative and more liberal! Hurray for all sides! Hurrah for some kind of persuasion!

I suspect wordplay accounts for the distinction. The LA Times research story looked at how people classified themselves as “liberal” or “conservative” and which political party, Democratic or Republican, they registered with. The NYT points to attitudes towards specific beliefs associated with “liberal” or “conservative” positions. You can see the large conceptual difference. If I’m a political consultant, I care more about voter registration and self-identified political philosophy. If I’m a current events guys, then attitudes and beliefs on specific issues draw me in.

But see how persuasion works: Begin with a badly defined TACT.

How smart do you have to be to understand the persuasion concept, Groupthink? Read.

There’s also a darker side to this effect: In cities, ideas and opinions, like product preferences, can spread virally and congeal into conventional wisdom. Cities thus risk becoming incubators of groupthink.

This overwrought and overwritten example comes courtesy of the Wall Street Journal and terminates with yet another misapplication of the term Groupthink. The story focuses upon differences between iPhone and Android users and then draws those facile conclusions like Groupthinking Cities.

Again. Groupthink is not defined as people coming together because they like the same thing. That’s similarity or homophily in persuasion terms. Groupthink applies to small groups of highly connected people sharing common work goals who permit cohesion to overwhelm frank discussion. The drive to connect is stronger than the drive to comprehend. Groupthink marks a High WATT Biased Processor on the Central Route cutting the Arguments to fit a Conclusion.

Since I’ve begun blogging I’ve noticed this misunderstanding of Groupthink in a few pop press sources, but the WSJ and the NYT seem to have a corner on the market. Today at WSJ, we have Groupthink with an analysis of which smartphone you use. Here Groupthink is applied to people who have the wrong opinion on Health Care Reform. There, a Member of the British Parliament tasks people with the wrong opinion on Global Warming. And, over the NYT we have a fascinating mashup with Groupthink and introversion. Then, here, in this book review of, all things, a climbing disaster on K2.

But, wait.

Sure, Steve, you’ve caught these mistakes through mere happenstance. Maybe it’s not just WSJ or the NYT. Have you searched more systematically?

Oh. Wow.

Apparently someone could start a blog called No That’s Not Groupthink and post daily. Try for yourself. Hit this link to see today’s collection through the Google News aggregator.

On Sunday, April 1, 2012 as I’m writing this, I see a listing for Chris Weigant in a piece at the Huffington Post on March 30, 2012. He believes that Groupthink is a synonym for that well known effect, the Herd Mentality. And, in a March 30, 2012 Financial Times piece Christopher Caldwell worries about the faddish interest in crowds and groups under the title, Groupthink Is No Match for Solo Genius.

Now, let’s give credit where credit is due. Sometimes pop press writers get Groupthink right. For example, on March 31, 2012 Paul Krugman’s liberal conscience echoes the Groupthink cry from Laurence Ball February 28, 2012 essay on the Federal Reserve’s action. Ball provides a cogent and coherent recounting of Groupthink and actually quotes a good definition of it. Good grief, a Nobel prize winning economist and another one who must be pretty smart, too, since Krugman reads him! Is that what it takes to understand Groupthink?

I could continue in that professorial style of exhausting both the content and the reader with detail upon detail in the name of scholarship, but you get the point. Smart people writing in smart outlets have no idea what they are talking about. Each instance is a small example of FauxItAllery and sure you’ve got to give people some room to expand a thought that might not be according to Hoyle. But, within that see the Bad Science in an attempt at Persuasion.

In all these negative instances, the writers misunderstand and misapply a well defined and well studied persuasion effect as a means of advancing their Persuasion. They reduce this useful concept to little more than a belittling insult thrown during a partisan rock fight.

Groupthink is what strangles your voice when a contrary thought pops in your head during a meeting. The discussion is gathering steam toward a conclusion that you find flawed, but in the interests of solidarity you don’t rock the boat that may soon flounder on the rocky reef only you can see ahead. When individuals allow their sense of cohesion to triumph over thoughtful expression, Groupthink rises. Many people in the group may see disasters ahead, but each suppresses that expression without pressure from another group member. We patrol our minds with the mind we think everyone else has.

And you want to call this the Herd Mentality?

You see the foolishness of these Cool Tablists. They think it more intelligent to drain the meaning and value of Groupthink down to a slur. They also demonstrate a baffling inability to read. Just check the Wikipedia basic entry on Groupthink. This requires a Nobel prize to comprehend? Shootfire, I’m not asking that anyone read any original peer review research, just the pop press like either of Irving Janis’ books on the topic. Or that simple Wiki entry.

I often lament or satirize the woeful reputation of persuasion science. People just don’t understand how wonderful we are. And, it’s worse than that. People don’t understand at all.

Past my stifled cries, gnashed teeth, and rent garments, see the persuasion opportunities. All those Cool Table elites at highly self- and other-esteemed sources like the Times or the Journal or the Post are complete persuasion fools. Talk about easy, ripe, and luscious. I still think it a dangerous game for scientists to play science with these Other Guys, but if you can play without Sincerity, you can shoot those fish in the barrel to advance your career or agenda. Past scientists, if you are trying to make a living off of science, you can be sure that the Cool Table will believe anything you say.

Just tell them your critics are Groupthinkers.

P.S. Laurence Ball makes a pretty good case that at least in the end stages of the Fed under Alan Greenspan, Groupthink processes were probably operating, but his analysis of Groupthink with Ben Bernanke’s Fed fails for me. Ball notes that Bernanke is perceived as an interior, shy, and introverted person who won’t rock the boat. Ball then suggests Fed committees should include aggressive, outspoken people as the cure. There’s no evidence that such personality traits function in Groupthink as Ball describes. Indeed, bombastic group members could easily stifle rational and open discussion as others remain silent as a means of avoiding bombast. And, if you read the case studies from Irving Janis’s work, you find constant examples of Groupthink that included outsized personalities in the room. Whatever the failings of Ben Bernanke and the current Fed, from Ball’s evidence, I don’t think Groupthink or introversion is an issue.

P.P.S. See also in both Krugman and Ball the classic Actor-Observer Attribution effects. Krugman and Ball sit outside the room Observing the Actor, Ben Bernanke. They attribute Bernanke’s actions to his disposition – he’s shy. Bernanke probably attributes his behavior to situational factors – facts on the ground, political reality from Congress, etc. And, if you put Krugman or Ball in the room, their attributions would shift accordingly. Like the old cliche goes, where you stand depends upon where you sit.

One writer observes other writers whose work he finds wanting. In understanding their failure he considers a variety of explanations and eventually hits upon Groupthink.

Or maybe groupthink. If Lithwick were lunching with Greenhouse, there would be no controversy at the table over the constitutionality of ObamaCare. The same would be true if they made it a double date with Larry Tribe and Akhil Amar (assuming the two men’s views haven’t changed since February 2011).

Yes, the controversy concerns the pending Supreme Court review of the Health Care Reform legislation, and you can chase the article to relish all the jot and tittle of disagreement, grievance, and outrage, but for our purposes, please consider the usage of Groupthink.

This writer, like many before him, misuses the meaning of the term for an insult to others as if they are in the throes of this well known irrational psychological effect which explains why they are crazy. Simply because different people share the same opinion on a topic does not mean that Groupthink is operating.

Groupthink applies to a relatively small and active group of people with regular communication typically oriented toward specific work goals the group shares. As a result of a strong need for social cohesion individual members may engage in dysfunctional problem solving that causes them to make truly dumb decisions without realizing how that need for cohesion has impaired their rationality.

The problem is not that everyone thinks Health Care Reform is Great or Awful but rather that everyone thinks group cohesion is crucial. That unspoken need for cohesion then motivates people to avoid lines of thinking that could disturb perceived group solidarity. And, no, Groupthink is not what junior players engage on teams with senior players; there, fear and uncertainty about position, politeness, or pride drives avoidance, but again, not Groupthink. As near as I can tell from the context, it appears those writers with the wrong opinion share Similarity, sweetly captured in “birds of a feather, flock together” saying.

If you want to stretch labels and meanings to fit your own universe, you are entitled, especially in the pop press. But, if you keep your concepts clear and clean, persuasion makes a lot more sense. Most groups are groups because of Similarity, but it is Groupthink and not Similarity that may cause them to hit the rocks everyone saw coming but didn’t avoid because they didn’t want to rock the boat.