Here’s the science from a peer review journal.

Ocean acidification may have severe consequences for marine ecosystems; however, assessing its future impact is difficult because laboratory experiments and field observations are limited by their reduced ecologic complexity and sample period, respectively. In contrast, the geological record contains long-term evidence for a variety of global environmental perturbations, including ocean acidification plus their associated biotic responses. We review events exhibiting evidence for elevated atmospheric CO2, global warming, and ocean acidification over the past ~300 million years of Earth’s history, some with contemporaneous extinction or evolutionary turnover among marine calcifiers. Although similarities exist, no past event perfectly parallels future projections in terms of disrupting the balance of ocean carbonate chemistry—a consequence of the unprecedented rapidity of CO2 release currently taking place.

Here’s the persuasion from a popular press outlet.

The authors tried to determine which past acidification events offer the best comparison to what is happening now. The closest analogies are catastrophic events, often associated with intense volcanic activity resulting in major extinctions. The difference is that those events covered thousands of years. We have acidified the oceans in a matter of decades, with no signs that we have the political will to slow, much less halt, the process.

If you take the time to read both “papers” you see a huge difference in hedging with the science showing qualifications, concerns, and doubts while the persuasion argues from certainty, immediacy, and decisiveness. And, as we’ve seen from Jakob Jensen’s work, the science approach with hedging is more persuasive to the general reader than the advocacy approach with certainty.

Thus, in this case if the New York Times editorialists want to build a brand, this style is probably useful. But, if they actually want to change people, it fails.

So . . .

HOW scientific are the “matching algorithms” of online-dating Web sites? But can a mathematical formula really identify pairs of singles who are especially likely to have a successful romantic relationship? We believe the answer is no.

So begins a NYT piece authored by two academic psychologists. They note a peer review publication they’ve authored that will soon appear in print at a peer review source, Psychological Science. They even give you free access to the pdf before the scheduled publication date. Consider the groovy service here. The New York Times provides you free access to the peer review scientific literature before release to the scientific membership. They permit scientists to describe their science . . . on the opinion pages.

I’m reeling.

Since when did I look to a commercial journalism source for free access peer reviewed science? Is this part of Journalism 2.0? Or is this peer review science 2.0?

Worse for me is one sentence from the psychological scientists providing their scientific report regarding online dating. Does it work?

We believe the answer is no.

We believe?

I believe gravity? I believe dissonance? I believe the periodic chart? I believe e = mc2? I believe the dual process models? I believe attribution. I believe the Two Step?

No. I believe that Melanie is sexier than Marilyn Monroe, Michelle Pheiffer, or the current favorite. I believe that an Al’s Beef is the greatest sandwich in the Western World. I believe that Martini’s are vodka, not gin, stirred, not shaken. I believe suits, not jeans.

Look. Online dating services provide no independent count of their success compared to any standard, scientific or otherwise. But, they are in business of selling dating services and not in the science of peer review literature. No one reasonably expects Match.com to publish structural equation models with outcome evaluation in JPSP.

Something else. In the very long, detailed, and wordy examination of online dating the psychological scientists never provide a count on anything related to relational success. No path model. No SEM. Not even an average d effect size from a meta. Nada statistics. They don’t Count what they say Match.com can’t Change.

And, they are doing science?

All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere.

All Bad Science Is Persuasive.

P.S. Gotta love a strategic partnership where your science is their opinion. Yeah. That will improve public perception of psychology. Why don’t we all put our heads down on our desks and let the public count raised hands?

P.P.S. Hey, how come NYT columnist and new APS BFF David Brooks didn’t mention APS or psychological science in his recent column about how people change? He just noted a forthcoming book by an NYT colleague on habits and “Duke researchers” as his scientific sources. I thought Brooks received the Key to Psych Science at the last convention. Or, goodness, this just occurred to me, are NYT writers now APS scientists?

Susan Cain mixes several persuasion ideas together in her examination of The New Groupthink which is the label she invents to describe the interpersonal counterpart to the virtual social world of Web 2.0:  Let’s collaborate!  Just as everyone is friended at Facebook, so too at work where we toil in teams.  Cain notes that introverts do not thrive in The New Groupthink and this suppresses creativity and inventiveness in a group of people noted precisely for their creativity and inventiveness, those introverts.

Introverts are people who need little external stimulation whether from other people or the environment – a little goes a long way for introverts especially compared to extroverts who always want to turn the dial to 11.  That dimension of introversion-extroversion is normally distributed which means that about 15% of people have the trait; across a wide variety of situations they will show their introversion.  Thus, true introversion is rare compared to everyone else.  About 85% of people are comfortable in a stimulus rich context, filled with other people, noise, and activity with those top 15% extroverts leading the way.

Just making that observation that 15% prefer solitude while the remaining 85% do not goes a long way to explaining the success of the social web with Facebook, Groupon, and on and on.  The Law of Large Numbers, right?  And it also explains the power of norms with either prescriptive (should) or descriptive (how) admonitions about how we roll around here.  Persuasion plays rooted in a social Local fall like ripe fruit from the Tree of Change.

In her defense of introversion, Cain focuses upon creativity and invention.  She correctly notes the failure of brainstorming as a social tactic for making the next New New Thing.  You gather your group, engage in the tactics of brainstorming, and voila, out pops an iPhone, Google, or even a Cabbage Patch Doll.  That’s the popular myth about brainstorming.  A group of just folks can harness creativity with one of those Wisdom of the Crowd tactics and deliver brilliance or at least market share.

Except if you read the brainstorming research you find that it fails.  It’s instructive to watch videotapes, listen to audiotapes, or merely read a transcript of brainstorming groups.  Almost all the time someone will introduce an idea during the session that is ignored or just politely acknowledged, but just a drop of thinking in the river of discussion.  Then, later, a more popular member of that group will light up with a brainstorm and propose this fabulous idea . . . and you guessed it . . . that is the same as that earlier idea.  The group grabs the light from the popular brainstormer and believes the process works.  The Creativity of the Crowd!

Given human nature and limited information processing capacity, people think brainstorming does something when it’s just a persuasion tactic after all, along with virtually all that Wisdom of the Crowd crowing.  Group creativity rarely exceeds the best individual, but does make the rest of us feel better about ourselves through misattribution and limited information processing.  Think of all the people at Apple who must think they were fundamental to the invention of the iPhone.

So, Cain is correct to criticize The New Groupthink as a Local that kills introverts and their contributions along with fooling everyone else into believing the New Groupthink makes things better when it only makes people comfortable.  I wish she did not use the label, New Groupthink.  She must realize that persuasion science has that word in its technical vocabulary because she’s read the brainstorming research which is a group variable, just like Groupthink.  Like many other pop press writers, Cain takes technical words and bends them to her own purposes which may sell a book but serves to obscure and confuse good and useful ideas.  Thus, she wields the New Groupthink as a kind of insult rather than as a scientific tool.  Her New Groupthink describes the Facebook Mob, but there’s the scientific Groupthink – a different animal.

Groupthink is an interesting and well-studied persuasion effect in group settings.  As I’ve noted before, some bright and educated people badly misuse it and wield it as a metaphor when you can use it as a persuasion tactic.  Groupthink explain how and when small collections of people can interact in biased ways that leads to destructive outcomes.  Individuals in these groups stop thinking and talking critically, converge on a popular consensus, and hold fast even in the face of failure.  The norm becomes more important than the outcome.

When individuals are in groups, they think differently about everything – themselves, the other people, the situation, the task.  Thus, mere group is an independent variable in the social environment that shapes the way you think, feel, or act.  People in groups can feel the pressure of norms, real or perceived, and bend themselves to fit rules that may not exist in other people’s minds.  They can misattribute other people’s actions and assume there’s more consensus than truly exists.  Critical thinking becomes heresy.  And, it’s all in your head.

Scientific Groupthink is an interesting and well-documented persuasion effect and it has nothing to do with Cain’s New Groupthink and the Facebook Mob crushing those quiet, but productive, Introverts.  Her unfortunate title may help sell a book or a position, but it obscures proven and practical information.  Too, she mixes distinct personality and situational factors – introversion, groups, social media, creativity, productivity – into a mash of meaning that suits her purposes, but misreads both science and reality.  It’s a FauxItAll approach that hides more than it reveals.

Yet another woman has come forward to describe her sexual affair with President John Kennedy. Mimi Alford discloses that on her fourth day as a Presidential intern in 1961, the President seduced her on his wife’s bed also taking Alford’s virginity in the act. The affair continued during the internship and through Alford’s return to her undergraduate studies. Kennedy saw her just a few weeks before Alford’s wedding to another man, gave her a gift, and promised to contact her again after the wedding. A few days later, Kennedy went to Dallas.

Past these disclosures, what do you make of Alford and the affair? Persuasion theory suggests that the Why? Because! game of Attribution will play a large role in your take. Consider, for example this review from Janet Maslin of Mimi Alford’s book of confessions.

If there is one question that Ms. Alford’s story poses, it is this: How did she end up in bed with the president on her fourth day at work? This may be the hardest part of her adventure to imagine, but it’s what she explains best in the half of this book that reconstructs a 19-year-old’s thinking. She was invited to swim at lunchtime in the White House pool. She couldn’t say no. The president arrived unannounced, asking, “Mind if I join you?” She couldn’t say no to that, either . . . That afternoon she was invited to what she thought was a “welcome-to-the-staff get-together” that turned out to be in the White House’s family quarters. “Would you like a tour of the residence, Mimi?” the president asked. And then, ushered into Mrs. Kennedy’s bedroom to admire the décor, she was a goner. The president who could so comfortably talk the language of Miss Porter’s effortlessly steered her into bed . . . Ms. Alford’s account of her own mental processes is remarkable for what it misses.

Maslin’s “one question” asks for attributions of causality regarding Mimi Alford’s cognition and action. Why did Alford do what she did? How did she understand her own actions?

She did not think of confiding in anyone. She did not think this was an extramarital affair. And she didn’t find it degrading to be put on the plane with the luggage when the president traveled. What she especially didn’t think about was the steep price she would pay for her actions.

The review continues down attribution alley with Maslin taking a stance that is common with observers of social actors. Maslin tends to attribute Alford’s actions to her own internal control rather than seeing any serious external forces. It is a classic kind of attribution preference that we as observers of others tend to show. That Other Guy did what she did because that’s who she is, not because of the situation.

Thus, Maslin thinks that Alford should have shown a different kind of character, but instead was the kind of person who lies and cheats and betrays other people instead of the kind of person who was in a prestige internship, surrounded by people helping the President, plied with alcohol before meeting JFK, then personally taken by the man to a bedroom and undressed by the President of the United States.

You see the attributional choice. Alford is a weak willed, empty headed little twit with no awareness of her own foibles. All those external forces like prestige, stupendous power differential, social and work norms of partying, large quantities of alcohol, and on and on, are simply irrelevant in Maslin’s version of the Why? Because! play.

Here the truth, as is often the case with persuasion, is either unknowable or irrelevant. Alford has no blue dress, no smoking DNA gun, so it’s her word over a dead man’s. How you understand her story is a tale of two attributions. Realize that persuasion theory and research warns about our natural attributional preference. We love to explain the Other Guys through their personal character and choices and give short shrift to proven situational factors (i.e. persuasion plays).

Jeepers, if you wanted to play the Pick Up Artist, you could do worse than the Kennedy tactics. Have a wingman get her drunk in a party atmosphere shortly after she hits the office, then take her to an historic room, and start taking off her clothes. It would help if there’s a 25 year age difference and you’re the boss of a position she had to apply to get, you’re rich, powerful, and good-looking. Think you might get lucky every now and then?

You see the persuasion implications here. If I make you go Internal on Mimi Alford then you will see her (and John Kennedy) this way, but if I make you go External on Mimi Alford then you will see her (and John Kennedy) that way. Same people, same events, but you are different.

Time magazine creates persuasion mayhem with salt.  First, they offer a good summary of a Cochrane review (look it up) on the outcomes of salt consumption.

Although lowering dietary salt resulted in a small dip in blood pressure, the researchers found no strong evidence that it reduced rates of death in people with high or normal blood pressure. One study suggested that restricting salt in patients with congestive heart failure could even potentially increase risk of death.

Okay, so a well done review and meta-analysis concludes reducing population consumption of salt has no impact on mortality.  Take your Falling Apples with a sprinkle of sea salt!

But.  In the same article, the Time writer notes:

Still, there is plenty of data — and consensus among experts — that excess dietary salt does affect blood pressure and cardiovascular health.

So.  The best scientific evidence we’ve got from the Cochran review claims no effect, yet there’s plenty of consensus among experts to claim there is an effect.

What journalism might call Point Versus CounterPoint is only what a persuasion theorist would call Biased Versus Objective Processing.  You can certainly find experts who will point to cases that prove salt kills and then try to generalize that reductions in salt consumption at the population level would save lives.  Anyone, without or without those little letters following their name, who reasons like this is not a scientist, but rather merely mortal and in the throes of common sense, human nature, and most particularly, Biased Processing.

What’s the difference between Falling Apples and Change We Cannot Believe In?

Persuasion.

Oh.  And, don’t forget the Bubble!