Consider this observation from Charlie Cook, a noted political observer and commentator.  He’s analyzing the Obama Administration’s struggles.

. . . And then when unemployment numbers started proving to be much, much tougher and it started becoming more clear that the stimulus package hadn’t worked properly, they just kept plowing ahead on health care. And this isn’t a communications problem. This is a reality problem. And I think they just made some grave miscalculations and as it became more clear that they had screwed up, they just kept doubling down their bet.

The interesting question here is to understand why Presidents make grave miscalculations that smart observers can see, but they cannot, then exacerbate their problems with a double down bet on the miscalculation.  We could frame this problem in other terms:  When people suffer for their choices, then tend to love that for which they suffer.  Dissonance, in other words.

Now, quickly and of course, this tentative hypothesis is not restricted to the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  Remember Mr. Bush’s miscalculation with that War of Choice in Iraq.  And, Mr. Bush certainly doubled down following his suffering from that miscalculation with the Surge.  That was, dissonance, too, right?

As outside observers, we can see the Suffering of Presidents for their Miscalculations and when we are correct, dissonance and the pursuit of its reduction is likely a strong explanation.  Why do Presidents persist in their miscalculations?  The suffering caused by the miscalculation causes dissonance, an unpleasant psychological state, and is removed by loving the source of the suffering even more which then motivates doubling down.

Of course, the analysis depends not on what the Presidents are doing or thinking, but rather upon the accuracy of our assessment of Miscalculation, Suffering, and Doubling Down.  Only the most impervious zealot argues today that Mr. Bush’s bet on the Surge failed.  Most see the Surge as the success that made following success more likely.  So, was Mr. Bush merely in the throes of dissonance when he doubled down and is supremely lucky that the Surge worked?  That’s what a dissonance analysis would support.  Or, did he simply see the problem in a different light and make the Surge as a rational solution that might actually succeed?  That’s just smart decision-making.

We should think the same way about understanding President Obama right now.  If we’re right – he Miscalculated, Suffered, and is now Doubling Down to more failure – then maybe dissonance is at work here.

But, can’t he just be rational rather than dissonant or even foolish?  He thinks his policies are Good Things and is trying to make Them happen.  Maybe his analysis of Goodness is flawed, maybe his political skills are weak, maybe his opponents are stronger, and maybe he’s like Terry the boxer in On The Waterfront, and tonight is just not his night (at 3:50 in).

All this turns on another persuasion concept, Attribution, stated in a nice turn of phrase:  Where you stand depends on where you sit.  Like Charlie Cook, we are not sitting in the President’s chair looking at the problem.  We are sitting around at our computers, perhaps in our underwear, looking at the guy in the President’s chair.  We conclude that Obama is an idiot, doubling down on a miscalculation when, if we were wearing a suit and sitting in that chair, we’d probably be doing the same damn thing, realizing that it’s always going to be a Close Run Thing that cannot be avoided.

Green believers face an uphill struggle in their pursuit of Green environmental change.  The status quo resists the most rational, reasonable, and righteous requests of Greens.  What to do?

Unless you are nothing but a locust eating zealot and assuming that you do want True Green, then if your current plan isn’t working, isn’t wise to change the plan?  Otherwise you are trapped in the Dissonance Jar, redoubling your efforts to break out every time you hit that invisible glass, just like a fly in a Bell Jar.  Green is Rational.  Smart.  Scientific.  You’re Right.  But, no one is listening.

Consider:  Change is a good thing.

Switch out of the Al Gore Science Show and get busy with persuasion, baby.  Do something that actually moves people up the Green Stairway to Heaven.  Like this.

Have people read or think about a story that goes something like . . .

. . . imagine graduating from college, looking for a job, and deciding to go work for a large company because it offers the greatest chance of moving up.  The story describes the person’s first day on the job, focusing on the high-status features of the workplace such as the upscale lobby and nice furniture. Readers eventually learn that they will have an opportunity to receive a desirable promotion. The story ends as the reader ponders moving up in status relative to his or her same-sex peers.

. . . in other words, elicit a status motivation in your target.  In this example, the participants were college students, hence to focus on a good job, but with many higher status attributes.  You could alter this as needed and use Buying Your House instead.  Just consider the life of your targets and have them think about something they desire and make sure you add high status elements to the story.

Now, does this status motivation produce Green choices?  Consider this.  Griskevicius, Tybur, and Van den Bergh gave this story or a control story to undergraduates, then had them make product selections.  Each selection gave two choices of products that provided the same function (car, dishwasher) at the same price (!!!), but were either Green or Not Green.  Participants given the status story chose the Green product more often, at a Moderate Windowpane effect (35/65) size.  For example, 63% of the status story participants chose a Green car while only 37% of the control story participants chose a Green car.

Let’s goose this turkey.  To the status motivation, add another element, public versus private choice.  Have people make their product choices in either a setting where other people can see them make the choice or in private where others cannot see them make the choice.  This manipulation led high status people to want the Green product in the public choice condition, but interestingly, reversed the effect in the private condition.  Thus, Green products become more desirable when people are both status motivated and making public choices.  But, Green products are more desirable when people have no status motivation, but make private choices and at a Moderate Windowpane effect.  Here’s a Figure to visualize the effect.

Finally, what about price?  In the two experiments we’ve looked at, price was always the same, but often with Green products they may be more expensive on up front costs that are recovered over time through Green efficiency.  But, people are very sensitive to price.  Or are they?

Griskevicius, Tybur, and Van den Bergh manipulated only that status motivation and then varied the price of the products to chose.  Sometimes the Green product was more expensive; sometimes it was cheaper than the Not Green product (and again, each product type, Green or Not, had the same functional attributes).  Interestingly enough, they found another one of those crossing interactions producing a Moderate Windowpane effect.  Under high status motivation, the more expensive Green product was more desirable.  But under no status motivation, the expensive Not Green product was more desirable.  Again, here’s a Figure to visualize the outcome.

If you are True Green all this is the classic Good News, Bad News outcome.  You can generate the Green choices you want from others, but not by making rational, scientific appeals (the Al Gore PowerPoint, for example).  Green sells through fairly typical high status, Snob Appeal.  Make people status conscious and they’ll go Green.  Make people status conscious, then make them chose in public, and they’ll go Green.  Make people status conscious, make Green more expensive, and people will prefer it.

This is not what many True Greens would want to hear.  They want others to go Green because it is True, Right, and Just.  Now, this research suggests True Greens can achieve their goals, but through Snob Appeals to human nature.

Remember the Rules.

All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere.

It’s about the Other Guy, Stupid.

But . . . does the end justify the means?

Griskevicius, V., Tybur, J. M., & Van den Bergh, B. (2010). Going green to be seen: Status, reputation, and conspicuous conservation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 392-404.

Get yourself in the mood . . .

Persuasion loves the heat.

Uncertainty?  Fear?  Confusion?  Peithos lights up, “Is someone calling my name?”  The Ancient Attendant prepares for affairs of the heart or affairs of the state.  It’s all the same, you know.

Science loves the light.

Uncertainty?  Fear?  Confusion?  Galileo smiles, returns to the lab and breaks the problem down, step by step until knowledge replaces ignorance.

Except today.  Science has a new companion, Persuasion.  And Science won’t go anywhere without Her, especially in Public.

. . . perhaps Fever at a higher pitch . . .

Need Persuasion for the Science of Health Care Reform?  Let me show you how to spend one trillion dollars to reduce mortality by 1% and make people think we’ve Fixed It.

Need Persuasion for the Science of the FDA?  Let me show you how mandatory menu calories counts will produce a 30 calorie reduction and fool people into thinking it is the End of Obesity as We Know It.

Need Persuasion for the Science of Global Warming?  Here’s how you hide statistically insignificant data in a pretty chart to convince the People.

Need Persuasion for the Science of Selling News?  Here’s how you market Science to people so they get all that great knowledge you’d have to suffer through in lectures, labs, and libraries, but without that annoying peer review.

. . . or Fever with the King . . .

Great times for Peithos, my friends, and it’s only going to get better.  The last time Science came courting like this was during the Clinton Administration.  Democrats are smart people in case you haven’t talked with one lately.  You don’t even have to ask; they’ll tell.  Especially the progressive ones.  You know, the ones that use Science to inform Policy.  Here, it’s good for you.  Trust us.  We’re smart.

Peithos loves them the best.  Progressives don’t mind throwing Science overboard in a storm when you need to lighten the load.  Is the data messy, complicated, and inconsistent?  Pitch it and use this simple chart.  Results disconfirm the original hypothesis?  Let me adjustment myself in private and we’ll call it Post Hoc.  Got folks who disagree?  Frame them as Deniers.

Don’t worry about the Science.  Persuasion will fix that.

. . . that’s all there is . . .

Evgeny Morozov offers an excellent and insightful essay on the consequences of communication technology for changing people and societies.  Many people see a new communication device – radio, film, TV to computer, smartphone, iWhatever – and believe it contains a persuasion revolution.  Morozov looks at the love affair some smart people have with social media and their rosy expectations for political and social change.  He is not optimistic.

As a persuasion guy, I’m not either.

Realize that a communication device only carries messages.  To convey is not to convince.  Reach is not persuasion.  Speaking is not changing.  Interactivity is not change.  The device always carries the message and that is the message, Marshall McLuhan nonwithstanding.

And, this extends to how devices vary in their deployment.  Take the term Network.  Remember it as a collection of allied transmitters that create a TV broadcast Network.  Now see it as the PostModern collection of wired and wireless computers that creates a Network.  Neither Networks are inherently persuasive or inherently persuasive in a New Way.  They just combine different elements of human nature into new packages.

Consider the Rules.

Great Persuaders Don’t Need Rich Uncles, Kindness from Strangers, or Third Party Vote Splitters.

If you know what you are doing you don’t need the New New Thing whether in the form of Ross Perot or Steve Jobs.  You just do it with your skill and make the change happen.  Hitler and Mussolini used, Zounds my Good Sir, radio and newspapers, posters and pamphlets, public speaking and cinema to conquer societies and rational restraints.  Imagine what more they could have done with an iPhone and twitter?  Not much.  They knew what they were doing as evil persuasion geniuses.  Sure, the devices helped, but only as a means of carrying their message.

It’s about the Other Guy, Stupid.

Persuasion is not about devices; it is about changing the other guy.  Devices may help you segment your TACTs (gee, are iAcolytes different from the rest of us?) but that’s not persuasion.  You change the Other Guy with messages, not devices.

May he rest in peace, but Marshall McLuhan is dead and so is the Medium is the Message.

Thomas Friedman provides this persuasion advice for frustrated True Greens.

In my view, the climate-science community should convene its top experts — from places like NASA, America’s national laboratories, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, the California Institute of Technology and the U.K. Met Office Hadley Centre — and produce a simple 50-page report. They could call it “What We Know,” summarizing everything we already know about climate change in language that a sixth grader could understand, with unimpeachable peer-reviewed footnotes.

Friedman also offers this name change for Global Warming.

1) Avoid the term “global warming.” I prefer the term “global weirding,” because that is what actually happens as global temperatures rise and the climate changes.

The Rules.

All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere.

It’s about the Other Guy, Stupid.

If You Can’t Succeed, Don’t Try.

You Cannot Persuade a Falling Apple.

. . . so I come early from work and catch my best friend in bed with my wife and I says, “Lennie . . . I gotta . . . but you?

When you do Science for any other reason than for the sake of doing science, you move yourself into the realm of persuasion.  My Rule observes:

You Cannot Persuade a Falling Apple

. . . which means you do not persuade when you’ve got science.  With science there is no ambiguity, uncertainty, or confusion (maybe error, but that’s something different).  Science is the pursuit of falling apples.

So, how are we to understand the work of some climate change researchers?  As Science for the sake of doing Science or as something beyond Falling Apples?  Consider this quotation from Dr. Phil Jones, a key scientist for the IPCC panel.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

To nonscientists that quoted phrase “statistically significant” sounds important, if unclear.  It is impossible to explain the concept briefly without over simplifying, but you can read more about it here.  If you can take my word for it, this admission is devastating to the claim that there’s been any practical change in global temperatures over the past 15 years.  In scientific parlance and reasoning, it means it is prudent to retain the null hypothesis of “no effect” and continue researching.  It also means, Don’t Cry Wolf!

Yet, this is exactly what Dr. Jones and his colleagues did.  They used their scientific credibility to hide the details behind a curtain as they cried, “Wolf!”  And, of course, we understand that crying “Wolf” means they were trying to persuade people.  They were not telling us about Falling Apples because the Apples were not Falling as the absence of statistical significance demonstrates.  And, they certainly were not doing Science simply for the sake of Doing Science.

And, this performance is not restricted to climate change researchers.  Recall Tiger Woods’ $12 billion tab on the dime of his various corporate sponsors?  Yeah, Tiger’s escapade in an Escalade caused a significant drop in the value of corporate stock for his sponsors.  Except if you actually read the report and go past the PR Headline, you discover an interesting repetition:  The results are not statistically significant.  Not even close.

If you read their badly formatted figure on page 8 that contains the individual stock prices over time, you see that the 95% confidence limit for each stock on 12 of 13 days includes values that show a loss, no change, or a gain.  To state this another way, each estimate for the effect of Tiger’s transgressions on each stock is statistically nonsignificant at the standard 0.05 alpha level.  It means that the estimates are not reliable.  The study authors artfully hid that flaw with an opaque admission that masked more than it exposed.

Finally, we should caution that our estimates are statistically `noisy,’ in that they could be significantly higher or lower than the numbers we report. One must make that caveat in any statistical study like this, and in our case the statistical margin of error is particularly large in part because Mr. Woods’ sponsors are (with the exception of Nike and EA) subsidiaries of larger parent companies.

When your results are scientifically worthless simply call them “noisy” and voila, you’ve got a Headline.  They, too, cried “Wolf,” but at a Tiger’s expense.  Ha-ha!  Great fun with science, isn’t it?  We get headlines and we admitted everything, but slipped it by everyone nonetheless and no one gets hurt.

Except if you are Dr. Phil Jones who had to resign his leadership position and is under continuing investigation by his university as if he were a rogue like Dr. Ward Churchill, noted Wolf Crier of all things Native American.  And, others in the climate change research community, too, are now feeling the consequence of trying to persuade with Falling Apples that, alas, are not Falling.  Most of the time Persuasive Science is merely a treat as with our UCal Davis economists free riding on Tiger’s misery.  But, the point of science is doing it for the sake of science and not for the sake of headlines, advocacy, or saving the world from itself.

Now, let’s consider Art for Art’s Sake!

Peggy Noonan at WSJ provides a nice illustration of the Rule, It’s about the Other Guy, Stupid, in her analysis of the current state of persuasion for Mr. Obama.  Here’s her key observation.

Washington’s pundits have begun announcing that the White House is better at campaigning than at governing, but that was obvious last summer. The president and his advisers understand one thing really well, and that is Democratic primaries and Democratic politics. This is the area in which they made their careers. It’s how they defeated Hillary Clinton—by knowing how Democrats think. In the 2008 general election, appealing for the first time to all of America and not only to Democrats, they had one great gift on their side, the man who both made Mr. Obama and did in John McCain, and that was George W. Bush.

Whether you are Left or Right, Ambidextrous or sitting This One Out, it is apparent that things have slipped for Mr. Obama, especially since last summer.  Riding the wave of change we can believe in, he’s having trouble making anything happen persuasively while also owning a lot of power.  Power Corrupts Persuasion and You Can Get Farther with a Kind Word and a Gun than with Either Alone, yet here we have the odd case where Power and Persuasion don’t do anything.

Noonan’s observation cuts to the root of this odd outcome.  If you don’t focus on the Other Guy, nothing else – Power, Persuasion, Power and Persuasion – matters.