We stand in the light of a New New Day brought forth from the New New Things, twitter, Facebook, and the rest. Don’t look for social media much in the next one.

As they prosecute hundreds of Occupy protesters on lower-level charges such as disorderly conduct, Manhattan prosecutors have turned one of the movement’s principal organizing tools—social media such as Twitter—against the defendants. In short Twitter messages, protesters coordinate activities and warn others of law-enforcement efforts. In doing so, prosecutors believe some have revealed an intent to break the law.

In New York over 1900 people were arrested as part of the OWS Revolution. Just over 1000 have faced a judge so far with 20% having charges dismissed and 80% found guilty or pleading guilty. Even New New Revolutionaries see the problem.

When Jeff Rae was arrested last October with hundreds of other Occupy Wall Street protesters during a march on the Brooklyn Bridge, he decided to fight the charges, believing he had been entrapped. On Monday, Mr. Rae changed his mind and accepted a plea agreement with Manhattan prosecutors. Why? The district attorney’s office had subpoenaed his Twitter account, raising the stakes in what he had thought would be a speedy case he could win, he said.

Perhaps there’ll be an Anonymous Anonymous App for the next one!

William Goldman, the great screenplay writer, observed in a book that Hollywood is haunted by one Rule: Nobody Knows Anything. Much like my Rule that There Are No Laws of Persuasion, Goldman asserts his Rule to explain why movie producers, directors, writers, and performers careen from hit to bust to bust to hit all the while aiming at the same goal. While you’re building it, you just don’t know how it will play.

Which is why in persuasion you always have to test your Box and Play every which way but loose. Most often you have more than one chance to get the Change and mavens become mavens through practice, not magic.

Which is why the Internet is so good for persuasion. Look only recently with President Obama’s re-election effort. He released a 17 minute video by the Oscar winning Davis Guggenheim (Al Gore’s, An Inconvenient Truth) extolling the virtues of Mr. Obama. Set aside any political or hipster snark and just think about this. Here we are in April, seven months in front of Election Day. A monster creative talent has created his take on a foundation theme video for the President and it’s going straight to the Internet. What a waste, right?

Wrong.

What a test.

Obama gets a free shot with this. He’s pretesting a Box and Play here and it costs next to nothing to produce, distribute, and evaluate. He gets a commitment from Hollywood (and Guggenheim gets the sheen of working with a politician who actually won the White House rather than that other guy). He gets reactions (and if bad can shrug off on some digital geek on the staff who pressed the wrong button). He’s also messing with his opponents. Hey, a 17 minute video from an Oscar winning producer. This is how Obama’s gonna run. Right? Right? Maybe.

Mr. Obama runs a real good campaign. He’s always messing around, experimenting, trying something. He’s testing.

Nobody knows anything. There are no laws of persuasion.

Always test your Box and Play.

Political observers are drawing a straight line between rising gas prices and President Obama’s falling opinion ratings. Yet any smart observer, political or otherwise, will tell you that Presidents do not and cannot control gas prices.

Consider a recent poll of a panel of economists conducted by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where I teach. (Disclosure: I am a member of the panel; the other respondents are well-respected economists from top universities with varying political views.) The 41 panel members were asked whether they agreed with the following statement: “Changes in U.S. gasoline prices over the past 10 years have predominantly been due to market factors rather than U.S. federal economic or energy policies.” Not a single member of the panel disagreed with the statement.

The writer then provides a rational look at gas prices and the larger market forces that drive them, then makes comparisons to other areas of economic life that are better than energy costs and suggests that Obama should at least get credit for this. All in all, the article is a standard example of a well argued, partisan position for supporting Mr. Obama.

Now, here’s the persuasion twist. The author of this NY Times opinion piece is Dr. Richard Thaler who is more famous for writing another piece, Nudge. You may remember Nudge as the progressive persuasion that would bring the Peripheral Route to the Federal Government and make the world a better place with a wide variety of artful, deep, and scientific Nudges. Other Guys would be Nudged into better diet, more exercise, less drug use, and in general becoming happy, shiny people. Thaler and his partner, Sunstein, proposed Nudge as the wonder weapon for a new society, the persuasion play no one would see, yet change everyone for the better.

As I warned a long time ago, Nudge didn’t work as advertised in the original book and wouldn’t work in the Federal government and now you see it revealed. Mr. Obama is in for a difficult re-election campaign after three years of Nudging. How can he be in such bad political shape when he followed the theory and research of his UChicago brethren, Sunstein and Thaler? He even hired Sunstein to join his Administration. All that Nudging and look where he is. Not only are the courts overturning his laws and regulations, but public opinion is turning against him.

Past all the success Nudge failed to deliver, you see that Thaler himself is repudiating the Nudge as an effective persuasion play in the op-ed piece with the Times. Where’s the Choice Architecture? Where’s the nuance? Where’s the tide beneath the surface? He orates with boilerplate, a letter to the editor that extols the virtues of one against the vices of everyone else. You’ve heard this persuasion play a thousand times and run it yourself in your local paper or with your family or friends or coworkers. The play is rational and reasonable. And worse still, nothing but Sincere, Authentic, and Obvious.

Persuasion mavens, see it. The Nudge was a half-baked Fairy Tale from the start, but the Cool Table took it to the White House anyway. And now even Nudgers won’t Nudge to budge voters or public opinion.

There’s a Difference between Persuasion, and Smoke and Mirrors; With Persuasion the Illusion Lingers.

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.

“They were getting close enough to a sitting U.S. Cabinet member that we thought we could no longer allow this to continue,” Figliuzzi says.

This regarding the Russian spy ring broken up in 2010. The ring included Anna Chapman. You remember her.

Yeah, the attractive one nearly got to a Cabinet member and potentially compromised . . . something. The great thing about this story is not what it says, but what it doesn’t say. Who was the Cabinet member? What state secrets were at risk? This statement from Figliuzzi is a masterpiece of persuasion. It says a lot without saying anything.

Gee whiz. The oldest Cue in the Book.