Readers of a certain type remember this, but for the rest of us, you might recall a post where I considered the persuasion skill of Rick Leach, the highly successful, but recently fired, head coach of the Texas Tech football team.  Here’s a key observation I made back then.

Leach suggests that he just wants to sit at the table of brotherhood and work this out with the good folks at Texas Tech and not turn it into a circus with courts and judges, media and journalists.  “Can’t we all just get along with each other?”  If anything he says can be proven in a court of law, Texas Tech will be writing a large check.  Given that Mr. Leach wants to break bread at the table of brotherhood, Tech might want to take its chances with a judge.

Well, maybe administrators at Texas Tech read this Blog along with Mr. Leach and assorted other coaches because they aren’t going to mediation.

Lawyers for the former coach Mike Leach and Texas Tech held a court-ordered mediation session in Lubbock, Tex., but did not reach an agreement.

This should be interesting, but my money’s still on Mr. Leach.

And, yes.  I’m snowed in.  You’ll probably get a blizzard of blog posts over the next few days.

Dry Vodka Martini

• 1 shot, journalism
• 1 dash, persuasion
  
• 1 ice filled shaker
• stir in shaker, pour, then enjoy!

Lady Gaga’s Great and Insincere Persuasion

I lost my manufactured pop culture street cred when I stopped teaching my large lecture Mass Media course in 1998.  Til then I had a relentless focus on the hipster world because it connected my students to the course and functioned as a hook to grab their Reception, then as a WATTage switch to get them to Process communication theory and research.  Just as a man will do anything if he thinks it’s foreplay, students will listen to anything if they think it’s groovy, gear, and fab.

Now, as an aging FauxHipster, even I can see the pop success of Lady Gaga when the Wall Street Journal (!!!) gives her the star treatment.  If you want a great demonstration of the truth behind All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere, now hear this:  At the Simon Cowell standard of cruel honesty, Lady Gaga cannot sing, cannot dance, and cannot pose, but she can persuade the world to think her a Icon which means there’s nothing sincere about her.

She’s great!

But, will she last as long as the last one with Blonde Ambition who showed such Great Insincerity?

Mojo Times?

The Sunday New York Times today is one of the best editions of that paper since Pinch Sulzburger took over and nearly destroyed it.  The paper is readable from <p> to </p> for every page.  Perhaps they’ve recovered from their Bush Derangement?  Once nothing but Biased Processing and Sincere Persuasion, the Grey Lady is gorgeous.

Today.

Auteurism at Apple:  Sincerity?

Great feature on Steve Jobs at Apple and the Auteur of Innovation.  Here’s the key persuasion point:

Apple represents the “auteur model of innovation,” observes John Kao, a consultant to corporations and governments on innovation. In the auteur model, he said, there is a tight connection between the personality of the project leader and what is created. Movies created by powerful directors, he says, are clear examples, from Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” to James Cameron’s “Avatar.”

I’m uncertain how to understand Apple.  Apple and Jobs attracts admiration from the Cool Table, but the Cool Table is rarely persuasive.  Magnetic, yes.  It attracts those who are attracted to it which is not nearly the same thing as persuasive which means you change the Other Guy rather than draw Other Guys who are Just Like You.

You see this in Apple’s market share.  They get the Sophisticate Slice, but nothing like the Microsoft Masses.  For example, if I wanted to win an election or a war, I wouldn’t ask Steve Jobs for advice (unless, of course, the election or the war only involved the Cool Table).  I would ask Bill Gates.  Look at Mr. Gates work with vaccine production and distribution.  This is a guy who really thinks big and important.

Apple and Jobs reek with Sincerity.  Granted they are cool, hip, beautiful, sleek, graceful, innovative, and on and on.  But sincere.

Obama’s Persuasion Crisis

The Chinese ideograph for Crisis contains both Danger and Opportunity and the NYT offers a great perspective piece that embraces the dynamic tension Obama faces here.

Mr. Obama rode into office on one of the most elegant narratives in recent campaign history: that he was the embodiment of hope and change. It caught the national mood, yet remained vague enough to mean pretty much whatever a voter wanted it to mean.

The Times writer then notes various challenges to this Image. Reverse Bush, but Surge Afghanistan; help the people, but bailout the banks; and so on.  The writer then unhelpfully quotes a White House perspective.

The White House largely dismisses the warnings. “The president has had a consistent political narrative since the day he stepped on the national stage in 2004,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. “The interpretation of it is cyclical.”

I noted that Mr. Obama lost his way on the Persuasion Path last summer and think he remains lost.

Forever Green, Forget the Price

You can recharge your cell phone with a solar panel device that uses Ms. Sunshine instead of Mr. Coal.  It only costs $99, but it comes with a bag so you can tote and charge on sunny days.  Pouty lipped model not included, although this technology may be a Chick Magnet.  Solar is sooo hot with Pouty Lipped women, isn’t it?

It costs about a penny to recharge the bad way (look it up).  That’s 9900 solar charges which equals over 27 years of coal charges.  Purple faced advocates:  Yes, this is too simple.  Yes, you are complex.  You are smart.  Yes, you are right.  But, of course, It’s about the Other Guy, so who cares about you?

Go long on Green when you can put it in a box and make profit for yourself.

Money, Politics, and Attitudes

Fun report on an interesting money study.  Researchers looked at how people handled their investments depending upon whether their political party was in or out of power.  You invest differently if Your Team is running things compared to when the Other Team is running things.

One of the primary findings concerned the relationship between investors’ political optimism and their propensity to hold domestic stocks. When their preferred political party came to power, investors tended to become much more upbeat about the economy and the domestic stock market.

Now, of course, there’s no good economic reason to do this.  It’s a matter of your political power perception making you feel differently about the stock market.

For Patrick

My nephew, Patrick, is a talented musician who plays the sax and wants to pursue a career in music.  We often discuss the paucity of sax pieces in the classical music repertoire.  Well, Patrick, here’s a nice Times story about Prism and how they’ve handled the problem.

Keep on moving, folks.  No persuasion here.  Just sax, but no violins.

Race and Persuasion

“I KNOW there is nothing a white person can say to a black person about race which is not both incorrect and offensive,” James Spader’s hard-driving lawyer says in the new David Mamet play, “Race.” “I know that. Race is the most incendiary topic in our history. And the moment it comes out, you cannot close the lid on that box. That may change. But not for a long long while.”

Makes it tough to write a review which, of course, is an exercise in applied persuasion.

Osama ‘Bama Wanna-be

Omar Hammami had every right to flash his magnetic smile. He had just been elected president of his sophomore class. He was dating a luminous blonde, one of the most sought-after girls in school. He was a star in the gifted-student program, with visions of becoming a surgeon. For a 15-year-old, he had remarkable charisma.

Great personality profile on an American boy, Alabama boy to boot, who’s now in Somalia leading Al Qaeda boys in jihad.

632,500

Read all about it.

Dry Vodka Martini

• 1 shot, journalism
• 1 dash, persuasion,
  
• 1 ice filled shaker
• stir in shaker, pour, then enjoy!

Salty Big Apples

Mayor Bloomberg and NYC health officials in his administration are leading a charge for a voluntary restriction on salt usage in city restaurants.  The NYT takes a multiple source effect approach here, offering the expert insights of several experts while the WSJ offers one man’s opinion.  I find the NYT nutrition experts, Walter Willett and Michael Jacobson interesting from a persuasion angle.  Willett is a Harvard public health professor and Jacobson runs the Center for Science in the Public Interest (guess their positions?).  Both, however, use the same persuasion ploy of Global Warming activists:  “Consensus” science declares Salt Bad.  Do your own Medline search to learn that advocates, oops, scientists like Willett and Jacobson have a definition of scientific consensus that is closer to “Me and the other Smart Guys at the Cool Table” than to “general agreement or concord; harmony” or “An opinion or position reached by a group as a whole.”  When your work becomes a part of your self concept and self esteem it is difficult to separate fact from personality.

Making More with More

I watched the famed 1958 NFL Championship game as a little kid.  Back then, football broadcasts lasted about 2 hours and were a rocking good time.  If you’re under 30 you don’t believe me because nowadays NFL games are 3 hours long and riddled with ads and silly technology.  How could you broadcast a football game in just two hours?

A piece searing of investigative journalism at the WSJ proves it.  They clocked last weekend’s playoff games and found that the football action (from the snap of the ball to the whistle blowing it down) averaged 11 minutes.  Eleven minutes.  That’s 10 + 1 minutes of actual contact.  And that’s no misprint.  An NFL game is 60 minutes and that 60 minutes boils down to 11 minutes of play with the remaining 49 minutes devoted to everything else but playing.  Now, you can understand how it is possible (and exciting) to make an NFL broadcast run 2 hours.  But not nearly as profitable.  It’s a great persuasion trick.

Stymied Genius – The Icon of Marketing

Another WSJ article outlines the marketing success various media players are making with Nikola Tesla.  Tesla’s story has been fashioned, worked, molded, squeezed, stretched, and fabricated into movies, computer games, and electric cars.  He is used often as the abused and misunderstood genius against the foil of that famous old fuddy-duddy Thomas Alva Edison who invented those dustbin of history devices like the phonograph, the movie camera, and incandescent light bulbs, AND the electric power grid that drives most of the world today with its Earth raping coal mines and Atmosphere strangling emissions.

Tesla failed to achieve much market or intellectual success back in the day, but if you are weird enough, ambiguous enough and wait long enough, some badly educated, but highly ambitious marketer will repair your image and give you the fictional success you never achieved in nonfiction.  For a flaming takedown of similar intellectuals whose lives betrayed their reputations, read Paul Johnson’s aggressive book, “The Intellectuals.”  He pummels the intellectual behind the icon from Rousseau to Marx to Hemingway, Sartre, and Lillian Hellman.  (I’d give Sartre a pass if only for his line:  “Hell is other people” or “L’enfer, c’est les autres” for us haughty, effete types who took high school French.  Mr. Johnson is less forgiving.)  Hey, if you are badly educated, but ambitious, you might want to read the book to find your next icon!  I’d think that Rousseau would be a great empty vessel for filling with your inspiration.

Less Is More and the Say-Do Gap

Karl Rove continues his series on killing Democrats with Truth, Perspective, and Facts at the WSJ.  Mr. Rove’s primary persuasion tactic seems to be the Say-Do Gap.  He frequently focuses simply on what Democrats (and sometimes Republicans) Say, but don’t Do, then pounds politely on the Gap.  Look this guy made George W. Bush into the political success he is – ignore Rove (or Bush) at your peril.  I don’t have to take anyone’s side on this.  He knows what he doing, so listen up.

My surprise is just how simple and direct Rove’s focus is.  He doesn’t typically clown around with complex arguments, PowerPoint slides, and colorful charts.  What did you say?  What did you do?  That’s it.  And, Rove doesn’t have to exaggerate, invent, squeeze, stretch (how did I put it with the Tesla thing?), you know, make it up too much.  Consider just this one example from Rove about Mr. Obama:

During his campaign, Mr. Obama pledged that any negotiations on health-care legislation would be broadcast on C-SPAN, “so the American people can see what the choices are,” and not conducted behind closed doors. “Such public negotiations,” he said, were “the antidote” to “overcoming the special interests and the lobbyists who . . . will resist anything that we try to do.”

Rove then follows the What Did You Say? with several observations about What Did You Do? that show the Gap.  A skeptic or an opponent can find a million ways to jail house lawyer this, but with any uncertain or uncommitted voter, the Say-Do Gap here is obvious.  Rove has always struck me as a persuader who follows the Rule:  Less Is More.  Stated another way, Keep It Simple, Stupid.

And again to those of you rolling your eyes over Rove, remember, All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere.

Persuasion with Numbers

The great line is “lies, damned lies, and statistics,” but the research tends to indicate that stories beat numbers by a mile in the overwhelming majority of persuasion cases.  Yet, many persuaders insist on finding numbers for their Arguments.  Like Nicholas Kristof today on international aid to Haiti.  He uses numbers (money) to make the case and chooses this way to make the US look like pikers compared to everyone else.

The United States contributed $2.32 per American to Haiti over the last three years for which we have data (about 80 cents a year). That’s much less than other countries do, even though Haiti is in our hemisphere and has historic close ties to the U.S. For example, Canada contributed $12.13 per person to Haiti over three years, and Norway sent $8.44. Other countries that contribute more, per capita, to Haiti than the U.S. are Luxembourg, Sweden, Ireland, France, Switzerland, Spain and Belgium.

So Kristof uses per capita numbers to make Canada look 6 times more helpful and Norway 4 times more helpful than the US.  Of course, the money hits Haiti as a total amount and when you look at the totals the US, of course, looks a bit better, as Kristof, oddly enough, notes.

True, there are more Americans, so collectively our aid amounts to more than one-quarter of the pot in Haiti, but that’s only because we’re such a big country. Given the per capita sums, we have no right to be bragging about our generosity in Haiti.

Why is “per capita” the persuasion standard Kristof wants to use?  Why is that more compelling than the total?  Why even get into a numbers-based Argument here?  The disaster in Haiti is overwhelmed with stories, horrible stories, powerful stories, compelling stories.  And Kristof tries to generate more contributions with numbers Arguments?  And bad numbers Arguments at that.  You persuade like this when no one is thinking critically, either you or your receivers.

And, of course, you fail.  But, you feel good doing it and in so doing you violate the Billy Crystal/Fernando Lamas Persuasion Principle:  It is better to look good than to feel good!

Where’s the Beef?

In 1984 Walter Mondale destroyed Gary Hart during the Democrat primary race with the mocking line from a popular Wendy’s commercial:  Where’s the beef?

Today the NYT perilously channels Gary Hart with a feature on how to have a burger without the beef and without irony.

And why is so much content at the NYT seemingly presented as somebody else’s blog?  Is no one except Maureen Dowd on the payroll?  Does anyone actually have a desk in the building?  It’s like the New York Times is only a symbol, a brand, and no longer an institution, a building, a place for speaking Truth to Power.

I’m A Journalist with People Magazine

In the classic movie, “The Big Chill,” Jeff Goldblum played a sweet, ambitious, but clueless buddy who always introduced himself as a “journalist with People magazine” with a serious and deadly demeanor.  Today it seems that people who write about sports think and act the same way.

The Shutdown Corner at Yahoo spreads the word about a piece of searing investigative journalism on the case of NFL wideout Marvin Harrison.  You might recall that Harrison was involved in a case where a man was shot to death on the streets of Philadelphia.  Harrison was not charged with any crime and has since retired from the NFL.

The piece of searing investigative journalism comes from that searing investigative team at . . . and no, I’m not kidding . . . at GQ Magazine.  That’s right.  The next Mike Wallace writes for GQ and he’s got the real deal on Mr. Harrison, at least according to the Yahoo who writes at Shutdown Corner.  If you read the Searing Investigative Report without your critical facilities engaged, it looks bad for Mr. Harrison.  But, if you go High WATT about what you read, you realize that it has more in common with Oliver Stone’s overwrought screenplay, “JFK,” than Mr. Wallace’s worst piece of searing investigative journalism.

The GQ article is essentially an extremely well written case of what if this is true and that is true and if Mickey put the gun under the cushion then Red couldn’t have driven the getaway car, but the Blonde never lies, does she?  It is a constructed fantasy that would border on libel if it was not so clearly untrue.

Outro

Perhaps it’s time for another Martini.  Dry.  Stirred.

It’s not easy being a guy especially when attractive women are on the scene.  Sure, laugh about it.  But, guys can’t help it.

Ronay and von Hippel recruited skateboarding males (average age 21 with a range of 18 to 35) who were paid about $15 to attempt easy and difficult tricks.  The men were randomly assigned to either Control or Treatment.  In the Control condition each guy tried an easy trick 10 times and a difficult trick 10 times.  They then took a scheduled break and repeated the process of 10 each at easy and difficult tricks while a male experimenter observed them.

In the Treatment condition, the men did the same activity, but after the scheduled break, an attractive female experimenter joined the scene and observed the men as they attempted the second series of 10 easy and difficult tricks.  That’s it.  That’s the Special Sauce, the New New Thing, an attractive female experimenter observing the scene.  (How attractive was she?  Before this experiment 20 different males of the same age ranged rated a photo of the female experimenter and scored her as a 6 on a 7 point scale.  The experimenters also noted that the woman received many positive comments from the skateboarders and many requests for her phone number.  In other words, she was pretty hot.)

After the experiment, regardless of Control or Treatment, all the skateboarders gave a saliva sample so that the experimenters could determine their testosterone levels.  Guys in the Control condition (who never saw the attractive female experimenter) had a mean testosterone level of 212.88 pmol/L while guys in the Treatment condition had a mean score of 295.95.  This is a moderate Windowpane effect of 35/65.  Stated another way, you’d have no trouble identifying the guys who’d been around the attractive female.

The experimenters also recorded the skateboarding tricks and coded each attempt as Successful, Aborted, or Failed.  Compared to the Control men, Treatment guys doing tricks in front of the attractive female, had more Successes (very large Windowpane 15/85 effect), more Failures (large Windowpane effect of 25/75), and fewer Aborts (very large Windowpane effect of 15/85).

Now, you don’t have to be a Persuasion Wizard to know that physically attractive people, female or male, are compelling in our society.  This study demonstrates that for men, the presence of an attractive woman has a strong biological effect and that change can motivate a behavior like increased risk taking.  Is it any wonder then that attractive people are also useful for persuasion?  And, it is a surprise that attractiveness most often functions as a persuasion Cue rather than an Argument?  When your body is talking to you, you don’t need any other messages.

P.S. This study is published in the first issue of a new social psychology journal, Social Psychological Personality Science.  I’ve not been able to locate an online abstract for the paper and only have my print issue.  It does exist and I’m not making this up.  Here’s the citation if you want to pursue it further.

Ronay, R. & von Hippel, W. (2010). The presence of an attractive woman elevates testosterone and physical risk-taking in young men. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 1, 57-64.

Mike Leach deserves a Peithos award for practical persuasion for his interview with ESPN on the story behind his firing as the head football coach at Texas Tech.  His statements create a powerful position that justifies his actions and cast deadly doubt upon his accusers and the Texas Tech administrators who fired him.  It’s an outstanding example of persuasion.  And you don’t have to have a Red Raider in the fight to see his skill.  (And if you can’t see his skill, I’d offer a friendly warning for you to stay away from Mr. Leach.)

Consider the Rules.

It’s About the Other Guy, Stupid

Listen to Leach’s argument not for yourself, but as someone who will have to rule on his contract with the University . . . like a judge.  The more experience you have with contracts, the more impressed you’ll be.  This interview was not just about public opinion.

Persuasion Is Strategic or It Is Not

Leach positioned himself as the innocent victim of conspiring administrators and “beauty pageant” parents protecting an untalented offspring.  He made constant references to contracts and laws.  He stressed his clean program, high graduation rates, and fan support along with the obvious on the field success.

Persuaders Can Either Be Famous or Effective, But Not Both

Who’d suspect a college football coach of being a persuasion wizard?  Sure, a master motivator, and X’s and O’s inventor, but persuasion?  Mr. Leach capitalizes upon people’s expectations and stereotypes.  Leach is famous as a coach, but not as a student of this blog and all things persuasion.  This guy is dangerous.

You Can Get Farther With A Kind Word And A Big Stick Than With Either Alone

Leach suggests that he just wants to sit at the table of brotherhood and work this out with the good folks at Texas Tech and not turn it into a circus with courts and judges, media and journalists.  “Can’t we all just get along with each other?”  If anything he says can be proven in a court of law, Texas Tech will be writing a large check.  Given that Mr. Leach wants to break bread at the table of brotherhood, Tech might want to take its chances with a judge.

Outro

I have no idea how this will all turn out.  We’re now getting regular updates from the various involved parties and certainly more information will come out.  Knowing what I do about big time college sports, universities, and coaches (Let’s Go-oooo, Mountaineers . . . with Rich Rodriguez), this is going to cost someone a lot of money and reputation or both.  If Mr. Leach can prove even some of what he says in this interview, I’d say Texas Tech might end up with more hat and less cattle.

Politeness lets me pause at the beginning.  I would like to consider Tiger Woods as a persuasion case study, but must proceed with what many people, including myself, would consider unproven evidence.  We have only one public statement from Mr. Woods and many public assertions and attributed assertions from others claiming knowledge.  The truth may be different than what we understand from town crier declarations available through January 1, 2010.  Against these polite concerns, let us tentatively consider the persuasion implications for Tiger’s success and failure.

Tiger Woods achieved unique status in popular mass culture.  His golf play compares with the legends of the game and he may yet write new marks in a venerable record book.  He broke racial barriers in a sport noted for its old unjust ways.  He demonstrated staggering physical talents – just remember that commercial with him bouncing a golf ball off a club face like it was a tennis racquet – yet demolished dumb jock stereotypes with his poise, humor, and grace.  He earned a billion dollars and mass market iconography as the most popular and respected person on the planet.

And we now know that Tiger’s public persona was at calculated and careful deviance from his private person.  He did not share his personal preferences and hid them under a shield of marital privacy, in yet another manifestation of his normalcy, dignity, and pride.  And the revelation of his private choices has destroyed that blessed public persona of a good man who also played great.

It is from the study of great failure that we can understand how great success arose.  How did he rise so far?  To answer that question, we will approach this as a persuasion problem.  How did Tiger use communication to change how freely choosing people think, feel, and act about Tiger Woods?

Consider, the Rules of Persuasion.

It’s About the Other Guy, Stupid

Tiger Woods is the first Billion Dollar Athlete.  While he earned a significant sum through his golfing skills, the lion’s share of Tiger’s take came from his sponsorships.  Other athletes parlay their achievements into endorsements, but usually with products and services that intersect strongly with the sport.  To earn a billion dollars, you must sponsor for mass market products and services from companies like Gillette, Buick, and AT&T along with the more expected companies like Nike or Electronic Arts games.  To appeal to that mass audience, you must have a relentless focus on the Other Guy.  Tiger achieved more wealth and fame than his athletic accomplishment could garner through giving the Other Guy what the Other Guy wanted to see and believe.

Looking back now, it appears that the Other Guy Image required success in two areas:  Work and Family.  Mere success on the greens would not earn an AT&T sponsorship.  That required the beautiful, happy family, proof of Tiger’s skill off the course.

Sure, there were chinks in the character armor.  Tiger cursed and threw clubs sometimes when his golf play went bad.  (Imagine cussing on a golf course!  Who’d suspect?)  But public intoxication?  Bullying, aggressive behavior?  Arrogant, obnoxious pride?  Gambling?  Shady business deals?  Nope, just an amazing golfer who cussed with a gorgeous wife and happy family.

Tiger created the Image the Other Guy would pay to see.

All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere

Assuming much less than the worst, Tiger Woods’ private life and public life were severely out of joint.  He gave the Other Guys the image of what they wanted to see in someone larger than themselves in both competition and in life.  But, he wanted for himself a private life that contravened that Other Guys Image.  It is also likely that Tiger pursued this double play from early in his professional career and certainly before he married.  Tiger could in no way be sincere, that is authentic, transparent, disclosive, revealing, and honest about himself and deliver the desired Other Guys Image.  Such sincerity would indeed have been bad persuasion and we see it now with the decline in his public reputation and loss of sponsorships.  Tiger knew that he could not have his private life and present the desired Other Guys Image.

It is cliché for bad-boy athletes to play bad-boy in their sponsorships, but that sincere presentation limits the range and reach of success.  You don’t cross the Billion Barrier as the bad-boy, no matter how sincere.

Thus, Tiger actively suppressed his authentic self, not simply for privacy concerns, but because it wouldn’t persuade.  And, consider, too, that shield of privacy Tiger constructed . . . to protect his family.  That shield protected Tiger’s sincere self from our view.

Persuaders Can Be Famous or Effective, but Not Both

Tiger was famous as a fabulous golfer and mass market icon while running under the persuasion radar. Tiger is now famous as a formerly effective persuader who is still a fabulous golfer, but no longer a mass market icon.  Stated another way, Tiger’s fame appeared to have nothing to do with persuasion.  Now we know.  Because Tiger was effective as a persuader, he became famous as not just a golfer, but as the mass market icon worth a billion dollars.

To the extent that you are famous for your persuasion skills, you will be less effective as a persuader.  When people know you know how to sell, they tend to tighten up and rightfully so.  Persuasion is best served with camouflage.

Persuasion Is Strategic or It Is Not

To reach the rare air of a Billion Dollar Athlete, Tiger had to create a plan, construct an image, and portray a performance to convince the Other Guys.  I can confess complete surprise at Tiger’s acting ability.  While I do not believe he is a Jekyll and Hyde, he clearly can play his public performance like a guitar and provide the key to fit the moment.  Athletes can use the dumb jock stereotype to both surprise and hide.  When one demonstrates any kind of social skill with humor, grace, or empathy, we tend to fall into surprise and over-rate them.  Further, Tiger was able to leverage his multiracial background, especially in his sport.  He correctly calculated how to package all his attributes, but as importantly, had the communication and social skill to keep our eyes on his hands, never seeing what was up his sleeve.

There’s a Difference Between Persuasion, and Smoke and Mirrors; with Persuasion the Illusion Persists

Smoke and mirrors are tricks that deceive us, usually to our delight unless we feel disadvantaged from the deception.  Persuasion, by contrast, changes us.  We continue to think, feel, and act different after the persuasion and often even if we know we were the target of persuasion.  We believed in Tiger, not in Tiger’s Image.  Now we realize the extent of the smoke and mirrors that Tiger employed to hide his private preference from public inspection.

Outro

What do we know?  Persuasion Rules reveal both the rise and current fall of Tiger.  He was not simply an outstanding athlete who managed his business well.  He carefully constructed and executed a persuasion plan with all the hallmarks of skill, forethought, and control.

A relentless focus on what the Other Guy wanted to believe.

A strong distinction between the Image and the Wizard Behind the Curtain, never letting people see the natural from the artificial.

A clever use of one talent, athleticism, to hide the use of another, persuasion.

A carefully developed strategy of Image construction and maintenance.

A dangerous combination of genuine persuasion (family pictures) with smoke and mirrors (the wall of privacy).

Tiger’s Tale teaches us about the Rules of Persuasion and how they reveal success and failure.

Rarely do I find a gift-wrapped example of biased processing in media reporting. Usually writers try to obscure this characteristic because it makes them look . . . biased. Here’s the lead paragraph from today’s NY Times.

I listened to every second of Wednesday’s four-hour hearing, looking for hints to bolster my suspicion that the “American people” were being set up for an intentional walk for Roger Clemens. There were code phrases, like “We’re not here to convict” or “Let’s move on” and, of course, “Let’s get back to baseball.”

The article goes on in detail about the author’s concerns, gathering a long trail of evidence well supported by external sources. It’s a pretty well done piece of journalism especially with its outright declaration of bias.

My point here is not to condemn journalism or weigh in on Roger Clemens, but to highlight the key characteristic of biased processing. While the Times writer calls it “suspicion” he’s talking about a prior belief he holds and how he engaged in high WATT processing of the Clemens hearings to find persuasion arguments to support that prior belief. In other words, the writer was on the Central Route with that high willingness and ability to think, but rather than use arguments to find a conclusion the way an Objective processor would operate, the Biased Processor uses a conclusion to find arguments.

If you scan through the remainder of the article you find the “prior belief” of the writer: Race. The author is concerned that there is a disparity in the case of the white Roger Clemens compared to the black Barry Bonds and the black Marion Jones. Again, without taking any stand on anything in these cases, look at the processing characteristic of the writer. This case has clearly pressed the hot button on a huge human trait – race – and this “prior belief” is now driving the persuasive information processing.

Now, Biased Processing isn’t Wrong or Bad. It’s just not Objective Processing in the ELM sense of the term. And we can thank the New York Times for this nice little teaching illustration.