I received a list email from Dr. Alan Kraut, Executive Director of the American Psychological Society.  APS, which attracts mainly research oriented psychologists, makes clear its desire for government funding for their psychological science.  And, of course, given our perilous economic times, the primary funding agencies of psychologists are facing the budget ax along with other scientific disciplines.  You are not surprised that APS doesn’t like this idea and in the contents of that email they quote from the New York Times columnist, David Brooks, and his favorable view of psychological research and its need for budget support.  The APS email also gratefully acknowledges the petitions and letters of support from other scientific associations.  One suspects that those other associations are likewise sending emails to members about the budget crisis and noting a letter of support from APS and Dr. Kraut, but that’s not my Main Point.  Let’s look at David Brooks and his column.

Brooks notes the compelling advantage of psychological research:

When you renew your driver’s license, you have a chance to enroll in an organ donation program. In countries like Germany and the U.S., you have to check a box if you want to opt in. Roughly 14 percent of people do. But behavioral scientists have discovered that how you set the defaults is really important. So in other countries, like Poland or France, you have to check a box if you want to opt out. In these countries, more than 90 percent of people participate.  This is a gigantic behavior difference cued by one tiny and costless change in procedure.

Really.  Save Federal Funding of Psych Research because of the organ donor default option research?

I’ve noted before the Brooks Effect which occurs when smart people read research reports – their eyes glaze over the review of lit and methods and results section and focus only on the glowing pronouncement in the discussion section.  Mr. Brooks, and unfortunately Dr. Kraut at APS, demonstrate the Brooks Effect again.  Their eyes move and read, but the mind doesn’t think about what those eyes see and read.

Choice effects are as old as dirt and Aesop’s fables, and precede Federal Grant programs by generations of unfunded workers.  Hey, read Aristotle and Plato, and the Sophists, then tell me that both the Golden Boys of Academe and their enemies the Sophists didn’t understand choice anchoring effects.  We knew this before major Government funding programs like NSF or NIH existed.  This old knowledge is apparently only more recently working its way into the elite corps and core of behavior researchers – economists, nowadays – who receive Nobel prizes for reading a dead psychologist’s old research and translating into Observational Tooth Fairy calculus with assumptions.  Yet Brooks and Kraut want to trumpet this as a Strong Argument for Continued Funding as if an NSF scientist discovered Low WATT choice or, more generally, how to make the weaker argument seem the stronger.

Furthermore, while setting default choices to different anchors has different effects, those different effects come not simply with a change in the rate of check-off, but also with a change in the relationship between citizens and their government.  Setting the default to We’ve Got Your Body and you’ve got to check Here to keep the Government literally off your back, not to mention your liver, kidney, or gizzard indicates a Government that has People.  Contrast that anchor with the American default of I Own My Body and you’ve got to check Here to give it away which means the People have a Government.  Brooks and Kraut elide that distinction.

And, as important as are checklists and choice anchors, organ donation and theory of Government for Continued Funding, even I, as a member of APS and APA, find it incredibly Weak.  I’m a geeky academic from way back who also served as a government administrator in an Agency that ran these Funding Programs.  I’ll shout it from any rooftop that in my experience, I cannot see any compelling evidence of specific Funded findings that made a difference in Government:  Nudge anyone?  Brooks’ own observation with choice anchors on organ donation proves the point:  American Governments do not typically assume they own your body and force you to check off otherwise; Government’s own action thus ignores or refutes the Truth of Funded Research that Mr. Brooks cites.

Of course, Brooks describes more excellence from psychological research than just checklist games.  He notes the current work of folks breaking exciting, new, and unexplored ground on the public policy implications of, hold on, scarcity.  Really.  Scarcity.  Who knew that when people are tight on money or time or ability or motivation or any psychological resource they behave differently!  Huzzah, NSF!

Get serious.  You want better research that makes a contribution to public life?  Cut funding by 25% right now.

As numerous posts in the Persuasion Blog demonstrate, much currently funded research in all areas, not just psychology, is just plain lousy.  It proverbially puts lipstick on a pig then tries to get more funding to fit a gown and slippers on the sow.  Reduce funding levels and make those Study Sections considerably more competitive and focused about who does science and who sits at the Cool Table reading the New York Times and hoping for a call from a Charlie Rose booker.

Processing may be Central or Peripheral as determined through WATTage, high or low, as the dimmer switch brightens or dims through circumstance and individual difference.  But, within that high WATT Central Processing, ELM theory advises two subsettings:  Objective or Biased.  Objective high WATT processing seeks Arguments, scrutinizes them, and follows them to attitude, belief, or conclusion.  Biased high WATT processing also seeks and scrutinizes Arguments, but does so with malice of forethought:  It cuts Arguments and Elaborations to fit the forethought and puts the Conclusion in front of the data, ensuring the Answer regardless of the Question.  Today we see a fun demonstration of Biased Processing in business.

Xu and Wyer provide a four study package of experiments over a range of consumer and political objects and events to show how easy it is to bias high WATT thinking.  The key play in this report is bias and how to manipulate it.  Xu and Wyer provide a standard conceptualization of bias.

Specifically, making supportive elaborations in an earlier situation could activate a general procedure of generating supporting arguments, giving rise to a bolstering mindset. In a similar vein, generating opposing arguments in an earlier situation could give rise to a counterarguing mindset. The activation of such a mindset is likely to influence people’s cognitive responses to a message they receive later, and consequently, affect the message’s impact.

Bias cuts in any direction as long as it supports the bias.  When you bias in support of an existing position, you Bolster.  When you bias against an existing position, you CounterArgue.

Now.  What makes you Bolster or CounterArgue?  Consider the manipulation from Experiments 1, 2, and 3.

Participants in the two experimental conditions were instructed to think about each proposition and to write a short essay indicating why they either agreed or disagreed with it. Participants in the bolstering mindset condition generated thoughts about propositions with which they typically agreed (e.g., Reading enriches the mind, the University should not increase tuition fees in the next academic year, etc.).  In contrast, participants in the counterarguing mindset condition generated thoughts about the negations of these propositions (e.g., Reading is bad for the mind, the University should increase tuition fees in the next academic year, etc.).  Thus, although the content of participants’ thoughts in the two conditions had similar implications, the behavior of generating the thoughts constituted bolstering in the first case but counterarguing in the second. Finally, in control conditions, participants were asked to write three short essays to show their knowledge of the pyramids of Egypt, lunar eclipses, and the American War of Independence.

Anyone who’s ever graded student papers, done reviews for peer review, conducted a series of personnel evaluations, judged American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, and on and on with Acts of Judgment, knows exactly what’s happening here.  You are in the evaluative mode.  You task yourself with sifting wheat and chaff, distinguishing sheep and goats, telling A from Z and sometimes even B!  Evaluate.  And, that’s what Xu and Wyer make their participants do, evaluate, and evaluate either to defend (Bolster) or attack (CounterArgue).  Pretty standard and entirely consistent with a ton of past research on biasing.

Now, for Experiment 4, things are a bit more tricky.  As part of a longer series of questions, they find out your political party preference.  They then expose you to either a speech from Barack Obama or from John McCain during the 2008 Presidential Election.  Now, here’s the nuance.  They expect, for example, that when you are a Democrat who watches Republican McCain, this will elicit a CounterArguing Biased mindset.  As you listen to the fool from the other side, you will naturally engage the Long Conversation in Your Head with thoughts like . . . gee, that’s stupid . . . he’s making that up . . . hey, we proved that wrong a thousand years ago . . . and on and on in that mode of dispute.  Thus, the combination of party identification and viewing experience can produce that Biasing effect.

After Xu and Wyer manipulate the Bias, they then expose you to a real stimulus – a vacation, exotic foods, charitable causes, Toyota cars – and measure you cognitive responses and attitudes.  You see the pattern.

1.  Manipulate Biased Processing.
2.  Evaluate New Attitude Object.
3.  Measure Cognition and Attitude.
4.  Look for the Bias.

And, exactly as theory predicts, Xu and Wyer find the Bolstering or CounterArguing effects over the four experiments, finding SmallPlus to Moderate effects sizes (45/55 to 35/65 Windowpanes).  When you are primed to Bolster, you are more favorable to a new Attitude Object.  When you are primed to CounterArgue, you are less favorable and derogate the new Object.

The interesting persuasion play here is that you can create change in a later situation through a manipulation well before the actual attempt.  If, for example, you know your boss or supervisor is working on an evaluative project that requires or allows negative responding (job evaluations, project funding, etc.), you definitely want to think carefully about what you present to her later in the day.  Has she been Bolstering or CounterArguing?  If Bolstering, then go ahead and explain the New New Thing you’ve got.  If CounterArguing, let your worst friend talk to the boss about his New New Thing.

Consider now the implications of this in your own life.  Without realizing it, you have probably been easier or harder on people depending upon your prior work involving evaluation.  Melanie and I used to inadvertently start fights with each other this way on days when one or the other of us was grading a stack of tests or papers.  I’d have spent the past hour in Teacher Mode, correcting, criticizing, despairing, grinding my teeth, and red lining all the many and various errors, mistakes, and outrages in my student papers.  Then Melanie would walk in the room and ask me about this cute new dress she was wearing and “What do you think, sweetie?”  Of course, I’d tee off on her and point out all the flaws, weakness, and errors in the dress and, while we’re on it, her makeup, shoes, and hair style.  And, worse still, I’d have no insight into my obnoxious action thinking merely that I spoke the Truth . . . which was true in a fashion, but not the truth such a situation requires.  Ahh, you see the fatal flaw with Bias:  It blinds us to other realities.

Finally, see the operation of General ELM in these experiments.  Xu and Wyer do not manipulate Argument Quality or Cue Strength in the traditional way with text and image listing attributes or displaying attractiveness.  This focuses on WATTage on the Central Route with an emphasis upon Bias over a wide range of events – vacations, exotic foods, charitable groups, and corporations.  The studies show the scope of the ELM beyond the stereotype practical debate setting you might associate with persuasion.

Of course, there’s more detail, nuance, and finesse in this report and I highly recommend your careful scrutiny of it!

Alison Jing Xu and Robert S. Wyer Jr. (in press).  The Role of Bolstering and Counterarguing Mind-Sets in Persuasion.  The Journal of Consumer Research.  Ahead of publication.

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/661112

The live twitter event in the Obama East Room of the White House on Wednesday, July 6, 2011 offers an interesting line of persuasion plays.

In the day after the event, realize that virtually no one in mainstream media journalism is saying anything about the event.  Broadcast news gave virtually no time to the event and the newspapers are remarkably silent about it.  Hey, the President did a one hour live question and answer session with The People where he fielded questions from sources he did not directly control.  That’s not news?

Well, according to ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox, CNBC, the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and on and on . . . no, it is not news.  By every standard that is traditional and holy, this is an impossible outcome.  Presidential interactions with anyone for one hour are NEWS.

No more.

And you should see the outlines of the persuasion problem.  Obama reached a highly targeted segment of Other Guys with his twitterQ&A, but he got no reverberations or echoes through other media lines even though he Made News.  No other media source amplified his message through their networks and thus reaching other Other Guys.  In the past, Presidents could reliably figure that anything they did live with one source would get picked up by many other sources.  That’s the nature of the game and smart politicians could make both news and persuasion through the same event.

But here we’ve got something quite new and different in the world of modern mediated persuasion.  Different sources appear to be stovepiping their audience, trying to wall them off from competitors.  Hey, why should ABC/Disney help twitter get a bigger audience and make more money?  Sure, ABC/Disney will use twitter to deliver their content, but they sure the hell are not going to let twitter content get into their network.  In many ways this twitter Presidential interview is a kind of virus that will destroy other media networks and they need to keep it out.

I suspect this won’t happen again.  Here’s why.

If I’m a Republican, I learned a lot watching this, mostly how not to do a 2.0 persuasion event.  Obama had a golden opportunity to invent a new style of politics and brand it as his own and he blew it.  He took a New New Thing and made it work like the Old Old Thing, merely taking two tin cans and a string and calling it IM.  A smart Republican (hey, Rick Perry, think about this) could play with both the old media (TV, print) and the new media (2.0) to create win-win outcomes for both technologies and at the same time create that New New Brand, a President of All Media.  Tweet, Like, and SoundBite together, united in the BrotherSisterhood of Mediation.  Oh, baby.

If I’m Obama, I’m clearly clueless, so I’d better have some maven on the team I believe and trust because Obama is Herbert Hoover Walking right now and needs every Lifeline he can get.  This kind of communication, branding, and persuasion combination could create enough of a New Change We Can Believe In that Obama could actually get re-elected.

If I’m in the media, Old or New, everyone will have strong external pressure to cooperate.  A divided Media cannot Stand!  As long as these journalistic sources are playing McAfee and Norton on each other, they will eventually wall themselves into MediaSpheres that are as viable as the BioSphere, which is to say, they are dying through their own fear, jealousy, and hatred.  The Media House of Many Mansions is good for business and better for democracy.  That homily presses on both twitter and the New York Times and they will eventually work together.

Thus, it behooves a persuasion maven to get in front of the Inevitable and shape it to his or her purposes, thus gaining all the benefits of being there first.  Wait for Michele Bachmann to figure this out.

P.S.  Put the White House press corps in the room mixed in with citizens from the slice you are persuading today.  Run some opening interaction through twitter Q&A with 140 character limits strictly enforced.  Now, do live Q&A with people from the room as selected by a Trustworthy Moderator.  Return to the twitter Q&A format and alternate between.  Hey, take a phone call from a yahoo in a FlyOver State.  Close the event with a handshaking rope line.  Then enter another room filled with a dozen potential Fat Cat Donors.  Drink coffee or RedBull and collect the checks.

Google introduces yet another social media attempt (Buzz, Wave, etc.) to confront Facebook.  Google calls it Google+.  Google+ is in beta right now with invitation only members.  At least one Google+ member thinks the platform is great.

Mr. Cuaron demonstrates the mark of a persuasion maven and I nominate him for a Peitho Award!

The Japanese government seeks a 15% reduction in national energy usage and not because of the problems with that tsunami struck nuclear power plant, but as the new national policy.  And that’s not efficiency as in getting 15% more use out of a lump of coal, gallon of gas, or rod of uranium.  No, this is reducing as in cutting the piles, puddles, and stacks of the stuff by 15%.  What to do?  Hit the New New Thing persuasion play:  a YouTube video.

Set your thermostat to 82 degrees.  That’s the ticket.  And, line up the fashion players to design new clothes.  The fashion folks are hot for this because people will need to buy new clothes, cool clothes, supercool clothes, in fact.  Nice play.  How about something like this, fellas?

Of course, setting thermostats at 82 and showing a little leg won’t make that 15% reduction goal.  That will likely require negative growth in the Japanese GDP.  Most folks call that a recession, but if it’s in the name of Green, we’ll try SuperCoolBusiness instead.

Remember when Japan Inc. was in our rear view mirror?  They generated a real estate bubble in the late 1980s that made them Masters of the Universe until the bubble burst creating even more damage than our 2008 real estate bust.  If you ever wondered what happened to Japan just look at their equivalent to the S&P 500, the Nikkei 225.

They lost all growth through the 1990s and since then are just limping along with virtually no economic growth.  Their financial markets are at the level they were in the early 1980s just before their bubble.  A 15% reduction in national energy use is not going to make things grow, but everyone will be cool, SuperCoolBusiness cool.

Persuasion is a great tool when the Other Guy is dying and you want to keep it a secret.

P.S.  Did the same folks who came up with the Grand Rapids, MI video consult with the Japanese government on this one?