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.

Here’s Mr. Obama pitching persuasion for health care reform on October 6, 2009.

And, here’s Mr. Obama six months later pitching persuasion for health care reform on March 3, 2010.

Ohhh.  I get it.  The blue scrubs make all the difference!

Imagine two health care reform plans.

The first one will save 275,000 lives over 10 years.

The second one will lower the annual US death rate from 811 deaths per 100,000 people to 802 deaths per 100,000 ( 0.00811% to 0.00802%).

Which is the better plan?  It’s obvious.  The one that saves 275,000 lives, right?

Consider this:

There will be a cost in lives, too. Mr. Pollack’s organization estimates that as many as 275,000 people will die prematurely over the next 10 years because they do not have insurance.

While 275,000 is a large number of people and you and I would prefer to not make this list over the next 10 years, what does the number mean?  Let’s go High WATT on it.

Turns out that the two options I gave you at the top of the post are equivalent.  Whether you say it is 275,000 over 10 years or a change from 811 to 802 per 100,000, you are describing the same amount.

So, why don’t the researchers in the NY Times story use the rate style (811 versus 802)?  It’s obvious.  The change is ridiculously small.  Gee whiz, let’s spend nearly a trillion dollars and move the death rate from 811 to 802.

Even 27,500 doesn’t sound that big, so pump it up to a ten year total and now we’ve got a Scary Number.  275,000 deaths is a lot of dead people to those of us who count on fingers and toes.

Yet another way of saying “275,000 over 10 years” is to say, “27,500 a year.”  In 2006, the last year that the CDC has final statistics, it claims that 2,426,264 Americans died.   Thus, the annual number of “27,500″ is just a little more than 1% of the annual death total for 2006.

One percent.

Thus, the most favorable estimate of the mortality impact of health care reform is a 1% improvement.  In Windowpane terms this is one tenth of a Small Effect (a 45/55 effect).  Now, we are talking mortality, so it is serious.  But one tenth of a Small Effect?  For a trillion dollar investment over the same time period? And given how very small the Effect Size is and how it was figured, isn’t it possible that it would actually be even smaller?

But, you obscure High WATT thinking and analysis when you persuade with numbers like this.  Combine very small effects over long time periods and make a big deal about the Total, but not the Accumulation.  It is an effective persuasion play because it looks like a serious, High WATT Central Route examination of the Facts, but really it is a Cue, a Peripheral Route shortcut that makes you the reader think you are Serious and Well Informed, when you are just the Target for an Advocate.

Remember:  All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere.

Okay.  The oceanography guys called the Chilean tsunami wrong.  They made dire predictions of killer waves and then the tide actually ran out in some locations.  So, they should have said nothing?

“It’s a key point to remember that we cannot end the warnings. Failure to warn is not an option for us,” said Dai Lin Wang, an oceanographer at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii. “We cannot have a situation that we thought was no problem and then it’s devastating. That just cannot happen.”

And that false choice between either saying nothing or else exaggerating is exactly the wrong belief to hold and yet entirely characteristic of the Expert.  As I’ve recounted numerous times in this blog, Experts in one area tend to think they are Experts in communication, persuasion, or behavior change as if those things are the easy part compared to Molecular Genetics, Advanced Global Concepts, and now, Wave-ology Studies.  Without criticizing the science (and that’s another issue), I can confidently assert that Dai Lin Wang and other oceanography experts I’ve read in the past day or two know next to nothing about the communication problem they face.

You see their ignorance in that false choice they perceive.  Either we don’t say anything (and make no public errors in our science or our communication) or we exaggerate (to save the foolish public from themselves).  Consider other options.

Just say exactly what you know.  If you know something to the decimal, nanosecond, or angstrom, then say it that precisely.  If you know something with a confidence interval a mile wide and a day long, then say it that with that range.  Say what you know and stick to that.  If someone asks for more precision, repeat your original warning and add that is the best science can do right now.  Above all, do not exaggerate the claim in the name of communicating risk to stupid people.

If a scientist cannot do this or something similar, then hire someone to the team who can.  Please consider the limitations to your Expertise.  You do know what you know, but you do not know what you are doing here.

Listen, scientists.  This is exactly how climate change science got into the public mess it now faces.  Scientists did not stick to their science.  They assumed more expertise in areas they clearly lacked.  Just do your science.  That’s the best thing you bring to the world.  Your science.  Just do that.

Remember the Rules.

If You Can’t Succeed, Don’t Try.

You Cannot Persuade a Falling Apple.

Consider this Figure from the IPCC (through the Wall Street Journal), the UN climate change panel that is driving the international conversation on policy.  If a problem can be fairly expressed in one Figure, this is it.

All you see are the colored lines in the middle of the Figure that meander like Old Man River until 1900 when they take off like a rifle shot with a couple of ricochets in 1950 and 1995, but then return to a trajectory that looks like escape velocity from Planet Earth.

Houston, we’ve got a problem!

A persuasive problem.  Those colored lines draw your eyeball, your attention, and your evaluation.  Zig-zag, zig-zag for thousands of years, then the rocket shot.  Just follow the colored lines . . . like Homer Simpson.

Now, let’s turn up the light a bit and make that gray background more noticeable.  Didn’t really see it, did you?  Of course not.  It’s designed to read like Background when it is actually Foreground.  That dull, plain, and unimportant gray contains the most important Numbers in this Figure, but the IPCC hid that from you to Simplify the data.

Notice two important perceptual qualities about the gray mass.  First notice how wide it is, especially compared to the range of the zig-zagging lines.  The lines essentially are the mid point of Old Man River while the gray background is the banks of the river.  Thus, the Old Man River of global temperature is wide and wanders mightily.

But, second, now note how no colored line at any time ever jumps the banks of the river’s width anywhere.  In scientific terms this means that the wandering of the lines across all points and all times is within the Random Variation or the banks of Old Man River; the lines never jump the banks of Old Man River and that means there is no scientific evidence of any temperature change in the last one thousand years this Figure displays.

Any one trained in statistics can see the mean variation of the colored lines never exceeds the 95% confidence band of the gray background.  Unless one chooses to be Fooled by Randomness and find meaning in the tea leaves, the best scientific data we have shows all that zig-zagging is just the normal variation of Old Man River.

And the IPCC hid that fact in plain sight which is always most persuasive.  Make the Favorable Argument Obvious and make the unFavorable Argument Plain.

I’ll give the IPCC credit as persuaders.  They understand the Rule:  All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere.  There is an obvious lack of sincerity when you persuade with statistics like this.  However, since the IPCC bills itself as a scientific unit, I’d have to caution them on another rule:  All Insincere Science Is Bad.

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.

USA Today continues its current marketing campaign to increase readership with rancid health stories.  Today it is perils of hot dogs.  But, no!  Not for the usual reasons of sodium, meat, and mystery.

For shape.

Quoting CDC statistics, USA Today notes that 77 children die every year from choking on food with an expert estimate that 17% of those deaths are from hot dogs.  That’s tough math to do with fingers AND toes, so let me get out the calculator, 77, then the multiplication X sign, and then, yeah, .17 and that =’s 13.09 deaths attributable to hot dogs.

All by design.

“If you were to take the best engineers in the world and try to design the perfect plug for a child’s airway, it would be a hot dog,” says statement author Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. “I’m a pediatric emergency doctor, and to try to get them out once they’re wedged in, it’s almost impossible.”

The Consumer Product Safety Commission requires labels on toys with small parts alerting people not to give them to kids under 3. Yet there are no required warnings on food, though more than half of non-fatal choking episodes involve food, Smith says.

“No parents can watch all of their kids 100% of the time,” Smith says. “The best way to protect kids is to design these risks out of existence.”

Though Smith says he doesn’t know exactly how someone would redesign a hot dog, he’s certain that some savvy inventor will find a way.

I appreciate Dr. Smith’s and all pediatricians work with children and I’m glad they do it.   And, my heart goes out to parents and families who experience this tragedy.

But . . .

If we need to redesign hot dogs for 13.09 events, how shall we handle natural foods like bananas and grapes which share a shape similarity to hot dogs?  Or do they get a pass here because they are natural?  Perhaps, they kill fewer children, but isn’t one death one too many?  If design kills, why should natural or artificial matter?

I’m just asking as the persuasion guy, you know, since I’m the one who has to handle the communication side of your idea because I’m sure that Dr. Smith doesn’t believe it goes from his lips to their ears then to their mouths.  And people might wonder, if it is the design, then don’t we design everything?  I mean, following Socrates and the humanists, isn’t Man the Measure of All Things?  Designer Science.  No Limits, except Imagination!

And, again with the Warning Labels.  It’s a feature of a new Policy Statement that pediatricians are proposing.  I didn’t realize that Med Schools taught courses in Warning Labels since you can’t swing the latest issue of a medical journal without hitting a medical expert calling for Yet Another Warning Label.

Hey, if you’re a Smart Consultant with a high tolerance for arrogant stupidity, there’s an exciting new career path for you as a Warning Label Consultant to Meds and Feds!  Man, the charges you could make for all the “creative” work on label design – you’d make a lawyer at Boston Legal look like Mother Teresa.

And, then, at the end, the FDA and that new Policy Statement.

The Food and Drug Administration, which has authority to recall products it considers “unfit for food,” plans to review the new statement, spokeswoman Rita Chappelle says.

Might wanna run that by The Man.

All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere.

If You Can’t Succeed, Don’t Try.

It’s about the Other Guy, Stupid.

Power Corrupts Persuasion . . .

. . . and on and on . . .