If you get around the Internet and are interested in current events, you’ve probably visited the LA Times website and might have even followed the ups and downs of this newspaper. For some folks, the LA Times is a major source of power in their world and they are upset at its more centrist editorializing, particularly with the recent firing of Robert Scheer. If you are an activist and a major media outlet is starting to get out of tune with your harmony, what do you do?

How about this . . . (described at the LA Observed blog)

“We embrace an inside/outside strategy, whereby subscribers lobby from within and non-subscribers, withholding their subscriptions, exert pressure from without. Please let us know (xxxxxx@aol.com) if you want to pursue an inside (subscribe) or outside (boycott) strategy.” This is the persuasion tactic that a group of Southern California progressives is going to apply to get the LA Times to add an anti-war leftist opinion writer to the editorial page or to drop right wing writers. If you had a good psych class in high school or college or if you are parent, you should recognize this tactic.Just about any normal human being quickly learns that consequences shape behavior. Get a reward and you’ll do that again. Get a punisher and you’ll move to the other side of the street. Professor B.F. Skinner is the iconic public figure for this theory and you might even remember seeing pictures of him standing beside a box that was the reinforcement environment for Skinner’s research subjects: Pigeons, rats, mice, and sometimes people.

SoCa progressives want to build a Skinner box for the LA Times. Through a combination of rewards (continuing subscriptions if your editorial page pleases me) and punishments (withholding subscriptions until your editorial page pleases me), these folks hope to shape the LA Times in a more congenial and progressive direction.

This appears to be fairly straightforward, serious, and potentially effective. Disgruntled folks organize themselves into an economic Skinner box and make the LA Times the lab rat (or if Professor Skinner was still alive to consult with them, I’d assume he would prefer to think of the LA Times as a pigeon) and keep whacking away with rewards and punishers until the rat does what you want it to do.

Unfortunately, this is bad persuasion and in a political context, I’ll call this the “Politics of the unElectable.” While these folks are serious about themselves, they are not serious about creating the change they seek. Let’s think about this for just a minute.

What kind of effort must these people exert to run their Skinner box? They can organize via email and websites, maybe an infrequent phone conversation. From the comfort of their homes, they can implement their chosen reinforcers with the touch of a few keystrokes as they subscribe to the Times online and pay with credit card or they can send an email to the Times to let the Times know they are withholding the subscription. Every now and then maybe as many as two or three hundred of these kindred spirits can plan and execute a picket at the LA Times.

In other words, they will expend about as much effort as it takes to open an account with one’s preferred pornography website. (Except for the picketing thing . . . that’s more like organizing a group appearance at an adult bookstore.)

While it is low effort, the effort is nonetheless gratifying although not in the same way as with the pornography website. Don’t you remember how good you felt composing that letter to the editor, getting the dictionary and maybe the thesaurus, showing each draft to your spouse or your dog or your cat. Then sending the thing off. Take that! The psychological payoff for cheap protest is not to be underestimated. In fact, I suspect the less you do, the better the protest feels for reasons best explained by Dissonance Theory which we’ll leave for another post far distant in the future.

But, sometimes even low effort can bring big rewards assuming you’ve got a great persuasion tactic. And what’s wrong with a Skinner box the for LA Times?

You gotta control all the significant sources of reinforcement for the rat or the pigeon or child or newspaper if you expect the Skinner box to work. If you’re whacking your kids with a punishing consequence for not cleaning their rooms and your spouse is whacking them with a rewarding consequence for expressing their individuality, you’ve got a failed Skinner box (but probably a pretty standard family).

Look, the Times is a multizillion dollar going concern. Yeah, it is suffering right now along with a lot of newspapers as they struggle to keep a preWeb business model making profit while they figure out a new business model for a postWeb world. But the passionate and principled actions of a few hundred subscribers is not even close to being a significant source of reinforcement for the Times. And as long as advertisers keep the ad dollars flowing no activist group from the left or right is going to materially affect the Times editorial board with a Skinner box tactic. And we haven’t even started on what the bad guys (the neocon right wing fascist cabal) are doing to keep the Times moving right. The progressive Skinner box affects nothing and no one except for the progressives’ state of mind.

This analysis cannot be that subtle, difficult, or arcane. Certainly even some of the folks in the group must have voiced a concern about this. (Unless they have become the dreaded Echo Chamber or Groupthink Gang).

Remember the Rules. All bad persuasion is sincere. If you can’t succeed, don’t try.

For some people central route persuasion may seem to be a more honorable and honest approach to persuasion. You seek motivated receivers who want the best information before they reach a choice. You provide the strongest arguments for your case and let your opponents offer their arguments. Let the best side win.

Well, it may be more honorable, but it is not necessarily the most effective approach to persuasion. You don’t have to be a football fan to understand this when you consider an example from the National Football League.

This year the NFL conjured up a new way to make money. The owners held back a handful of late season games from the standard TV contract and created a new “NFL Network” that carries these eight Thanksgiving to Christmas games played on Thursdays and Saturdays. It’s a smart marketing move. During this time period college football is not active because the regular season is complete and most of the bowl games don’t start until Christmas. So, football junkies are down a pint for this month. Into the void steps the NFL Network with eight games to be available during the typical times when college games would air.

From a persuasion perspective I’d call this a scarcity move (when it is rare, it is good). Typically employed as a peripheral route strategy, scarcity operates on a low WATT processor who feels the pressure of the rare thing (like those home shopping channels that make a product available “only in this hour”) and without carefully looking at the merits of the thing makes a purchase. In this instance, I do not think that the NFL is using scarcity as a peripheral route tactic. Instead, the NFL is deliberately creating a scare item (football games available during a period when they are not usually available), and using that scarcity as an argument to support the consumer purchase of the product. The reasoning goes like this – “I’m a football fan and I love watching football on TV. From Thanksgiving to Christmas there is less football on TV. The NFL Network is now offering games during the dry spell. Yippee!!!” This is not a peripheral process. This is central route. The scarcity of the product is truly an argument that bears on the central merits of the purchase. In fact, this is just a nice illustration of economics and the relationship between supply and demand. When this is true, it is killer central route persuasion and the source is in line for a major gain.

So, this sounds like smart business . . . except, virtually no one is able to see the games.

See, since these games are outside of the standard TV contract, no one is contractually obligated to carry the games. Producers like NBC, ESPN, Fox, and CBS and cable operators like Time-Warner, Comcast, etc. agreed to deliver all NFL games – except these eight – as part of the contract. It looks like the NFL wanted more money for these eight games, but the usual gang of suspects didn’t want to pay the premium, so they declined the offer. The NFL is stuck with having these eight games, but can’t get them out to the public. Now, the NFL Network is trying to manipulate public opinion into pressuring these groups to deliver the NFL Network games at rates the producers and operators don’t like.

If you visit the NFL website they promeniently feature their concerns about the evil cable operators. They offer highly edited quotes that appear to offer some sympathy to the NFL and provide various strategies that outraged NFL fans can pursue to register discontent with cable operators. And if you are a real sports fan, you can see people like Tony Kornheiser make snide comments about the failure of his cable operator to offer these games on his ESPN cable sports show, “Pardon the Interruption.” The fact that Tony is a football analyst for ESPN and therefore paid by the NFL is not disclosed.

If you take the central route, you are thinking that you can make your case on the merits. You believe that your arguments are the best arguments and will lead to more favorable elaboration activity in your receivers. It is straight-up, head-on, me-against-you, let-the-best-one-win persuasion. You don’t need to play any persuasion games that exemplify the peripheral route – no CLARCCS cues – just straight out logos, classic Aristotle, and the best arguments for rational minds.

The persuasion problem for the NFL here is that their arguments are not clean, simple, and fundamental. They wanted more money for these eight games and in a fair marketplace, they couldn’t get any takers for their offer. The NFL is now trying to mobilize their fan base to attack the cable operators and get the operators to take an offer they’ve already refused. As long as the fan base does not realize this, the NFL might succeed in this persuasion strategy. However, we are now in the seventh week of the scarce resource and the cable operators have not changed their minds. It looks like the NFL brought a knife to a gun fight. We’ll see confirmation of this if the NFL Network disappears after this year.

Remember the Rules: Great persuaders don’t need rich uncles, kindness from strangers, or third party vote splitters.

Today we learn that a medical Expert proposes a new solution to the obesity epidemic. According to an article in the “Daily Mail” newspaper:

“Oversize clothes should have obesity helpline numbers sewn on them to try and reduce Britain’s fat crisis, a leading professor said today. And new urban roads should only be built if they have cycle lanes, according to Naveed Sattar, Professor of Metabolic Medicine at the University of Glasgow.”

There’s more . . .

“Prof Sattar also wants ads for slimming services without independent evaluation banned, TV ads for sweets and snacks stopped before 9 pm, higher tax on high fat and high sugar foods and tax breaks for genuine corporate social responsibility.” (You can read the article if you’d like.)

Where to begin?

A point about journalism first. If free speech falls in the forest, and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? Whether it makes a sound is debatable, but it certainly doesn’t make a profit. The first rule of journalism in any form is to attract the ears and eyes and today journalism clearly believes it can attract ears and eyes with experts, particularly health and safety experts.

Second, let’s realize that obesity is a health risk and that we’ve known about this not just in the past year, decade, or millenium, but since we’ve got recorded time. When you get seriously overweight, you will have health problems. No news here.

And, third, we know that while there are multiple causes of obesity, when there is a sudden and large increase in the percentage of obese people in a society, typically the largest cause is not medical, but rather lifestyle factors. That is, when you find a society that quickly goes from a lot of lean people to a lot of fat people, the cause is not a virus or bacteria or some other new ailment, but rather that the society has figured out a way to generate a lot of cheap, abundant, and safe food for all of its people and people are having trouble controlling their behavior.

Professor Sattar must be an Expert in metabolic medicine. That’s beyond dispute. He’s a professor at a university, he’s got the lab coat, a bar chart, and probably a pill. He knows all about the biochemistry of anabolic and catabolic functions and everything that makes our motors run faster and slower. No news here.

But what has the Professor’s expertise in metabolic medicine got to do with any expertise in the lifestyle problem of obesity? His CV online makes no mention of any training, experience, or skill in behavior change at either the individual or social level. Now, on a fairly common sense basis, if I was trying to create behavior change in people I don’t think I’d say, “hey, find me an Expert in metabolic medicine.” In much the same way if I was suffering from hyperthyroidism, I don’t think I’d say, “hey, find me an expert in Behavior Change.”

Yet, the Professor has no shame in making behavior change recommendations and the “Daily Mail” of Britian has no shame in printing those recommendations. Should we take any of this seriously from a Healthy Influence perspective?

Well, let’s see . . . what kind of behavior change theory supports his recommendations (helpline phone numbers in oversized clothing, higher taxes on various foods, requirements for cycling lanes)? The range of recommendations vary from information (helpline numbers, nutrition labeling) to regulation (taxation, required road building policy).

There’s good evidence and simple common sense to demonstrate that regulation does change behavior. Primary seat belt laws, for example, do create greater compliance and lower mortality and morbidity rates. It’s arguable that regulations in the form of taxes and road building, however, would not do much to change individual behavior because these regulations do not address the primary causes (cheap, tasty, safe, abundent, accessible food) of the problem. It’s also an argument of last resort for an expert to make. (”I can’t persuade these damn fools to keep from hurting themselves, dammit, pass a new law RIGHT NOW!” Gee whiz, any citizen can make this appeal. What’s the point of being an expert if you fall into magical thinking?)

Then what about the more persuasion orientated ideas from the Professor? While there’s again good evidence and good common sense that providing information and education does change behavior, the literature is pretty clear that there is one very serious limitation to the effect: If people already know or think they know about the problem, “new” information is not likely to be seen as new and will be discounted or ignored. In other words, “new” information had better be truly new information and not simply the pedantry of an untrained and ignorant expert. It’s hard to imagine that anyone in Britain or the Western World is uninformed about the link between overeating and obesity. Information ain’t the Special Sauce here.

I do not doubt for a moment the sincerity of Professor Sattar. He believes what he says and he says what he believes. And while this is true, no one should doubt that his sincerity can do no good for the problem he seeks to solve. Further, I’d argue that experts like Sattar make the problem worse. His bad persuasion attempts only serve to reinforce the existing beliefs and attitudes of the people he’d like to change. His recommendations are likely perceived as weak attacks that people can easily overcome. Thus, Sattar is running a bad inoculation experiment that does make existing attitudes and beliefs stronger, but the problem is that he wanted to change those attitudes and beliefs. Instead of taking one small step toward success, experts like Sattar make a giant leap into failure.

If you can’t succeed, don’t try. All bad persuasion is sincere. It’s about the other guy, stupid.