Category Archives: Persuasion

A little background on solitary confinement

27 Wednesday May 2020

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In 1829 George Washington Smith published a “pamphlet” in the Philadelphia Gazette entitled, A Defence of the System of Solitary Confinement of Prisoners Adopted by the State of Pennsylvania. In 1833, the work was republished by the Philadelphia Society for the Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons. The printer, should you care to pick up a copy, was E.G. Dorsey, Printer, 16 Library Street. 

The pamphlet was originally published to influence the legislature at the time a bill was pending which concerned the organization of penitentiaries in the state. On the first page of his pamphlet, Mr. Smith lays bare his proposition:

We propose to inquire whether solitary confinement, or rather the confinement of prisoners separate and apart from each other, united with a system of labor and instruction, be expedient in Pennsylvania. [Emphasis in original]

He deals briefly with the question of whether prisoners should be left to work. “The maintenance of any class in idleness, has never been intentionally practiced by any industrious and thrifty nation.” (6)

The more important question for Smith is whether keeping prisoners “separate and apart from each other” would benefit the prisoner.  Now, throwing someone else into a pit, alone; chaining a miscreant in a dungeon has been the pastime of the powerful from time immemorial. Mr. Smith notes that 

The Egyptians were accustomed to bury alive in dark, narrow and secluded cells of some of their vast and secure edifices, which at once served for prisons and for tombs, certain offenders against their laws. (7)

Which idea was put to good use against Fotunato in The Cask of Amontillado.  Now Mr. Smith was not proposing that prisoners be walled-in behind bricks. His concern was quite the opposite. 

Shortly before the Revolutionary War, a society had been formed in Philadelphia to provide for the more humane treatment of prisoners. However, the war displaced the work of the society until 1786. And one great idea from this work to humanize the prison system was to introduce solitary confinement. 

The thinking was simple: Bad company corrupts good morals. The reformers were concerned about the reformation of the prison system because they were concerned about the persuasive effects that bad company would have upon those who found themselves in prison: the “effectual seclusion from society and the prevention of further injury by prisoners during the period of incarceration.” (7)

He traces the concept of segregation alone for one’s good to religious practices. It was a means of reforming the offending member to conformity by means of the “penance” of being alone.  “Reformation, and not the infliction of suffering, was the noble intention of this institution.” (9)

Then in 1779, John Howard in Great Britain along with Sir William Blackstone, the great legal commentator, proposed solitary confinement as a means of reforming prisoners rather than transporting them to Australia. That same John Howard made a sizeable contribution of 500 pounds to the work of the Philadelphia society.

In a moment we will hear from those voice quite a different opinion on solitary confinement and would think of their forebearers as monsters indifferent to the plight of the hapless prisoner. But that would be unfair to them. Consider how Mr. Smith describes the then-existing jail:

In this den of abomination, were mingled in one revolting mass of festering corruption, all the collected elements of contagion; all ages, colours, and sexes, were forced into one horrid, loathsome communion of depravity. Children committed with their mothers, here first learned to lisp in strange accents of blasphemy and execration: young, pure and modest females, committed for debt, here learned from the hateful society of abandoned prostitutes (whose resting places on the floor they were compelled to share) the insidious lessons of seduction. The young apprentice in custody for some venial fault, the tyro in guilt, the unfortunate debtor – the untried and sometimes guiltless prisoners, the innocent witnesses, detained for their evidence in court against those charged with crimes – were associated with the incorrigible felon, the loathsome victim of disease and vice, the disgusting drunkard (whose means of intoxication were furnished unblushingly by the jailer!) Idleness, profligacy and widely diffused contamination were the inevitable results. (11)

They did not see solitary confinement as an excessive punishment, but as a means of protection.  In 1838, John Silby  writing in Great Britain published A Letter on the Superior Advantages of Separate Confinement Over the System of Prison Discipline, at Present Adopted in Gaols and Houses of Correction Addressed to Benjamin Hawes, Esq., M.P. and Respectfully Dedicated to the Worshipful Her Majesty’s Justices of the Peace for the County of Surrey. Not exactly a promising title. 

I feel the strongest assurance that nothing of the kind need be feared. I am fully aware that solitary confinement is a severe description of punishment, and, moreover, its severity may be said to increase in geometrical proportion to the time of its endurance, while the sympathies are preserved in healthy activity; but I repeat my fullest conviction that if judicially administered,  no fears need be entertained of its consequences ; on the contrary, there is every reason to hope that the result would be most beneficial. I have had a prisoner under my charge, undergoing solitary confinement for six months, without the slightest alarming symptom appearing; he enjoyed very  good health, and although a little reduced in strength at the end of his confinement, still not more so than many others who underwent hard labour for a less period. (66)

But by 1851, a physician reporting in the Pennsylvania Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy made the following observation about the system of solitary confinement:

Not many years since, a visiter to this prison might pass and repass through the whole extent of the working apartments, without being observed by any, or at least very few of its inmates; and the means of communication between the convicts, either by signs or speech, was almost wholly suppressed. Under such discipline is it not philosophic to conclude, that the health of the convicts must suffer much more than from absolute solitary confinement? By such discipline, the instincts of our nature are continually violated, every sound that vibrates upon the ear is a call upon some other sense to assist in its relief, and every emotion of feeling has its demand upon some other faculty to come to its relief, or help in its manifestation. Now is it not easy to perceive that so great a strife continually waged between the instincts and volition, must be fraught with serious consequences to the mental and physical health of the subjects of such a system. (9)

The physician’s notes are not a model for clarity, but his point is plain. This system of solitary confinement had a profound effect upon the prisoner, but not in a positive manner. Solitary confinement did something to prisoners: it forced a profound change in the prisoner.  

As the author Jack Abbot wrote concerning the “hole” (what he called solitary confinement): It could “alter the ontological makeup of a stone.” 
Jack Henry Abbott, In the Belly of the Beast: Letters from Prison 45 (1981).

Draft Preface

26 Tuesday May 2020

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Preface

This book began in a law office, late at night, arguing, with each other. These conversations have continued for hundreds upon thousands of hours over the decades. We will spend hours to write a one paragraph letter. We will take weeks to work and re-work a brief. We will make an argument and scrap it. 

It has become a habit and a pastime.

We have disagreed and debated and again changed our minds repeatedly over some very simple questions: What are we trying to do? What are we trying to achieve? What will happen if we say No – or we say Yes – or ignore this letter – or contradict our last position. Do we pick a fight with this guy and contradict everything? Do we agree and misdirect the conversation? 

Who will eventually see this letter and what do we care?

What does this lawyer want? Should we give it up or fight about it?

Our entire career has been all about this one thing: it’s how we make a living. 

Now this book isn’t about us: we’re nondescript. A book about us would entertain no one.

This book concerns what learned about other people. 

We are not research scientists studying persuasion by bringing 250 undergraduate students into a room and then tricking them into a filling out a questionnaire. We are lawyers and part-time professors who have had to make a living by means of persuasion.

And in that time, we have seen judges believe things which are completely untrue – believe things for which there was no evidence. 

We have seen the awkward honesty win the day over a slick lie.

We have seen juries believe a party whose star witness admitted under oath that the claim was a fraud. The star witness explained how the fraud was created and how it had proceeded. The jury award the party committing the fraud – admittedly committing fraud – over ten million dollars.

And we have seen where a vicious cross-examination on behalf a multi-billion dollar corporation back-fired, and the confession out of a grieving family enflamed the jury to do right.

We have seen courts simply disregard the law and contradict their own rulings. We have read decisions where courts have seemingly made-up facts, or at least never took the time to even approximate the truth.

We have represented extraordinarily talented sellers, sales – people (?), men and women who could sell apartment buildings and sophisticated technology when others could not even get a meeting. 

We have had to play persuasive chess with brilliant opposing attorneys and have had to slug it out verbal thugs who somehow passed the bar.

We have had to use these skills not merely in courts and mediation sessions, but in colleges and churches and debate tournaments. 

And all this time, we have been asking ourselves Why did this work and that did not?

Why did this argument work so well on this day, but we were shut down like stray dogs the next day?

Persuasion is how we make a living. None of this is pure abstraction or study for us.

This book is the result of not exactly experiments – because we never got to do the same twice – but rather field research on persuasion. 

Yes we have read about persuasion and rhetoric: We have studied ancient authorities and modern psychologists. We have read treatises and reports and looked at historical interactions as well philosophical and theological problems. We have been paid for using this information within disputes – but our interest is far broader than the Uniform Commercial Code. 

And in doing that work, we have learned some-things which should matter a great deal to you. 

Actually, persuasion does mean a great deal to you – whether you recognize that truth yet, or not. 

You probably think persuasion matters if your job is sales. If you sell real estate or cars, you  need to learn techniques to increase your chance at making a sale. 

Or, perhaps you are interested more generally in how to “win friends and influence people”. Knowing a bit more about persuasion might just help you get along in life. 

This is how pretty much everyone thinks about persuasion: it is a learned skill, a technique which one displays when needed. It’s kind of wrench you need to loosen a particular bolt on a motor. You can use it when you need it, but most of the time, it is simply unnecessary. 

And you think, Hey, I’m not a mechanic, so I don’t need that wrench. Or, Hey, I don’t sell things so I don’t need to understand persuasion.

You are thinking about persuasion as if it were just a technique, like learning how to properly cook an egg or how to grow herbs in a box in your window. 

It’s true: there are techniques which will help you become more influential in this circumstance or that. You can learn how to be better at sales. There are people who will help you learn how to deliberately influence people. 

There is also “science” of persuasion. By the way, using the word “science” has a persuasive effect upon you. “Science” makes something very difficult and especially true – and if you question anything, you “deny” science. 

And so, if you are like most people, persuasion is something that might get your attention in an online quiz: How persuasive are you? These fifteen questions, proven by science, will tell you the answer. 

As long as you think like that, you will be the well-groomed consumer. You will never understand the degree to which you are being formed by others – and the degree to which you are busy persuading others. 

Learning how to think rightly about persuasion will let you see just how powerful the forces are which shape your thinking and behavior. There are very capable people who are using very deliberate methods to persuade you to think this and do that – and what makes this best, is that it is all completely invisible to you.

You know persuasion when a commercial says Buy! But you completely miss persuasion when a news story presents you some quotation, some fact, some statistic. 

You simply don’t see how often and how easily you are a lab rat in someone else’s scheme. 

Until you understand how persuasion is the very air in which we human beings live and breathe and move, you will never understand what is happening all the time around you. When you can see the element of persuasion in every act of human communication, it will change the way you understand yourself, your relationships and the world around you. 

And that means something more about persuasion – something which you cannot avoid. Persuasion is not merely about buying cereal or getting someone to help you move from your apartment. 

Persuasion is about what it means to be a human being. This book in the end is about what we human beings are doing to and with one-another in every interaction. 

Persuasion is not evil manipulation by a propaganda machine – although it may be. Persuasion is also how we fall in love, raise children and imitate the best. Persuasion is hello, thank you, please, I miss you.

To be human and communicate is to persuade. It’s not a science or a technique. It is not an abstract theory; it is kindness and violence; it is hatred and love; it is solitary confinement and the crowd at a baseball game.

This book is about persuasion, but it is really about one of the most fundamental aspects of being a human being. And so, this book is really about you.

Talking Yourself Into Tipping

24 Sunday May 2020

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So, which will be more effective: a list of reasons you tell yourself, or a list of reasons which someone else tells you? Are you more likely to be persuaded by your own ideas or the ideas of another.

Studies have shown that when confronting a person who engages in addictive behaviors, self-persuasion (making up your own argument) works better than “direct persuasion”, telling someone what to do. So if you get a room full smokers and tell them what a disgusting habit it is so to smoke, they are less likely to listen than if you ask a room full of smokers to give a list of reasons why someone would want to quit smoking.

This makes some intuitive sense, particularly with addictive behaviors with a low degree of social acceptance. When I tell you smoking is bad, it may sound like I am saying you are bad. In such a circumstance, the smokers actually seek to defend their behavior.

This still leaves open a number of questions. For instance, when it comes to smoking, the smoker has already heard a million arguments as to why they should quit smoking. And so, the smoker already has learned arguments to use.

Another question is whether self-generated arguments only work with addictive behaviors.

To test this idea, some researchers in a Dutch city investigated tipping behavior among restaurant goers. At the end of a meal, the wait staff handed out questionnaires on “consumer satisfaction” created by a university. There were a number of generic restaurant question.

The second part of the questionnaire differed. Some ended with a request that consumer write down reasons for giving a tip: why is tipping a good idea? A second version included some reasons to give a tip (direct persuasion). A third group included nothing about tipping.

It turned out that asking the consumer to generate reasons to tip resulted in higher tips.

A second study asked university students to respond after reading one of two fact sets. Both groups were asked to imagine being a restaurant, receiving adequate but not spectacular service. In one scenario, they were provided two good reasons to tip. In the other scenario, they were asked to come with their own reasons to tip.

There was one further element: they were also asked to rate how much tipping mattered to them: is tipping an important aspect of how you see yourself?

For those students who cared a great deal about tipping, self-persuasion had a substantial effect. But for the students who were less interested, their tipping decision was not that different depending upon whether their rationale was self-generated or provided in the fact set.

So why does this work:

It has been demonstrated that that this technique (self-persuasion) relies on the principle of commitment and consistency. [citation] This C&C principle uses the human desire to appear consistent in attitude and behavior. After committing, people are more likely to act in lien with the statement provided earlier. [citations] The persuasion power of this technique can be explained by the theory of cognitive dissonance [citation], which states that saying or doing something that runs counter to peoples’ own beliefs evokes an uncomfortable feeling when people are aware of the dissonance. Individuals try to reduce this dissonance by bringing disparate cognitions into greater harmony.

Bernritter, S.F., van Ooijen, I. and Müller, B.C.N. (2017), “Self-persuasion as marketing technique: the role of consumers’ involvement”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 51 No. 5/6, pp. 1075-1090; 1084.

What goes into Ethos?

21 Thursday May 2020

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A basic element of persuasion is the speaker: what do we think about the speaker? Aristotle called this element of persuasion, ethos (like ethic).

Dr. Flynn of McMasters University argues that Aristotle’s ethos, the way in which we perceive the speaker functions as a heuristic, a means of peripheral route processing which leads to greater and easier reception of the message. The responsiveness of the hearer to speaker depends upon a number of elements in the speaker and in the hearer.


On the speaker’s side, Flynn identifies trust, authenticity, credibility, expertise, attractiveness. Now it is true that the hearer is the one who bestows trust and such upon the speaker. The hearer must believe the speaker to be trustworthy or credible. But the quality is something which is perceived to exist in the speaker.


The fact of trust, for instance, immediately creates a basis to receive the message from the speaker. If I trust you, I’ll listen to you.


The converse is thus obviously true, if I do not trust you, there is no reason to give you my attention. But what if I am merely ambivalent: I’ll give you a listen, but I don’t know that I would take advice from you. In that instance, the heuristic won’t act to shortcut the decision making. I’ll need to stick around.


Authenticity is the degree to which I will allow the current statement to be integrated with my I previously believed about you. I see a celebrity influencer speaking day after day about the greatness of this product. I have seen the celebrity tout this product for years and speak of personal use. I believe the celebrity actually uses this product. But then one day, the celebrity hawks a competing product. It doesn’t sound right to me
Expertise: You have been my doctor for years; I trust everything you have told me about medicine. Then one day you begin to offer your opinions about macro-economic policy. How do I receive that? I could think you’re pretty smart. I could think, you’re a doctor, how to you think you can talk about economics.


Credibility. Do I believe you? Obviously if I do not I will not confer trust upon you. If you need an example, look to how your friends perceive the public statements of a politician from a disfavored political party.
Attractiveness. This involves physical attractiveness, but is not limited to physical attractiveness. It is well known that jurors are more likely to believe physically attractive witnesses.


He also identifies two characteristics which are perceived to belong to listener: identification and expectations.


We in the end have a tribal default switch. When the speaker is someone I perceive to be like me, I’m more likely to believe that speaker. There is an observations among political consultants is that the winner is the one most people could imagine having over for a barbeque.


Finally, I’m only going to trust a speaker who says something which I could have potentially already believed. I come to a lecture and the person behind the podium beings to speak on and on about the hidden world inside the hollowed earth and how aliens and dinosaurs secretly live beneath us now. I am unlikely to grant much in the way of sympathy for the speaker’s views on anything else.

Terence (Terry) Flynn, Ph.D., You had me at hello: How personal, developmental and social characteristics influence communicator persuasiveness and effectiveness
Research Journal of the Institute for Public Relations 1 Vol. 3, No. 1 (August, 2016), 1-11

Anxiety and Thoughts of Death

20 Wednesday May 2020

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Short version: It’s not just the idea, but the anxiety produced by the idea, which gives rise to an increase in thoughts of death. If I tell you your worldview is stupid and you don’t care, you don’t have increased thoughts of death. But if you take my “you’re stupid and so’s your worldview” to heart and feel anxious, you’ll have increased thoughts of death. If you have increased thoughts of death, you try to defend your worldview from attack.
Longer version: Terror Management Theory proposes that when we are confronted with thoughts of death, we seek to (1) shore up our self-esteem, and (2) our worldview. For example, an atheist confronted with death can say, I won’t know I’m dead so there is no reason to fear death. A Muslim can say, I will be resurrected to Paradise, so I have no need to fear death. When I thinks about death, they can think about their response to death.

When confronted with some information which undercuts their worldview, (say, there is a god, or Muhammed was not a true prophet), research shows that the victim (or test-subject, depending upon your point-of-view) has more thoughts about death (DTA death-thought accessibility).

Since thoughts of death produce anxiety, human beings seek for ways to relieve that anxiety (anxiety being unpleasant). Researchers have noted two basic mechanisms, first were used to relieve the anxiety. The immediate response is to distract oneself or otherwise try to ignore the information). Then, after a passage of time and as thought the immediate thoughts of death fade, one begins to various “distal defenses” are brought to bear. The victim seeks to shore-up their symbolic mechanism to deal with death.

The research has primarily dealt with the thoughts of death, not the emotion of anxiety. A study published 2014 sought to examine the emotive functions.

The study sought to produce anxiety in Protestant Christian undergraduate students. They were told that the they were testing how a drink effected memory. Some of the students were told the drink contained caffeine and would them “jittery,” others were told it was a vitamin drink.

The reason for the two different drinks has to do with “attribution of arousal manipulation.” The students who drank the “caffeine” might attribute their anxiety to the drink and not to the article challenging their beliefs.

The students were given an article which challenged their religious beliefs (Jesus is the same as Krishna or Mithra or Horus). A control group read an article on the northern lights.

The next phase asked the students to complete words . So they were given coff–. Do they write “coffee” or “coffin”? The reason for this section to was both assess their thoughts of death and to give time for the “distal defenses” to engage.

The final phase as the students to evaluate their article – did it make you angry? How smart was the author?

When the students were given the “caffeine”, there was a marginal tendency to attribute their anxiety to caffeine and to have fewer “death-related” thoughts than the vitamin drink group. The students with the vitamin drink did experience more death related thoughts when having their religious beliefs attacked.

Not surprisingly, the students who read the attacking article had greater emotional response than those who read the article on the northern lights.

But since the researchers had given an introductory questionnaire on death related thoughts, they wanted to make sure that initial questionnaire did not poison their results.

They performed a very similar test. But this time they gave the students an opportunity to set bail for a prostitute. The thinking was that death-related thoughts would lead to more protection for their worldview, which would lead to higher bail amounts.

The surmise was true.

Here is what the researchers believed was significant in these tests: When the student attributed their anxiety to the caffeine they did not seek to protect their world view. It seems that when they blamed the drink for their anxiety it acted to protect them from thinking further about death.

A third test was premised upon this idea: Humans protect ourselves from thoughts of death by distinguishing ourselves from other animals. Therefore, we experience disgust when someone eats strange food, defects on the living room floor or commits incest, because it reminds us that we are animals; reminding ourselves that we are animals, reminds that we can die like animals. Therefore, we feel disgust in those circumstances.

You don’t need to take that explanation for why we experience disgust when someone decides to imitate a dog in your apartment.

The third experiment sought to determine the extent to which misattribution could apply to disgust.

And so we come to a test which I am glad I did not have to experience. The students were going to be subjected to viewing a number of gross pictures, someone vomiting, urine, feces, snot, a dirty toilet, a bloody finger. These apparently makes us think we are animals.

All the students were given an essay to read. One essay said, you’re just animal. The other essay had nothing to do with animals.

All the students were given instructions on viewing the pictures. Some were told to view the pictures carefully. Others were given specific instructions to take a “detached and unemotional attitude.” They were to be clinical and unfeeling as they examined the pictures.

After looking at the pictures, they were examined for disgust.

The students were instructed to have clinical detachment when viewing the pictures had fewer death-related thoughts after viewing them.

And so again, an increase a serious negative emotion increased one’s thought of death.

Here was the upshot:

Our findings suggest that threatening material will only increase DTA when that material is experienced as emotionally unsettling.

Webber, D., Schimel, J., Faucher, E.H. et al. “Emotion as a necessary component of threat-induced death thought accessibility and defensive compensation.” Motiv Emot 39, 142–155 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-014-9426-1.

What precisely takes place is unclear.

This research reminds me of some research I did in college on the grotesque in literature. There is a theory that we are attracted to disturbing things in art because it allows us to focus our existing anxiety on a point and attribute our anxiety on that artwork (rather than on some other matter which may be disturbing me.

There is an important consideration here for persuasion study. Persuasion functions by creating some sort of dis-ease, some anxiety and a proffered means of resolution. You see the car, you want the car: anxiety. You can buy the car: resolution.

If the creation of anxiety generally has a tendency to increase thoughts of death – and thus thoughts of protection of my worldview – this creates a certain complication. The research showed only a “marginal” decrease in death related thoughts when the anxiety could be attributed to the caffeine drink.

If we seek to create a powerful persuasive movement, we have the potential for creating greater anxiety and thus increased death related thoughts. An increase in death related thoughts comes along with protection of one’s worldview.

Thus, a powerful persuasive move have the wind at its back if the persuasion accords with one’s worldview. But, an attempt to make a strong persuasive move (by generating a great deal of anxiety at first) will have a headwind if that persuasive move is contrary to the worldview.

This does not mean that the issue under persuasive pressure is distinctly a facet of the worldview; only that it can be concordant or discordant with a worldview.

Aesthetic Judgment and Persuasion (Wittgenstein)

19 Tuesday May 2020

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In a 1983 article published in Crítica, Richard Shusterman examples Wittgenstein’s doctrine indeterminacy in aesthetic value and the work of critical evaluation. At first, this may seem rather remote from the matter of persuasion, but Shusterman rightly notes that the work of a critic (literary, musical, dramatic) is a work of persuasive rhetoric. In fact, Shusterman notes a passage in Wittgenstein’s Lectures and Conversations where he equates the nature of legal argument with the rhetorical procedure of a critic. As a lawyer, I can affirm correctness of Wittgenstein on this point.
Briefly, Shusterman notes three ways in which an aesthetic judgment is indeterminate.
Perhaps under the pressure from natural sciences and their seeming claim to indisputable truth, objective and eternal as a sort of sight of Platonic Forms, non-physical sciences beginning in the 19th century often sought to stylize themselves along “scientific” lines. Theology and literary criticism were taken up as sciences (in the sense of chemistry or physics).
A movement was made to formalize aesthetics in terms of deductive and inductive argument. If you have ever seen Dead Poets Society, the introduction from the beginning of the poetry book on how to graph the quality of a poem – which the new literature teacher has the students tear from their book – is a perfect example.
Wittgenstein critiques such deductive and inductive evaluations of art on the ground that the necessary grounds for evaluation have a degree of flux (Shusterman calls this “radical indeterminacy”, but I think he overshoots the mark; there is however a relative indeterminacy without question).

First, the basic concepts of balance and beauty do not have hard edges. Second, the work of the critic depends upon what sort of question the critic is asking (Wittgenstein’s concept of “game”). Thus, a critic who considers Hamlet psychological or the emotive or the political or metaphysical work will come to different conclusions. (Merrill Tenney’s book on Galatians is an example of how to perform this sort of critical evaluation. I also just realized that I have lent this book to someone and now I can’t find my copy.) Third, evaluations of beauty and art take place in a larger cultural context.
When we come to the contemporary period (granted Shusterman is writing 40 years ago; but the situation is even more extreme at present than then), the cultural context does not provide a universal scheme in which we can make a deductively valid and sound argument: who can say whether the premises are true.
What then does a literary critic do in such an environment? The critic cannot present “a nice knock-down argument for you.”
The critic’s work in this environment is thus to bring you to see the work from a particular point of view:

Validity is success, success in inducing the desired perception of the work, if not the desired critical verdict. He held that ‘aesthetic discussions were like discussion in a court of law’, where the goal and criterion of success is that ‘what you say will appeal to the judge.’ Elsewhere, Wittgenstein suggests that the criterion for adequacy of argument and correctness of explanation is acceptance or satisfaction. ‘The answer in these cases is the one that satisfied you.’ ‘That explanation is the right one which clicks,’ and is accepted by the interlocutor; ‘if he didn’t agree, this wouldn’t be the explanation.’

Richard Shusterman, “Aesthetic Argument and Perceptual Persuasion,” Critica 15, no. 45 (Dec. 1983): 51-74.
There is an important point: a deductive or inductive argument is not persuasive in some manner abstracted from the person who hears the argument. A deductive argument only works if it persuades the hearer in the direction intended by the speaker (it is possible that the deductive argument merely annoys the hearer and you have merely persuaded him to dislike you).
Thus, the work of the critic is to bring you see the artwork from a particular perspective: I seek to have you understand this poem, this painting as I do. When you see it as I see it, my literary criticism has been “worked.”
If anything, legal persuasion falls into this category even more than literary criticism. The lawyer seeks to bring the court to see the world from the perspective of the client.
Wittgenstein also notes that science functions in a similar manner:

Wittgenstein in fact suggests that such persuasion is also present in science. For instance, it underlies our firm and ready acceptance of the theories of Darwin and Freud, even when the grounds for their doctrines were in strictly logical terms of confirmation ‘extremely thin.’ We have been largely persuaded by the attraction of looking at things the way these theories present them.

Subsequent research into things such as confirmation bias only strengthen this insight. The strength of an argument – even a scientific argument – ultimately lies in the fact that it persuades: it causes one to see the world from a particular point of view.
Shusterman goes to offer a correction to those who take Wittgenstein further than is warranted. While literary criticism may be to bring you see a work from a particular perspective (and thus perhaps is the intended – and not always successful — end of all argument), that does not mean that deductive and inductive arguments are illegitimate.
Since arguments exist in the context of “conventions”, the “conventions” may permit or even dictate the use of deductive or inductive aesthetic judgment. Thus, “logical” arguments are not wrong even in the case of aesthetics. They just may not be effective (as determined by the intent of the one making the argument).

Finally, this understanding of persuasion as seeing the world from a particular perspective helps explain why certain ideas will be particularly difficult to change. When we ask someone to give up a certain perspective, they must not only give up the particular idea under review, they also must give up their conclusions on all of the world as seen from that perspective. Certain ideas form the context and basis for a worldview.

It is one thing to change a window on the second floor; it is quite another to tear our the foundation on the entire high-rise.

The Cognitive Learning Approach to Persuasion

29 Wednesday Apr 2020

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The Cognitive Learning Theory of Persuasion seeks to explain persuasion in terms of ideas.  It is a theory that persuasion takes place as the modification of ideas:

[T]he cognitive response analysis assumes that attitude change can be achieved by modification, through learning, of the recipient’s repertory of attitude relevant cognitions.

Anthony G. Greenwald, “Cognitive Learning, Cognitive Response to Persuasion, and Attitude Change,” in Psychological Foundations of Attitudes, ed. A.G. Greewald, T.C. Brock, and T.M. Ostrom (New York: Academic Press, 1968), 151. Being a learning-theory, it has its origin in classical conditioning models of learning. Greewald understood the relationship to conditioning learning theory as analogous, not direct. Ibid.

Richard Petty, the psychologist not the racecar driver, published a study which considered the effect of cognition on persuasion. In a series of experiments, he wanted to determine whether the ease of thinking or the ease of not-thinking effected the persuasiveness of a message.

Not surprisingly, distraction alone made strong arguments weaker – but it also made weak arguments stronger. Body posture also mattered: standing made one more resistant; why lying down made one more compliant:

The present series of experiments was designed to show the importance of a recipient’s cognitive responses in persuasion situations. By employing manipulations designed to increase negative cognitive responses (such as forewarning, or simply asking a person to stand up) we were able to produce resistance to a persuasive communication. By employing manipulations designed to decrease negative cognitive responses (such as distraction, or simply asking a person to lie down), we were able to enhance the persuasiveness of a communication.

Richard E. Petty (1977) ,”The Importance of Cognitive Responses in Persuasion”, in NA – Advances in Consumer Research Volume 04, eds. William D. Perreault, Jr., Atlanta, GA : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 357-362. (accessed online at https://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/5689)

Writing of the cognitive approach Myers-Levy and Malaviya found that it had “been reasonably supported by data,” but, the “theory is silent about many issues”. Joan Myers-Levy and Prashat Malaviya, “Consumer’s Processing of Persuasive Advertisements: An Integrative Framework of Persuasion Theories,” Journal of Marketing 63 (1999): 45-60, p. 47.

 

How to Manipulate with the truth

29 Wednesday Apr 2020

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Look at this thread:

It is a simple demonstration of how the angle of a photograph changes the meaning:

Image

Multiple examples of such manipulation are given in the comments. Note that there is no “lie” precisely. There is no photoshop. There is no misattribution of the location — only a change in perspective.

I remember perhaps the first time I noticed how perspective so easily changes meaning. I saw a protest which turned violent. Protesters attacked the police. The police arrested the quite reluctant to be arrested protesters. I saw the story on two news reports. One showed the attack; the other showed the arrests. Same event; no one manufacturing information, but a deliberate selection of information.

We have this bad habit of assuming that we know the correct context in which to place a fact. We assume that we are looking at the event from the “objective” or “true” point of view.

But meaning is never just there in an event: meaning is the relationship of an event, of a fact to a larger context. Facts alone are meaningless. Facts only have meaning as they relate to other facts. We view events from a context: our perspective is one of the facts at issue.

 

 

Does Forewarning Affect Persuasion?

27 Monday Apr 2020

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A study published in 1991 by psychologists at the University of Florida, Changing Personal Beliefs: Effects of Forewarning, Argument Quality, Prior Bias, and Personal Exploration (Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, vol. 10, no. 1, 1991, pp. 1-20) found being well-prepared to respond to an argument can keep one being persuaded.

They performed a series of three experiments on undergraduates on the issue of whether one should be completely honest in a relationship. They sought to investigate the way in which a counterargument, such as might be raised in counseling, would affect one.  For instance, you are a counselor. A counselee comes to you and has relationship problems. You tell the counselee to be completely honest in the relationship, which is not the counselee’s belief. How successful will you be in convincing the counselee?

In the first experiment, they presented strong and weak arguments to two sets of people. In one group, they warned the student that they would be hearing an argument which challenged in their belief. They gave these students a short time to prepare for hearing their counter arguments. A second set of students was not forewarned.  The groups were further divided into hearing “strong” or “weak” arguments.

They expected that forewarning the student would cause the students to be more resistant to the arguments. Instead, they found no significant difference between the two groups: the only thing which mattered was the strength of the argument. Strangely, they discovered that for some students, the forewarning actually increased the effect of the argument.

The hypothesis ran as follows: If I had good reasons for my position & if I had time to prepare, when I heard the counter argument I would be ready to respond. But, if I really had no good reason for my positions, few or no arguments – and those arguments weak – when I was presented with counterarguments the effect would be to collapse: In effect the poorly prepared but forewarned student realized that he really didn’t have any good reason for his position.

I can vouch for this from a position of being raised a Christian. As a kid, I had various questions about this or that. The answer was always along the lines of, It is bad to ask questions. So when I was confronted with counter arguments, I concluded, well I guess I don’t really have any good reasons for my position.

To test that idea, they sorted the students again – but this time they looked for evidence that a student had arguments to back up the “bias”.  The more arguments the student had for his side, the stronger the bias. This was a bit problematic, because one could have one very strong argument or three weak arguments.

Their idea was that one with more arguments would be more easily able to access any arguments which presented with the counter.

It turned out that forewarning a student with an array of counter arguments made it easier to access the counter arguments and made them more resistant to agreement.

In a third experiment, they learned that one could increase the increase their resistance by being preparing them to “explore” their position. This found a slight increase in resistance for “low bias” individuals.

“One provocative implication of the data concerns the potentially undesirable impact of directed exploration and attitude clarification in counseling. The effects of reviewing and articulating self-relevant attitudes may be to render them more resistant to subsequent change.”

There is an additional way to understand the findings of this research. It is not that one is staking up arguments one against the other. Another way to understand this research is to consider the possibility that the “subject” of the experiment is not paying attention:

When a person receives a communication and is faced with the decision of accepting or rejecting the persuasion, he may be expected to attempt to relate the new information to his existing attitudes, knowledge, feelings, etc. In the course of doing this, he likely rehearses substantial cognitive content beyond that of the persuasive message itself.

Anthony G. Greenwald, “Cognitive Learning, Cognitive Response to Persuasion, and Attitude Change,” in Psychological Foundations of Attitudes, ed. A.G. Greewald, T.C. Brock, and T.M. Ostrom (New York: Academic Press, 1968), 149.The author then goes on to quote a 1949 publication:

There is reason to suspect that those audience members who are already opposed to the point of view being presented may be distracted [from the content of the communication] by “rehearsing” their own arguments while the topic is being presented and will be antagonized by the omission of the arguments on their side.

Ibid.

How to Negate the Influence of a Persuasive Bias

24 Friday Apr 2020

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One of the great difficulties in understanding persuasion comes due to many variables which do or which potentially affect the outcome. One possible way to analyze the elements is to try and divide up the degree to which one likes the speaker  from the quality of the argument the speaker presented.

In the Spring 1998 volume of Social Cognition, we find an example of one such experiment. It begins like most psychological experiments by deceiving college undergraduates. College undergraduates are used because they have free time and are available to professors. Deception is used, because if the subjects know that they are being tested for X they may distort their responses.

In the first test, the students were asked to evaluate the quality of an argument given by someone whom the students would find “likeable” or “unlikable.” The speaker advocated for an examination policy. There were two versions of the argument: in one the speaker gave “strong” arguments; in the other, “weak” arguments.

All of the students were told that prior to evaluating the quality of the argument to indicate their personal opinion about that exam policy. A sub-group was told to make sure they did not let their opinion about the likability of the speaker to influence their conclusion.

This is what they happened. The students who heard the argument from a likable source were more likely to accept the argument. But if they were told to let their opinion of his likability to influence them, they found the argument weaker. The mirror image happened with the unlikable speaker. Without the instruction about not letting likability be influence, the students did not find the arguments persuasive. But when they were told to not let their personal opinion about the speaker influence their decision, they found the speaker more persuasive.

They repeated the experiment with this twist: some of the students were told that exam policy would not be implemented for 10 years, and thus the policy was not relevant to them personally. They were also asked to memorize a seven digit code as part of completing their questionnaire.

A second group was told the policy might take place next year. Also, they were asked only to memorize a single digit.

For the students who were told the exam wouldn’t apply to them, their preference was markedly based upon the likability of the speaker. But when they were told to not let likability affect their decision, the strength of likability significantly diminished.

It was the last group that was the most interesting to the researchers: if the policy applied to you personally, would that factor alone overcome the strength of likability? Would someone “automatically” filter out likability and get to the strength of the argument standing alone?

The answer is “no.” The students disliked the argument from the dislikable speaker. But when they were told you can’t let likability affect your decision, the students were able to factor that out and raised their valuation the argument itself.

And so they were able to demonstrate that people could distinguish between variables.

The psychologists were busy considering variables and testing theories. But the trouble with psychological theories is they can often illuminate as well as obscure.

Let’s think about this test in more practical terms. We all tend to ignore or disregard people we dislike or find unattractive. It’s easier to do.  How many people have ignored someone they disliked speaking.

If you don’t pay much attention, the argument will not be very persuasive.

But there is more, we give more grace to people we like. We give them the benefit of the doubt. It makes us feel better about giving more attention.

The students were students. They are people who are good at doing what they are told. This is merely a factor among all people to want to do what is “right” based upon whatever rubric they consider salient. When an authority told them be careful you don’t let likability affect your decision, they “knew” that they were probably doing that and they discounted that aspect.

What is interesting is that in both experiments, the degree of “correction” was greatest for those students who had a dislikable speaker and who were told they should let that influence them. One might even see this as an overcorrection for their bias.

There is a practical takeaway here. For instance, when a lawyer stands before a jury, and the lawyer has a dislikable client, he should tell the jury that the law considers the truth alone. We cannot allow personal feelings about a party to influence a decision. Done well, these experiments seem to indicate that the jury would overcompensate to avoid their bias.

A caveat: This experiment only concerned a rather weak bias: How much could you irrationally dislike a speaker whom you had to bear with for only short time? What would have happened if the students had to deal with this dislikable speaker for weeks? What if the bias was based upon something which evokes greater passion in the subject, particularly if that bias were informed and supported by some considerable matrix of culture or education or a peer group?

Flexible Correction Processes in Social Judgment: Implications for Persuasion

Richard Petty, Duane T. Wegner, and Paul H. White

Social Cognition, Spring 1998.