Category Archives: Psychology

Rieff, Triumph of the Therapeutic 4.2

14 Tuesday Jul 2020

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(In Defense of the Analytic Attitude)

In the remainder of the chapter, Rieff distinguishes Freud from what came after.  The distinction which Rieff draws is between Freudian “freedom” and a “cure.” Freud offers no solution, only a “technology” which will allow one to understand the working of their subconscious. The end game, as seemingly proposed by Rieff would be the freedom from the “residues of religious compulsion.” (79) This may be achievable with a combination of Freudian analysis and behavioral technique. (Ibid.)

Freudian analysis “is the aim of science – power; in this case a transformative technology of the inner life….This is ultimate technology.” (79)

The purpose of “faith” is to mitigate suffering: “all religions have a therapeutic function.” (76) Jung sought to scoop up all religions with his theory of archtypes. An interesting observation is how Rieff sees Jung and Freud as inversions of one another. Freud understood “erotic instinctual forces” sublimate themselves into the “highest ethical and religious interests of man.” While Jung saw the process going in the other direction. (77)

Freud’s aim of “freedom” comes at a cost:

“What men lose when they become as free as gods is precisely that sense of being chosen, which encourages them, in their gratitude, to take their subsequent choices seriously. Put in another way, this means: Freedom does not exist without responsibility.” (79)

This freedom is of course something which is at issue. It is taken by everyone that Freud’s theories of pscyho-social development and dream analysis and slips of the tongue – however interesting – are unquestionably not “scientific.” His technology is simply untrue. 

What is strange is that his basic proposition that your sensation of ethical constraint is a trick society has played upon, that restraint is what is holding you back, mixed with Rousseau and Hegel and whatnot and developed by his followers (some who – as we shall see – were criminally insane) has become a default argument over against the “illusion” of religion and God. It is a curious sort of position to occupy. 

But on the same ground, by what basis do Hegel’s thesis-antithesis, Rousseau’s sociology, Marx’s economic history still have currency? It seems that people pick bits and pieces of ideas without ever well-understanding either what they believe or why. They could never articulate their axioms much less their conclusions. 

We live too easily in cages built of the thought of others. Freud in his effort to bring a technology of freedom foisted insupportable conceits upon the world. When his conceits proved to be nonsense, the conceits remained.  

Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, 3.1 (Community and Therapy)

07 Tuesday Jul 2020

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The prior post on Triumph of the Therapeutic may be found here.

Community and Therapy, Chapter 3

In this chapter, Rieff begins with an understanding of mental health as provided by means of a symbolic system. By means of a symbolic system, the society creates a matrix in which the individual person can achieve a character ideal. To be a functioning person, the person must belong to a “positive community” which “offers some sort of salvation to the individual through participant membership.” (60)

In this scenario, the system works if the individual functions reasonably well. The system will need a sufficiently robust symbolic format and mechanism for involvement in that system. 

For the individual to function well, the individual not may but must participate in the communal life: it was only the life of the community that the life of any individual would be sufficiently well served.

Rieff then subsumes the history religion and culture into a concept of therapy:

Ultimately, it is the community that cures. The function of the classical therapist is to commit the patient to the symbol system of the community, as best he can and by whatever techniques are sanctioned. (57)

Rousseau provided a seeming break from this concept by introducing the idea that the individual must break free from the confinements of the community. But in the end, Rousseau ended up in the same place, because he merely posited the creation of a new community in the future.  

Marx took Rousseau a step further and argued that the community was utterly broken and that all that currently existed is cash interactions. But Marx was still looking for a community, just a new future community where the individual could finally be integrated into the communal whole.

From a slightly different perspective, De Tocqueville considered the possibility of a wholly democratic society where all communal bounds would be broken down and all life would be private.

But for all that, Rieff contends that prior to Freud, mental health was a matter sociology: it was obtained by means of integrating the individual to the society’s system to simultaneously define and give room for expression of the individual. 

At this point, Rieff places Freud as the one who provides a therapy to the individual when no positive community exists. 

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.

Persuasion and Education

14 Thursday May 2020

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Karen Murphy and Patricia A. Alexander, “Persuasion as a Dynamic, Multidimensional Process: An Investigation of Intraindividual Differences,” American Educational Research Journal41, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 337-63.

In a study published in 2004, Professors Murphy and Alexander considered the relationship between persuasion and education research. As they note, “persuasion is neither inherently good nor evil, but a catalyst for thinking analytically about the messages encountered by individuals.”

The study consisted of 234 college students, primarily undergraduates who were given three articles from the popular press to read. The topics were likely to provoke emotional responses, assisted suicide, AIDS and school integration.

The students were examined for perceived and actual knowledge of these topics, prior to reading the articles. The students were then examined after reading the articles to determine the persuasive effects upon the students. Specifically, the researchers wanted to see how knowledge, interest and belief prior to reading the articles effected their beliefs after reading the articles.

One of the most unusual features of their research was a finding that the students with a high degree of knowledge about the topic and a high (to moderate) interest in the topic “were associated with low beliefs levels at prereading and post-reading.” That is the more they were interested and knowledgeable, the less they had firm positions (I assume that is the meaning of “belief”) on the topics.

Here is an example of something interesting which may not tell us much at all.

Consider:

A person considers life precious in all circumstances. Such a person may have a very strong position on assisted suicide and think it always wrong. Having determined that assisted suicide is wrong, the person then decides not to read many arguments on the subject and has relatively little interest in subject.

Another example, I am firmly convinced that racism is wrong and thus I don’t really intend to spend any time reading arguments in favor of racism. I have little “knowledge”  (in the sense of an extended body of research) and strong belief.

Or consider another person who has thoroughly studied a subject for years: Say a professional medical ethicist. The ethicist has a very high degree of knowledge and a high degree of interest – and likely has rather firm conclusions about the topic.

The subjects of this experiment were undergraduates. They are being introduced to all sorts of new ideas in college. Their high degree of knowledge and interest is likely not all that “high”. They may know more than they did in high school, but it is unlikely they have any profound understanding.

Consider this: the articles they were reading were from the newspapers and popular magazines — not academic journals. That does not make the articles bad, but the articles are certainly not exhaustive explorations of the topics. By nature of the medium, the information is will be limited to a few hundred words.

What the researchers discovered is that making education more interesting made education more effective.

They also discovered that what works for one person may not work for another. As they note, the existing studies on the topic show that “persuasion is a multidimensional process that is influenced by individual and intraindividual differences in learners and how they interact with varied texts.”

Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic 2.2 (Therapy as Re-Education)

12 Tuesday May 2020

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The previous post on Rieff may be found here. 

Therapy as Re-Education

Rieff has a useful understanding of therapy in contrast religion (which in the case of Freud would be Christianity of Judaism) which Rieff refers to as “older moral pedagogies.” (45) The prior moral system required one “concentrating on the life of trying to order the warring parts of the personality into a hierarchy.” (45).

This ordering of one’s competing demands and impulses is done in accord with the requires of a “positive community” which promised “a kind of salvation” for such accord. (43).

Freud and therapy provide a completely different manner of understanding one’s self. Rather looking at the various “impulses” as a matter of good or bad, higher or lower, one should consider demands as “a jostling democracy of contending predispositions”. (46-47)

Freud realized that this new means of understanding the various “impulses” would result in a subversions of the expectations of life. In particular, the position of the “father” would be particularly subverted, because the position of father takes the position of maintaining of “repressive command”. (47).

Now it may be thought that Freud encourages immorality. But the understanding of the impulses as there does not necessarily result in the encouragement of acting on such impulses.  What Freud did do was seek to exhaust a sense of guilt built upon these moralities.

At this point, Reiff makes a rather self-contradicting argument. Freud’s analysis:

Help[s] us distinguish between guilt on one hand and a sense of guilt on the other, between responsibility for an offense committed and fantasies about offenses intended or merely imagined, seems a moral as a well as a therapeutic aim.

This argument seems to be that the older moral orders merely imposed a “fantasy” of moral order in exchange for a promise of salvation as contrasted one making a conscious decision based upon “responsibility.”  Upon what moral basis could one determine concern for “responsibility”?

There is not any rational basis for responsibility. You could say I would like to avoid whatever I might see as a negative consequence (like avoiding imprisonment) was rational – but seeing a connection between the consequence and the result does not determine whether I should not engage in the conduct. The decision to avoid the behavior to avoid the consequence is a moral decision. Granted it is a very limited morality (I want to avoid negative consequence), but it is still a moral decision.

If the negative consequence is less than imprisonment or death, than what do we mean by “responsibility”? Does he that I could care about what my behavior would do to another? That would be a moral decision.

The only sort of amoral decision would be one where I see the consequence and have not concern for the consequence.

Perhaps the concept is that I can decide whether I wish to abide by the moral code I see raised by my “impulse”. But one still must made a decision to be moral; that decision may have a very habitual basis, but it is not a reflex in the sense of blinking an eye.

Indeed the decision to forgo an “older moral paradigm” is itself a moral decision.

Freud may make one explicitly conscious of the moral decision. Freud also grants a certain sort of sanction to forgo moral decisions (this is an evil desire, it is just a desire – evil is what I have been taught to call this desire; but the desire is not in itself evil). All Freud has done lay the basis for a new morality where personal desire is necessarily good.

Thus, therapy is a matter of “re-education” into a new basis for morality.

Different Strategies Work for Different Customers (Persuasion)

08 Friday May 2020

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A study published in 2006 sought to examine the effectiveness of the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) of persuasion to examine various artificial intelligence responses to online consumers.

The putative consumers were categorized into four groups. First, they were arranged by their “need for cognition.” Some people were determined to have a “high need for cognition”; some had a “low need.” Second, they were arranged in terms of their prior knowledge concerning the product.

The underlying premise was the two routes to decision making: central route, which is primarily cognition; and peripheral route, in which a purchaser puts more concern on emotional responses to the product or the salesperson.

These four groups of people were presented with two distinct sales interactions: One variant was the Product-Attribute-Relevant (PAR) sales pitch. This variant provided data about the product. In the experiment, they were selling cars. This would be quality, features, et cetera. A second variant  Product-Attribute-Irrelevant (PAI) strategy: this would be all of the “tricks” of the sales personnel. For example, “foot-in-the-door”:  This happens when you are presented with a small request by the seller. For example, when you call into a company and they ask you for your name and an alternative telephone number. If you have learned the persuasion categories made famous by Cialdini, then you know these non-cognitive techniques.

You have created this minor relationship status which creates some future willingness to concede further.

The results of the experiment were what one would expect.

For people with a “low need for cognition,” the increase in data did not effectively persuade them. Interpreted in light of the ELM model, that means that such people “do not have enough motivation or ability to process messages about product features.” Stated otherwise, they simply did not care. Not surprisingly, they sales-technique strategy was effective with these peripheral route processors.

Conversely, those who wanted cognition, wanted data.

But something interesting was observed: the sale-technique strategy (PAI) had about the same effectiveness on high-and-low-need-for-cognition purchasers. In line with the ELM theory, the non-cognitive techniques are easiest to process and thus everyone processed such information.

Another interesting result concerned the degree of change among various purchasers. The PAR strategy had a greater effect upon the high-need-for cognition or prior knowledge purchasers, than did the PAI strategy on the low-need-for-cognition or no-prior knowledge purchasers.

But what does one do with these results? How does a sales-agent determine the need-for-cognition of a customer quickly and without arousing suspicion that this a sales-technique?

A second experiment concerned bargaining procedure. This experiment used two bargaining techniques a tough attitude (start high, give small concession) or a moderate strategy. The purchasers had either a low or degree of prior knowledge as to what the ending price should be.

For purchasers who had little prior knowledge, the tough strategy was most effective and it did not produce a negative attitude in the purchaser. However, for the purchaser with a high degree of knowledge, the tough strategy did produce a negative attitude in the purchaser and was not more successful than the moderate strategy.

 

Huang Shiu-li, Lin Fu-ren, and Yuan Yufei, “Understanding Agent-Based On-Line Persuasion and Bargaining Strategies: An Empirical Study,” International Journal of Electronic Commerce 11, no. 1 (Fall 2006

Distinctions and Similarities Among Positive Emotions

02 Saturday May 2020

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Distinctions and Similarities Among Positive Emotions

A study published in 2013 (Belinda Campos et al., “What Is Shared, What Is Different? Core Relational Themes and Expressive Displays of Eight Positive Emotions,” Cognition and Emotion 27, no. 1 (2013): 37-52) sought to determine which aspects of eight positive emotions (amusement, awe, contentment, gratitude, interest, joy, love, and pride).

There were actually two separate studies. The first study asked the undergraduates (for course credit) to describe one of the eight positive emotions

in a short narrative. The students were also given a series of prompt questions. The information was then encoded for content. The goal was to determine what aspects of these various positive emotions remained common among all the eight, and which aspects differed.

They found things such as love and gratitude tended to go together. That positive emotions came more readily when one experienced safety or reward. Contentment was the least distinct.

Those who described awe also correlated this with the feeling of smallness, which was a trait not shared with other positive emotions. Although not part of the study, I imagine that “smallness” is likely associated also with certain negative emotions, because a feeling of vulnerability could lead on to feel unsafe.

A second study sought to correlate facial expressions with positive emotions.  It was already understood that negative emotions presented significant distinct elements. The question for the researchers was whether positive emotions would display unique elements.

I especially appreciated the quite formal description of a smile:

The Duchenne smile, which involves the simultaneous lifting of the lip corners and contractions of the orbicularis oculi muscles around the eyes, is regarded as the key marker of ‘happiness,’ the global term for displayed positive emotions.

While I appreciate the need for exactitude when discussing a subject, I did have to smile in response to this description of smiling while happy.

What was discovered was that most positive emotions were coupled with common facial displays, except for gratitude.

In the end, positive emotions are not an undifferentiated blog, but rather there are distinct elements of the emotions. Some emotions have a relationship to other positive emotions; some do not. Emotions – at least among the undergraduates studied – tend to show distinct physical expression.

The study leaves one the extent to which these findings apply to anyone beyond undergraduates at American universities.

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.