Category Archives: Models

Examples we can productively study

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The Pessimist’s Guide to Persuasion

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retochet[Changing attitudes is hard.  This piece written several years ago confronts the strong likelihood that a persuasive message will trigger unanticipated effects.  I like to think of this as realism rather than pessimism.  But either way, guiding others to where we want to take them is never easy]

A number of years of writing and teaching persuasion have forced me to be a student of the unexpected ricochet.  That’s pretty much the whole game if you are playing racquetball, and it has a lot of relevance to communication.

The actual court for the game is simply a room-sized shoe box that functions as a playing surface for a hard rubber ball and several players.  It’s typically smashed so hard against the playing wall that it comes back at speeds and angles even a supercomputer couldn’t predict.  Those who have escaped the sting of that small missile can be thankful.  It hurts.  the word“ricochet” must have been coined by a bruised French player. But it also evokes the unanticipated associations, meanings, slights, and bogus significations possible every time we open our mouths. More than most kinds of human endeavor, persuasion is fraught with effects that are unforeseen. No wonder it is so difficult.

Try the different analogy of competitive running. Our inability to anticipate effects usually means that a person’s resistance to change is pretty much on its last lap before the possibility of personal transformation has even left the blocks. From a number of meta-studies we know that the odds of getting someone to alter their attitudes even after a flurry of good reasons have been presented is—on the best days—no better than one in ten.  After explaining this theory of “minimal effects” in a recent class, a student glumly asked, “What’s the point?  Why bother? The challenge hardly seems worth the effort.”

The short answer is that we have no choice.  Gaining assent from others is why we are mostly social rather than isolated creatures.  We are hard-wired to connect.  And, by the way, who says that convincing another person to give up an attitude or a cherished behavior should be easy?  We’ve worked hard to put our lives together in some sort of coherent way.

The point is how functional it actually is to be ready for the worst.

In persuasion theory, unexpected effects are called “boomerangs.”  Even well-planned campaigns to change others’ behaviors can easily veer off course. I teach this logic, and encourage my students to wear their newly acquired skepticism as a badge of honor. Having a healthy level of doubt about predicted effects is a life skill.

Consider some cases, all mostly true:

  • You show up to give an invited presentation to a group and (a) there is no screen for the PowerPoints you counted on, (b) there is nowhere to plug in your video projector, (c) there is no podium for your notes and (d) and a crew of ten men and nine machines are busy re-paving the parking lot next door.  Under these circumstances, how effective do you think will can be?
  • Your advertising agency has prepared a gay-friendly ad campaign that tested well and is now running in three national media outlets. Everyone on the creative team basks in their certain rewards of their progressive messages. But a respected leader in the LGBT community condemns the ads for “promoting old stereotypes.”  Condemnation of the ads is getting more attention than the ads themselves.
  • At a business lunch with a potential client you innocently praise the good service you once got from a large national retailer, only to be chided for supporting a chain whose owners are “political reactionaries.”
  • You meet a new set of Michigan in-laws for the first time, not realizing that for this family of General Motors employees, your new Ford visible to all in their front driveway might as well be a load of manure.
  • You are Bridget Jones at a literary party in the midst of introducing the work of a hack you oversell as the author of “the greatest book of our time.”  This happens just as you catch a look of dismay cross the faces of Jeffrey Archer and Salman Rushdie, just a few feet away.
    See the clip here.

    When it comes to communication, some of us are natural pessimists who are certain that life will not work out as planned.

 

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American Hustler

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                                      Robert Preston

Delivered at a head-spinning pace, “Ya Got Trouble” seems like it could have only emerged out of the righteous precincts of mid-century America. 

An article in last Wednesday’s New York Times reported that the Broadway show Beetlejuice will be evicted from the Winter Garden Theater in June to make way for a revival of The Music Man.  Apparently, the producers of the weird and ghoulish  Beetlejuice feel like they cannot move the expensive sets and still recover their $21 million in costs.  And it’s not certain any theater is actually available.  The owner of the Winter Garden believes a splashy Music Man will be a bigger draw.

There’s nothing especially wrong with Meredith Wilson’s hopelessly square but entertaining musical. It is an antique built on a familiar kind of middle American monoculture.  Robert Preston did his best to breathe life into a long Broadway run and the  successful 1962 film.

But I have a compromise that should please everyone.  Simply merge the shows.

There’s no reason the two casts and a few script doctors can’t come up with a new production that combines the best of both.  The Music Beetle, perhaps.  Or maybe Beetleman.  The combined show would probably be a little more hip and a lot of more fun.

Problem solved.

As you can see, I’m good with titles.  It’s what follows that’s hard.

There is actually a point to all this. Taken as a whole, The Music Man is full of perhaps too many trombones and more four-part harmony than might be good for a person. But it does offer one song that’s destined for the ages. Wilson hit a rich vein of Americana with the rapid-fire ‘patter’ song, “Ya Got Trouble.”  Wilson’s home of Mason City Iowa was a pretty tranquil place.  But at least he knew how  people loved to parade their righteousness.  It’s a perfect evocation of an American hustler in full flight: filled with trumped up worries that would excite the fantasies of folks in the play’s fictitious River City.  Delivered at a head-spinning pace, “Ya Got Trouble” seems like it could have only been sung and believed in small-town mid-century America.  The fun of the song is that Americans know a lot about pitches for things that are probably more evocative than true.  Peddling fear can also be profitable.  It’s a perfect representation of the sell-at-any-cost spirit that helped build the country.

I’m thinkin’ of the kids in the knickerbockers
Shirt-tail young ones, peekin’ in the pool
Hall window after school, ya got trouble, folks!

The popular historian Daniel Boorstin wrote a great deal about hustlers in America who were constantly on the make (The Americans: the Democratic Experience, 1974). He was right to note that it was a particular American type.  Many went on to be innovators or builders of business empires.  Others were charlatans. Surely the contestants on CNBC’s Shark Tank are heirs to this tradition.  So, I fear, is our President.