In some ways the reduction of the fabulously complex mind to the connectivity of neurons is akin to describing a piece of music in terms of the physics of air pressure.
Twenty five years ago interest in the subject of communication was largely confined to a limited circle of teachers and researchers in the fields of rhetoric, marketing and psychology. In addition, there has always been a uniquely American fascination with provocative topics like political “brainwashing,” advertising and the contagious cultural fads of the young. But over the period of the last quarter decade the circumference of the borders of communication, persuasion and related topics has grown to such an extent that it is even pushed into formerly distant fields such as ethnography and neurobiology. Especially in the latter field it now common for researchers to track “neural pathways” activated when subjects are exposed to everything from “shooter” video games to deodorant ads. Adherents to this approach are sometimes so confident of the possibilities in linking all human action to physical first causes that a few have even issued warnings to psychologists and psychotherapists that the days of talk therapies are numbered. So much for the idea of the individual as a truly free agent. The underlying assumption is that brain chemistry will eventually make personality transparent.
Factor in the alleged existence of brain “plasticity” which makes it possible to adapt to digital media and the dominant daily activity of Americans of attending to screens, and it becomes clear why nearly everyone is now in the thrall of the neurobiology of social influence.
To be sure, expanding explorations of how we try to affect each other is always going to be a good thing. But the growing fashion for seeking answers using brain imaging devices seems badly misguided. Mapping the “brain activity” of individuals while they view movies, play video games or scan web pages involves all kinds of dubious simplifications. There is no question that we have much to learn about specific brain locations and routes that are awakened by certain kinds of media and presentational forms. And while there is ample evidence that some messages and activities influence hormone releases that effect mood and feelings, the mistake of such mapping offers the false impression that a relatively new “science” will give the analysis of persuasion a level of certainly that it has never had.
It badly misses the mark to assume that persuasion can be understood as a function of chemical and electrical processes in the brain. After all, human communication is about the engagement of the mind, with all of the personal uniqueness that comes with it. The brain is indeed the physical site where thinking—cognition—takes place. But unlike nearly all other body organs, the brain has no single function. Instead, it encompasses a world of possibilities that are ultimately realized when an individual’s biography and memory are brought into play. It facilitates thought and perception, but in ways that are always intimately tied to the experiences of the individual. A person’s cognitive presence involves a rich mixture of early influences, their own social history and attendant memories. All may be possible because of brain synapses, but their significant effects have to be measured on their own terms: what meanings we assign to messages, how we feel about a subject, what we “know,” and what we believe about our intentions and those of others. In short, an individual’s interpretation of another’s words and actions is an outcome flowing from an infinite set of social, circumstantial and physical origins. It’s this interpretative function that makes communication so much more interesting to approach in biographical rather than bio-chemical terms.
In some ways the reduction of the fabulously complex mind to the connectivity of neurons is akin to describing a piece of music in terms of the physics of air pressure. To be sure, it is easy to measure sound this way, converting pressure into frequencies that can be displayed on an audio analyzer. But to study music or persuasion by focusing on their physical processes has the effect of mistaking the conditions necessary for their production with the deeper complexities of their essence.
Neuroscience researchers will often concede as much. But journalists trying to catch the next intellectual wave need to be reminded that a competent analyst of communication must first be an interpreter keyed into the unique worlds of audiences, who construct significance and meaning from the mysterious depths of their own rich experience.
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Adapted from the Introduction in Gary C. Woodward and Robert E. Denton Jr., Persuasion and Influence in American Life, Seventh Edition (Longrove Ill.: Waveland, 2014.
Contact with another demands that we ask “What drives this person?” It’s not just a question; it’s the question. The process of creating a fully developed character does the service of making the answers more transparent. And it’s why drama as an idea is so powerful as a way to account for what others say. Just as an actor may imagine a “back story” that provides the reasons for their visible acts, so do we all fanaticize back stories to find explanations for the behaviors of those we interact with. In this process, art is the perfect condensation of life.
Literary scholar Bert States approaches the essence of characterization from an unusual but revealing perspective. In his perfectly titled Great Reckonings in Little Rooms, he asks us to consider performers in relation to the occasional live animal who is sometimes written in to a script. It’s a useful juxtaposition because it helps us see what is so essential about the idea of performance.
A dog can learn a set of behaviors that it can do on command. It behaves on cue through a process of simple conditioning. It’s an obvious point, but it’s also a reminder that it doesn’t quite work to describe the dog’s efforts as “acting.” An animal isn’t in the business of constructing a different individual, nor does it consciously perform actions to telegraph what will unfold in the rest of the narrative. Dogs fall below a common measure of higher consciousness measured in a procedure called the “mirror test.” In it, animals are given a temporary facial mark created with a safe dye, then shown a mirror and observed to see if they recognize themselves. Their lack of awareness on the low side of this threshold—common for a dog, but not for a higher functioning ape—doesn’t mean we can’t be enchanted. The famous wire-haired terrier Asta “playing” “Mr. Smith” in Leo McCary’s The Awful Truth (1937) is certainly one of the joys of that film. A running gag in the story is the apparent pact that Mr. Smith has made with his owners: he will hide his face in his paws while they (Cary Grant and Irene Dunne) conceal a toy somewhere in the room. Then on cue, he scours the apartment to find it. The fun of his presence comes from being a terrier who, like most pets, wins us over by simply showing up. In comparison with actors who have taken on the personas of another person, a dog is always the same dog. In truth, Asta’s “performance” is mostly a trick finessed into something more by good editing.
The point here is obvious but important. The difference with dogs and other animals is that they don’t have social intentions. They may indeed be imprinted with a social nature. But they cannot fake sociality in the ways that theater and life require. Trainers work to teach dogs to take on broad behaviors that signify certain attitudes: indifference, aggression, an enthusiastic welcome, and so on. But the dog is never really in the game of creating and sustaining an alternate reality. We are the species that gives meaning not only to signs, but symbols. We give significance to elaborate codes far removed from the sensory information that animals process. And we delight in constructing alternate (and often totally false) selves, sometimes relishing the possibilities of a masterful deception. Dogs can deliver fragments of themselves of cue. And they surely aim to please. But what is alien to their nature is the essence of ours.
This human capacity for selective representation of oneself should cast doubt on at least one of the oldest clichés we thoughtlessly foist on each other: the imperative of living a life of “personal authenticity.” This aspiration sits near the top of the Pantheon of most-desired human goals. We savor the idea that there are consistencies of behavior that ostensibly point to some durable mental core. Synonyms for the authentic person are mostly eulogistic: “genuine,” “reliable,” “dependable,” “credible,” and so on. By contrast, no similar bouquets are offered to the consummate role-player. We deny the mastery of numerous selves any public honors. But there are surely times when we recognize the truth: that we exist in multiples, and that—like the actor—an acquired repertoire of roles is a basic life skill. As audiences to each other, we need the other’s familiar persona, even though the reality that we have multiple selves makes the search for intentions all the more difficult.
Adapted from Gary C. Woodward, The Rhetoric of Intention in Human Affairs (Lexington Books, 2013).
