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Where Was I?

Models, Problem Practices, , , , , , , , ,

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To the question “Where was I?” a common reply is that we were probably “peripherally processing:” tuning out most that was said. 

[A 2018 essay on a very helpful theory of message reception got the basic model right. But in hindsight I discovered that I didn’t more thoroughly consider how our busy lives force us to sacrifice the rewards of being fully engaged with a single challenge. Drifting away from a person’s words now seems like the norm. I suspect we only have the required discipline at peak moments of focus when we know that something important is on the line: everything from two pilots in a cockpit reviewing contingencies prior to what will be a difficult landing, to a journalist getting just one shot to ask a newsmaker a question. Too infrequently do we engage in this kind of critical awareness.  Here’s an updated version of that piece with two key terms from a theory that offers useful language to access whether a receiver is fully engaged on a single task.]

Occasionally an idea in communication comes along that provokes the realization that it would not be possible to live without it. Good theories can help us see what is right in front of us. So, it is with a set of observations that fall under the name of Elaboration-Likelihood Model. The name might be a little off-putting. But as a framework for insights about how messages are likely to be received by others, the model is golden. It has been enormously helpful in various branches of the social sciences. We are in the realm of the theory when we wonder how we missed seeing or hearing a message that came our way.  To the question “Where was I,” the answer is probably that you were focused on a challenging task or, more likely, tuning out most everything that came your way. Not paying adequate attention is a modern affliction.

                Elaboration Likelihood Theory

The framework first proposed by Richard E. Petty and John Cacioppo proposes that we think about the reception of messages as coming via one of two general pathways. Messages that are “centrally processed” are, by definition, the kinds that trigger a whole set of critical responses. These are claims and ideas readers or listeners think about. Their engagement means that they are more inclined to assess these assertions against what they know. Their beliefs or behaviors have been put into play and may change.

The model assumes that serious attempts at advocacy or involvement must gain a strong foothold in our consciousness. Those messages that get scant attention are said to be “peripherally processed.”  A message like an advertisement or a casual request from another may wash over us quickly. We are not especially interested or motivated to hang on every word. And, as you would guess, the message is not likely to produce significant or lasting change. It has not created an impression that sticks.

All of this may seem more or less obvious. But considering how much a person or audience cares is a worthwhile question. It asks if you can trigger enough attention and interest to have a chance at producing real effects. As labels, “Peripheral” and “Central Processing” are good ‘top-of-mind’ concepts. Keep them in your head as you parse out the amount of energy you want to invest in sending or receiving a message.

The model’s relevance increases every year as Americans recede into ever-deeper waters of message overload. We simply weren’t made to attend to what is now a routine exposure to many hundreds of messages every day.  We may deceive ourselves into believing that we can multi-task and accurately consume all that is thrown at us. We can’t. Truth to be told, we’re not good multitaskers. Peripheral processing means that we will miss too much to feel bound by a specific request.  It’s antidote is active listening. 

Watch a skilled grade schoolteacher manage a class and you will see a survivor who knows that active listening and central processing are essential and hard won. It takes time, repeated attempts, aa lot of eye contact and follow up. When we get older, we are our own bad actors by endlessly staring at phones and multitasking. As we’ve noted before, none of us are good multitaskers. Multitasking is the gateway to incorrect directions, missed messages, misunderstandings and, finally, a growing frustration of being disconnected from people that matter.

Another person’s attention may be essential. But it is not easily given.

When you find yourself saying to a friend our spouse “I mentioned it yesterday; I’m sure I said it” we are likely recalling something that mattered much more to us than the person who was supposed to be listening.  And, while we can get frustrated at the other’s inattention, we also need to cut them the slack by recognizing that communicating with a peripheral processor is a bit like shouting in the forest. The people close by may look like they have heard us. The Elaboration Likelihood model reminds us to have some doubts.

There’s also an interesting twist here. Someone who is fully engaged with their own thoughts—critically thinking them through—may not have much time for another’s extraneous conversation. Albert Einstein was supposedly forgetful. Was this was because he was engaged in the challenges of playing out the nuances of major insights like the theory of relativity? By now it is a cliché for an author to construct a character like the absent-minded professor:  intensely focused on one thing, yet unable to take in the verbal clutter around them. That’s my excuse, even if no one no one lets me get away with it. But you can see the irony here: peripheral processing might be one consequence of central processing. The more we are locked into exploring a singular idea, the less we may be available to adequately receive the messages of others.

Of course, the model is more nuanced than I have presented. Wikipedia has a more complete overview of it. And models with only two reference points need to accommodate the likelihood of various gradients. But anyone who wants to break through the crust of a peripheral processor can start by considering several recommendations. First, repeat what you deem important. A tactful rewording of the message that you want another to retain may help. Second, give the peripheral-processing “forgetter” some slack. To deal with every message that comes to us is not possible. If we tried to do it, we would need a mental health intervention. To be sure, another person’s attention may be expected. But the requirements for sanity in an over-communicated society mean that it can’t be easily given.  Finally, as a receiver, practice central processing. Repeat what you heard someone else describe.  Take notes. Ask questions.  Do whatever is required to fully give yourself over to their message.

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The Mandate for Compliance over Initiative

Problem Practices, Reviews, , , , , , , ,

The rhetoric of rules places a heavy burden on all of us. Organizations want more data than can be meaningfully used, with few incentives to strive for brevity.

A few years ago law professor Alan Dershowitz described one litigation strategy used by large corporate defendants as “papering the other side to death.” He meant, of course, that a lawyered-up organization can intimidate a plaintiff  by requiring so much data and information that the cost of a “win” becomes too risky and time-consuming.

The phrase has always stuck with me as a perfect representation of a much broader and common bureaucratic document completion documents that take up light years of a hapless consumer’s time.  Of course, paper has often been replaced by online documents forms. But the effect is the same, and we all have our stories. My recently completed online form for a COVID booster shot fell just short of the time needed to sign the papers to buy a house. Even after checking the “Male” and age boxes, the form would not allow me to go forward to the next page until I indicated that I was not pregnant.  Similarly, friends enrolling in Social Security talk of months of efforts to reach an agent.  It’s gotten so bad that AARP, the people who write about retirement, note that seniors may need to hire a professional to access the money from the agency they earned in their working years.

There seems to be a natural tendency to bureaucratize even the simplest processes, ostensibly to be “uniform” and complete. Most of this laid-on complexity seems to be in response to lawyers, who can imagine nearly limitless ways an organization might be sued for not asking the right questions. Few organizations hold their staffs to what would be a useful rule I tried to adopt as the Chair of an academic Department, namely, to try to hold endless requests for reports and information to responses one page written in comprehensible English.  There were raised eyebrows in meetings when other chairs noticed my paltry one page passed along to the Dean in the midst of their much thicker reports.  And, truth to be told, I did screw up the department budget in my quest for brevity.

There seems to be a kind of rules function within organizations that functions to mystify others into compliance. For example, no one reads the “conditions of use” fine-print attached to nearly every downloaded application.  But the sheer volume of the legalese lends authority to the source. If you don’t like a product, you have at least been “papered” with warnings and caveats.

These days the process of taking your self or your car in for service will include a long session for data entry. The front desk clerk taking down your information is now likely to go through a prolonged set of questions that leaves little time for a description of the problem that you want solved.  Filling in forms seems to be a primary function that now exists for its own sake, or because an organization sees itself as mostly in the data management business.

Think of who gets hired and promoted in the organizational world: policy specialists, compliance officers, lawyers, professional writers, contract law specialists, employees charged with reviewing procedures, and especially organizational members–some with OCD tendencies–that see any free choice as something that can be turned into procedure.

 

The pedant in all of us loves to make guidelines, rubrics, checklists, worksheets, mission statements, instructions, directives, standards , criteria, minimal requirements, qualifications and certifications.

 

Any procedure can be turned into a process that must be nailed down in multiple “steps.”   Organizational culture naturally wants uniformity, which is not itself a bad thing. The problem is that the folks who write the rules seem to self-select, forming groups who are all too willing to “paper” the rest of us.

Alas, this compulsion toward overwrought rule-making has not produced a comparable group of  specialists motivated to reverse the process. So organizational culture typically embraces a snowballing accumulation of regulations.  All of the accumulating pixels and paper serve as evidence of high productivity.

Even college professors aren’t immune from this tendency, especially when setting up rules defining the  work status of their colleagues. The pedant in all of us loves to make guidelines, rubrics, checklists, worksheets, mission statements, instructions, directives, standards , criteria, minimal requirements, qualifications and certifications. People who might better spend their time on scholarship often drift into generating handbooks of rules for even the most simple of professional tasks, such as observing a younger colleague’s teaching. The arc of a college teacher’s professional career is now tracked, classified, quantified, compared against a rubric, assessed by insiders, assessed by outsiders, tested with online questionnaires, burdened with filings to outside agencies, and itemized in reports to higher-ups. How lucky Albert Einstein was to find refuge not exactly at Princeton University, but at the more innovative Institute for Advanced Study next door.

                  Kenneth Burke

Another temporary resident at the the Institute–a haven for free thinkers–was rhetorician Kenneth Burke, who once described the tendency to over-produce regulatory flotsam as “the bureaucratization of the imaginative.” It’s a perfect phrase. Reining in creativity by “regularizing” work simplifies organizational life, but has a deadening effect on innovators and all of us who must negotiate our way through the labyrinth-like rules thought up by the organizational mind. In effect, the rhetoric of rules places a heavy burden on the most creative among us, too often leading to the redefinition of success as compliance rather than initiative.