Tag Archives: doublespeak

Putting a Grand Theory to the Test

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

At the Oval Office meeting the President took the opposite position of the one urged by Marco Rubio. Rubio suddenly fell silent. As the Guardian reported, “The image of a sullen Rubio quickly went viral online, with one social media user dubbing him ‘the corpse on the couch.’”

These are challenging times. But for a student of persuasion, the events unfolding within the national government provide a flurry of opportunities to evaluate a core theory of persuasion. Events have conspired to force people to acknowledge the contradictory actions of their leader which, in theory, should force them to resolve the discrepancy. A researcher just needs to notice a person’s apparent discomfort with a world that is suddenly different from what they planned. What will change?

Theory of Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive dissonance theory hypothesizes that individuals will feel some mental stress if new information presents an apparent inconsistency between two firmly held beliefs, or a belief and a behavior. The theory assumes that the inconsistency will trigger an impulse to reduce or explain away the discrepancy. Although this old and grand theory offers something less than a certain “if-then” result, it is also premised on the familiar psychological motive to resolve apparent contradictions. For example, suppose that you found out that a close friend has been charged with theft of pages from artbooks taken from a local library. If the information disturbs you, would you change your attitude about your friend? A hypothesized result is a new realignment that resolves into more consonant attitudes: perhaps less regard for the friend and a thought that the crime was a small one.  The theory’s original author, Leon Festinger, proposed that cognitive dissonance is the tension that results when two thoughts seem incompatible.

There are many possible  refinements and variations on this model, but even in its simplest form it offers a theory of how our attitudes can change. Festinger was also wise enough to never underestimate our willingness to deny a contradiction.

Consider another example. Imagine that you discovered a distant ancestor in your family-owned slaves before the civil war. How would you feel? Writer Cynthia Carr remembers her shame when she learned that fact about an ancestor. She sought to resolve the resulting dissonance by telling an African American friend. For her, that comment reduced some of the dissonance. On the surface, at least, we want our mental life fit together in a more or less coherent whole.

And so we arrive at this moment in the nation’s fraught politics, considered in a few examples from the human dissonance machines in the White House. It appears that the admired business innovator Elon Musk may have a bit of a fascist streak, as demonstrated in his recent efforts to urge German voters to support a far-right party that has been more accepting of the nation’s Fascist past. Musk’s words were mostly an unwelcome intrusion into German and American politics, made even more so with Hitler-style arm salutes offered at Trump’s inauguration. What gives? The dynamic is the same if a person thought that reducing the costs of everyday goods would be Donald Trump’s top priority, as per the campaign. But his first big push has been to place tariffs on foreign goods coming into the country, which will likely raise prices for Americans. An unwelcome surprise? Similarly, if a person like Rubio thought Vladimir Putin is the true villain/aggressor of the Ukraine war, will they accept the President’s absurd judgment that Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky is to blame? In the traditional American view, Putin is the anti-Christ and Zelensky is the patriot.

These and other reversals should produce a flood of dissonance for Trump supporters. Should they feel dissonance and buyer’s remorse over owning what demonstrators against Elon Musk are calling Tesla “Swasticars?” Or changing topics, does a daughter’s recent dismissal from her dream job at NOAA increase his dislike of Musk and Trump, who initiated all the massive federal job cuts?

Some politicians can pivot on dime if they are asked to square a circle. Doublespeak is just second-nature. Ask them their favorite color and it is plaid. Marco Rubio entered the last Oval Office meeting as an avid foe of Vladimir Putin and a supporter of Ukraine. By the end of that meeting he sat in silence as the President more or less took the opposite position. And so the image of a sullen Rubio. The fact that a committed belief can be so easily discarded is one reason Congress as a whole is held in such low esteem.

Alternate Paths

As noted, Festinger was savvy and knew that humans could walk a crooked path out of an obvious contradiction. But one final example surprised me. A recent Associated Press report followed a young new hire in the Forest Service who had barely begun her work before she was fired: a result that devastating to her. As she was modeling her new uniform some of her relatives unhelpfully noted that the reduction was probably necessary. They thought she had too many co-workers. The worker was rightfully unprepared for the personal she experienced for privileging the faux urgency of job reductions over dismissal of her own achievement. Dissonance Theory is useful, but when a predicted outcome fails to materialize, it can also point to other factors, like how cruel American life has become.

________________________

Portions of this essay are adapted from the Author's Persuasion and Influence in American Life, Eighth Edition.

 

red bar graphic

It’s 1984 Again

Problem Practices, Rhetorical Mastery, , , , , , , , , , , ,

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”  –George Orwell

It has been a pathetic spectacle to witness the ransacking of our federal government under the guise of serving the American public. Extra-legal acts of sabotage to agencies like the NIH have come with the explicit endorsement of the GOP and implicit acceptance of a somnolent public. We have to wonder what kind of country actually wants the self-inflicted wounds of wholesale firings and dismembered agencies. Few democracies have seemed so placid in the face of such self-destruction.

It tends to be the smaller declarations from the White House that capture its sloppy logic and daily rhetorical mayhem.

Consider the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf is shared by three nations. Though the  mental  fog may sometimes lift from his thinking, Donald Trump was logically out of his lane to overturn tradition and unilaterally assign a new name. Mexico and Cuba rightly have other ideas.

And for keeping the same geographical label, the Associated Press was suddenly barred from full access to the White House.

In overturning an uncontested place name Trump sought to turn a rhetorical whim into reality. Like his absurd palaver ignoring the sovereign states of Canada and Greenland, he squandered his authority to deny what others can clearly see. Such denial tries to sell a fantasy as the truth. Only small children and politicians engorged with a sense of power would try this kind of sleight-of-hand.

And so when CNN’s Kaitlan Collins put the question to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, her response was stunning in its audacity. The logic of Leavitt’s non-answer would bring no credit to even a child. She tried to sell the renaming as settled fact, and the traditional name a “lie.” “I was upfront on day one if we feel that there are lies being pushed by outlets in this room, we are going to hold those lies accountable,” she noted. And with a straight face she continued with a perfect example of doublespeak: “It is a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America, and I am not sure why news outlets don’t want to call it that, but that is what it is. The secretary of interior has made that the official designation, and geographical identification name server, and Apple has recognized that, Google has recognized that, pretty much every outlet in this room has recognized that body of water as the Gulf of America, and it’s very important to the administration that we get that right.”

                                 Karoline Leavitt

The circular logic here tries to sell this weeks old fabrication as the status quo, presumably while the rest of us will avert our eyes to avoid noticing that Mexico itself shares over 1700 miles of shoreline along the Gulf. This kind of  binary thinking is Alice in Wonderland kind of stuff, spoken—amazingly—to a packed pressroom disappointingly silent except for Ms. Collins.

Ditto for the new administration’s insistence in the same press conference that gender is a simple two-tailed concept. In attacking efforts to deal with the dynamic nature of gender identity, Leavitt wanted to hold to a view of language that admits no well-documented subtleties. Apparently the Trump administration is ready to declare “that there are only two sexes, male and female. And we have directed all federal agencies to comply with that policy.”

Again, Leavitt can say this, but even in the precincts of the White House her truth is a forgery. She needs to get out more. It is settled science that gender is fluid, allowing no one-size-fits-all dichotomy. As the University of Iowa’s Maurine Neiman has noted, scientists of human reproduction “are in wide agreement that biological sex in humans as well as the rest of life on earth is much more complicated than a simple binary.” In fact, according to the Gallup Organization, nearly one in ten Americans identify as L.G.B.T.Q. Poor Ms. Leavitt wondered off into the weeds again to presume that it was her place to deny firm scientific proof. He attempt to usurp the prerogative of Americans to shape and affirm their own identity would have been wide of the mark even in 1894.