Tag Archives: persuasion and character

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Will the Indictments Refuel Chaos Voters?

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The 2024 election will be a chance to see whether the republic we have is–as Ben Franklin wondered–something that we can keep.

This site has invested in the idea that our political disfunction is increasingly fueled by a sizable portion of the public that welcomes the chance to oppose big and sometimes small American Institutions. Opposition is its own reward. In recent years more voters have been interested in challenging the motives of national and sometimes local cornerstone organizations: everything from the FBI and Presidency, all the way down to the local library. As we have seen, the impulse to intervene even extends to local school districts, with some parents seeking to upend professional curriculum planning, library acquisition standards, and even the plays their drama coach is planning to mount.  Rhetorically, these frustrated Americans engage in a Rhetoric of No, using some of the same tropes—if not the script—of sixties radicals on the left who sought to defy official power. (Think of the turmoil of the left unleashed at the 1968 Democratic Convention.)

The current urge at the other end of the political spectrum seems to be motivated by a sense of powerlessness, as well as a loss of meaningful connections to local groups or institutions. Social media feed these feelings of isolation without providing functional ways to curb them.

2000px Vertical United States Flag.svg By now, anyone still grounded in the observable world must understand that Donald Trump was and is an outlier. There can be little question even among most members of his party that he has bent the norms (and, presumably, laws) that usually govern presidential behavior. There are the obvious character issues: cheating others out of payment for their services, sexual predation, playing the victim, lying, and long bouts of narcissist rhetoric.  And then there is the stale but vivid verbal abuse of federal and state officials, members of his party, and even his own vice president.  Only fascism can use ad hominem attacks  on others as a pathway to leadership.

The federal and state indictments documenting improper intimidation of election officials are yet to be proven in court, but seem hard to deny. As most know, he is on tape asking Georgia officials to “find” more votes that would allow him to reverse his loss.  And he has shamelessly accused election officials in his own party of improperly adding or withholding votes. We now know that–against the odds–the election process in 2020 was generally well run. It makes the blanket accusation that the current indictments are “witch hunts” seem increasingly hallow.

The wildcard here is the boomerang effect: the catch-all idea  that persuasion theorists reserve to describe individuals who grow more antagonistic in the face of evidence that should convince them. It happens more than we might think. We can ask people to accept a clear truth.  But we can’t make them accept it. Perhaps people do not want to appear to change while under the thumb of another’s compelling case.

This counterintuitive effect  seems to be happening with each new indictment of the President.  The maelstrom of this news asks supporters to simply affirm deeply held views.

But. . . 

Persuasion is typically an incremental process.  Most of us need time to change our attitudes. In the meantime, there may be a fair amount of  cognitive dissonance attached to the act of continuing to support a flawed idea or candidate. In time, that dissonance may be relieved  with attitude realignments that can be face-saving.

The coming election will be a test of whether the nation can collectively handle what the indictments of Trump administration imply.  Americans still live in very different rhetorical realities. But can that diversity occur while we acknowledge what is true and known about this whole sordid period of our political life? The 2024 election is a chance to see whether the republic we have is–and Ben Franklin noted–something that we can keep.

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The Illusive “Soft Skill”

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                                         Pixabay

Persuasion is less a single skill than a range of capacities available in a specific circumstance.

A recent study conducted by the social media site LinkedIn ranked skills “in demand” by a broad sampling of employers.  They included certain “hard skills” like knowledge of computer language, as well as more people-oriented “soft skills.”  As reported by CNBC, the two most sought of the latter type were “creativity” and “persuasion.” LinkedIn recommended that job seekers would benefit from a course in persuasion or “becoming a thought leader.” They also recommended a course in consumer behavior: one of a large group of university courses focusing on marketing, advertising and public relations.

As a long-time student of persuasion, I’m grateful for the acknowledgement. And most students get it. Courses in persuasion and advocacy are rarely seen by them as a waste of time. Even so, one-word rankings of traits can easily fall prey to our common habit of asking a term to do too much.  As an idea, “persuasion” actually represents a thick onion with layers of ideas, strategies, unanticipated responses, and complicated effects.  Hence, its less a “skill” than a microcosm for many of the vagaries of human interaction.

To cite just one dimension, a lot of influence-making depends on attributes of character that audiences see in particular sources. The Greeks were the first to note that a persuader’s reputation is a huge wildcard.  The possible permutations begin to multiply rather quickly when we query the nature of character.

It’s useful to remember that figures like Aristotle and the Sophists–itinerant teachers of rhetoric (circa 335 b.c.)–considered the ability to make a compelling case for one’s own honesty was the essential pathway to power within the various city-states where they resided. Aristotle asserted that a person’s “ethos” is probably their best persuasive tool.  He noted that  “who you are sometimes speaks louder than what you say.”  In the preferred term of the times, the virtue of an advocate mattered as much as anything else.

 

It simply won’t do to reduce persuasion to a set of strategies, if the perceived virtue of an advocate matters as much as anything else.

 

In terms of this kind of classical analysis, the President may be able to ‘tweet’ with the rancor of a practiced bully.  But who can school him on becoming a better human being? We are always somewhat skeptical about the motives of politicians.  But Trump’s credibility has fallen so low that, as recent polls reveal, many voters and most women no longer believe him.

Source credibility is just one area of many areas that make up the study of persuasion. It is one thin layer of the onion. It helps to illustrate the larger point that persuasion is less a skill than a context-specific capacity  shared jointly by advocates and their audiences. If this plea for complexity sound like the familiar gambit of academics who want to enhance their subject’s importance, I suppose that’s true.  Even so, none of this precludes making a case for a given advocate.  But we must also ask to whom, on what subject, and in what circumstances?  When we begin to focus on the particulars of any single example, naming the positive qualities of a source and their persuasibility is tricky. In effect, it asks us to not just  look at the layers of one onion, but layers in a virtual bushel as well.