Tag Archives: persuasion

Persuasion: The Myth of Easy Influence

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Persuasion 7th edition cover - CopyPersuasion is hard.  It isn’t just Uncle Fred who refuses to acknowledge what everybody else around the family table knows.  In most contexts it’s all of us most of the time. 

 

A recent study on addiction created a stir in the psychiatric community with its claim that 12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous had success rates only in the single digits. Lance and Zachary Dode’s The Sober Truth (2014) has its critics, but it is quite plausible that rates of voluntary behavioral change in even the best addiction treatment programs are low. In a word, persuading another person to change is distressingly difficult.  Add in the addiction factor and it is even more difficult.

The task of trying to alter the attitude or behaviors of someone fairly comfortable with them is one the most difficult challenges a communicator can face. And yet Americans have traditionally believed that spellbinders, “brainwashers” and marketing experts have some sort of access to the secret pathways of persuasion. The ability of others to somehow do end-runs around our natural defenses is reflected in our fascination with advertising and religious conversion, our interest in books about selling products as well as ourselves to others, and our love of films as diverse as The Matrix (1999) or the classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956, 1978).  American narratives love to build on the idea that there’s a secret back door for finding another person’s vulnerabilities.

We also think businesses advertise to gain market share, when it is equally likely their efforts are intended to retain existing consumers by reminding them that the brand is still around. This point is important because maintaining recognition for a brand is an obvious and much easier marketing goal.  Look at the last frame of a television ad it will almost always be a brand’s packaging or logo.  The simpler objective of reassuring the consumer is usually the point of the message.

We would also like to believe that personal transformation happens—Hollywood style—when the strong hand of unexpected experience turns someone toward a sudden change of heart.  At the beginning of Casablanca (1942) Rick may be the world’s greatest cynic. But in the short span of two acts he’s a very different man.  But after four decades assessing persuasion messages and effects, I can only count a handful of instances where I’ve actually seen a member of a target audience change their mind.

To be sure, persuasion is real. We need only track changes in American attitudes about gay marriage. Gallup, Pew and other pollsters have seen dramatic turnarounds in the number of citizens–now a majority–who accept marriages for same sex couples. But those attitudes evolved over a number of years, incrementally and often in private.

There is something more interesting about the possibility of even faster conversion. We often share a common narrative of the man or woman “on the make:” the person who will charm us into becoming active participants in our own persuasion.  Any number of shills for medical cures, shaky or legitimate investment schemes, and fake university courses has made many more wary. But believing in the American dream also means placing faith in the ability of an individual to find lucrative ways to induce consumers into parting with their money. After all, our economic system is built on consumer spending. When we are collectively reluctant to buy, state and federal budget directors become nervous.

Determining what motivates change is always a challenge. It isn’t just Uncle Fred who refuses to acknowledge what everybody else around the family Thanksgiving table knows. It’s all of us most of the time, especially if we take away the use of a hierarchical advantage as a bludgeon. The command of a superior isn’t really a form of persuasion. Power plays are just inducements toward reluctant compliance—something less democratic than true persuasion and not very interesting.

It turns out that we have perfect mental mechanisms for resistance to an unwanted idea. In persuasion research this fact of life is usually called the “theory of minimal effects.” Countless studies that compare “pre” and “post” persuasion attitudes in tested audiences–“post” coming after the researcher’s best shot at a persuasive pitch–note that very little changes. Most of the time we are immune to even strong and logical arguments, the testimony of credible sources, and the raw evidence of undeniable facts.

For example, if you don’t accept a human role in global warming, there is no shortage of mental equipment available to you to cling steadfastly to your beliefs. One common defense is to only notice evidence that confirms your view. This approach to choosing what you believe—sometimes called “confirmation bias”—is one reason our news media now tend to come in certain predictable ideological shades. In the case of doubts about climate change, Fox News is more likely your media home than MSNBC or The Weather Channel.

There are also risks to the ego in giving up a cherished belief.  Our beliefs are a big part of what makes up who we are. To shed even a part of a personal web of attitudes is to be a slightly different person. The new attitude is also likely to bump into other behaviors and attitudes that no longer make as much sense. So, if given the choice, we like our beliefs to be as comfortable as our Saturday morning clothes. Indeed, even though I teach and write frequently about “persuasion,” it would be more accurate to say that much of my time is really spent focusing on the ways we resist change.

Comments: woodward@tcnj.edu

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What We Can Learn From the Persuasion of LDS Missionaries

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Missionaries-elders-mormon
       Source: Mormon-wiki

One researcher studying Mormon missionaries estimates that in the thousands of contacts a single member makes in a given year, he or she will convert only about four to seven people. 

Every year about 30,000 men and women between the ages and 18 and 21 pass through a well-manicured collection of low buildings that adjoin the Provo campus of Brigham Young University.  The Missionary Training Center of The Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS) lies at the base of Utah’s Wasatch Mountains and runs what is perhaps one of the largest missionary training schools on the globe.  The specific goal of the center is to prepare recruits to proselytize for converts in the United States and overseas.  These intending missionaries spend up to twelve weeks honing their foreign language skills, studying The Book of Mormon and The Bible, and getting ready for the rigors of 10-hour days trying to ingratiate themselves to strangers in distant locales.  It’s all part of the church’s tradition of encouraging young members to give up two years to find new converts.

This massive effort at persuasive outreach is a huge change from the mid-nineteenth century, when small groups of followers of Joseph Smith escaped the east and Midwest in their own Diaspora.  Though they eventually settled in the geographic isolation of Utah hoping to be left alone, the LDS Church is now among the largest five denominations in the United States, and one of the fastest growing religions in the world.

All male Mormons over 18 are asked to serve on a mission, and about half do.  Women who are at least 21 can also join the ranks, but in smaller numbers. After they leave the center individuals are assigned a partner who will be their constant companion for the duration of the mission.   Young men in white button-down white shirts, pressed slacks and conservative haircuts easily stand out from their surroundings.   They may end up in Baltimore, Manila, or Sao Paulo.  But they look like they could have just walked out of the pages of your grandparent’s high school yearbook.

Missionaries call potential converts “investigators,” in recognition of the likely fact that conversion is not necessarily a sudden thing.   They are people who seem at least willing to listen, often at bus stops, or on street corners and front yards.  The logic is that the more they learn, the more willing they may be to explore the church be attending services or meetings.

The Student Manual at the Missionary Training Center sees the task of winning converts in terms of the expected biblical admonitions to go out and serve as witnesses for the faith.   In this frame of reference, missionaries often think of themselves as “sharing” or “teaching” the two primary works in the Mormon canon, with the hope that some of these scriptures will be prophetic or provide moral clarity.  The church also emphasizes the classic persuasion idea that you should somehow physically embody what you advocate, a principle that echoes back to ancient rhetorics that urged persuaders to show in their own demeanor the values that they espouse.  New missionaries are taught to be positive and always courteous, and to approach every person as a potential new friend.  This is not an effort that owes much to the irony or cynicism that flows through much of the rest of American life. Earnestness is the order of the day.  They also talk up the importance of family, and especially try to communicate with the unambiguous certainty of a committed believer.

Many new recruits are initially shy.  Most who openly write about their experiences are positive about the experience.  But a reader of these accounts sometimes gets a sense that many of the church’s volunteers don’t see themselves as natural persuaders.  Some appear to struggle to find the confidence to approach people in settings far different than the prosperous Rocky Mountain enclave that is the center of the LDS church.  What do you say to an impoverished mother of seven in a rundown section of Columbus Ohio?  One resident, Star Calley, feels the awkwardness of the moment, but invites Jonathan Hoy and Taylor Nielsen to sit on her porch and talk.  She worries about raising her kids in the neighborhood.  The missionaries listen, sympathize, and then ask her to pray with them.1 After they leave, she admits she was just trying to be nice, noting that “it must take a lot of courage to do what they do, for all the good it does.”  For their part, they hope they can come by again, perhaps building on a first encounter to offer more reassurance that her family will be better off within the local LDS community.

The Manual also offers a range of more secular advice about how to maximize success.  As a general rule, it urges missionaries to follow what is by now an axiom of political persuasion:  look for people who have recently been buffeted by reversals or unwanted change.  “People who are experiencing significant changes in their lives—such as births, deaths, or moving into new homes—are often ready to learn about the restored gospel and make new friendships.”2  It also reminds recruits to find a way to be brief and effective.  What can be offered to someone waiting for a bus, or a person who is willing to give up just a few minutes?  The promise of eternal salvation is, of course, the primary message.  But there are other inducements that open doors as well, such as helping someone do a simple household repair, or offering to help a family research its own history through the vast genealogical resources of the LDS church.

One researcher studying Mormon missionaries estimates that in the thousands of contacts a single member makes in a given year, he or she will convert only about four to seven people.3 That can amount to a “success” rate of one percent or less.  Jonathan Hoy went through the experience and remembers even fewer, but still found his limited success worth the effort.  In 2007 Hoy recalls the nearly 10,000 people he probably talked to during a 22 month stint in Ohio and Greece.  He especially remembers a young woman in Athens who converted after spending time studying various “restored” scriptures from The Book of Mormon.  “I saw it change her life,” he said.  “That’s what keeps me going.”4 

What is sometimes missed in the seemingly low rates of conversion is the crucial role that this rite of passage has on the missionaries themselves.   In the important process self persuasion sometimes the greatest effect a message has is actually on the persuader.  If these missionaries come back with limited success in turning large numbers toward the church, it is nearly certain that they have become committed activists for their faith, carrying some of that fervor into their relationships with others.

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Adapted from Gary C. Woodward and Robert E. Denton Jr., Persuasion and Influence in American Life, Seventh Edition, (Waveland, 2014).

1 Josh Jarman, “God’s Salesmen,” The Columbus Dispatch, Friday July 6, 2007, p. 3B.

2 Missionary Preparation, Student Manual (Salt Lake: Church of the Latter Day Saints, 2005), 99.

3 Gustav Niebuhr, “Youthful Optimism Powers Mormon Missionary Engine,” New York Times, May 23, 1999, http://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/23/us/youthful-optimism-powers-mormon-missionary-engine.html, August 10, 2010.

 4Jarman.