Early warnings about messages others will soon hear often increase resistance to those messages. In short, forewarning sabotages persuasion.
We’ve all done it. We find out that someone is about to make a pitch of dubious value to a friend or family member. And so we warn them. We tell them what they will probably hear in the next hours or days, and we urge them to be wary of accepting those claims.
This process of issuing what amounts to a pre-message warning about a subsequent message is called inoculation. It’s linguistic origin is in the medical idea that the body’s defenses can be tricked into responding as if it is infected. Those antibodies created when a benign form of a disease is introduced can have the effect of immunizing us against the real thing. Similar immunizing of a potential victim against harmful persuasion can have the same effect.
To see this at work in a structured setting recall courtroom dramas that have included scenes where the prosecution and defense take turns making opening statements. Following real life, those statements typically warn the jury about the questionable claims the other side will offer. “You will hear the Defense claim that the defendant was not at the scene of the robbery,” the Prosecution begins. “But don’t believe them. Listen carefully. They have no real evidence that the defendant was elsewhere.” And so it goes. It’s not that different from my actions as a grade-schooler when I broke a window in my house. The glass was in the way of an errant throw of a baseball to one of my friends. Thanks to his slippery hands and inability to jump ten feet I needed to be first at the car door when my parents came home. I was anxious to tell my side of the story before they heard a version that would put all the blame on me. Even children are natural persuasion strategists.
Most of the available research suggests inoculation is effective. Early warnings about future messages that will come from others substantially weaken those messages. So it generally makes sense to plan ahead when you know you will be in a struggle to win over the views of others.
Although this may sound like a strategy predicated on negative messages–to not accept what will be coming someone’s way–inoculation can actually be quite positive. It’s mostly how we discourage kids from taking up the cigarette habit. The Truth Campaign’s warnings about how tobacco products are “nicotine delivery systems” made to taste like candy reliably trigger a potential smoker’s natural desire to not be someone else’s pawn. It’s one of the winning strategies in a “drug war” that can claim few persuasion successes.
This summer as candidates prepare to enter the presidential sweepstakes, expect to hear some inoculation messages. Any candidate with unwanted personal baggage (legal, health, or family problems are the most common) will announce them in advance of the fall debate season. All candidates want to inoculate the American public against a steady drip of leaks or embarrassing revelations. By mentioning their problem early, the hope is that it becomes old news by the time citizens are ready to pay attention in the Fall.
Individuals who flatter themselves by being about “action” must ultimately face the undeniable fact that survival in American life depends on the water of communication. What we say matters. A lot.
In parched California, getting caught watering the sidewalk rather than a patch of grass is likely to annoy neighbors. And a clueless homeowner’s response that what is involved is “merely” water won’t help. Everyone understands what’s at stake. Water makes life possible.
My incredulity matches those neighbors when I hear someone dismiss another’s comments by noting that those expressions are “mere rhetoric.” In my field this is the professional equivalent of a thumb in the eye. I’ll give the phrase it’s due; it hangs around our public discussion like mosquitoes in a Michigan summer. But it’s a misguided thought.
We use the “mere” put-down to devalue someone’s words, usually on the mistaken assumption that we have other means for understanding each other. In the usual form, the preferred reality is to preference “deeds” over words. And that is sometimes the case. For example, we generally expect that people will act on their stated intentions: that their behavior matters. But even in such cases we are also interested in making conclusions about character based on spoken promises. Individuals who flatter themselves by being about “action” must ultimately face the undeniable fact that survival in American life depends on the water of communication. What we say matters. A lot.
The “mere rhetoric” mistake is often spoken by reporters and politicians, the very folks who most need to acknowledge the debt they owe to the fluency of others. Their fuzzy thinking sometimes comes with a statement such as this: “For the moment let’s set aside all the rhetoric about this subject and get to the point about what’s at stake.” This supposed set-aside is then followed by. . . well. . . more language. Staring at each other in complete silence isn’t much of an option. Not understanding our debt to words shows the same kind of lack of self awareness that allows someone to worry about the government “taking over” Medicare.
Over the centuries thinkers have wondered if there isn’t a better cure to misunderstanding than via verbal pathways. Most have usually ended up with a synthetic symbol system that mimics mathematics. No one ever misunderstands what “2” means. And we don’t think others are hurling abuse in our direction if they talk about a “dozen.” Mathematical language has the virtue and liability of being completely stipulative.
Football on television is functionally as much about the announcing as the action on the field. Try watching an entire game without the sound.
But our expressive needs require more. We revel in rhetoric that is loaded, judgmental, evocative and sometimes rude. We seek out people who use beautiful constructions that engross and engage. And this isn’t just in the realms of the novel or poetry. Football on television is functionally as much about the announcing as the action on the field. Try watching an entire game without the sound. Similarly, a judgment in the form of a letter grade often matters more to a student than their actual work. And parents rejoice when their young children begin to pass through the threshold of literacy.
To be sure, we are theoretically capable of stepping back from the rhetorical world. But the requirements are harsh and, for most of us, not very welcoming. Lock yourself away in a silent place. Don’t talk. Don’t listen to others. And try to control the verbal chatter of a rhetorical mind that can probably run circles around even your most loquacious relative. It’s not fun to be denied the gifts of utterance.
The scholar Kenneth Burke reminded us that “Language is equipment for living.” We are toilers and pleasure seekers in the information age, often allowing our bodies to wither while our heads surf through endless waves of verbiage. Even social scientists who pride themselves on being rigorous empiricists usually end up studying verbal behavior most of the time. As for the neuroscientists who often use brain scans to seek the origins of our actions? Well, that’s mere neuroscience. The human mind is more than the organ of the brain. It’s the source and signature of our verbally constructed selves.
