Healthy Influence – Persuasion Blog

How do we understand the persuasive impact of the situation upon the key figure in this photo?

The President is participating in the ceremony that honors war dead returning home.  Is this a facile photo op? (Everything a President says or does is always considered first through the lens of calculation.)  Did he instead willingly put himself into this painful situation?  (Even Presidents choose for themselves.)  Consider the attribution and dissonance explanations here.

Attribution first. When Mr. Obama asks himself, “Why did I attend this ceremony?” does he provide an external or an internal attribution?

Does he feel the press of externalities (everyone expects this; if I underplay it, it will play bigger; it’s duty, just part of the job description; my family expects me to do this)?  If yes, then he’s making an external attribution or assigning the causality for his action to outside forces (the “situation”).

Does he feel the press of internalities (I want to honor these citizens; I love my country; I owe everyone the symbolic meaning of my attendance)?  If yes, then he’s making an internal attribution or assigning the causality for his action to inside forces (the “person”).

Certainly there is a mix, but for something this intense, personal, and painful, one category of attribution probably dominates.  And he may have entered the situation with one attribution, but left it with another.  But, this situation must have had psychological meaning and impact for Mr. Obama and he must have made his attributional decision.

Then, let’s mix in the painful emotional consequences of this situation.  One tends to think that most people and probably the President would find this situation emotionally intense, conflicted, and difficult.  Moving around, through, and with several flag draped coffins in the presence of other uniformed, solemn, and serious men and women in the dead of night on a large, open, and windy airfield is not a joyful occasion.

Under the psychological terminology of dissonance, this is an “aversive consequence.”  It hurts.  It hurts worse than a blow or a wound.  It strikes at your fundamental beliefs – the meaning of life, the meaning of death, questions about afterlife.

Now, how do we understand this?

If Mr. Obama walked away from this event with strong external attributions, it’s likely that the event activated and strengthened his existing beliefs and values.  The ceremony triggered deep elaboration over basic beliefs, reinforcing those beliefs and connecting them to the symbols and meaning of the moment.

If Mr. Obama, however, walked away with strong internal attributions, he put himself on the dissonance path, taking personal responsibility for a painful consequence.  If so, then his beliefs will change in the direction of the meaning of the event.  He walked with warriors and marched in their ceremony.  The meaning of the moment moves Mr. Obama’s deepest beliefs in that direction.

I cannot know the President’s mind.  I can only observe action and situation and think with the concepts of persuasion.  How Mr. Obama responds to this moment only he knows and since he’s human like the rest of us, even then, he probably understands some, but not all of his reaction.  It could visibly play out in his decisions and actions in the Long War.

Persuasion is the psychology of everyday life.  We persuade others, others persuade us, and sometimes we persuade ourselves.

Persuasion certainly provides an interesting way to think about ourselves and others.