Healthy Influence – Persuasion Blog

Typically the biggest barrier to change is not in the receiver, but in the source.  Sources try to persuade with tactics that persuade them.  “Hey, if it works on me, it will work on you!”  This crashes into two Rules:  It’s about the Other Guy, Stupid and All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere.  Consider two illustrations of persuasion sources run amok.

Both share an abiding common sense theory of persuasion:  Information will change ‘em!  Just tell ‘em.  Give it to ‘em straight.  Once they know the Truth or the Science or the Facts, persuasion gravity will take over and they will fall into the change.  Except information alone rarely persuades.  If the information is completely novel, unknown, or strange to the receiver, information can persuade.  But in most avenues of human life, people already have a fair amount of knowledge about most things even if their knowledge is spotty, incomplete, or erratic.  Thus, your news rarely is news to most people most of the time.  Peruse these two information failures.

The first comes through the Small Wars Journal with notice of a post by LCol J.J. Malevich.  Malevich gleefully shares a rancid example of PowerPoint Persuasion with a copy of a briefing aimed at using COIN (right, counterinsurgency) in Afghanistan.  You have to download the brief to appreciate how painfully bad it is.  Each slide manages to become more complex, dense, and swirling than the one before it until the last slide looks like a parody of bad persuasion.  I have no doubt about the sincerity and smarts of the folks who made the presentation.  But, like I observed in the opening, usually the reason you don’t persuade the receiver is not because of the receiver, but because of you.

The second example comes from the research team led by Kelly Brownell at Yale University.  Brownell is a member in good standing with the Food Police and who thinks that his facts should persuade Congress to regulate and tax the food industry to its knees, then require warning labels on anything related to food to scare off, oops, educate people about the perils of eating processed foods.  Brownell’s latest effort is available at his website and tests the impact of caloric information on menus on food ordering and eating behavior.

The research team conducted a really good lab experiment that actually had randomization, control, comparison, and counting.  The team recruited adults to order fast food then eat it in the lab so that they could accurately count what people ordered and ate.  The Special Sauce in the experiment was Information in the form of caloric labeling on the menu.  One third of people got a plain menu with just the items, one third got a menu with items plus calorie counts for each dish, and one third got a menu with the items, plus calorie counts, plus the USDA 2,000 calories a day recommendation.

You’d predict a simple linear effect here if you are a smart Food Police scientist:  More calorie information, less ordering and eating.  But, if you’re a smart persuasion guy who doesn’t have a dog in the food fight, you’d predict a lot of nothing with a bit of little on the side.

You have to know about playing the guitar called statistical analysis to hear the tortured music Brownell’s team found in their data, but if you put it on PowerPoint it would look something like the COIN Afghan slides.  The simplest way to see their failure is to look at the effect sizes.  Expressed as windowpane effects the outcome for number of calories ordered is a 46.5% versus 53.5% difference, not even what we conventionally call a “small” effect of 45/55.  The effect on calories eaten, not ordered, but actually eaten, is even worse:  47.5% versus 52.5%.  Worser still, this piddling effect is not even statistically significant.  Thus, the Brownell crew finds that calorie labels have a less than small effect on ordering and no real effect on eating – just a side of a little with a lot of nothing as the main dish.  (Who reviewed this study at the American Journal of Public Health – those East Anglia weather guys?)

So, it’s still the same old story, you tripping all over yourself with piles and reams of data, information, facts, statistics, PowerPoint slides with boxes, arrows, and lateral arabesques, believing in Santa Claus, Bill Gates, and One More Post Hoc t-Test!  Chances are good that if you are smart, experienced, trained, one of those Cool Table guys, no matter how large or small the Table, you will kill yourself with your own facts.

As time goes by, It’s about the Other Guy, Stupid.