Let the word go forth, even if I don’t make any money on it, as long as the word is good!

Chip Heath and Dan Heath write best selling books about what they call Ideas That Stick or Switch while I write non best selling books about the Elaboration Likelihood Model and the Theory of Reasoned Action.  I wonder why they do better?

Seriously, folks, Heath and Heath do a nice job of taking a research project I worked on with many others and blending our findings into their own ideas.  And, here’s the Big and Important News:  They get it right.  So, let me congratulate them for reading a fairly technical report and getting the Main Point.

The specific project they reference is from the “1% or Less!” nutrition campaign I helped with.  While the Heaths only mention one paper our team wrote, there were actually several people involved in the work in a multi-year, multi-city, and multi-experiment project.  Bill Reger-Nash, a colleague at WVU, brought me in as a persuasion and statistics guy.  Bill was also collaborating with Margo Wootan of the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington DC.  Also working hard on the project were Holli Smith, a public health educator now in private practice, and Linda Cooper, a recently retired program administrator at WVU.  We spent several years on this project and it’s rather complicated compared to most public health behavior change campaigns.

The Main Point of the paper that Heath and Heath discuss in Switch is:  the Cascade Works!  Through several field experiments we manipulated the amount of Reception people got through various combinations of paid advertising, free media coverage from PR events, and classic public health education outreach.  We also used the Theory of Reasoned Action to guide our messages to generated the correct Response (change behavior beliefs rather than normative beliefs).  And, finally, we provided many opportunities for people to engage in High WATT processing of our arguments.

Using the Cascade we were able to generate some of the largest behavior change ever reported in the peer review literature and get mentioned in a New York Times best selling book.  Hubba-hubba!  And, if you want to die on the details, I’d be happy to talk with you about them.

Senator Mitch McConnell understands the Rules while, apparently, the NYT does not.

He counts.  They don’t.

It’s about the Other Guy.

Who’d think this guy is dangerous?

Aristotle started this mess when he observed the three ancient routes of persuasion, logos, ethos, and pathos (names I often confabulate as the little brothers of the original three musketeers – Athos, Porthos, and Aramis).  Logos, meaning “the word,” translates into modern persuasion lingo as Central Route processing.  Aristotle provided many examples of effective logos (my favorite is the enthymeme – look it up – the fundamental persuasion tactic), but glossed over the most important element:  How do you create effective logos before you encounter the listener?

Aristotle provided a list longer than a mountain man coming to town before winter, so it looks like a lot of practical advice.  However, when you actually read the list you realize you’re still stuck with the fundamental problem – which one do you select and why?  He’s smart enough to tell us that logos, Arguments, the Central Route, is real important to persuasion and then goes on to characterize it in that familiar Aristotelian way, but behind that massive accomplishment, where’s the beef?  Like a lot of experts, Aristotle knew how to sound smarter than he was.  He thus took his shot at being the Queen of Tomorrow who knows the Laws of Persuasion, but missed, just a bit outside.

Hit the fast forward button two and a half millennia.  Stop.  Read.  If you know persuasion theories you realize that all of them are suspiciously quiet about cooking arguments before the guests arrive for dinner.  Dissonance . . . nope . . . that’s motivation and processes that operate on knowledge structures.  Attribution . . . nope . . . that’s cognition and processes that operate on knowledge structures.  Social judgment . . . hey, there’s nothing in my Primer Pages about that . . . so you’re not responsible, but it too is quiet.  Hey, what about those beautiful dual process models, the ELM or the HSM?  They specifically talk about those “crucial bits of information” and that’s Arguments.  Sorry, the best contemporary persuasion theories talk about cognitive processes that operate on knowledge structures called Arguments, but they don’t explain how to make Arguments in advance.

Looks hopeless, doesn’t it?  There is nothing remotely approaching scientific evidence that tells you how to make a strong Argument before you actually use It on someone new. This fact suggests three things to me.

First, once again recall the first Rule:  There Are No Laws of Persuasion and If There Were Why Would Anyone Tell You.  You just have to know your limitations along with Dirty Harry and get along with the great uncertainty of Life.

Second, we’re back to the Garden of Eden and studying the Serpent.  As near as I can tell the only character in text who knew the Arguments before the delivery, was Satan with Eve.  Satan is an angel and thus just a little bit more than Woman or Man and it would appear that little bit is knowing the Arguments before the argument.  But, since you and I are not angels and never will be, alas we are again stuck in the middle with Dirty Harry and our limitations.

That leaves us with P.T. Barnum and modern Madison Avenue.  Pretest your Arguments on the gang of usual suspects before you turn them loose in the world.  That’s the best we’ve got today.  Sure, you can use persuasion theory, the seat of your, mine, or Melanie’s pants, or somebody’s gut feeling to get started, but before you bet the ranch, start the fire, or light the fuse, the best advice is:  Pretest.

And, again, let me warn you.  Don’t trust anyone who has an Argument Machine.  That means she’s the Queen of Tomorrow who knows the Laws.  And you know about Her.

For the past several years I’ve been a regular reader of blogs like Small Wars Journal, Long War, and MountainRunner, plus the Usual Gang of Media Suspects, then following their links to where it leads.  From this reading, I’ll now commit to a generalization that is untrue in many specific instances, but generally true which is why I generalize.  Many of the posts I read tend take a negative critical stance against US communication efforts while taking a positive critical stance on Bad Guy communication efforts.  We’re culturally insensitive, blundering, confused, and expensive; They are savvy, resourceful, nuanced, and effective.

I disagree.  And not just by degree, shade, or tone.  Osama’s crew is simply awful at strategic communication or brand marketing or psyops or IO or, for me, persuasion.  Don’t misunderstand me.  I fear them.  I recognize the destruction they create.  I want them stopped.  But, I don’t want to lose sight of their success and their failure.

For me the failure is most glaring: They want a global Islamic state.  You can state this TACT with your preferred Who does What When and Where, but it’s got to include Global Osama and it’s obvious that they are farther away from this TACT today than they were 10 years ago.  Think about it more broadly than Osama’s latest YouTube jihad rock video shot on a Flip Mino.  Think about the whole thing.

We’re nearly 10 years into bin Laden’s self declared war against the US and other assorted infidels.  While some of that war involved direct aggression and killing as in the September 11 attacks, similar ones in Madrid, London, Bali or small unit fights in Afghanistan and Iraq, a large part of his war has been based in a communication campaign.  He uses words and images to change the way other people think, feel, and behave.  Sometimes his messages are aimed at reassuring the faithful or attracting the interested; sometimes they are aimed at his Crusader enemies, warning them of coming attacks, explaining his rationale for declaring war, and just plain taunting.

Consider, too, his communication machine.  By all accounts the man has a large amount of money (probably in the tens to hundreds of millions of dollars), sufficient access to communication technology (recording devices, Internet, ready connections with journalists), and many people to assist (delivering messages, gathering information on infidel efforts).  Perhaps, most importantly, he can design events to suit his purposes and he is not limited by normal civilized constraints (he can choose when to cut off an infidel head then choose when to release the tape of the beheading).  He’s a man of the people with long and wide experience in recruiting warriors and supporters and he’s connected to other men and organizations with similar goals and experiences.  While he can create great harm and damage with a well planned and executed attack, a much greater concern is his potential to attract millions of active supporters (the “Arab street”).  We’ve seen the devastation he managed with attacks on the USS Cole, African embassies, the 9/11 attacks, and others.

Now, put these resources into the hands of gifted persuaders and you can expect clear, obvious, and countable changes.  Guys like Lenin, Hitler, and Mussolini were able to accomplish more with less in a shorter period of time than Osama.

The best observable evidence we’ve got is that bin Laden is doing surprisingly poorly at roiling the Arab street.  This is not to saw that he’s not getting recruits.  Every honest source that tracks this reports a pipeline is still running.  But, the larger point is how small that pipeline is.

Certainly, the military and police operations conducted by the US and it allied infidels plays a major role here, but if millions of Arabs wanted to take up arms against a desert of unbelievers, the rush would make the US immigration problem look like a failed block party by comparison.

Consider it as a diffusion of innovation problem or to cast it in contemporary terms, the tipping point.  For more than 10 years bin Laden has been trying to create a mass movement that will actually produce the restored Islamist umma he desires.  Thousands of warriors cannot accomplish this goal.  He must generate an organized and extremely large population of millions of believers.

If you read the older diffusion literature (how a new idea goes from small to large acceptance) or the current tipping point popularization, in every observed case of a New Thing, there is a process of moving it through a population.  At first only a small group of innovators know about it, then a slightly larger group of early adopters accept it, then onto early majority, next the late majority, and finally the laggards.  The size of these five groups varies with each New Thing and its particular circumstances (adoption of the iPod in the 2000s versus adoption of the Nazi Party in 1930s Germany), but a key point is that there is almost always an inflection point on the adoption curve where suddenly the rate of adoption dramatically increases (the tipping point in pop parlance) and the New Thing takes off with an irresistible momentum.

Only the most paranoid advocate for the Long War thinks that the larger Arab world is marching as a result of Osama’s communication campaign.  A clear eyed review of the evidence indicates that the Bad Guys are failing badly at hitting a tipping point and have been failing since September 12, 2001.  Don’t misunderstand.  Even a few thousand fanatic militants are incredibly dangerous, but they haven’t hit the Big One, the Main Point, the Primary TACT Osama seeks:  the Totalitarian Islamic State.

Why?

I’d argue that the Osama persuasion machine is not very good.  It reeks with sincerity, authenticity, and deeply felt beliefs meaning that its messages tell you everything about them, but doesn’t really address you.  Thus, the persuasion machine is not a persuasion machine – seeking change in others – but rather an attraction machine – seeking to magnetize similar believers.  From a Standard Model perspective, Osama seems to think that if he just gets his message out (Reception and Exposure) the world will turn in his direction.  This is a classic hallmark of the zealot’s persuasion attempt.  They do all those noisy and colorful things to get you looking, but then they don’t have much of a message for you to think about.

Think about this failure another way.  What TACTs does Osama target?  Who does What When and Where?  His ultimate TACT has to have just plain folks marching in the streets demanding a new Islamicist state Osama-style.  Sure, he want Believers to give their money or their bodies to the Cause.  That’s good for the immediate struggle.  What about Believers marching in the streets of Cairo or Istanbul or, better still, Chicago or Bonn or Shanghai?

It’s clearly not happening despite all the money and Osama’s alleged information superiority.  The fact is, Osama is just bad at persuasion.  Consider the Rule:  Power Corrupts Persuasion.  Osama uses a gun to get where he’s going and if he cannot persuade you then he will kill you.  He gave up on persuasion a long time ago.

Consider those who say more than they know:  FauxItAlls.

FauxItAlls presume for themselves a credential of knowledge, insight, or perspective that passes Low WATT or Biased High WATT inspection, but not Objective High WATT.  Many are bright, have good undergraduate educations, and probably had a respected professor tell them they’d excel as scholars or scientists, poets or politicians.  That puts you in the Club, right?

FauxItAlls beguile with expressiveness that passes for knowledge, talking the talk, but not walking the walk.  FauxItAlls may also be deceptive, rhetorical frauds covering ignorance with illusion, but generally they are justified.  They believe themselves.  And, they are also able to convince others, mainly other FauxItAlls, who don’t want to die in a lab or library or garret or election.  It’s just so much more rewarding to write for the New Yorker or appear on Charlie Rose or simply bedazzle the boys and the girls around the bar.  Consider this exemplar.

Steven Pinker provides a takedown of Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book and, along the way, Gladwell’s approach.  I cringed while also agreeing with every vowel and consonant Pinker wrote.  And, of course, Gladwell is only a poster boy for those who say more than they know.

FauxItAlls pretending to elevation in scientific fields like Malcolm Gladwell are not reliable for one great reason:  They do not write for peer review.  If you are a scholar, a researcher, a scientist, one who lives on, by, and with the Edge of Truth, you must survive peer review.  FauxItAlls never write for peer review, but only for editorial review, market review, or legal review, certainly external standards of judgment, but standards aimed at style sheet, popularity, or lawsuits, not the anonymous approval of proven peers.

Peer review is a brutal process wherein you submit your writing to a proven, competent, and trustworthy peer chosen from a large, cantankerous association who then passes it on to several other proven peers for their anonymous opinion.  If the editor (the first peer) and the reviewers (the other peers) accept your writing, it goes into print as both a statement of possible truth and a statement for further consideration.  Other peers may then cite your writing as authority, take it as a launching point for further development, or laugh you out of the field.  Peer review does not guarantee the Truth.  But it is the closest thing to a guarantee we’ve discovered to date.

Pinker crushes Gladwell on one word, “igon.”  Gladwell uses the word in the authoritative manner of a FauxItAll in describing a mathematical concept and procedure of importance in one of his articles.  Gladwell clearly implies in his writing that he understands the igon, grasps why it is important to the people in his article, and that he could have done this himself if he wanted.  He implies, too, that he learned this from reading about it which is impossible if you know what an “igon” is.

See, it is “eigen,” which is pronounced in conversation as “i-gon.” If you only hear it (as Gladwell probably did when he interviewed people for his article) and don’t read it (which Gladwell may have, but did not realize that “igon” is “eigen”) then you can confidently write about igons.  If you are a top drawer FauxItAll, you can drop it meaningfully in conversation with other FauxItAlls, and no one will be the wiser all the while approving of your wisdom.  Thus “eigen” becomes “igon.”

Except for anyone who has survived peer review in a field that uses eigenvalues as part of its vocabulary.  Pinker knows about eigenvalues because he’s trained as a quantitative, experimental psychologist.  Eigenvalues are useful statistics for understanding factor analysis, interpreting brain scan data, and just plain fun for those who like to invert matrices in their heads rather than solve crossword puzzles in ink.  Otherwise, Igon’s may be interpreted as the name of Igor’s twin brother.

In this instance, the word “eigen” functions like Hitchcock’s McGuffin or the one mistake a killer makes on CSI.  You don’t need to know anything about eigenvalues yourself.  You just need to understand that this McGuffin reveals the point of the story, that it accuses and convicts the guilty party.  A FauxItAll hears an unfamiliar word, but rather than admit ignorance and ask for help, the FauxItAll turns a vast, but undereducated,  intellect upon it, determines its true meaning, and pronounces it loudly to the world.

Of course, this coinage reveals my envy and indirectly the envy of other suffering souls dying over data or metaphors or votes.  FauxEnvy, perhaps.  FauxGreen . . . but isn’t that Tom Friedman?

But, note:  no post in this blog has survived peer review.  I know the experience, but I provide here what I think I know without the benefit of the scalding you get from peer review. I just hope that Dr. Pinker approves!

P.S.   While planning this post, I asked Melanie to help me think of a word to describe those who say more than the know.  She thought about it and reeled off a couple of failures, then burst out, “FauxItAlls.”