Healthy Influence – Persuasion Blog

My Headline Persuasion Rule should drive any serious persuasion effort and it separates the mavens from the muggles instantly. Muggles extemporize, displaying either or both arrogance or authenticity. Mavens think a long while first. And they think about the Strategy, the Big Goal, because they know if you don’t get the Big Goal right, nothing else matters. Today I’ve got a serious, real world example of that strategic planning for persuasion.

Consider the strategy inherent to these questions.

1. Does Israel have the ability to cause severe damage to Iran’s nuclear sites and bring about a major delay in the Iranian nuclear project? And can the military and the Israeli people withstand the inevitable counterattack?

2. Does Israel have overt or tacit support, particularly from America, for carrying out an attack?

3. Have all other possibilities for the containment of Iran’s nuclear threat been exhausted, bringing Israel to the point of last resort? If so, is this the last opportunity for an attack?

This, according to a published article based on face to face interviews with key Israeli leaders is how they are thinking about responding when and if they believe Iran will possess nuclear weapons. The long article develops their strategic planning over the past ten years and the following tactics. In many ways, the article is a blueprint for thinking and acting, strategically and tactically. I highly recommend that anyone who pretends to persuasion maven status read it.

I observe and approve of the clear-eyed or hard-headed focus on concrete outcomes. The strategy produces observable, countable, physical changes. There’s no flowery self-persuasion as if you need to justify the strategy to yourself. It directly aims at doing explicit activities at an explicit group of Other Guys. A persuasion plan falls naturally out of the strategy behind these three key points.

The three key points also provide a great hierarchy of concerns. The first concerns sheer ability and enhancing that. The second concerns allies and public opinion. The third seeks alternatives to the first point. You know how to prioritize with this hierarchy and you also understand you need to address all three simultaneously.

The article then develops how this strategy has played out and is playing out in tactics, some of which I consider as persuasion plays rather than power plays. Even events that involve killing people function more persuasively than just the removal of a key Other Guy. Such violent acts frighten some Other Guys who remove participation or support for the Iranian project – that’s delay and damage. These acts also encourage internal dissenters and opposition. Finally, these acts force potential allies to think about the Iranian project.

It’s also interesting to note how talkative these Israeli leaders are right now. Normally you associate silence with Israel on issues like this. They do or don’t do what they do and always refuse public comment on everything. The fact of their public talk demonstrates a more clear communication application of persuasion than the persuasive effects of killing lead scientists. Consider this quote from Ehud Barak, the defense minister of Israel.

At various points in our conversation, Barak underscored that if Israel or the rest of the world waits too long, the moment will arrive — sometime in the coming year, he says — beyond which it will no longer be possible to act. “It will not be possible to use any surgical means to bring about a significant delay,” he said. “Not for us, not for Europe and not for the United States. After that, the question will remain very important, but it will become purely theoretical and pass out of our hands — the statesmen and decision-makers — and into yours — the journalists and historians.”

Here the Israelis are using fairly traditional persuasion – interviews with journalists – as a persuasive tactic in the service of the three key points. This interview and in particular this quote speaks directly to the second key point regarding allies. We see an Argument from Barak regarding the Iranian nuclear project and what should be done and that Argument is aimed squarely at allies, especially the US.

Regardless of your opinion on this issue, please see the persuasion planning and execution in it. Focus on the three key points that express the strategy and their implications for persuasion. Learn how to devise strategy that is this clear, behavioral, measurable, and operational.

Time magazine creates persuasion mayhem with salt.  First, they offer a good summary of a Cochrane review (look it up) on the outcomes of salt consumption.

Although lowering dietary salt resulted in a small dip in blood pressure, the researchers found no strong evidence that it reduced rates of death in people with high or normal blood pressure. One study suggested that restricting salt in patients with congestive heart failure could even potentially increase risk of death.

Okay, so a well done review and meta-analysis concludes reducing population consumption of salt has no impact on mortality.  Take your Falling Apples with a sprinkle of sea salt!

But.  In the same article, the Time writer notes:

Still, there is plenty of data — and consensus among experts — that excess dietary salt does affect blood pressure and cardiovascular health.

So.  The best scientific evidence we’ve got from the Cochran review claims no effect, yet there’s plenty of consensus among experts to claim there is an effect.

What journalism might call Point Versus CounterPoint is only what a persuasion theorist would call Biased Versus Objective Processing.  You can certainly find experts who will point to cases that prove salt kills and then try to generalize that reductions in salt consumption at the population level would save lives.  Anyone, without or without those little letters following their name, who reasons like this is not a scientist, but rather merely mortal and in the throes of common sense, human nature, and most particularly, Biased Processing.

What’s the difference between Falling Apples and Change We Cannot Believe In?

Persuasion.

Oh.  And, don’t forget the Bubble!

Every field that aspires to science uses numbers to prosecute its business. If You Can’t Count It, You Can Publish It! So, numbers, particularly in the form of statistical analysis are a crucial part of science. Yet, as I’ve demonstrated numerous times in the Persuasion Blog, some science is mere sophistical statistics, those persuasive presentations of p < .0something, the rhetoric of research. The worse the science the better the persuasion, right?

Of course, this is just one fool’s opinion and he’s cherry picking examples to fit his argument. Show me something other than your sarcasm, Steve.

Okay. How about this demonstration of sophistical statistics.

We related the reluctance to share research data for reanalysis to 1148 statistically significant results reported in 49 papers published in two major psychology journals. We found the reluctance to share data to be associated with weaker evidence (against the null hypothesis of no effect) and a higher prevalence of apparent errors in the reporting of statistical results. The unwillingness to share data was particularly clear when reporting errors had a bearing on statistical significance.

This summary gives it up nicely. Three researchers reanalyzed the published statistics in 49 papers in either the 2005 issues of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, two well respected psychology journals. These particular papers were chosen because another research team had contacted the authors of the studies in a previous project, merely asking for a copy of the datasets used in the publications. Some of the 49 authors provided the data, some didn’t. After waiting five years (5 years!!!), the current team pulled the studies and checked the results sections for errors and inconsistencies.

As the researchers noted in the Abstract they found that authors who would not disclose data had more errors of statistical analysis and that the tests of statistical significance were much more likely to be extremely close to the p < .05 level. Here’s a pie chart that displays errors by data shared or not.

Even among researchers who shared the data, there were errors in their analyses, but just eyeballing the differences between the two groups, you can see that folks who refused to share data (after five years!) made more of all kinds of errors. And, the differences are Medium to Large Windowpanes, 35/65 to 25/75 differences, so they are obvious, practical, relevant. What’s more, authors who did not share had data with marginal results; they were more likely to report p values at or near the traditional .05 alpha while authors who shared data found results with much smaller alphas (> .001). Here’s a bar chart to illustrate.

You can see that the gray bars represent authors who did not share and that they had more errors at or near .05 and .01, traditional, almost ritualistic, markers of effect. You can understand why they were reluctant to share.  If you found results, but didn’t share your data, chances were good the results were small effects that you had to finagle to achieve even statistical significance. No wonder these authors found good reasons to withhold their data even after five years of waiting.

Oh, and if you’re not familiar with the publication ethics of publishing in these journals, you need to know that all authors have to sign a contract when they publish stating that they will share data when it is requested. This is not a matter of personal preference or taste; it is a professional standard of behavior with your signature of agreement and consent on it.

Authors who don’t share data are not doing good science. Their inaction violates both the letter and spirit of a contractual agreement they made when publishing. They obviously withhold data because they know they engaged in sophistical statistics and if anyone else ran the data, they’d expose the rhetorical research.

So, through a thoughtful research project on statistical analysis in peer review journals we actually learn a lesson about human nature and persuasion.

All Bad Science Is Persuasive!

Wicherts JM, Bakker M, Molenaar D (2011) Willingness to Share Research Data Is Related to the Strength of the Evidence and the Quality of Reporting of Statistical Results. PLoS ONE 6(11): e26828.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0026828

Peggy Noonan observes about the Republican Presidential race to date.

The worst trend in politics that fully emerged during phase one? People running for president not to be president but as a branding exercise, to sell books and get a cable contract and be a public figure and have people who heretofore hadn’t noticed you now stopping you in the airport to get a picture and an autograph. In an endeavor like this you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. You’re not held back by any sense of realism as to your positions, you don’t have to worry about them being used against you down the road because there won’t be a down the road. You can say anything. And because you do you seem refreshing. People start to like you—you’re not like all the others, who are so careful. You rise, run your mouth for a month and fall.

While it’s terrible leadership, it’s fabulous persuasion. Jeepers, getting national exposure through multiple media channels over several months! Books! t-shirts! Fridge magnets. Speaking gigs. Celebrity appointments to boards, committees, public events! Persuasion is democracy’s greatest tool . . . and test.

Who’d think running for President would be a persuasion play?

A maven!

P.S.  When I was in the Fed explaining a potential persuasion play over a conference table, the folks in the room looked aghast at me for my suggestion and I told them, there are no values in persuasion, only change. They laughed. Noonan displays similar sincerity here and while I would not dispute her as a citizen, as the blog persuasion expert I must observe: Tah, to you!

Persuasion knows the Other Guy is free to choose.

Neil Young wrote it and sang it with Buffalo Springfield  (YouTube).  The opening lyric exactly expresses the act of persuasion.

Oh hello, Mr. Soul, I dropped by to pick up a reason.
For the thought that I’d caught in my head is the event of the season.
Why in crowds just a trace of my face should seem so pleasin’.
I’ll cop to the change but a stranger is putting the tease on.

“A stranger is putting the tease on” nicely sings the Rule:

All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere.

P.S.  Hey, kids.  Neil Young, the artist, is a stranger putting the tease on.  Consider that.

P.P.S. Guitar players know why the song riff sounds like a couple of Rolling Stones songs (Satisfaction, Let’s Spend the Night Together), plus other near hits. It’s in E with a movement from B to C# to D, a classic blues boogie line. You can show newbies that trick and within a couple of minutes they sound like a blues man. It’s hard to get good on guitar (just listen to me play!), but it’s easy to get okay which explains why you see so many guitars in people’s houses.