We're here to talk today about persuasion, the role of persuasion and
rhetoric in that effort.
And the motivation is that we talk about persuasion all the time in other domains.
We talk about it in marketing or politics inside a firm.
But we don't usually think that something like
science would involve persuasion and rhetoric.
My sense of having been around you guys in this project for
most of that time is that persuasion's been an important part of it.
And so I thought it'd be good and
instructive for us to talk a little bit about it.
And hear kind of from the inside how you thought about that.
And what your experience with persuasion and rhetoric has been in this domain.
>> This was a paper that we really needed people to read and pay attention to.
Otherwise, there's no point at all in doing it.
We were trying change how the field as a whole did research.
>> Okay. >> And so for the first time in my life
I was involved in sort of a big persuasion attempt.
And so we really did think hard about how on Earth to get people to read this paper.
Most people don't read papers that are published.
>> Even academics?
>> Even academics, for sure, most papers do not get read.
>> Right.
>> So we're going to talk in a lot of detail about this research.
It might be useful to explain in a very short fashion what the enterprise was.
So what exactly were you trying to persuade people to do?
>> [CROSSTALK] >> I know that's a ridiculous question,
but it's concise.
>> So basically change how people conduct and report the research.
So the idea is people have, when you conduct the study,
you collect many measures.
For example, you may ask people how they feel about something.
That you may ask them how hard they would work to obtain it.
You may ask them multiple ways.
But then, so if you collect all those measures, and you get to choose from them,
the results you report are going to be biased towards the one that works.
Imagine you try a drug, and you give it 100 patients.
And you see if it helps with weight, or
with their heart condition, or with their skin.
And then if you try enough of those things, one of them will work.
And then you report your results, and
you only talk about the one that actually worked, readers will be misled
into thinking that it's very persuasive, very compelling evidence.
When in fact, it's just chance.
>> Mm-hm, so
this a important feature here, that this is basically a methodology paper.
So it's not just persuasion and rhetoric in a scientific endeavor, but
it's scientific methods.
And so we're really getting into what I think most people would think is
pretty dry, technical area.
Not much room for persuasion, so how did you position this paper?
How did you argue in this paper in a way that was
different from other academic attempts?
>> I mean, we were writing a methods paper.
And most methods papers are written for methods people.
And we didn't want to write a paper for methods people.
We wanted to write a paper for normal people, normal academics, at least.
>> Uh-huh. >> And
we had the advantage of being normal academics.
So a lot of people writing methods papers are methods people, but
we are not a methods people.
So we sort of understood, like what would it take for us to read a methods paper?
And so we tried to build a methods paper that we ourselves would want to read.
>> Mm-hm.
>> So we started out by putting simulations in our paper because
that sort of showed how big the problem was.
But I think the big insight was that a paper that just contains simulations is
not a paper that many people are going to read.
>> Mm-hm. >> And so we thought long and hard, many,
many conversations around what is a good example or demonstration of the problem?
>> Mm-hm.
>> And we tried to come up with a demonstration that was interesting,
kind of cute, maybe people would talk about it, that sort of thing.
>> I think that's sufficiently cute.
You should tell us real quick, just to describe it at a high level.
>> So basically wanted to show that scientists could
find statistically significant evidence for any hypothesis, no matter how absurd.
And so we came up with a hypothesis that was demonstrably absurd.
Which is that listening to a particular song can change how old you are.
And no one on Earth believes that's possible.
>> Mm-hm. >> And so we ran a study using the norms
of the day that basically showed that that effect was true.
We were like, look, if you do things the way they are currently being done,
you can find evidence for this crazy hypothesis.
And you can write it up in such a way that scientists would be persuaded by it.
>> Mm-hm.
>> And so we thought that piece was, I think, absolutely critical.
If we hadn't done that, I'm not sure we would've gotten published.
But even if we had gotten published, it would've probably been ignored.
>> Mm-hm.
>> That was one aspect of it.
>> So just on the persuasion, thinking about it,
we would picture our least-mythologically oriented friend.
And ask, what would get this guy to tell about this paper to his friends?
What would the paper need to contain?
>> Okay. >> So it becomes like viral for
academic standards?
>> Okay, where did that inclination come from?
Is that a way you had thought about your work or your teaching?
Why that pivot from the way you might typically write?
>> The goal we said when we first met to discuss this, we said, okay.
So we want to change how psychologists do science.
And that felt like an impossible goal.
And so the first step in persuasion, people have to listen to you.
>> Mm-hm.
>> And so I guess we were just very aware of how common it is for people to
complain about a problem in academia and be ignored for decades and decades.
And so the first step for
not being ignored is people need to know what you said.
I think, at least introspecting, that's what I think, [INAUDIBLE].
>> No, yeah, absolutely.
So the first piece was basically getting people to
want to read the paper by making it interesting.
Maybe even a little funny in places, stuff like that.
>> Mm-hm. >> But the second piece was about,
as Uri was just saying, you can't just complain about a problem.
You also have to propose a solution.
Otherwise, people will just keep walking around complaining about it.
And nothing will ever get done.
And you also have to produce a solution that is actionable and
easy and really hard to argue against.
And so that was the other element of the paper that we really strove for.
Other people at around that time or shortly thereafter were writing similar
type pieces, but the solutions on offer were Utopian.
In fact, some people even used the word Utopian.
And they were not at all practical.
And they weren´t going to happen any time soon, and probably not in our lifetime and
probably not ever.
And so we were trying to think instead of what could journals,
what could scientists do tomorrow to change how they're doing it?
And so we really tried to find a baby step that would actually work,
actually be impactful, and that was sort of hard to argue with.
So those are sort of the two elements we've really focused on,
almost all of our conversations.
I mean, the science of it was figured out in a day or two or something.
Almost all of our conversations with this paper were about how to persuade.
>> Wow.
And the paper itself is actually quite short.
It's like nine pages and two or three of those are these prescriptions.
Long list of prescriptions.
>> Right. >> But obviously the persuasive effort
goes beyond the publication.
You then go out and, or even before the complication,
you're out talking about the paper, you're visiting schools, you're giving talks.
How did you find yourself going about that differently than you had before?
>> I think, that we did not alter very much.
We did what we always did except that this time it was an incredible amount of demand
to hear us talk about it.
So we submitted a symposium to a conference which is something everybody
does all the time.
You say here's three papers, please let us talk about it and they said okay.
And usually 20 people show up, 50, maybe 100 will show up.
We had like 800 people.
>> [LAUGH] >> It's like standing room only and
that was, it's not like we prepped for that.
It just happened.
And I think it was really just the downstream consequences of having drafted
the message in the paper appropriately.
>> But that must have been reinforcing in some way.
You had this pivot to thinking in a more, thinking about rhetoric more explicitly.
I'd be surprised if you didn't bake that into some of your presentations.
Did you not spend extra time, more than usual working on just the right example or
just the right analogy?