How Social Psychology Can Be Used to Create an Effective Message: A Case Study

This week's Living on Earth radio show featured an interview with Robert Cialdini, the leading authority on the psychology of social influence, about how he'd worked with an environmental group to develop an extremely effective PSA promoting recycling. You can read the transcript here: http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=10-P13-00051&segmentID=2

The first point discussed in the interview was perhaps not made as clear as it could have been. When Cialdini talks about "what those around us are doing," he's referring to a principle of social influence called social proof. What this means is that we tend to look at other people's behavior to decide what we should do. In the context in which he mentions it — raising awareness of global warming caused by fossil fuel use — the point is that, if the message is saying "everyone is doing it" (i.e., wasting energy), the listener's reaction, consciously or otherwise, is likely to be, "If everyone is doing it, why should I do any differently (especially if it's inconvenient)?" Instinct tells us to follow the herd, even if our intellect says otherwise. Effective messaging avoids triggering this in a way that's counterproductive.

The point here is not limited to environmental issues. The basic principles of social influence — including social proof and the other one mentioned in the interview, reciprocity, and four others — apply in all areas of human life. Activists would do well to study them carefully.

Give It Away for Nina

Nina Hartley is facing an urgent financial situation: she needs funds to pay for her recovery after upcoming surgery. The appeal follows.

http://www.giveforward.com/giveitawayfornina

Help Our Friend Nina

If you’re reading this you’re likely already a friend, or fan, of Nina’s. Thanks for taking the time to be here. She’s always made an effort to connect on the personal level with all she meets, and it’s from that personal level that I write this. If you’ve ever had a moment’s fun with any of her work there’s something real, concrete and life saving you can do for her and it won’t take much.

She is seeking funds to cover her recovery from surgery, tentatively scheduled for late January/early February 2011. Recovery will take 2-4 weeks, depending on how it goes.

As some of you already know she has fibroid tumors in her uterus. They’re genetic and are not cancer, nor will they turn into cancer, so that’s a blessing right there. However they are unsightly and are starting to cause other, negative side effects. After dealing with them for nearly twenty years the time has come for a permanent solution. She thought that nearing menopause would cause them to shrink but they show no signs of doing so. So, surgery is the next step. She’s lucky enough to have medical insurance to cover the cost of the operation. What she needs is money to cover her expenses during recovery. In twenty-six years she’s never needed help more. As an example of how easy it could be, if each of her Twitter followers donated just five dollars that
would cover everything.

Some may ask, “What about Ernest?” Her darling husband is facing his own medical crises, as well as a cut back at work. He won’t be able to help her financially, though he’d very much like to do so. He’ll be there to take care of her when she comes home from the hospital. Anything we raise here will be a big help to both of them at this difficult time.

She’s never asked for help before, and it’s hard for her to do so now, which is why I’m doing this, but this counts as an emergency. She’s been hit by the recession as badly as the next person and her reserves won’t cover what she’ll need. Her family is not in a position to help, though they would if they could. That leaves, in the words of Tennessee Williams, “the kindness of strangers.” “Strangers” being you. Of course, Nina doesn’t think of her fans as strangers, only friends she’s not yet met in person, so I like to think I’m asking her friends for help.

After all she has given me, taught me, been there for me, it is my pleasure to give back to her. If she has ever taught you anything, been there for you when nobody else understood, or just made you happy with her sweet, wonderful demeanor, please donate at least five bucks. You can help her continue to give from the depth of her being to make you happy.

Please, let’s all show her how much we love her…

Lesley

Bring Courage Back to City Council

That's the slogan of Sherrie Cohen's campaign for City Council, which she officially kicked off last night. I met her last May Day, at the dedication of a memorial to the Haymarket martyrs in Southwest Philly, where she was passing out a leaflet announcing her intentions. That was the first I heard of her. The next time was at OutFest, where she had a table staffed by a supporter.

Shortly before the election I added a link here to her Twitter page, which was the closest thing to a campaign site that she had at that point. Now she has an official site at http://www.cohen4council.com/.

Sherrie is the daughter of the late David Cohen, who used to be one of the most progressive Councilmembers. She has a long history of activism around economic justice, women's, and queer issues. Most recently she headed the successful Campaign to Save the Libraries.

Meeting her for the second time last night, I encouraged her to study the psychology of social influence in order to maximize her effectiveness, and signed up to be a volunteer. Just now I sent her a link to Robert Cialdini's Influence: Science and Practice. I'd have lent her my own copy of an earlier edition, but it's still on loan to Hugh Giordano.

On the Wagon Again

It's been a while since I wrote about my struggle with social anxiety disorder. Partly this is because things were preoccupying me that left me little time to post about anything. But I also felt that I was backsliding, and was not eager to write about this.

I was trying to use the weekly messages from a seduction "email bootcamp" to keep me motivated, and initially it worked. But then I started to fall behind on my email. I could have made an exception for these emails and kept up with them even while lagging on the other messages, but didn't do so, due presumably to an unholy alliance of social anxiety and obsessive-compulsiveness.

When, a few weeks ago, I decided to resume the boot camp, I found the instructions to be totally over my head. They seemed to require me to already have proficiency in areas where I simply didn't, and I despaired of following them in any but the most perfunctory way, which might fulfill their letter but not their spirit.

Reflecting on this impasse led me to the feeling that this approach might be too rigidly goal-oriented for me (especially when I can't negotiate personally tailored "homework," as I could with a therapist). I also recalled someone's observation that OC people are always telling ourselves that we need to be "more self-disciplined," when actually we need just the opposite. So I decided to focus on practicing mindfulness more -- both to be more open to possibilities to start conversations with strangers, and to avoid the kind of self-talk which, even though intended to motivate me, seems often to just end up making me more anxious by raising the stakes too high.

I judged that I need to do less reading, more simply being and doing in the moment. And now there's evidence that this was a good choice. Yesterday, while standing in line at my neighborhood post office, I started a conversation with an attractive student standing behind me, in the course of which I got her email address. This was the first time in several weeks that I'd done something like this. (I'd made small talk on elevators in the interim, but never asked for contact info despite the notion that I should try to.)

An example of the different approach I was now taking is that I resisted any temptation to strategize in my head during the conversation. At those points where I had nothing to say, I simply turned away and maintained my poise without thinking about anything in particular, and when something apt occurred to me I turned back and expressed it.

Over the preceding couple days, I'd actually started unsubscriibng from several people's attraction and seduction-related newsletters which I wasn't keeping up with. I worried that this might be a manifestation of avoidance, but yesterday suggests it was in keeping with an approach that may prove to be more sustainable than my previous one.

Wednesday, 15 December: Day of action for Rite Aid workers

Jobs with Justice reports there will be a national day of action 15 December for Rite Aid workers, whose benefits are under attack. I've left the following message for their CEO, who just gave himself a huge raise:

Stop attacking Rite Aid workers!

Think you have to make cuts to keep the company profitable? All right, then how about cutting your OWN salary to that of the average employee? After all, they're contributing as many hours per week as you are. So why should you be making any more than they are?

In an earlier entry, I posted the words to my filk song "Trinity," based on Lois McMaster Bujold's fantasy novel The Curse of Chalion. Two weeks ago at Philcon, I got it recorded, and today uploaded it to my computer.

Turns out that at present, Blogger provides no way to post an audio file directly in a blog, so I'll have to find a service to host it as a podcast.

Talk on Psychology and Social Change

Lucky I learned about this — it was almost by accident. Nick Cooney will be speaking Friday on his new book, Change of Heart: What Psychology Can Tell Us About Spreading Social Change at Grindcore House, a new vegan café in South Philly:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=158039280898401&index=1

Halloween and Election Day: The Hidden Connections

I've spent most of this weekend strolling the streets of Roxborough, leaving doorhangers for labor candidate for state representative Hugh Giordano. This has given me plenty of time to think, and today a profound insight came to me about the relationship between Halloween and Election Day.

For some years I'd noticed the temporal proximity of the two days, and certain parallels. I'd come to refer to the period they bookend as "Monster Week," because on both days we find the streets filled with scary creatures making loud noises and demanding we supplicate them -- first with candy, then with votes. I figured it was just a coincidence.

But today I realized otherwise. Consider: Halloween is the one day when the dead return temporarily to the land of the living. Because of how the elections are scheduled, they only have to stay here a few more days to participate before returning home. Can there be any doubt that this is precisely why Election Day is held when it is? There's none in my mind. It's too great a coincidence to have happened by chance.

Of course, the dead aren't allowed to vote, on the grounds that they don't have a "fixed stake" in the affairs of the living. But it shouldn't surprise us that some politicians will try to get around this when they think the dead will vote for them. The fact that they usually appear to vote as a bloc confirms this hypothesis.

Speaking of the Underworld, this also explains another observation: the fact that the dead vote in significantly higher numbers in South Philadelphia than in other parts of the city. This can be explained by the consideration that more of the South Philly dead are restless. They can't find peace until their deaths are solved -- which may never happen because nobody saw anything. If this isn't proof of paranormal activity, I don't know what is!

Cultism Is About Psychological Manipulation, Not Doctrine

I've been having a discussion turning partly on this point with another atheist. You can read it here: http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=151629424879710&id=504226569

Quote of the Month

"Where there is equality there can be sanity." -- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-four, page 181 (Signet Classic edition)

Leave the Ghost, Take the Pizza

I went to Fluid again last night, where they were having a party featuring soca among other musics. I've loved soca for years, since becoming acquainted with it from the old show "Rhythms on Trade Winds" on WKDU. But this was the first time I'd been to a soca party.

I asked another woman to dance at this party, and this time she did dance with me for a bit.

When I took a break for a snack at the nearby pizza place, I noticed a handful of people down the side street Fluid is on (Kater), just hanging out at the intersection with Orianna. This really seemed anomalous because of the way I'd become acquainted with Orianna, and I had to go down and comment on it to them. They were, in fact, just hanging out and eating pizza themselves. The one who asked me the details of the purported haunt seemed surprised at the story about a massacre. She made some reference to Native American history, as if perhaps she thought she'd have heard the story already if it were true. On the other hand, she didn't seem surprised that I'd heard a cricket there a few days earlier. She said they were like car horns where she came from.

After this experience, there's not much left of the air of mystery and potential excitement the street had for me when I first visited it.

Orianna Street Revisited

Coming home from Fluid the other night (the first time I've been to that club), I saw Orianna Street again, and decided to take another walk down it since it was around the right time (2:15-2:30 am) for strange happenings to purportedly happen. Unlike before I was by myself, so there was nothing scientific about this visit; clearly anything I (thought I) saw or heard could be the product of my imagination, informed by what I'd heard about the street. I was just entertaining myself this time.

As I got about halfway down the block I realized this was as far as I'd gone with the guy who'd accompanied me last time -- just a little short of an even smaller cross street, which I realized in retrospect is probably the same one Fluid is on (at Fourth). I decided that this time I'd walk the whole block.

As I approached the cross street I started hearing a cricket, and continued to hear it for a few strides after passing it. I looked around but could see no obvious source for the sound, which I assumed must come from the (SW) corner rather than the street. It being late and I having to work the next day, I didn't investigate further. Afterward, though, I thought the speed with which the chirps' volume rose and fell as I passed the south side of the cross street was so great that it must have come from the street itself, where I hadn't thought to look.

Although a cricket's chirp may seem out of place in the middle of an urban district like this, I see no need to invoke a paranormal explanation. But perhaps for people who are "fantasy-prone" and believe in such things, a seeming anomaly like this might set off their imaginations.

Then again, it may well be just a coincidence. Perhaps the cricket settled there to be close to the electro music. (Could it actually have a similar rhythm?) Or maybe the flashes from the mirror ball reminded it of starry nights in the countryside :-)

On rereading the earlier post, I realize I was a little late for the purported "window" for paranormal activity. Since I'm inclined to go to Fluid again, I can correct that next time, and maybe even incorporate it as a "venue change" into my pickup efforts.

10,000 Stand Against Hate

Yesterday I was in New York for the march and rally for religious freedom called in response to protests of the permit for an Islamic Cultural Center a couple blocks from the World Trade Center site.

I made a sign the night before. On one side it says, "Magic Baby believers, STOP PICKING ON Magic Rock believers!" On the other, I inform the Used Tea Bags (as I like to call them -- because they're all wet) that we have this thing called the Constitution that guarantees freedom of religion and prohibits an established church. A number of people liked it; near the end of the event, someone took a picture of the first side, calling it the best sign she'd seen all day.

There were a number of other homemade signs, including "Atheists for religious tolerance."

It'd been a few years since the last time I came to an out-of-town demonstration -- since January '07 I think. As I've struggled with finding a way to fulfill my need to express myself politically while maintaining a strong sense of autonomy -- and, especially, avoiding association with anything too reminiscent of my past cultic involvement -- I didn't want to commit ahead of time to riding on a charter bus run by a sectarian group, which often seemed the only affordable way to get to NYC or Washington.

Fortunately, while making plans to get to the cultic studies conference in July, I became aware of how affordable the nonstop Chinatown-Chinatown buses are, and the fact that one need only arrive twenty minutes ahead to be assured of a seat. Round trip from Philly to NYC is only $20, about the same as a ticket to ride on a charter bus, even after figuring in a few extra dollars for the Metro. This knowledge freed me to save the date without having to make any commitments in advance; I just had to see if I could leave enough money in my budget to cover the cost, which I was able to do.

My new orientation meant that I was also trying to pursue the development of my interpersonal skills even at an out-of-town event like this. I made a particular effort to start conversations with attractive women; even though it seemed an outside chance, I entertained the idea that if I really hit it off with someone, I might be invited to stay overnight, and here again my new transportation option gave me the needed flexibility to take advantage of that. With this in mind I also brought a Red Bull shot with me, as I've used previously only in connection with clubbing.

As people were leaving the rally site, I did briefly consider going to the afterparty that had been announced, but I was reluctant to because I had only a few dollars left in my budget and there might not be sufficient free food at said party if I got hungry again. Not that I couldn't have gone over budget -- borrowing against future expenses -- but it seemed ill-justified for the sake of an outside chance. Was this prudence, or avoidance? I don't know, but I intend to have more to spare next time I face a choice like that, so that I won't need to second-guess myself.

Last night I dreamt that for research purposes, I joined Geerts Wilder's party, despite neither being a Danish citizen nor sharing his views. After signing up and being shown the eco-friendly farm he somehow had inside his party's giant building, one of his cows followed me home.

Unfortunately, I don't have health insurance right now, so I can't see a therapist like I did last year. But I've found an alternative that may serve just as well.

I recently signed up to get free email newsletters from the guys behind fastseduction.com, and it turns out these include a twelve-week "boot camp" for aspiring pickup artists. The first was not very challenging; aside from abstaining from a couple things asserted to be bad influences (porn and sappy love music), the only positive action required was something to get over a recent obsession that I'd actually already done. (I hadn't really had that much of a recent obsession.)

There was a bit more to the next message, which I read Friday. Both parts involved starting conversations with women, and the first one was pretty simple; I accomplished it yesterday with a new neighbor I encountered on the elevator of my building. The second is considerably more complex -- a sort of multi-tier "nested set" of instructions on what thing (or kind of thing) to say in response to each of several possible contingencies. I had to read it over several times before I felt prepared to attempt it.

Nonetheless I did attempt it late this afternoon, three times, in a food court. I haven't yet managed to get through the whole script (not always through my own fault), but given my past troubles with approach anxiety -- especially in that setting -- I decided to reward myself with a box of lemon herb tea on the way home. I'd been doing without an evening beverage for a while.

Even though I think I have a pretty accurate idea of the things I need to do to continue overcoming social anxiety disorder, I know from past experience that I can get frustrated easily without some external prod to keep me going. Where a therapist's "homework assignments" have sometimes played this role in the past, Jay Valens's "missions" should accomplish the same thing now.

Hopefully, Tha Truth Is Not Out of Style

I just noticed some lovely lyrics on rapper Tha Truth's album Tha Miseducation of the Masses. On the track titled "Truth with a Side of Humor," he relates, "I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left before we met." And: "My house burned down from a stress-relieving candle."

I find this reminiscent of that old gem by MC 900 Foot Jesus, "The Truth is Out of Style," which I heard was on his album Hell with the Lid Off. Anyone know where I could find a copy of that?

More on Nouveau Tech

I just noticed a comment I'd previously missed on something I'd posted a few years ago, and have made a reply. You can see it all here:

http://stripey7.blogspot.com/2007/03/nouveau-tech-surely-most-audacious-scam.html?showComment=1283040877256#c4054052012028557586

R. I. P. $pread!

I am sorry to pass on this sad news from $pread, the magazine by and about sex workers:

Hello $pread fans. We regret to inform you that, while we expect to publish 5.4, the Crime and Punishment Issue and 6.1, the Race Issue (guest-edited by a fabulous collective of sex workers of color) by January, $pread will close its glittery doors soon after the dawn of the New Year. Once the remaining two issues have been posted, we will fulfill subscriptions for those of you who are owed them with the option of back issues, or, if you're feeling generous, a waiver to help us with closing costs. We apologize for those of you who have only recently come to know us, and to all our longtime supporters. After all these years, five all-volunteer years to be exact, we have come to the conclusion that an all-volunteer magazine is simply unsustainable in the current publishing climate. Short of a donation of $30,000, we will be unable to sustain the magazine past January.

For those of you with a hankering for $pread merchandise and back issues, make sure to go to the $pread Shop (www.spreadmagazine.org/shop) in the next few months. Once we print the next two issues, we will donate the materials to our outreach partners as well as lay the foundation for a physical archive, complete with all the $pread memories of yore, blemishes and all.

We hope that you will look forward to a $pread retrospective in book form, featuring highlights of our five years of publishing. We will also package a '$pread Scrapbook' for sex worker advocates looking for tips and tricks on publishing a magazine by and for people working in the sex industry. We are producing these materials in the hopes that our model will help motivate the continued movement for social justice among our many and varied communities, in the same way Danzine inspired our own publication. We also close our doors in the comfort of knowing that right now, around the world, sex worker-run and sex worker-supportive media such as ConStellation (http://www.chezstella.org/) in Montreal, Flower in Beijing, and Red Light District Chicago (http://www.redlightdistrictchicago.com/) are holding forth on the issues that matter to our communities.

$pread was motivated by the motto “Illuminating the Sex Industry.” We submit these five years of blood, sweat, and tears to you as a testament to this founding sentiment. May the struggle to end the stigma, discrimination, and violence perpetrated against our communities end in justice, and may the flashy strobe light of sex worker rights never go out, but illuminate the sex industry for the world to see.

I can proudly say that I've subscribed to $pread for the majority of its existence, and don't doubt that it's helped inspire other projects that are ongoing.

Differences in Cognitive Culture, and Doing Something About Them

I just read another post by my brother to his new blog, which you can read at

http://wersgor.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/ive-got-them-on-my-list-2-directions/

It served as a takeoff point for a number of related thoughts which I posted as a comment there. I reproduce them here:

One good habit to develop in life, is not too quickly forming conclusions about other people’s behavior or underestimating the extent to which their knowledge base may be different from one’s own. Doing so may be reinforced by a momentary gratification — because it allows one to feel superior — but can stand in the way of helping them become more a help to themselves and less a burden to others.

Where illiteracy is concerned, it’s important to remember that many people who didn’t learn to read when they were supposed to, are too embarrassed to admit this, and so have developed quite elaborate means of concealing it. They may, for instance, pretend to know the name of a place from reading the sign, when in reality it’s from someone’s having previously told them, or from acquaintance with the graphical aspects of its logo. Once several years ago, I was hit by a store clerk who, as I interpreted it afterwards, was simply too embarrassed to admit he didn’t know arithmetic well enough to see that the register had miscalculated my bill.

Where street signs are concerned, there are many conventions with which we are so familiar, we may forgot that they are not intuitively obvious, and we ourselves had to learn them at one point. A few months ago I was on the the 15th Street platform of the Market-Frankford Line, and someone asked me if this was the side that goes to West Philly. I said yes, but she felt uncertain because of a sign saying “To Frankford.” I explained to her that the arrow next to those words means that you would have to follow that arrow, up the stairs and across to the other side, to get to Frankford. She evidently had simply never been outside her own neighborhood before (some people never do) and so hadn’t made the acquaintance of this sort of sign.

Someone new to the city might 1) not know where to look for the street signs, 2) not be familiar with the convention that a street sign goes parallel to the street it names, so that even if they see the signs they still won’t know which street is 12th and which is Chestnut, or 3) even if they know which street is which, not notice (or be able to read, if their eyesight is poor) the signs’ smaller print about street addresses indicating which way the higher numbers are.

Another, extremely pleasing experience I had in the past year was on a subway ride. A woman whose dress and manner loudly said “middle class” was showing her young child the SEPTA map on the wall of the car, and explaining how it worked. What was remarkable about this heartwarming sight was simply how rare it is, at least on public transit. Not long ago I saw a flier for a book arguing that one of the major factors helping to perpetuate class inequality is the differences in the cognitive habits passed on from generation to generation. Because this is cultural rather than biological transmission, it’s possible to break the cycle (which is the idea behind the Harlem Children’s Zone, for instance).

Of course such differences in cognitive-cultural heritage don’t account for our sociey’s huge differences in income, which result from hereditary private ownership of productive wealth. But while we’re trying to do something about that, there’s no reason not to also address what is easier to tackle politically — not to mention that such newly improved cognitive skills can be applied to activism as well as personal advancement, and are more likely to be if those who taught them are also activists. And that the species as a whole generally benefits when some portion of it gets smarter.





I went to a reading today by the authors of The Great Typo Hunt and got a free bag from the Chicago Manual of Style.