Columnist and human rights advocate Nicholas Kristof recently wrote a piece on saving the world for Outside magazine. The column is worth noting both for what it says, and because he feels the need to say it. In his columns and blogfor the New York Times, Kristof is a relentless advocate for international justice – there is no doubt our world is a better place because of his work.
In his piece (which he also blogged about) he writes:
“The bottom line is that we increasingly have evidence from research in social psychology about what makes readers care — and the answers have to do with story-telling and a sense of success. Guilt-tripping people doesn’t work, nor does jumping and down about millions of people dying.”
The obvious insight about his insights is that it’s old news. Anyone who has spent any time studying persuasion knows this. While Kristof turns to “recent research in social psychology” the list of people who have written about persuasion stretches at least back to Aristotle, who noted that one way to persuade people is to scare them – but not too much – and then offer then a solution their fears (if you only read one work on persuasion, make it Aristotle’s Rhetoric). That people are story-tellers, that we are more homo-narans than homo-economus is similarly important, and similarly old news. Indeed, the essay was sent to me by a former student who said it was “filled with language that reminded me of your class last semester” (I teach courses in political language and rhetoric at George Washington University and Emerson College). That someone as smart as Kristof could just now learn that how one talks about problems matters and that folks have thought about how to successfully talk about problems, should be a reminder for communications professionals that there is still a lot of educating to do about what we do. Just as Kristof can be amazed that there are those who do not know or care about genocide and starvation in Africa, me and a lot of my colleagues are sometimes amazed that people do not know or care, about the several-thousand year old study of persuasion. My poke at Kristof is a slap at myself for falling into the same trap he did – but doing it as someone who is supposed to be adept at avoiding such traps.
The second observation about Kristof’s observations is that he’s right, the column is worth reading. Persuasion happens when you put information in a context people understand and can empathize with - it is finding your ideas into their story and letting them finish the story for you. Persuasion isn’t about massive piles of doom crashing down on people; to steal a line from the late Tony Schwartz, persuasion is about pulling a responsive chord.
