Sociocultural Data to Accomplish Department of Defense Missions Toward a Unified Social Framework: Workshop Summary (2011) / Chapter Skim
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6 Persuasion
6 Persuasion
Pages 61-72
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From page 61... ...
The guiding question for this panel was, How is the persuasive appeal of conversations, messages, and activities that are intended to foster social change affected by sociocultural factors? Offering their perspectives on this question were three presenters: Jeanne Brett, a researcher in the area of negotiation and dispute resolution, who discussed the differences among "face," "dignity," and "honor" cultures and offered insights into how and why the effectiveness of direct versus indirect confrontation for resolving disputes differs across these cultures; James Dillard, who described research on the power of narratives to influence across different cultures and how narrative influence may often be effective on a subconscious level; and Brant Burleson, who focused on the cultural similarities and differences in the types of behavioral strategies that people use to seek support from and demonstrate support to others.
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From page 62... ...
"Dignity cultures tend to be loose cultures in which social norms are relatively flexible and informal," Brett said, "and in loose cultures, social expectations permit individuals to define the range of tolerable behavior within which they exercise their own
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From page 63... ...
In such cultures, a person's sense of self-worth depends both on the person's own intrinsic estimation and on the recognition of that worth by society. "Honor cultures tend to develop in competitive environments of rough equals," Brett added, "and as a result, honor is always in flux, lost and gained through cycles of competition." An honor culture will generally have a combination of tight and loose cultural characteristics, with the social norms being clearly defined and strictly imposed within the family and the clan but being relatively flexible and informal between families and clans.
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From page 64... ...
So conflict management that signals social respectability should be more effective than conflict management that does not." Furthermore, although honor cultures also have an element of self-worth that is viewed as intrinsic, this should not make indirect confrontation any less useful, as research has shown that face giving is important even in dignity cultures. Thus, she concluded, indirect confrontation should prove to be a useful approach to resolving conflicts in Middle Eastern cultures, just as it is in Asian and Western countries.
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From page 65... ...
"Whether you're entering a military organization and your identity is to become a warrior, whether you're entering citizenship into a country and you're going to incorporate this idea of a citizen, or whether you're being recruited into a terrorist group and the story is one of how your sibling or your friend has been abused by the oppressing power, these are all stories that help us create our identities, that tell us who we are, and that maintain those identities throughout our lives, or as long we connect with that group of people." Although the particular stories told vary from culture to culture and group to group, the functions of the stories are very much the same everywhere, Dillard said. There has been a great deal of research on how stories -- or narratives, as they are usually referred to in the literature -- affect people's beliefs.
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From page 66... ...
Once they are engaged in this way, they are more open to accepting new ideas. Dillard described research done at Pennsylvania State University with his colleagues Mary Beth Oliver, Daniel Tamul, and Ken Bae that looked specifically at the effectiveness of narratives compared with public policy news articles.
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From page 67... ...
"I emphasize," Dillard said, "that these are really brief news stories, the kind that you're likely to encounter over breakfast." What had caused the difference in the subjects, the researchers found, seemed to be differing levels of compassion. The subjects who had read the 4.5 4.0 Narrative Intentions Policy 3.5 3.0 2.5 Immigrants Elderly Prisoners Stigmatized Group FIGURE 6-1 Attitudes based on narrative compared with policy news formats.
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From page 68... ...
And that's a very positive identity that you would do this thing for your group, make such a sacrifice." Terrorists are also representing themselves as sophisticated experts with nerves of steel, the sort of people who can plan and carry out operations like the 9/11 attacks on the United States with tremendous success. "These are great recruiting stories," Dillard said.
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From page 69... ...
Supportive communication could be important to the military, he suggested, as a way of "winning hearts and minds." Supportive communication is a form of social support, which Burleson defined as the provision of emotional, informational, or instrumental resources in response to the perception that others are in need of that aid. Social support includes both tangible and intangible forms of assistance, so providing food, money, transportation, or health care in a time of need would be a form of social support.
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From page 70... ...
There is a great deal of research, Burleson said, that shows that when support misfires, it can be hurtful and damaging. "Efforts to provide support that go awry can exacerbate unpleasant affect states, inhibit effective problem solving, foster unhealthy dependencies, heighten stress levels, deepen depression, undermine relationship satisfaction, and damage physical health." The implication is that it is important to know what works and what doesn't.
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From page 71... ...
Figure 6-2 shows the results of one study of such differences. Groups of Chinese and American subjects were asked to rate the helpful ness of supportive messages that were low person-centered, moderately person-centered, or highly person-centered (Burleson and Mortenson, 5.0 4.5 4.0 Rated Helpfulness 3.5 Americans 3.0 Chinese 2.5 2.0 1.5 1.0 Low Moderate High Level of Message Person Centeredness FIGURE 6-2 Perceived helpfulness of comforting messages.
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From page 72... ...
Theoretically, if people in the studies could be induced to focus more on processing the content of the messages, it should diminish the cultural differences in how helpful comforting messages are perceived to be. "Pretty clearly," Burleson concluded, "we would like to think that this work ultimately has some deliverables for the Department of Defense, particularly in terms of communication skill training and training those who are on the ground in how to be supportive to those that they encounter."
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