I would like to see your data on Dawkins’ actual effectiveness. You’ve made a strong claim there.
While diplomacy is certainly an important consideration in getting an argument across, it’s very far from the whole story. I think you’re confusing people’s self-reporting on whether they like an argument with whether the argument is actually effective. These are very different things. I quote again David Colquhon on getting homeopathy out of UK universities, and Dawkins’ tone:
Dr Baggini, among others, has claimed that the “new atheists” are too strident, and that they only antagonise moderate atheists (see The New Atheist Movement is destructive, though there is something of a recantation two years later in Religion’s truce with science can’t hold).
I disagree, for two reasons.
Firstly, people like Richard Dawkins are really not very strident. Dawkin’s book, The God Delusion, is quiet and scholarly. It takes each of the arguments put forward by religious people, and dissects them one by one. It’s true that, having done this, he sets forth his conclusions quite bluntly. That seems to me to be a good thing. If your conclusions are stifled by tortuous euphemisms, nobody takes much notice. Just as in science, simple plain words are best.
The second, and more important, reason that I like Dawkin’s approach is that I suspect it’s the only approach that has much effect. There is a direct analogy with my own efforts to stop universities giving BSc degrees in subjects that are not science. Worse, they are actively anti-science. Take for example, homeopathy, the medicine that contains no medicine. I started by writing polite letters to vice chancellors. Usually they didn’t even have the courtesy to reply. All efforts to tackle the problem through the “proper channels” failed. The only thing that has worked was public derision. A combination of internal moles and Freedom of Information Act requests unearthed what was being taught on these courses. Like Westminster’s assertion that “amethysts emit high Yin energy”. Disclosure of such nonsense and headlines like
“Professor Geoffrey Petts of the University of Westminster says they “are not teaching pseudo-science”. The facts show this is not true
are certainly somewhat strident. But they have worked. Forget the proper channels if you want results. Mock what deserves to be mocked.
Or, as H. L. Mencken put it nearly a century ago:
One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent.
Making people feel comfortable and being effective are not necessarily linked.
Why redo what has already been done? The information is out there – we need but someone to read and summarize them. A ten-minute search yielded the following:
Wow, nice start! Unfortunately none of your citations, except maybe those behind paywalls, seem to address our main issue directly. They do, however, provide much useful background about the emotional and interpersonal dimensions of persuasion and deconversion. Streib’s book, for example, uses personality tests (the 5-factor measure, a measure of “well-being and growth”, and such) to study deconversion. Jacobs writes that “severing of socio-emotional bonds to the religious leader” is important in deconversion. And Ullman writes that “Emotional factors were more closely associated with religious conversion” than cognitive personality features like tolerance of ambiguity. Max Heirich disputes the emotions-and-relationships focus however.
Cobb and Kuklinski do examine argument styles for effectiveness, but the only dimensions they study are Pro/Con and Easy/Hard (to comprehend). From other browsing, I got the impression that Hard to Comprehend means that the arguer actually explains how the policy will lead to great or terrible things, rather than simply asserting that it will. Ah, democracy!
It occurred to me that political argument is probably better studied than religious argument, and is similar enough, dynamically, that an argument tone effective in one area is probably comparably effective in the other. That search led me to:
Arceneaux finds that exploiting in-group bias and loss aversion make for effective political arguments. Croft cites psychologist and political consultant Drew Westen for the claim, among others, that tone matters, and that in particular, condescension or know-it-all attitudes are trouble. However, Croft does not cite specific studies or explain any findings.
Nice, I like the Arceneaux paper. (Published version and online supporting material.) It cites a lot of papers too, so given its recency, it’d make an excellent base for a backward citation search.
[Edit: I have retracted the strong claim, incidentally.]
“Quiet and scholarly”? It compares a religious upbringing to sexual abuse—and finds sexual abuse too mild to compare.
Public derision should not be your first resort, however. It has a bad tendency to backfire, and depends pretty heavily on a public agreeing with you to begin with.
Your last paragraph is true, but somewhat vacuous in context: no-one’s particularly disputing that diplomacy is a useful persuasive tool. Your article comes across as elevating tone considerations above all else when the aim is effectiveness, and I think that you simply haven’t substantiated that.
Your article comes across as elevating tone considerations above all else when the aim is effectiveness
The summary sentence of the article: “The categorical assessment of “Responding to Tone” as either a logical fallacy or a poor argument is incorrect, as it starts from an unfounded assumption that the purpose of a tone response is, in fact, to refute the argument.”
I would like to see your data on Dawkins’ actual effectiveness. You’ve made a strong claim there.
While diplomacy is certainly an important consideration in getting an argument across, it’s very far from the whole story. I think you’re confusing people’s self-reporting on whether they like an argument with whether the argument is actually effective. These are very different things. I quote again David Colquhon on getting homeopathy out of UK universities, and Dawkins’ tone:
Or, as H. L. Mencken put it nearly a century ago:
Making people feel comfortable and being effective are not necessarily linked.
What this debate about the strategically best tone needs is some experiments. Are there any social scientists in the LW house?
Why redo what has already been done? The information is out there – we need but someone to read and summarize them. A ten-minute search yielded the following:
H Gardner. 2006. Changing minds: The art and science of changing our own and other people’s minds.
M Cobb and J Kuklinski. 1997. “Changing minds: Political arguments and political persuasion.”
L Rambo and E Farhadian (eds.). Pre-print. Oxford Handbook on Religious Conversion. (Notable article: H Streib, “Deconversion.”)
H Streib et al. 2009. Deconversion: Qualitative and quantitative results from cross-cultural research in Germany and the United States of America.
H Streib and B Keller. 2004. “The variety of deconversion experiences: Contours of a concept in respect to empirical research.”
B Kim. 1979. “Religious deprogramming and subjective reality.”
J Jacobs. 1987. “Deconversion from religious movements: An analysis of charismatic bonding and spiritual commitment.”
M Heirich. 1977. “Change of heart: A test of some widely held theories about religious conversion.”
C Ullman. 1982. “Cognitive and emotional antecedents of religious conversion.”
M Khalil and M Bilici. 2007. “Conversion out of Islam: A study of conversion narratives of former Muslims.”
J Druckman and A Lupia. 2000. “Preference formation.”
Someone willing to put in a day’s work would surely be able to find better and much more studies and reviews.
Wow, nice start! Unfortunately none of your citations, except maybe those behind paywalls, seem to address our main issue directly. They do, however, provide much useful background about the emotional and interpersonal dimensions of persuasion and deconversion. Streib’s book, for example, uses personality tests (the 5-factor measure, a measure of “well-being and growth”, and such) to study deconversion. Jacobs writes that “severing of socio-emotional bonds to the religious leader” is important in deconversion. And Ullman writes that “Emotional factors were more closely associated with religious conversion” than cognitive personality features like tolerance of ambiguity. Max Heirich disputes the emotions-and-relationships focus however.
Cobb and Kuklinski do examine argument styles for effectiveness, but the only dimensions they study are Pro/Con and Easy/Hard (to comprehend). From other browsing, I got the impression that Hard to Comprehend means that the arguer actually explains how the policy will lead to great or terrible things, rather than simply asserting that it will. Ah, democracy!
It occurred to me that political argument is probably better studied than religious argument, and is similar enough, dynamically, that an argument tone effective in one area is probably comparably effective in the other. That search led me to:
Arceneaux, Kevin. 2012. “Cognitive Biases and the Strength of Political Arguments.” American Journal of Political Science, 56 (2): 271-85.
JamesCroft, 2012, “The Freethinkers’ Political Textbook – Logos, Ethos, Pathos”
Arceneaux finds that exploiting in-group bias and loss aversion make for effective political arguments. Croft cites psychologist and political consultant Drew Westen for the claim, among others, that tone matters, and that in particular, condescension or know-it-all attitudes are trouble. However, Croft does not cite specific studies or explain any findings.
Nice, I like the Arceneaux paper. (Published version and online supporting material.) It cites a lot of papers too, so given its recency, it’d make an excellent base for a backward citation search.
[Edit: I have retracted the strong claim, incidentally.]
“Quiet and scholarly”? It compares a religious upbringing to sexual abuse—and finds sexual abuse too mild to compare.
Public derision should not be your first resort, however. It has a bad tendency to backfire, and depends pretty heavily on a public agreeing with you to begin with.
Your last paragraph is true, but somewhat vacuous in context: no-one’s particularly disputing that diplomacy is a useful persuasive tool. Your article comes across as elevating tone considerations above all else when the aim is effectiveness, and I think that you simply haven’t substantiated that.
Your article comes across as elevating tone considerations above all else when the aim is effectiveness
The summary sentence of the article: “The categorical assessment of “Responding to Tone” as either a logical fallacy or a poor argument is incorrect, as it starts from an unfounded assumption that the purpose of a tone response is, in fact, to refute the argument.”
Hence “comes across as”.
You were, in another comment, talking about insubstantiable claims? I believe in a manner that suggested they were a bad sort of thing to be making?