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From Logos to Pathos in Social Psychology and Academic Argumentation: Reconciling Postmodernism and Positivism in a Sociology of Persuasion 1 MITCHELL BERBRIER Department of Social and Cultural Sciences Marquette University Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53233 USA I’m not and I don’t think we’re uncomfortable with corporate language. What we’re interested in is truth. And true truth can be packaged with all kinds of different language. When you talk about ‘product,’ we used that term because our target audience marketplace person understands the notion of ‘product.’ Out target person is a marketplace person. So we’ll use marketplace terminology. Jim Dethmer, Pastor Willow Creek Community Church (emphasis added)2 ABSTRACT: This paper argues that one can empirically test, via positivist methods, the post-modern attack on positivist epistemologies: Postmodern perspectives hold Knowledge and Truth to be intersubjective, consensus-driven social constructions. But traditional scientific approaches to knowledge, exemplified here by the cognitive social psychology of persuasion, seem oblivious to this and continue to detach the study of attitudes, beliefs, and emotions from that of knowledge, facts, and reason. Abandoning these artificial distinctions in both epistemology and method would enable this social psychology, reconstituted as a Sociology of Persuasion, to contribute greatly to illuminating the processes of Truth and Knowledge construction in social interaction. Moreover, this would facilitate academic engagement in civic discourse. KEY WORDS: Social construction, knowledge, affect, postmodernism, positivism The insights of Bruno Latour in the first half of Science in Action (1987), and the senior pastors of the Willow Creek Community Church, an evangelical Christian outfit in suburban (corporate) Chicago, are essentially the same: truth is dependent upon the package and how it is received, and it is effective to convince others of your truth – that is to say, of course, true truth – by packing it into a linguistic and rhetorical framework aligned with the world-view of your audience. Truth, of course, never exists within the individual; rather claims are made to audiences of many and/or powerful interests, and the outcomes – Truth, Falsehood, or some murkier status – Argumentation 11: 35–50, 1997. 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 36 MITCHELL BERBRIER are negotiated in the actions and interactions that follow. Truth is thus always intersubjective (Berger and Luckmann, 1967; and dialogic, Shotter, this volume). In this paper, I wish to argue that if we are to understand each other, if we are to engage in interpersonal or intercultural communication, we must recognize the intersubjective bases to our truths and attend to the affective bases of knowledge. There is a role in civic life for academics (such as social psychologists) who take ‘beliefs,’ ‘attitudes,’ and ‘knowledge’ as their subject matter, but this role is dependent upon the recognition that knowledge is not a matter only of logical inference and reason (logos) but of persuasive rhetorical strategies aimed at aligning emotional ties to world-views (pathos). In the following discussion, I take as my starting point the postmodern attack on artificial academic divisions of facts and values, reasons and affect, logos and pathos. I go on to argue that by adhering blindly to this positivist creed of compartmentalization, social and cognitive psychologists are condemned to the elegant sterility of esoteric experimentation and its distance from civic life. However, social psychology can address knowledge in a vibrant and applicable manner. Indeed, as I will describe, the tools are already there. Long-standing research in social psychology and other areas provide myriad conceptualizations of the conservational character of social knowledge – discussed below as the urge to defend and maintain symbolic universes. A sociological approach to persuasion and argumentation would be directed at exploring the fundamental sentiments of symbolic universes which ultimately guide knowledge and belief; this entails a holistic union of postmodern critiques and positivist methods. I suggest Affect Control Theory (Heise, 1979) as a promising basis for such inquiry. THE CRITIQUE OF MERE REASON Epistemologists have traditionally taken their task to be the study of how knowledge is or can best be produced, focusing on how knowledge can be justified (Pollock, 1986, p. 7). In so doing they have assumed ‘a clear boundary between “real” knowledge and mere opinion’ (Fuller, 1988, p. xii) or belief, wherein knowledge is the result of ‘methodical,’ ‘rational,’ ‘scientific,’ and ‘objective’ processes (Rorty, 1991, p. 35), and opinion and belief are determined differently, presumably, in part, by irrational subjective or subconscious processes. The dichotomies of logos and pathos, reason and emotion, affect and cognition, knowledge and belief – in all instantiations the separation of reality from our socially mediated conception of it – have long provided a foundation for Western philosophy, science, and philosophies of science. These artificial dichotomies belie abundant evidence to the contrary and, importantly, may preclude effective social scientific participation in civic discourse (Brown, 1989, p. 6). FROM LOGOS TO PATHOS IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 37 The idea that ‘knowledge’ is a product of more than the application of logic to the perception of objects is by now commonplace among those who would deny the validity of traditional Western (or at least academic and scientific) distinctions which place knowledge, truth and fact on one side of a divide, and opinion, belief, and attitude on the other. Claims regarding the inappropriateness of this division have been promoted under myriad labels – postmodernism, constructivism, relativism, pragmatism, feminist epistemology, nominalism, anti-realism, anti-positivism, and subjectivism, as well as by people who might shun any such labels. For convenience, I refer to these as the postmodern attack. In philosophy, the attack derives substantially out of reactions to the correspondence theory of truth: the idea that there is a reality ‘out there’ which we can accurately apprehend and that rational processes are those which yield the most accurate apprehensions of this reality. In such a view, ‘truth’ and ‘knowledge’ can be validated by reference to objective rational criteria; truth itself is objective and verifiable. As Holland (1990) put it, ‘according to correspondence theories . . . the states of affairs constituting the world will be the states of affairs constituting the world regardless of human cognizance’ (Holland, 1990, p. 80). A contrary philosophy is Richard Rorty’s popular ‘pragmatist’ perspective – that truth is the product of ‘the consensus of a community rather than a relation to a nonhuman reality’ and that the ‘distinction between knowledge and opinion . . . is simply the distinction between topics on which . . . agreement is relatively easy to get and topics on which agreement is relatively hard to get’ (Rorty, 1991, p. 23). The notion that there is no reality ‘out-there,’ separable from our limited perspectives of it, also fits well with sociological approaches suggesting that truth and knowledge are socially constituted. The phenomenological tradition, epitomized by Berger and Luckmann’s classic work, The Social Construction of Reality (1967), holds that reality and knowledge are determined ‘intersubjectively.’ Similarly, postmodernists have accused positivists in social science of having, as Richard Harvey Brown put it, ‘unlimited faith in deductive logic and direct observation’ (Brown, 1987, pp. 82–83), thus disregarding this intersubjective character of knowledge. Other sociological traditions such as ethnomethodology (Garfinkel, 1967), the labelling perspective on deviance (Becker, 1963), and the constructivist perspectives on social problems (Miller and Holstein, 1993; Spector and Kitsuse, 1977), social movements (Klandermans, 1992; Snow and Benford, 1992) and scientific knowledge (Bloor, 1991; Latour, 1987) have all argued in one form or another that what we know is the product of collective cultural activities rather than mere logical deductions. Related arguments have also gained currency in the speech communication literatures on ‘rhetoric as epistemic’ (Scott, 1967; 1976) and the rhetoric of science (Gross, 1990; Nelson, Megill and McCloskey; Simons, 1989). The 38 MITCHELL BERBRIER postmodern attack reverses the familiar positivist snub of ‘mere rhetoric’ (Baker, 1990) – the problem, rather, is mere reason. Taking seriously the view that truth and knowledge are products of consensus, argumentation, and negotiation, rather than discovery, leads to a focus on effective forms of persuading to knowledge – of asking how it comes to pass that people believe or know – and empirically assessing how it comes to pass that consensus is achieved (Latour, 1987). The implications of the postmodern attack reveal a need to refocus the empirical study of knowledge in those disciplines that have traditionally taken knowledge as part of their empirical subject matter, especially sociology and psychology. a sociological account of knowledge thus demands as examination of the role of persuasion in social interaction. REIFYING THE FACT-VALUE DIVIDE: PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH INTO PERSUASION Cognitive social psychology takes ‘knowledge’ as its focus of study. There is a long tradition of literature on persuasion (see Chaiken and Stangor, 1987, for a review), as well as many studies on the relations between affect and cognition (e.g. Bower, 1981), Yet although psychologists have made progress in breaking down the absolutist boundaries between affect and cognition, the operating assumptions of these researchers continue to betray a very traditional epistemology; the chasm between attitudes-beliefsopinions and facts-knowledge-truths is as wide as ever. Thus when Chaiken and Stangor (1987) present their comprehensive review of research on attitude change, including voluminous bodies of work examining non-intentional determinants of ‘information processing,’ the discussion focuses simply on transformations in people’s ‘attitudes’ and ‘opinions,’ and neither ‘knowledge’ nor ‘facts’ are scrutinized. One of the most important recent developments in persuasion psychology is the Elaboration Likelihood Method (ELM) of Richard Petty and John Cacioppo (1986). Petty and Cacioppo emphasize a distinction between a central route to persuasion, involving ‘a person’s careful and thoughtful consideration of the true merits of the information presented in support of an advocacy’ and a peripheral route which involves ‘some simple cue in the persuasion context (e.g. an attractive source) that induced change without necessitating scrutiny of the central merits of the issue-relevant information presented’ (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986, p. 3). They go on to describe how persuasion via the central route results in more ‘enhanced thinking’ which ‘produces [greater] resistance’ (p. 190) to persuasion because a person is now better able to fend off contrary claims. According to the theory, people will only process information as they are motivated to do so. More motivation produces more ‘objective’ elaboration, whereby ‘some variable either motivates or enables people to see the strengths of FROM LOGOS TO PATHOS IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 39 cogent arguments and the flaws in specious ones, or inhibits them from doing so’ (p. 18). Less motivation produces more ‘biased’ elaboration, whereby ‘the person’s knowledge base or situational factors make it more likely that one side will be supported over another’ (p. 19). In an endless series of elegant experiments Petty and Cacioppo show that people presented with cogent arguments who are motivated to elaborate in a relatively objective manner will become more resistant to persuasion and more capable of arguing their point. Conversely, people whose elaboration has been biased will be less resistant to persuasion. But from a constructivist view of reality (Berger and Luckman, 1967), and a consensus view of truth (Roty, 1991), the ‘cogency’ of arguments is itself a matter of negotiation, rather than an objective fact (cf. Latour, 1987). In other words, in operationalizing ‘cogent’ and ‘biased’ arguments, persuasion psychologists reify the ‘sacred epistemological notion’ that there is a ‘disjunctive polarity between truth and its medium of expression, language or rhetoric’ (Baker, 1990, p. 233). They beg the questions which ought to be part of the study – i.e. what makes an argument appear cogent?; are there affective components to ‘cogent’ arguments? Petty and Cacioppo’s realist assumption is that the spurious experimental arguments they supply are peripheral and affective and that the ‘cogent’ arguments they supply are central and rational. Petty and Cacioppo’s Elaboration Likelihood Method of persuasion has been well-received within psychology. Together with other work on attitude change, this literature may have an awful lot to say about the study of knowledge and truth. Yet its reification of the artificial epistemological boundaries prevents such implications from being drawn. The work seems to be oblivious to – or at least uninterested in – the postmodern turn. THE MOTIVATION TO CONFIRM:3 THE CULTURAL, CONSERVATIONAL, AND AFFECTIVE BASES TO KNOWLEDGE (a) The motivation to confirm symbolic universes Knowing is not simply a matter of perceiving but rather is fundamentally constrained by pre-existing knowledge, opinions, attitudes, biases, and prejudices (Gadamer, 1975). In other words, extant knowledge, opinions, attitudes, biases, and prejudices are facilitators of persuasion; if you want to convince someone of something, show her how it fits in with what she already believes. Another way to put this is to say that people are motivated to confirm their fundamental sentiments and cognitions about the world. In other words, what Petty and Cacippo refer to as ‘biased elaboration’ is an inherent part of the knowledge process (although they characterize it is a flaw). As they put it: 40 MITCHELL BERBRIER more often than not . . . prior knowledge will enable biased scrutiny of externally provided communications. . . . Specifically, schema-driven processing tends to be biased such that external information is processed in a manner that contributes to the perseverance of the guiding schema’ (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986, pp. 111–112, my emphasis). That the ‘perseverance of guiding schema’ is a basic process in the social construction of knowledge has long been recognized by diverse psychologists, philosophers, and sociologists through the years. For example, for the classic social theorists in social psychology, the processing of incoming information is seen as a process of comparing that information to internal ‘anchors’ (Sherif, Sherif and Nebergall, 1965). The literature on cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957) is understood as holding that what we desire is to create ‘consonance’ – to confirm our held beliefs (Larson, 1989, p. 79). Nominalist philosopher Nelson Goodman discusses truth as a matter of ‘fit’ with existing views (in Holland, 1990, p. 88). The idea of a ‘world-view’ guiding perception is the sociological correlate to these notions: Mannheim (1936) held that our experiences in groups are crystallized in the meanings we share with them – that our belonging to a group is best signified by our seeing the world the way it does. Merton (1957, p. 473) points out that part of Durkheim’s perspective on the sociology of knowledge was that ‘the acceptance or rejection of concepts is not determined merely by their objective validity but also by their consistency with other prevailing beliefs.’ Kuhn’s ([1962] 1970) classic notion of the ‘paradigm’ in scientific research further buttresses this notion that we approach information with cultural frameworks which enable as well as constrain the kinds of things we can see. But Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s notion of the ‘symbolic universe’ is probably the most inclusive manifestation of this urge to maintain the integrity of our prior conceptualizations. According to Berger and Luckmann (1967), people live their lives in a humanly produced symbolic-universe which presents itself as the full-blown and inevitable totality of things, whereby all ‘sectors of the institutional order are integrated in an all-embracing frame of reference’ (1967, p. 96). Among other things, the symbolic-universe provides order to life (‘nomos,’ as opposed to anomie). When the symbolic universe becomes problematic, for example when it is confronted by an alternate symbolic universe, people must employ universe-maintenance – strategies used to legitimate the symbolic universe in the face of competing symbolic universes. Taken together, these views entail a model of knowledge acquisition that is quite different from a logical-processor, human-as-computer prototype common in cognitive science; if we wish to understand how people know, if we wish to understand people other than our own kind, if we wish to foster a civic discourse on a multicultural planet, we need a model of situated knowledges and cultural truths which can account for multiple humanly produced symbolic universes. Furthermore, we need to move beyond the notion of simply adding complexity to the situation by heaping multiple realities FROM LOGOS TO PATHOS IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 41 upon our discourse; we need tools for reflexion and for interpretation of the varied interpretations (see Klumpp, this volume), for sorting among and through them. There already exist rich conceptual tools for such an accounting in the psychological literature, tools with unacknowledged promise for utility in civic discourse. (b) Enter affect and culture: cognitive schema, fundamental sentiments, and the intersubjective elements of symbolic universes (i) The motivation to confirm cognitive schema For Piaget (according to Furth, 1987, p. 3), ‘to “understand” an object means to assimilate it to an increasingly complex and logically and hierarchically ordered network of schemes.’ Thus, one important characteristic of the renowned psychological construct of cognitive schema is that they strongly imply that people are active information processors. This was emphasized in Bartlett’s (1932, p. 20) original conception of cognitive schema (as quoted by Markus and Zajonc, 1985, p. 14): ‘What is very essential to the whole notion, [is] that the organized mass results of past changes . . . are actively doing something at the time; are, so to speak, carried along with us, complete, though developing, from moment to moment.’ Thus we are not passive perceivers and receivers of objective facts – rather we are active processors of what we perceive – we act upon the objects of our perception. Furthermore, we are selective information processors. Cognitive schema were developed in part to account for the fact that human beings are limited in their perceptual abilities – that we cannot possibly process all the data the universe throws at us. Cognitive schema provided cognitive social psychologists with a tool for providing order to this selectivity, the implication being that the schema themselves provide order to our worlds. Thus, the content of cognitive schema becomes important for determining what we come to know. According to Markus and Zajonc’s (1985) review of this literature, ideas about the content of cognitive schema run the gamut, from schemes about specific objects or individuals which ‘are ephemeral and constantly changing to the very general idea of a schema as a world view’ (Markus and Zajonc, 1985, p. 144). Moreover, Petty and Cacioppo (1986), in their discussion of biased elaboration, refer to studies that indicate both that ‘people are motivated to cognitively bolster and accept proattitudinal messages that are schema-congruent’ (p. 113) and ‘to reject counterattitudinal appeals’ (p. 114). Just as people are motivated to maintain the integrity of Berger and Luckmann’s symbolic universes, they are similarly motivated to confirm their cognitive schema. Yet cognitive scientists do not aggressively address the attachment they describe people having for these schemata. That is, although these are cognitive schema, people have affective attachments to them. If cognitive schema, whether as selection mechanisms or symbolic universes, provide 42 MITCHELL BERBRIER order to our worlds, then we are motivated to defend them to confirm to ourselves that they are real and they are right. We have a stake in our worldviews. Still, people do not consciously decide to use schema in determining their actions (at least not always), or in being selective about their cognitions. We may cognize but we are rarely so reflexive as to cognize about our cognitions – indeed, that would entirely defeat the putative purpose of cognitive schema as providers of order and facilitators of cognition. So why do we use cognitive schema? what motivates our use of them? (ii) The motivation to confirm fundamental sentiments Affect Control Theory (Heise, 1977; 1979; 1986; 1987; henceforth ACT) provides a framework for understanding the motivation to confirm cognitive schema, via its attention to ‘fundamental sentiments.’4 ACT holds that people act so as to confirm their ‘fundamental sentiments’ or more precisely that people behave and think in such a way as to maintain a congruency between their fundamental sentiments about the world and their immediate situations. When such a congruency is not maintained, people will change their definitions of the situation. For example, people usually think of ‘mothers’ as certain kinds of people with certain kinds of characteristics. This and similar notions can be understood as largely socialized – that is, derived from our culture. Our ideas of what Mother is comes from our repeated exposure to what a Mother is and does and how she acts, in our culture. The more exposure we have had to the idea of Mother, the more indelibly are these sentiments sketched in our minds. When a mother behaves in a way consistent with our conceptions of Mother-ly behavior, these fundamental sentiments are confirmed. However, when a given mother’s behavior does not confirm our fundamental sentiments we are motivated to change our view of that mother. So, for example, when a mother nurtures her daughter, our view of Mother as Nurturer is confirmed. However, when a mother beats on her daughter, we are motivated to question her inclusion in the concept of Motherhood. This mother may become a different kind of Mother – say, an Abusing Mother. Lastly, if a mother ax-murders all of her children, we are motivated not to include her in the category of Mother at all – this person becomes a Lunatic. All this to confirm our fundamental sentiments about the world – in this case about the world of Motherhood. In this manner, ACT can account for the development, generation, regeneration, and even dissemination of social knowledge. This notion of fundamental sentiments and cognitive schema driving knowledge acquisition is not of course limited to ‘social knowledge’ in the delimited sense of that term. The perspective adopted here is that all knowledge has a significant social, cultural and affective component, such that the idea of purely objective knowledge is rendered absurd. The exten- FROM LOGOS TO PATHOS IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 43 sion of the Affect Control perspective on knowledge to other world-views and symbolic universes is a fairly simple matter. An example involving scientific knowledge is presented below (in Section (c)). (iii) The motivation to confirm the intersubjective elements of symbolic universes: consensual structures, enthymemes, and warrants A sociological view asks not what aspects of the individual lead to most effective persuasion, but rather what is deemed ‘evidence’ in a given society or culture, what is believable, what is the range of possibilities for ‘Truth.’ As discussed, making appeals to people’s cognitive schema and fundamental sentiments about the world is an elemental means of generating belief/knowledge. Yet when a persuader is faced with the task of persuading an anonymous individual – someone of whom he knows little or nothing, and hence is unfamiliar with her symbolic universe – he must appeal to collectivity-based (cultural) correlates of schema and sentiments. Some ways in which we can talk about how culture enters into persuasive discourse may be via ‘consensual structures,’ ‘enthymemes,’ and ‘warrants.’ Consensual structures, as presented by Cantor, Mischel and Schwartz (1982), are cognitive schema shared across people. These psychologists have argued that consensual structures can be determined by assessing intersubjective agreement. They ask people to provide a definition for a term – e.g. ‘extroverts.’ Out of the various definitions a common schema (of what extroverts are) will emerge, called a consensual structure. A second and related way that culture may enter persuasive discourse is via Aristotle’s notion of the enthymeme – ‘syllogistic arguments in which the major premise is already believed by the audience and thus does not need to be stated’ (Larson, 1989, p. 62). This fits nicely with the idea that such premises are in fact grounded in fundamental sentiments about the world that are shared – i.e. are intersubjectively developed – and thus contain persuasive power; in alternative terms, that they are consensual structures. Finally, Toulmin (1958) refers to ‘warrants’ invoked to lend authority and legitimacy to arguments – ‘statements which justify drawing conclusions about the grounds’ (Best, 1987, p. 108). Warrants are enthymemes made explicit – the premise is already believed and the warrant is invoked to indicate that the premise is what is at issue. For example, Best lists the ‘sentimentally priceless’ value of children, the idea of ‘blameless victims,’ and ‘claims about rights and freedoms’ as warrants presented in the rhetorical construction of the ‘missing children problem.’ It is important to emphasize that by their nature collectivity-based, culture-specific elements of symbolic universes are neither timeless nor universal. References to ‘the sentimental value of children’ or to, say, ‘rationality’ will have less persuasive effect in other times when, and in other places where fundamental sentiments about ‘children’ or about 44 MITCHELL BERBRIER ‘science’ are different. As Best (1987, p. 108) put it, ‘within specific social units (e.g. a dyad, an academic discipline), members hold particulars lines of reasoning to be valid. Thus, for an argument to be persuasive, the individual to be persuaded must ordinarily belong to a field which deems the warrant valid.’ Thus, ‘reasonable’ arguments which are persuasively powerful in one social or cultural setting may be persuasively impotent in another. Theories of knowledge following traditional epistemological boundaries aim to represent modes of justification which are universal and timeless – in other words, contextless. I am arguing for a more pragmatic approach to knowledge which inherently accommodates its contextual and variable character. Brown (1987) argues forcefully for such contextualization in his discussion of the rules and assumptions governing domains of discourse: To elicit credence . . . representations not only must have an internal consistency, but in addition must be consistent with the rules and assumptions that govern that domain of discourse. . . . Such rules and assumptions are not merely abstract universal norms, as they might appear to be if formulated in purely logical, rather than rhetorical language. Such rules and assumptions involve interactive social processes, communitarian conventions, historically inherited protocols, and political power . . . claims . . . are authorized by their respective rules of perception and interpretation. It is according to the vivacity of a representation that the alternative explanations or descriptions advanced within their auspices are judged to be believable, adequate, true, or compelling. These criteria of truth are aesthetic and political – that is, rhetorical (Brown, 1987, pp. 86–87). (c) A brief example: parapsychology and the symbolic universe of science Latour (1987) reports that it is during scientific controversies when scientific rhetoric becomes most apparent. Many scientific controversies involve boundary-work (Gieryn, 1983; forthcoming) wherein scientists demarcate real science from non-science. One interesting example, the case of parapsychology and its status in and as science, has been well documented (Allison, 1979; Collins and Pinch, 1979; McClenon, 1984). The case involves a situation in which researchers in a discipline vigorously attempt to follow all the accepted canons of science, but are still rejected by scientists. Collins and Pinch (1979) describe the strategies used by established scientists to disavow parapsychological phenomena, ranging from ‘blank refusal to believe’ to ‘attacks on methodological precepts.’ From the perspective taken here what is pertinent is how the rhetoric used by scientists discrediting parapsychology is loaded with affective meaning for the symbolic universe of science. Here is a sampling of some of the statements made by scientists, assembled by Collins and Pinch (1979); the emphasized terms evoke the fundamental sentiments the speaker is attempting to confirm: It is quite clear that interest in parapsychology has been maintained by faith. People want to believe in an occult something (p. 246, emphases added). FROM LOGOS TO PATHOS IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 45 To view the modern E.S.P. movement in perspective, one must realize that it is basically a cult – a cult of the supernatural in technical dress. The perpetuation of all such cults depends ultimately on irrational beliefs and the ignoring or ‘explaining away’ of rational criticism (p. 246, emphases added). Parapsychology has, all through its history suffered from its fatal attraction for persons of unbalanced mind who seek in it their personal salvation (p. 247, emphases added). I am unwilling to accept the genuineness of any phenomenon that leans as heavily as does E.S.P. on probability arguments (p. 247, emphasis added). The parapsychologists claim that they are describing phenomena which have ‘no place in the physical world’ and present a ‘modified picture of the universe’ to which their inquiry leads (Allison, 1979, p. 282). This represents a major shake up of the rational and material symbolic universe of most scientists. As predicted by the Affect Control perspective on knowledge, the scientists will create events to restore the balance between the current situation (the scientistic claims of the parapsychologists) and their fundamental sentiments (that paranormal phenomena do not exist and have no place in the scientific enterprise).5 Those events are exemplified in the quotations from Collins’ and Pinch’s (1979) report, wherein scientists actively discredited the paranormal by associating it with the ‘irrational’ and the ‘unbalanced’. The Fact of the matter becomes, in a very ‘real’ sense, that psi-phenomena are unreal wish-dreams of misguided and illogical nonscientists. This is the Truth. This is universe-maintenance in the form of confirmation of fundamental sentiments. Appealing to culturally-based fundamental sentiments in an effective way to both maintain one’s symbolic universe as well as persuade people to knowledge. Furthermore, this example can also be interpreted as an instance of the Brown’s ‘rules and assumptions’ of a given domain. The domain of science operates according to rules and assumptions; these can be called ‘Norms of Nature.’ In the case of parapsychology, the Norms of Nature invoked by resistant scientists included such things as the ‘material’ and ‘observable’ aspect of nature – both violated by the ‘metaphysical’ subject matter of the parapsychologists. Finally, Affect Control Theory provides a mechanism for empirically measuring the rules and assumptions of a given domain. ACT is often presented using a computer program, INTERACT, which simulates interactive situations (Heise and Lewis, 1988). These simulations are drawn from structural equations which operate on measures of the affective qualities of different actors or objects. These measures have in turn been derived from studies employing semantic-differential techniques to elicit ratings on affective qualities of thousands of actors and behaviors (cf. Heise, 1979). It is possible to envision similar studies of the affective qualities of hypothesized consensual structures, enthymemes, and warrants that comprise Norms of Nature and the symbolic universe of scientists, as well as structural equations derived from these studies which could 46 MITCHELL BERBRIER approximate the conditions under which Truth is derived. In other words, it may be possible to employ positivist social science techniques to test hypotheses derived from the post-modern attack on the epistemological presumptions of positivism. TOWARD A SOCIOLOGY OF PERSUASION Academic inquiry has considered emotions to be inimical to knowledge (Furth, 9187), but evidence seems to indicate the contrary: ‘emotions may be helpful and even necessary rather than inimical to the construction of knowledge’ (Jaggar, 1989, p. 157). Within the field of social psychology, persuasion and attitude researchers, working under the banner of positivist social science, have reified the boundaries of logos and pathos in their investigations. Social psychological research would be improved and made more relevant if its mandate were reconciled with the postmodern attack on those bifurcations of Western epistemology. Persuasion psychology, thus reconstituted in a Sociology of Persuasion, could develop an empirical – perhaps even positivist – approach to the non-logical and/or pre-logical aspects of knowledge construction and dissemination. Such a course holds a promise of relevance for social psychological researchers as ‘wise counsellors’ of civic discourse, in the Merleau-Pontian framework for social planning outlined by Brown (1989). Social psychologists of persuasion would situate themselves to empower and enable social actors in civic discourse, recasting their own authoritative roles as ‘objective’ (and hence conservative) defenders of the status quo knowledges and truths, and deauthorizing (cf. Ashmore, 1989) the privileged rationalist discourses of powerful interests, simultaneously elevating the voices of Others. The preceding example illustrated that the context and circumstance under which scientists are willing to believe in truth derives not from judicious application of SCIENTIFIC methods, but rather from proximity to Norms of Nature – i.e. from judicious adherence to the symbolic universe of scientists. Prior knowledge, conceptualized as symbolic universes, constrains (as well as enables) the processing of new information. Knowledge is the result of persuasion, and the most effective persuasion is brought on by appeal to both individual and cultural sentiments. It is the strategy of persuasive appeal to sentiments which results in the intersubjective agreement necessary for what we call Knowledge and Truth. Furthermore, ACT, and the several psychological concepts discussed, provide tools for empirically assessing those shared sentiments. The guiding principles for a Sociology of Persuasion, then, are that what people know, as well as what people come to know, are products of interaction, intersubjectivity, consensus, and context, AND that this interaction, intersubjectivity, consensus, and context can be measured and analyzed in rigorous fashion. Postmodern and positivist camps in academic discourse seem to engage in monologic FROM LOGOS TO PATHOS IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 47 claims-making with each other (Shotter, this volume). This essay attempted to engage the two in a dialogue, and to formulate a Sociology of Persuasion that could empirically assess – even in a positivist framework of inquiry – the insights of postmodern regarding the cultural and affective bases to Knowledge and True Truth. If rhetoric, argumentation, and other approaches to persuasive discourse are in part attempts to confirm one’s own and/or others’ symbolic universe(s), then rhetorical claims will be most persuasive to those whose symbolic universe(s) are confirmed by it. The corollary is that failure to successfully address the symbolic universe of the audience will doom any persuasive strategy. This resonates well with Shotter’s (this volume) distinction between monologically and dialogically formulated claims. 6 When you have, as Shotter describes, rational monologically formulated sets of claims, coherent only within their own logical systems, what you have are simply confirmations of one symbolic universe. The utter failure to address the symbolic universe of the Other is absolutely institutionalized and embedded in our modes of public (and academic) discourse. But logos and pathos are distinct only in philosophical space; in the social world, intersubjective agreement is always achieved patho-logically, in cultural space and affective context. Effective dialogue requires at the very least recognition, and at best deep understanding and explicit attention to the multiple intersubjective symbolic universes which engage one another in civic discourse. NOTES 1 This paper developed out of work and discussions with David Heise, to whom I am also grateful for comments on earlier drafts. Much thanks also to Richard H. Brown for several very helpful suggestions. 2 From the film Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory, written and produced by Randall Balmer, and adapted from his book of the same tittle. 3 In using the term ‘motivation to conform’ I am borrowing the terminology of Affect Control Theory (ACT). ACT holds that people are motivated to confirm fundamental sentiments. In this scheme, fundamental sentiments are one (though perhaps the central) element of more general symbolic universes. ACT is discussed further below. 4 Such a perspective assumes the primacy of affect versus cognition (cf. Zajonc, 1989, 1984). 5 This perspective, although formulated on the conservational character of knowledge, still accounts for the ‘rapid pace of change’ and scientific innovation. The structural equations of Affect Control Theory model cumulating knowledge whereby fundamental sentiments about things are constantly being altered by ‘transient sentiments,’ that is by feelings evoked in ongoing interactional settings. By this accounting, change in knowledges – scientific or otherwise – is ordinarily a gradual process, whereby fundamental sentiments are slightly altered by the transient sentiments. The more transient sentiments point in one direction, the more likely will new ‘knowledge’ be of that character. Indeed, the process of scientific persuasion documented by Latour (1987) would support this as a general model: even if scientists are proposing ‘radically’ new ideas, they must ground these ideas in accepted canons (Latour refers to this as ‘captation’); there are no such things as knowledges in science; 48 MITCHELL BERBRIER rather the norm is knowledge that adds a little around the edges. The Kuhnian perception of anomalies building up gradually offers further support. Thus the so-called rapid pace of change in science is fundamentally delimited to change within the symbolic-universe of scientists. A more detailed discussion of how the Affect Control Perspective bears upon this issue is beyond the scope of this essay, but see discussions of transient sentiments in Heise, 1979. 6 Here I am trying to fit the symbolic universe I have herein constructed with that of those who are comfortable with Shotter’s claims, and in so doing building an actor-network to captate my facts (Latour, 1987). But by saying just that, by telling you that, I am undermining my author-ity, employing a literary form that exposes my rhetorical strategies (Ashmore, 1989). But still, this is useful to my enterprise, for as I discuss below, de-authorization, whether by New Literary Forms or a Sociology of Persuasion, can improve the quality of discourse both in the academy and in civil society. 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