Download From Logos to Pathos in Social Psychology and Academic

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. See Ashmore (1989) for details and
endless regressions.
REFERENCES
Allison, P.: 1979, ‘Experimental Parapsychology as a Rejected Science’, in Roy Wallis (ed.),
On the Margins of Science: The Social Construction of Rejected Knowledge, Sociological
Review Monograph 27, 271–291.
Ashmore, M.: 1989, The Reflexive Thesis: Wrighting Sociology of Scientific Knowledge,
University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Baker, S.: 1990, ‘Reflection, Doubt, and the Place of Rhetoric in Postmodern Social Theory’,
Sociological Theory 8, 232–245.
Bartlett, F. C.: 1932, Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Berger, P. and T. Luckmann: 1967, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the
Sociology of Knowledge, Doubleday-Anchor, New York.
Best, J.: 1987, ‘Rhetoric in Claims-Making: Constructing the Missing Children Problem’,
Social Problems 34, 101–121.
Bloor, D.: 1991, Knowledge and Social Imagery, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Bower, G. H.: 1981, ‘Emotional Mood and Memory’, American Psychologist 36, 129–
148.
Brown, R. H.: 1990, ‘Rhetoric, Textuality, and the Postmodern Trun in Sociological Theory’,
Sociological Theory 8, 188–197.
Brown, R. H.: 1989, Social Science as Civic Discourse: Essays on the Invention, Legitimation,
and Uses of Social Theory, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Brown, R. H.: 1987, Social as Text: Essays on Rhetoric, Reason, and Reality, University of
Chicago Press, Chicago.
Cantor, N., W. Mischel and J. Schwartz: 1982, ‘Social Knowledges: Structure, Content, Use,
and Abuse’, in Albert H. Hastorf and Alice M. Isen (eds.), Cognitive Social Psychology,
Elsevier North-Holland, New York, 33–72.
Chaiken, S. and C. Stangor: 1987, ‘Attitudes and Attitude Change’, Annual Review of
Psychology 38, 575–630.
Collins, H. M. and T. Pinch: 1979, ‘The Construction of the Paranormal: Nothing Unscientific is Happening’, in Roy Wallis (ed.), On the Margins of Science: The Social
Construction of Rejected Knowledge, Sociological Review Monography 27, 237–270.
Festinger, L.: 1957, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, Evanston, Row, Peterson, IL.
Fuller, S.: 1988, Social Epistemology, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN.
Furth, H.: 1987, Knowledge as Desire: An Essay on Freud and Piaget, Columbia University
Press, New York.
Gieryn, T. F.: Forthcoming, ‘Boundaries of Science’, in Sheila Jasanoff, Gerald Markle,
FROM LOGOS TO PATHOS IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
49
Trevor Pinch and James Petersen (eds.), Handbook on Science, Technology and Society,
Sage, Newbury Park, CA.
Gieryn, T. F.: 1983, ‘Boundary-work and the Demaraction of Science from Non-science:
Strains and Interest in Professional Ideologies of Scientists’, American Sociological
Review 48, 781–795.
Gross, A.: 1990, The Rhetoric of Science, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Heise, D. R.: 1987, ‘Affect Control Theory: Concepts and Models’, Journal of Mathematical
Sociology 13, 1–33.
Heise, D. R.: 1986, ‘Modeling Symbolic Interaction’, in S. Lindenberg, J. S. Coleman, and
S. Novak (eds.), Approaches to Social Theory, Russell Sage Foundation, New York.
Heise, D. R.: 1979, Understanding Events: Affect and the Construction of Social Action,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Heise, D. R.: 1977, ‘Social Action as the Control of Affect’, Behavioral Science 22, 163–
177.
Heise D. R. and E. Lewis: 1988, Introduction to Interact, National Collegiate Software
Clearinghouse, Raleigh, N.C.
Holland, M.: 1990, Beliefs Based on Emotional Reception: Their Formation, Justification
and Truth, Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University.
Jaggar, A. M.: 1989, ‘Love and Knowledge: Emotion in Feminist Epistemology’, Inquiry 32,
151–176.
Klandermans, B.: 1992, ‘The Social Construction of Protest and Multiorganizational Fields’,
in Aldon Morris and Carol McClurg Mueller (eds.), Frontiers of Social Movement Theory,
Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 77–103.
Klumpp, J. F.: In this volume, ‘Freedom and Responsibility in Constructing Public Life:
Toward a Revised Ethic of Discourse’.
Kuhn, T: 1970/1962, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press,
Chicago.
Latour, B.: 1987, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society,
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Larson, C.: 1989, Persuasion: Reception and Responsibility, 5e, Wadsworth, Belmont, CA.
Mannheim, K.: 1936, Ideology and Utopia, Harcourt, Brace and Co. – Harvest Books, New
York.
Markus, H. and R. B. Zajonc: 1985, ‘The Cognitive Perspective in Social Psychology’, in
Lindsey Gradiner and Elliot Aronson (eds.), Handbook of Social Psychology (vol. 1),
Random House, New York, 137–229.
McClenon, J.: 1984, Deviant Science: The Case of Parapsychology, University of
Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
Merton, K.: 1957, Social Theory and Social Structure, Free Press, New York.
Miller, G. and J. A. Holstein (eds): 1993, Constructionist Controversies: Issues in Social
Problems Theory, Aldin de Gruyter, New York.
Nelson, J. S., A. Megill, and D. N. McCloskey (eds.): 1987, The Rhetoric of the Human
Sciences: Language and Argument in Scholarship and Public Affairs, University of
Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI.
Petty, R. E. and J. T. Cacippo: 1986, Communication and Persuasion: Central and Peripheral
Routes to Attitude Change, Springer-Verlag, New York.
Pollock, J. L.: 1986, Contemporary Theories of Knowledge, Hutchinson, London.
Rorty, R.: 1991, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
England.
Scott, R. L.: 1976, ‘On Viewing Rhetoric as Epistemic: Ten Years Later’, Central States
Speech Journal.
Scott, R. L.: 1967, ‘On Viewing Rhetoric as Epistemic’, Central States Speech Journal 18,
9–17.
Sherif, C. W., M. Sherif and R. E. Nebergall: 1965, Attitude and Attitude Change: The Social
Judgment-involvement Approach, W. B. Saunders and Co., Philadelphia, PA.
50
MITCHELL BERBRIER
Schneider, J. W. and J. I. Kitsuse (eds.): 1984, Studies in the Sociology of Social Problems,
Ablex, Norwood, NJ.
Shotter, J.: In this volume, ‘On a Different Ground: From Contests Between Monolgoues to
Dialgoical Contest’.
Simons, H. W.: 1989, Rhetoric in the Human Sciences, Sage, London.
Snow, D. and R. Benford: 1992, ‘Master Frames and Cycles of Protest’, in Aldon Morris
and Carol McClurg Mueller (eds.), Frontiers of Social Movement Theory, Yale University
Press, New Haven, CT, 133–155.
Spector, M. and J. I. Kitsuse: 1977, Constructing Social Problems, Cummings, Menlo Park,
CA.
Toulmin, S.: [1958] 1964, The Uses of Argument, Camrbidge University Press, Cambridge,
England.
Zajonc, B.: 1984, ‘On the Primacy of Affect’, American Psychologist 39, 117–123.
Zajonc, B.: 1980, ‘Feeling and Thinking: Preferences Need No Inferences’, American
Psychologists 35, 151–175.