You can say it until you're blue in the face...

I think I've mentioned it before but I have a lose connection with the team that delivers the UK Chartered Institute of PR's on-line Diploma qualification.  It's a simple but impressive operation that allows people around the world to work towards a valuable qualification.

One of the benefits of this connection is that I get to see the debates that take place on the course blog and there's been an interesting one this week about crime statistics.

The issue is that even though crime levels in the UK are dropping (as far as you can tell when the government continually dabbles in the way the data is collected) the general fear of crime continues to rise.  Other people have weighed in with examples like improvements in healthcare provision not being appreciated by the public at large, or rail passengers refusing to believe that services have actually improved in the face of overwhelming evidence.

Some of this must be attributed to the 'world's going to hell' view of the aging population (as I age I have noticed that teenagers are more slovenly, shopkeepers more rude etc...).

But reading the debate made me dig out some old textbooks on cognitive consistency and selective exposure (well just the one actually).  The essential point is that we'll tend to avoid exposure to media and information if it challenges our view of the world.  And we'll actually reinterpret what we see to make it fit with our prejudices (ask a police officer about discrepancies in descriptions given by witnesses if you want to see this one in action).

And we've all seen the tendency with internal communications when employees are willing to believe all sorts of odd rumours.  How often have attempts to change a policy at work been immediately seen as an attempt to reduce wages, cut conditions or make job cuts?

The thought occurred to me about how much we refer to this sort of work when we're planning messaging.  I suspect most of us know it in the back of our minds - why else would we have such a fetish for face to face communications over 'broadcast' media at work?

And I wonder about the evidence to suggest that you can force people to change their own internal cognitive models - the fundamental objective of much of change communications.

I'd be really interested if anyone could point me in the direction of a respectable recent study...

However, overall the thought I keep coming back to is how little of this stuff is understood by the people we work with.  A chum told me the other day of his surprise at having to explain to a senior HR colleague that a poster campaign was less likely to be effective in changing behaviours than a programme that involved personal discussion and debate.

I am also thrown when I discover I'm talking to someone who thinks that a good old fashioned video/voicemail/canteen tray placemat is sufficient to make a difference.  I sometimes struggle to work out where to pitch the argument - too low and I'm patronising, too detailed and I sound like an academic wannabe!

So PR people have the problem of colleagues who just want to pump out facts and assume that a reasonable mind will be swayed by the weight of their evidence.  Likewise our colleagues think that we can do the same - perhaps we can highlight certain facts and maybe downplay others, after all isn't that what 'spin' is all about?

Good tips most welcome on explaining that it's a bit more fundamental than that....

Liam

Comments

[Sue]

Here's my tip - tell people a story that gives them the experience for themselves. The one I often use is when someone came on a Black Belt from overseas and was talking about a very peaceful village they'd visited the day before. It was very pretty, we should all visit, etc. etc.

Someone asked the name of the village, and it was ... Hungerford. For those of you from outside the UK, a guy walked down the street in Hungerford with a gun randomly shooting everyone about 16 years ago - a huge shock, a major news story, and now, if someone mentions the name, your mind instantly flicks to the guy with the gun. From the looks I saw on people's faces at this Black Belt, that's exactly what happened.

Lockerbie (bombing) or Hillsborough (people suffocated at a football match - a particularly vivid one for me because it's in my home town and I can still remember what I was doing when I heard the news) are similarly horrible examples where my brain instantly flicks a switch and brings up its script when the place names are mentioned.

Whenever I tell the Hungerford story and paint the picture of a pretty, sleepy village etc. etc. and then come out with the name, I wait for people to recoil and then ask them why. At which point they start talking about the guy with a gun. I ask how long ago it happened, and they talk about 'ooh, must be 10, 20 years'. And then I point out how instantly their brain fetched out its own image, which was totally contrary to the picture I'd been trying to paint a minute before.

Usually it's a bit of an 'aha' moment for people.

[Timm]

You're asking for studies: I would look into cognitive psychology, especially learning psychology. One of the fundamental concepts in this area is "mental models", i.e. the internal, simplified concept of how something works. Learning happens by building up or changing these mental models, and analogies are a good way to do this. The classic example is how to explain how electrical current works, and depending on the problem at hand, it makes more sense to describe current as water flowing through pipes or as people walking through corridors. In the end, all research is saying is: "ask people to look at a problem from a different angle, and it will change their understanding". What we can learn from it is the use of good analogies and examples.

[Marc Wright]

Some good practice is getting through. A Marketing Manager was talking to her IC manager yesterday about the possible overlap of messages between a customer event and a roadshow where some people would be in both audiences.

The Marketing Manager said: "You know - I think we should change our policy here and not worry about repeating ourselves, since they rarely remember it the first time."

The IC Manager demurred, but then changed her mind when faced with the evidence that it takes 8 OTS's (opportunities to see) before an advert is remembered.

Why should internal comms be any more memorable?

[Liam]

I think it's a good point Marc makes to look for examples from other areas to make the point (like quoting the OTC example to the marketeer).

And I'm with Timm on the understanding some basic cognitive psychology (I say basic because that's about my level!) - then at least you know there is some evidence to back up your point (rather than rely on some of the mumbo jumbo that gets passed off as insight in our profession).

Liam

[Heather Yaxley]

I find the concept of cognitive dissonance and the Elaboration Likelihood Model by Petty and Cacioppo are both useful here also. (Although I probably wouldn't cite the terms at managers)

Getting people to understand how their minds like to be in harmony and how we will alter our perception of a situation to feel comfortable is helpful. You can then look at helping people to get that sense of harmony whilst accepting a change in the situation.

Similarly the idea of how we tend to process more superficially these days rather than making more indepth reflective decisions (from ELM) helps explain why complex arguments are often rejected in favour of more simplistic ones.

[Liam]

Elaboration Likihood ...http://www.ciadvertising.org/student_account/fall_01/adv382j/cmoore/elaboration_likelihood_model.htm