I have been following the work of Anat Schenker-Osorio, hereafter ASO, for quite some time. But lately I’ve become more of a fan. I found an interview with her from “The Zero Hour with RJ Eskow” podcast from about three years ago. It covered a fair amount of territory for a short interview, and I thought it be worth summarizing and commenting on to help with my own clarity of thinking as I try to synthesize lots of cognitive psychology material around persuasion and changing peoples’ minds. So here we go!
First, Anat Shenker-Osorio is the author of the book “Don’t Buy It: The Trouble with Talking Nonsense About the Economy.” She is also a consultant and advisor in the field of communication and strategic communications, and the host of the podcast that was called “Brave New Words,” and is now called “Words to Win By.”
As has been said many times by many people, our choice of words when making our persuasive arguments matters. It matters a lot. She gives the example here of the difference between talking about the price of a prescription drug versus the cost of a prescription drug. She points that cost implies inherent value while price is simply an arbitrary number assigned by typically, someone trying to sell the item. Cost implies an inherent value and perhaps the cost of producing something. (She later mentions talking about insurance corporations rather than insurance companies as another example.)
This argument ties into another discussion I have recently become interested in from Prof. Mariana Mazzucato, who argues that without a clear understanding of value creation, we risk allowing value extraction to masquerade as value creation, leading to a distorted perception of productivity and value in the economy. In other words, in the same pharmacy example, there is value creation, but it lies with the underlying research, typically done in federally funded institutions, and with the actual whitecoat scientists in the pharmaceutical companies. Contrarily, the value extraction in the industry comes from the administrative and executive overload of trying to name prices that are extraordinarily out of step with the actual cost and value of a product.
ASO argues that the “way we describe these policies makes a measurable difference in terms of both who is persuaded to understand and support them, and equally, if not more importantly, how we galvanize are base to repetition so that our version of the story is the one that’s actually able to dominate” in public discourse. If there is one thing the Democrats are bad at, it’s staying on message and repeating the message ad nauseum. We have a lot to learn from our political opponents on this!
She continues that it’s not simply about convincing people that our ideas are better, but it is contending with the cynicism of the public, particularly in healthcare, that change is even possible. She notes that they are also scared to death of getting rid of the devil they know.
She then makes two arguments about this:
- Describing policy and making cogent arguments will never overcome the fear of uncertainty.
- Arguing for the financial and economic benefits for something that is essentially an argument about our morality as a nation is never going to work.
The uncertainty argument is critically important. Jonah Berger, in The Catalyst, Chapter 4, reviews the literature on loss or risk aversion. People really dislike uncertainty. Uncertainty undermines actively making changes and can halt the decision-making process entirely. “[W]hile uncertainty is great for the status quo, or whatever people were doing before, it’s terrible for changing minds.” “Status quo bias” or favoring something simply because it’s this certain thing that we already know and have is powerful. As Uwe Reinhardt put it long ago, “everybody’s second choice is the status quo!” Therefore, it wins. More here.
The second part of her argument is an echo of a chapter in Dan Ariely’s book, Predictably Irrational. In Chapter 4, “The Cost of Social Norms,” he describes how differently we process decisions based on whether the appeal is to “market norms” or “social norms.” He gives the example of asking a lawyer to do pro bono work for a good cause versus asking a lawyer to do work at discounted rate for good cause. They will nearly always do the former and almost never the latter. Once a rate of exchange is applied to the transaction, it becomes a market transaction and the appeal of doing something as a social good is out the window.
So ASO’s point about not making the typical liberal nitty-gritty detailed policy argument about the market benefits of universal healthcare is spot on. The argument has to turn on social justice and moral norms.
She further emphasizes that point by noting, as would George Lakoff and Drew Westen, that when you make the arguments as financial and economic you activate the parts of the brain, the neurologic pathways that favor conservative arguments of fear of the unknown. And besides, as far as energizing the progressive base, it really isn’t about the economic arguments, even as persuasive as they are, it really is about the moral argument. I know it is for me.
She gives three examples of progressive campaigns that she participated in including the fight for abortion rights in Ireland, the campaign for prime minister in New Zealand, and an anti-racism campaign in Minnesota. She points out that messaging around being against things really doesn’t work well. Progressives need to figure out how to forcefully state what we are in favor of. “Abolish ICE,” for example. It is better as an argument to “create fair immigration process that respects all families.”
One of her central points tying these three campaigns together is the idea of the inevitability of change. Rather than trying to convince people that change was necessary, argue that change is necessary and inevitable. In the abortion example particularly, this was about getting the change over with, because it painted Ireland as backwards and out of step with the modern world. I think the same argument applies directly to America and universal healthcare. We will eventually do this, what are we waiting for? It makes us look bad: selfish, uncaring and backwards. We should lean into that.
Anand Giridharadas in an appearance promoting his new book, The Persuaders, makes a good case for reframing Medicare-For-All as “FreedomCare” in a recent “Off-Line with John Favreau” podcast:
Let’s help people see themselves in Medicare for all. I would call it FreedomCare. I think it’s ridiculous that it’s that it’s called Medicare for all. Why is it named after a government program instead of a widely held American value that would be an example of sticking to the ambitious demand, but saying what are some other ways of talking about it, right?
A language of freedom is a much more resonant language in this country. Healthcare is a human right is something that people – progressives – often say about Medicare for all well that’s actually not a particularly resonant frame in America because it’s not like the people who don’t like universal healthcare also don’t like human rights, right?
What I think universal healthcare would be in truth would be a massive expansion of human freedom in this country. Like I don’t want my boss dictating whether my kid gets care if, heaven forbid, my kid gets cancer. Did you want your boss having that decision over you, right? Yeah, like I don’t want to not pursue my business idea because I have to stick to a stupid job for healthcare.
It’s amazing to me how little progressives speak in this kind of language of personal Liberty around the stuff. That’s the kind of persuasion that I think the characters I’m writing about are interested in.
But let me tell you where she really made me a fan: she wants us to name the villains! This is something I have been pushing in my circles for quite some time, so it is great to hear it validated! She talks about the positive messaging and to say what we are for, but she doesn’t discount the importance of name checking the problem and deliberately naming the villains! She uses the example of the 2009 housing crisis: people didn’t lose their homes, their homes were taken from them by Jamie Dimon and J.P. Morgan Chase and all their collaborators. We have to lose the passive construction of our arguments and assign deliberate causation to the actions of the “malefactors of great wealth.”
There are hundreds of ways that this will work in healthcare. In fact, if you ask Chat GPT who the five highest-paid health plan insurance corporation executives are, it’ll tell you.
1. Bruce Broussard, Humana – $17.3 million
2. Joseph Swedish, Anthem – $13.1 million
3. Stephen Hemsley, UnitedHealth Group – $12.4 million
4. Kenneth Burdick, Cigna – $11.6 million
5. Andrew Slavitt, Optum – $10.8 million
Her final point is based on a quote from Keith Ellison, Atty. Gen. of Minnesota who said, “power knows exactly what it’s doing.” The argument is that speaking truth to power is not enough. The goal is to achieve enough power and force change. FDR allegedly said to a group of activists, “You’ve convinced me. Now go out and make me do it.”
Let’s do that.