Winning Hearts & Minds - Fri. 10am
Changing behavior by altering feelings and beliefs

Presenters: Hershaft, Joy

Alex Hershaft, PhD
Farm Animal Rights Movement, www.farmusa.org

Click here for a formatted version of Alex's outline.

WINNING HEARTS AND MINDS

Animal liberation from human oppression can be achieved only by modifying human behavior. Here are some common techniques for doing just that.

Principles of Behavior Modification

• Approaches: direct (coercion), intellectual (changing beliefs), emotional (affecting feelings); works because people strive to reconcile feelings, beliefs, and actions
• Defining objectives and tactics: what do we want and how will we get it
• Assessing the audience: knowledge, beliefs/feelings, concerns/desires, physical state
• Conscious mind: filters and interprets our experiences and stores them in subconscious mind; discriminating, analytical, single thought; like CPU
• Subconscious mind: stores perceptions of experiences filtered/interpreted by CM; also re-peated notions; unable to discriminate between fantasy and reality, large storage; like HD

Direct Behavior Modification

• Done through application of power
• Types of power (positive/negative): physical (liberation/jail, relief/pain), economic (reward/bribe/fine, patronizing/boycott, productivity/strike), political (ability to influence votes and workers), social (praise/condemnation, love/withdrawal, peer pressure), religious (redemption/sanction), virtual (connections, appearance, carriage)
• Initially resented, but then accepted (abolition, hate crimes, labor contracts)
• Quick and effective, but requires power which we and the animals have in short supply

Emotional Behavior Modification (Appeal to Feelings)

• Most important and always applicable; note terms: image, intuition, gut reaction, vibes
• Appeals to SM, so uses repetition and association to bypass CM; form over content
• Source likable: similar (appearance, ethnicity, geography, gender, profession) and friendly (humble, humorous)
• Content should appeal to audience’s desires, concerns/fears or use repetition, language, imagery
• Techniques: learning to be liked, using language, humor (holds up mirror to human failings without offending, defuses tension, makes likable)

Intellectual Behavior Modification (Appeal to Beliefs)

• Intellectual BM appeals to conscious mind, so must pass analytical test; content over form
• Source credible: appearance, podium, intro, credentials, no ax, witness
• Content credible: similar (agreement, positioning, menu), logical, authoritative (jargon, ref-erences, precedent, personal experience), accurate (truthful, precise – 99.44%)
• Steps: establishing similarity rules, constructing arguments, learning jargon, conducting re-search, getting credentials or quotes, appearing and sounding credible

Positioning

• Definition: placement in a framework designed to influence public perception of subject
• Positioning shapes perception of AR (assertive/defensive, outsider/similar, terrorist/idealist)
• Gauge audience, stress similarities, enlarge spectrum, or change menu; seize opportunities