By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm:
It’s an unfamiliar word, “entrain,” but here’s what it means. In the hotel bar where I’m writing this, there are two conversations going on. At a table toward the back, two women are having what looks like a serious conversation. They’re leaning in towards each other at identical angles, both dropping their chins in the same way, both speaking in the same quiet tone, and both mirroring facial expressions that show concern, then warmth, then humor. Meanwhile, up at the bar, two men are blowing off some steam. Both sit with their backs to the bar as they gaze around the room. Both have their chests out and shoulders back in the same expansive posture. Both are joking in the same loud voice, and both share the same booming laugh at the same times. When one says something funny, the other one repeats it. In each conversation, the two speakers have synced their own verbal, vocal, and physical communication styles. They’ve unconsciously shared these behaviors in order to create a joint style that sets the tone for the conversation.
That is what it means for communicators to entrain. The definition in a communication context is to match one’s behavior to the other in communication. In my post earlier this week, I wrote about attorneys and judges adapting the same disfluencies (“um”) and that being predictive of the judge’s likelihood of agreeing with the advocate. That is an example of entrainment, but it goes beyond being simply a tactic of communication. The process is a basic building block of communication, even if it is one that we aren’t generally consciously aware of. It is also an important principle of human influence. To reach across the barrier that separates us humans from each other, we use physical and verbal mimicry to send and receive basic messages of credibility, likeability, and common purpose. Litigators and others who persuade through an oral medium should be aware of this principle, so this post aims to provide a simple introduction, as well as a few thoughts on litigation contexts where it applies.
The specialized term is warranted, because to “entrain” means more than to “adapt.” It is not just a matter of consciously adapting a behavior because we feel a given audience expects it. Instead, it is a more subtle process of coming into sync. So why do communicators tend to sync their style and substance? The answer seems to go back a long way. Alex Pentland of MIT’s Media Lab wrote that “social species are likely to develop honest signals, a reliable communication system that serves to coordinate behavior between individuals” (Pentland, 2010). Entrainment is one such set of systems that “seem to be evolutionarily predating language” (Benus, Levitan & Hirschberg, 2012). As a foundational communication tool, entrainment is a powerful force.
One feature of entrainment is that it is not always conscious. That doesn’t, however, mean that we should ignore it. Instead, persuaders should be open to it, and sometimes even consciously focused on entraining their form and content to a persuasive target. Here are a few settings where litigators might do that.
Entrain During Interviews
Of course, litigators don’t just persuade and influence when they’re in front of a jury. Meetings and interviews with clients and witnesses represent an important setting where it helps to be in sync with your target. It helps to put the other person at ease if you want to get more information and work more effectively. In a psychiatric setting, the technique is called “mirroring.” The analyst consciously copies the interview subject’s behavior. Lawyers don’t practice psychiatry of course, but the goals can come pretty close at times, and there is no reason attorneys shouldn’t try some of the same techniques.
Entrain During Examination
Anything that is a good interviewing strategy is also probably a good technique for setting a tone with your own witness in direct examination. There is one situation where an understanding of entrainment is a good idea for witnesses as well. Benus, Levitan and Hirschberg (2012) also write of the tendency to “dis-entrain” or to “consciously decrease the similarity to people in order to increase their social distance to the interlocutor or to show a negative attitude toward the interlocutor.” That is a bad idea for witnesses, no matter how much the opposing counsel is disliked. Jurors and judges need to see the same person in the witness box in direct and cross. If the witness even subtly becomes more hostile in cross (e.g., through distancing behaviors like dis-entraining) then credibility comes into question.
Entrain During Argument
In the article I have referenced above, the focus is on entrainment during Supreme Court arguments and the conclusion is that a stylistic sync (on something as basic as saying “um”) predicts success for the advocate. There is reason to believe that the benefits of syncing at the level of substance are even greater. Going all the way back to the rhetorical idea of the enthymeme, for example, the principle is that the best argument is the one in which your audience participates. Instead of just giving your target reasons, it is better to build your argument by adding to the reasons your target already believes. Viewed this way, the enthymeme is simply an entrained argument. Beyond borrowing premises from your audience, it also is effective to draw from the same linguistic terms. By using the same “God Terms” and “Devil Terms,” for example, you are showing your affinity for your target and speaking in a language that will resonate.
The habit of entrainment provides a good reminder that persuasion is best approached, not as a speaker’s creation, but as a speaker and target’s co-creation. Like the conversations in the hotel bar mentioned above, comfort, trust, and influence are all a product of first getting in sync.
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Other Posts on Finding Common Ground With an Audience:
- Persuade With Participation, Part One: Learn from Early Rhetoric
- Convert Your Conspiracy Theorists: Research Shows it Can Be Done
- Remember, it’s a Sidebar, Not a Bar Fight: Reason With, Not At, Your Adversary and Judge
- Avoid Condescension and Other Sins of Legal Argument: Know Your ‘Second Persona’
Benus, S., Levitan, R., & Hirschberg, J. (2012). Entrainment in spontaneous speech: the case of filled pauses in Supreme Court hearings. In 3rd IEEE Conference on Cognitive Infocommunications, Kosice, Slovakia.
Pentland, A. (2010). To signal is human. American scientist, 98(3), 204-211.
Photo Credit: Jordi Payà, Flickr Creative Commons