By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm:
Over the past week, the phrase “beyond words” has been a common way of describing the nation’s reaction to the murder of 20 young children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. In a way, it is literally beyond words, because what dominates our thoughts is the mental image of a class of terrified first graders killed in a spray of bullets from a semi-automatic assault rifle. In the days following this tragedy, there are noticeable differences that we didn’t see in the public’s responses after the Aurora, Colorado theater shooting, or the attack on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (both of which we’ve discussed in this blog). In each of those incidents, the killings were followed by expressions of shock from public officials, as well as by somewhat vague commitments to work toward greater levels of public safety. Following the Sandy Hook killings, however, there is a palpable “enough is enough” reaction that appears to be backed up by a much greater public willingness to consider policy alternatives. Recent polling even suggests an attitudinal shift in the wake of last week’s tragedy, and already the Vice President has been asked to lead a new Gun Violence Task Force with the mission of crafting legislative proposals by next month.
If the reaction lasts, Sandy Hook may become a watershed moment in the country’s judgment on the place of guns in society, particularly the role of highly lethal military-style assault weapons. But those who work in the realms of public attitudes (including social scientists and attorneys) might wonder, why is it different this time? Clearly, the deaths of so many very young children are responsible for much of the psychological shift. But it isn’t just a logical or even an emotional response to the tragedy that drives us — it is a visual response. Based on a recent study on moral judgment (Amit & Greene, 2011), our ability to picture an event mediates our moral judgments about that event. Events which are more likely to be pictured are more likely to result in severe moral evaluations. Persuaders, in other words, need to be concerned not just with reasons, and not just with feelings, but with the picture they create in the minds of listeners. This post will take a look at the study and offer a few thoughts on trial attorneys’ efforts to visualize the case story.
Picture This: Moral Judgment
As covered in a recent story on NPR, this line of research relies on short scenarios. As told by Harvard psychologist Joshua Greene, here is one:
A trolley is headed toward five people, and the only way you can save them is to hit a switch that will turn the trolley away from the five and onto a side track, but if you turn it onto the side track, it will run over one person.
In response to that story, most participants will make the uncomfortable but utilitarian choice to turn down the side track and kill one person, saving five. But consider another version of the story:
This time, you’re on a footbridge, in between the oncoming trolley and the five people. And next to you is a big person wearing a big backpack. And the only way you can save those five people is to push this big guy off of the footbridge so that he lands on the tracks. And he’ll get squashed by the train; you sort of use him as a trolley stopper. But you can save the five people.
If we apply the same logic from the first scenario, there’s no change: The large backpack fellow goes off the bridge, one dies, and five are saved. But that isn’t what people do. Most opt not to push the person next to them, and instead doom the five. There is an emotional difference, of course, because pushing people to their death feels different from just flicking a switch, even if the result is the same. But Greene and research colleague Elinor Amit thought something else was at work: The way we picture the dilemma matters. “A switch” is abstract, but the set up involving the foot bridge, the tracks, and the large person with a backpack call for, or even require, visualization. In that case, it could be the picture that makes the difference. “Emotional responses don’t just pop out of nowhere,” Greene explains to NPR, “They have to be triggered by something. And one possibility is that you hear the words describing some event, you picture that event in your mind, and then you respond emotionally to that picture.”
To test that theory, Greene and Amit (2011) conducted an experiment. First they provided research participants with moral dilemmas and found that, as predicted, they evoked strong mental images which in turn led to moral judgments. In addition, those who were most likely to think visually were also most likely to make emotional moral judgments. But to take it one more step, the researchers decided to add a trick: They distracted people during that task by asking them to visualize something unrelated instead. Once it became harder to “see” the dilemma, the participants were less likely to make emotional decisions. Instead, the inability to visualize led them back to the simple and logical utilitarian method of calculation (like story one above).
Providing further explanation of these results in the NPR interview, Elinor Amit contrasts one additional scenario: a drone strike on a target, or a terrorist ax murder in a bus. In the bus attack, “The story produces a movie in our heads. We can see blood everywhere. We can hear people screaming. We don’t have to think at all. It feels terribly wrong.” In the drone attack though, we might see “a missile hurtling toward a target. At the center of the crosshairs, an explosion. There’s dust billowing everywhere.” The ax attack is likely to be less lethal but more pictorial. In contrast, at least based on what we’re likely to see of it, the drone strike is somewhat abstract. And drone strikes, even when they kill civilians, are more likely to be supported than terrorist attacks.
The implication is one that is critical for persuaders: We are simply more likely to be moved by what we can easily picture.
So what pictures are you creating?
For legal persuaders, a lot can hang in the balance. How do we frame the controversy so that fact finders are likely to make the most favorable moral judgments? I’ve written previously that case stories require visualization, and the stories that are more easily seen are also more likely to be viewed as true. But when visualization is used as a strategy to influence moral judgment, there are two different paths we can take in completing the picture.
1. Negative Visualization. This means creating a picture of the evil that you are trying to respond to or avoid. This is a critical component of the “Reptile” perspective counseling plaintiffs to frame their case in order to position the defendant’s actions as a threat to jurors’ own safety and the safety of others. While there are reasons to doubt whether this works by appealing to jurors’ primitive reptile mind, it is powerful nonetheless to paint a picture of a danger that your fact finders will want to address through a verdict: a faulty product that continues to wreak havoc, or a future patient put at risk.
2. Positive Visualization. While negative visualization can create action by tapping into fear, it is also possible that fear can lead to denial or avoidance (if the threat is too great). An alternative is to visualize the positive: the safer product, now on the market and protecting its users; or the patient who who is in better hands with great prospects for improved health. Taking an idea from the study reported above, one defense strategy in responding to a case in which there is already a dominant negative mental picture is to encourage jurors to visualize something else, something more positive. As we’ve written before, the positive message can be more effective in many situations. Similarly, a positive image can serve as a greater motivator in telling your decision maker what they are voting for and not just against.
Of course, one strategy is to use both: contrasting mental images in order to move jurors from a very bad picture to a better picture. That contrast is what we understand as progress. In the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings, that could be what the public is looking for as well.
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Other Posts on Imagery:
- Talk to the Eyes: If It Can’t Be Visualized, It’s Not a Story
- Become a Two Minute Expert: Robert Reich Explains What’s Wrong With the Economy
- Careful, Your Animation May Be Promoting Hindsight
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Amit E, & Greene JD (2012). You see, the ends don’t justify the means: visual imagery and moral judgment. Psychological science, 23 (8), 861-8 PMID: 22745347
Image Credit: FFFFound.com