Rondeau's Roundtable

Senior administrators, admissions officers and college marketers frequently have to persuade others to agree and act on their point of view. At times that can prove extremely difficult. Senior staff members may want to include important new initiatives in their institution’s priorities for the coming year. Admissions officers need to influence colleagues, faculty, guidance counselors parents and students. Senior marketers are required to come up with marketing communication strategies to achieve the college’s goals and evaluate plans for individual campaigns.

In each case, the key players involved must agree. But at times agreement can be extremely hard to achieve. Sometimes it seems that people just won’t listen to good ideas. Researchers have carefully studied this phenomenon using controlled scientific experiments. The results may surprise you.

Why can’t they see the point?

Social psychologist Lee Ross’ research led him to conclude that people often express what he calls “naive realism.” Each person assumes that they perceive events as they really are. Eminent social psychologist Dr. Elliot Aronson explains that since we are sure we recognize reality, our tendency is to assume that others who are reasonable should be able to see things our way. If they don’t, we assume that they aren’t reasonable. But are we ourselves always able to see the facts clearly?

NBC news reported on a study done on “seeing the facts” in the political arena. During the 2004 presidential race between George W. Bush and John Kerry, Drew Westen, Director of Clinical Psychology at Emory University conducted a study using functional MRI (fMRI) equipment. This machine allows researchers to monitor blood flow to different parts of the brain, revealing how people’s minds react in various situations. One study found, for example, that the brain area normally involved in reading did not activate when those coping with dyslexia attempted to read. Another neural region tried to do the job for which it was not equipped (like star quarterbacks Tom Brady or Drew Brees playing nose tackle).

In Dr. Westen’s study, staunch Republicans and Democrats heard contradictory statements released by Bush or Kerry on important issues while monitored by the fMRI equipment. When hearing their own candidate’s points, supporters’ brain regions involved in reasoning and emotion lit up. They paid close attention and liked what they heard.

But when listening to the opposing candidate, the reaction was quite different. "We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," the researcher reported. People paid little attention to a viewpoint that contradicted their own. According to NBC, “The test subjects on both sides of the political aisle reached totally biased conclusions by ignoring information that could not rationally be discounted, Westen and his colleagues say…The study points to a total lack of reason in political decision-making.”

That’s a scary finding. And if people whose minds are made up can discount or ignore inconvenient facts in a crucial matter like national leadership, what hope do we have of winning colleagues to our point of view on institutional initiatives or admissions matters? Fortunately, research has not only revealed human biases, but some helpful approaches for overcoming them as well. Stay tuned.

The Allied Group is an award-winning marketing communications company that provides search, conversion,yield and stealth programs for college admissions. Allied is a leader in employing one-to-one communication programs for admissions and advancement based on important research in marketing and social psychology.