Rogerian argument

For example, they concluded that Rogerian argument is less likely to be appropriate or effective when communicating with violent or discriminatory people or institutions, in situations of social exclusion or extreme power inequality, or in judicial settings that use formal adversarial procedures.

They borrowed the term Rogerian and related ideas from the polymath Anatol Rapoport,[6][7] who was working, and doing peace activism, at the same university.

[9] The University of Texas at Austin professor Maxine Hairston then spread Rogerian argument through publications such as her textbook A Contemporary Rhetoric,[10] and other authors published book chapters and scholarly articles on the subject.

[11] He noted that they correspond to three kinds of psychotherapy or ways of changing people,[12] and he named them after Pavlov (behaviorism), Freud (psychoanalysis), and Rogers (person-centered therapy).

Young, Becker, and Pike's 1970 textbook Rhetoric: Discovery and Change said that the strategies correspond to three big assumptions about humanity, which they called three "images of man".

[13][18] Rapoport considered this strategy to be at the core of Freudian psychoanalysis but also to be present in any other kind of analysis that aims to change people's minds or behaviors by explaining how their beliefs or discourse are a product of hidden motives or mechanisms.

[20] Such "explaining away" or "debunking" of people's beliefs and behaviors may work, Rapoport said, when there is "a complete trust placed by the target of persuasion in the persuader", as sometimes occurs in teaching and psychotherapy.

"[25] Rapoport suggested three principles that characterize the Rogerian strategy: listening and making the other feel understood, finding merit in the other's position, and increasing the perception of similarity between people.

[26] A work by Carl Rogers that was especially influential in the formulation of Rogerian argument was his 1951 paper "Communication: Its Blocking and Its Facilitation",[27] published in the same year as his book Client-Centered Therapy.

[33] One idea that Rogers emphasized several times in his 1951 paper that is not mentioned in textbook treatments of Rogerian argument is third-party intervention.

[41] English professor Andrea Lunsford, responding to Young, Becker, and Pike in a 1979 article, argued that the three principles of Rogerian strategy that they borrowed from Rapoport could be found in various parts of Aristotle's writings, and so were already in the classical tradition.

[46] English professor Paul G. Bator argued in 1980 that Rogerian argument is more different from Aristotle's rhetoric than Lunsford had concluded.

[49] Professor of communication Douglas Brent said that Rogerian rhetoric is not the captatio benevolentiae (securing of good will) taught by Cicero and later by medieval rhetoricians.

[50] Brent said that superficially confusing the Rogerian strategy with such ingratiation overlooks "the therapeutic roots of Rogers' philosophy", rhetoric's power to heal both speakers and listeners, and the importance of "genuine grounds of shared understanding, not just as a precursor to an 'effective' argument, but as a means of engaging in effective knowledge-making".

Philosopher Daniel Dennett, in his 2013 book Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, called these principles Rapoport's rules of debate,[54] a term that other authors have since adopted.

[70] In a summary of Dennett's version of Rapoport's rules, Peter Boghossian and James A. Lindsay pointed out that an important part of how Rapoport's rules work is by modeling prosocial behavior: one party demonstrates respect and intellectual openness so that the other party can emulate those characteristics, which would be less likely to occur in intensely adversarial conditions.

[73] Austin summarized Axelrod's conclusion that Rapoport's tit-for-tat algorithm won those tournaments because it was (in a technical sense) nice, forgiving, not envious, and absolutely predictable.

[74] With these characteristics, tit-for-tat elicited mutually rewarding outcomes more than any of the competing algorithms did over many automated repetitions of the prisoner's dilemma game.

[78] Rapoport distinguished three hierarchical levels of conflict: Rapoport pointed out "that a rigorous examination of game-like conflict leads inevitably" to the examination of debates, because "strictly rigorous game theory when extrapolated to cover other than two-person zero-sum games" requires consideration of issues such as "communication theory, psychology, even ethics" that are beyond simple game-like rules.

[86] The third of Rapoport's principles—increasing the perceived similarity between self and other—is a principle that Young, Becker, and Pike considered to be equally as important as the other two, but they said it should be an attitude assumed throughout the discourse and is not a phase of writing.

[89] She said that the Rogerian approach requires calm, patience, and effort, and will work if one is "more concerned about increasing understanding and communication" than "about scoring a triumph".

[90] In a related article, she noted the similarity between Rogerian argument and John Stuart Mill's well-known phrase from On Liberty: "He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.

"[109] (Soon after, in opposition to Status belligerens, Rapoport relocated permanently to Canada from the United States,[110] leaving behind research connections with the military that he had since the 1940s.

[111]) Young, Becker, and Pike pointed out in 1970 that Rogerian argument would be out of place in the typical mandated adversarial criminal procedures of the court system in the United States.

[117] For women who are marginalized and have been taught that they are not "worthy opponents", Lassner said, "Rogerian rhetoric can be just as inhibiting and constraining as any other form of argumentation.

"[118] Some of Lassner's students doubted that their opponent (such as an anti-gay or anti-abortion advocate) could even recognize them or could conceal repugnance and rejection of them enough to make Rogerian empathy possible.

[129][130][131] Negotiation expert William Ury said in his 1999 book The Third Side that role reversal as a formal rule of argumentation has been used at least since the Middle Ages in the Western world: "Another rule dates back at least as far as the Middle Ages, when theologians at the University of Paris used it to facilitate mutual understanding: One can speak only after one has repeated what the other side has said to that person's satisfaction.

A nurse listens to a young woman
A key principle of Rogerian argument is listening carefully to another person empathetically enough to be able to state the other's position to the other's satisfaction.
Burton Tower, with Hill Auditorium (left) and the Rackham School of Graduate Studies (right), at the University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is where Rogerian argument was given its name by Anatol Rapoport and others. In the 1960s, Rapoport had helped put Michigan's Mental Health Research Institute at the center of the use of game theory in psychological research. [ 5 ] Rapoport came to Michigan from a position at the University of Chicago , where Carl Rogers was also a professor.
Manometer reading outside of door to a dog experiment room, and operator seated looking through periscope at dog inside, Ivan Pavlov seated to the right
Pavlov , the Russian physiologist known for his experiments on dogs, inspired Rapoport's name for the Pavlovian strategy of controlling people through rewards and punishments.
Lenin making a speech from the back of a vehicle before troops in the Red Square, 1919
Lenin , the Russian revolutionary and political theorist: Rapoport called him a frequent user of the Freudian strategy of persuading people through "explaining away" their beliefs.
A young woman demonstrator offers a flower to a military police officer at the March on the Pentagon, 1967
The removal of threat is what Rapoport called the Rogerian strategy of inviting people to consider the possibility of mutual learning and change by understanding and accepting them.
Detail from the Renaissance painting The School of Athens portraying two bearded men, Plato and Aristotle
Scholars have compared Rogerian argument to some ideas of the classical Greek thinkers Plato and Aristotle .
Fist bump
Rapoport's three principles of ethical debate are: listening and making the other feel understood, finding merit in the other's position, and increasing the perception of similarity: "we are all in the same boat".
Two bar charts show roughly how payoffs to players differ between a single prisoner's dilemma game and repeated games
Rapoport's tit-for-tat computer algorithm maximized mutually rewarding outcomes in repeated prisoner's dilemma games around 1980.
A man in a formal shirt and tie writes in a notebook
Formal written communication requires a different approach to Rogerian argument due to differences from oral communication such as lack of immediate feedback from the other person.
Three U.S. Fairchild UC-123B aircraft spray Agent Orange as part of the overall herbicidal warfare operation in Vietnam called Trail Dust, circa 1962–1971
Rapoport pointed out that farmers could not practice a Rogerian approach with the military pilot who was spraying Agent Orange and strafing them with bullets from the sky. [ 107 ] Rogerian argument is ineffective with someone who is only functioning as a cog in an impersonal machine.
A woman at a demonstration outdoors holds a sign that says Feminists Fight Back
Some feminists argued: "Rogerian argument has always felt too much like giving in." [ 114 ]