The Art of Persuasion No. 3 : Value Typology

They say “know your audience.” But that can be tough without a guide. Understanding the lenses through which your audience is likely to see the world can help. (Call this meta-messaging. In other words, it's critical to ask yourself relevant questions about your audience in relation your goals and tactics prior to messaging.)

Allow me to steal shamelessly from Aaron Wildavsky, who identified primary value types or ‘biases’. These political predispositions can help you tailor your messages to some degree. They are: hierarchicalist, egalitarian, individualist and fatalist.

1)      Hierarchicalist

This group sees society in terms of both order and “place”. So, in some sense, their over-arching value is law and order (but in another sense control). In particular, elites should make decisions on behalf of the less accomplished or less fortunate. They tend to understand people as falling along a natural hierarchy from the ablest leaders, to managers, to followers, to the most helpless or inept. The hierarchicalist can be of any ideological persuasion. In fact, you’re just as likely to find hierarchicalist egalitarians (lefties) as you are hierarchical individualists (righties). In other words, hierarchicalists feel those who know best should be in control. Authority serves the good. Nanny statists, paternalist drug warriors or top-down CEOs all qualify. And whether or not you agree with them is not the issue. It is that this group is predisposed this way, for whatever reason. You must frame your messages accordingly (e.g. pro-freedom messages might frontload the rule of law to this group, tapping into their sense of order.)

2)      Egalitarian 

This group sees the world through the lens of equality. Their over-arching value is fairness, (never mind fairness is determined). So, for example, this group is likely to see injustice in the fact that someone has more of some resource than another. They may have concern for the less fortunate and may feel guilt at their own social/financial station. Finally, they may feel indignation at the inequality of station from one person to the next. (See the Stone Age Trinity - guilt, envy, indignation - for more on this.) Merit, choice and other considerations are secondary at best. Indeed, if someone’s concept of justice is shaped around fairness, they may be more likely to support “any means” of achieving fairness (trending hierarchicalist, whereas more individualist egalitarians tend to see sharing, giving and so on as an act of personal morality or kindness, but not necessarily of an enforceable obligation). Luckily, it’s easier than one might think to craft messages for this group, because government intrusion in people’s lives presents a fundamental power inequality that can be brought out (never mind that many government policies hurt the poor.) Hierarchical egalitarians are among the toughest for the center-right to communicate with, for reasons which should be obvious.

3)      Individualist 

This group sees the world through the lens of free choice. Their over-arching value is personal autonomy. “Don’t tread on me.” Individualists (who tend libertarian) and hierarchical individualists (who tend conservatives) are probably familiar to this audience. Messages to this audience will be successful if they involve appeal to principles and to reason. But ultimately, individualists shun notions of duties to authorities or to some abstract greater good—the latter of which they see as a rationalization of affronts to their personal sovereignty. Their concept of justice centers on non-harm (i.e. of one person or group by another) and they believe justice requires tolerating inequalities of station, even though the individualist may be charitable. Messages to this group should appeal as much to their anti-authoritarian and anti-elitism as their desire for autonomy.

4)      Fatalist

This group sees the world through the lens of inevitability. Their over-arching value is really not a value at all, but the notion that most things fall outside of their spheres of control—so why bother? “You can’t fight city hall.” From the standpoint of the Freedom Movement, this group may be the most intractable. Many voters think this way, which is not unreasonable. That said, messages to this group should involve giving them the feeling that they are in control, much more than they believe. Words should empower, inspire and enlighten them, because we’d like fatalists to pass from apathy to activism.

Where things get interesting is when you start mixing and matching types. For example, we see how individualists can have a hierarchicalist strain, or how egalitarians can have an individualist strain. So what does a fatalist/hierarchicalist look like? (Members of a caste in India?) What does an individualist/fatalist look like? (The staff at Reason Magazine?) And what happens when you switch dominant and supporting traits? It can get confusing. In any case, these types worth considering as you craft messages for different audiences. And it’s useful to recall that these strains are not ideologies, but cultural or even evolved predilections. (For more on value communication, see this.)