SPICE stands for: simplicity, perceived self-interest, incongruity, confidence, and empathy. These are the pillars of persuasion - says Kevin DUTTON Ph.D. From someone who has studied persuasion for so long, one would expect a grand and persuasive performance.
There is lots of useful information in this work on how we change our minds, what factors influence us, and how our brain might operate. I found for instance the last chapter particularly illuminating. Emotion comes first - with a belief - and reasoning is the acid with which we test the validity of the belief. Unless we can "reason away" from belief - we are stuck (pg. 233). Of course the social environment plays a fundamental role, and so many inborn traits.
Simplicity, however, is not the author's strong suit. He has an inordinate fondness for metaphors, at times inapt, many inept - one might suspect some kind of attention disorder, which inhibits him from completing a phrase, or using plain words. His language tends toward obfuscation whenever approaching the gist of the argument. Just an example: "It comprises, in zoological terms, the modern-day equivalent of a key stimulus of influence." (pg. 163). A penny for clarification. Descriptions of experiments are at times shoddy, incomplete, or confusing: one has to go over the material several times in order to understand it - or conclude that the description is imperfect.
Maybe he is pursuing incongruity: he loves biological metaphors applied to consciousness: "persuasion virus", "cancer of the will", "genome of influence" - somehow he wants to get the message across that emotions have an unchanging biological basis - without making the case openly. Unless he happens to be lost in "airspace of perception" - that is. Given the central role of the brain in buttressing his case, one might have wished a brief and coherent description of the brain's functions. It all comes in bits and pieces scattered throughout the book.
His link of emotions to evolution is beyond the pale. Our knowledge of hominid evolution is far too scanty to allow inferences as to the role of evolution in behavioural traits. Dr DUTTON shows here masterly confidence is his own insights: "We have a powerful, inbuilt bias that predisposes us to think in a certain way: namely, that we do the things we do because we're the kinds of people who do those things! It's an evolutionary rule of thumb. A timesaving device programmed into our brains over millions and millions of years by natural selection." (pg. 106) I rest my case.
Does Dr. DUTTON generate empathy? This question I'll leave to other readers.
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