Social science has a way of confirming what we humans already knew about ourselves. Data that validate one’s intuitive gleanings about the species make a timeless gift, always in season. “Extreme Protest Tactics Reduce Popular Support for Social Movements,” from sociologists Matthew Feinberg of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School and Stanford’s Robb Willer, is also delightfully of-the-moment.
“It was coincidental,” said Feinberg. The research was a year-and-half’s work. (Some perspective: Eighteen months ago, former reality TV stars Josh Duggar, Caitlyn Jenner, Donald Trump were copping to Ashley-Madison-aided infidelity, facing manslaughter charges, and rallying in the Deep South, respectively.) “By no means are we trying to make a political statement,” Feinberg told me, further downplaying his and his coauthors’ apparent futuresense.
The first official month of the Trump era saw a burning limo and a viral Nazi punch, a window-smashing black bloc at UC Berkeley, and a steady pace of “cathartic” Resistance marches. “Not My President’s Day” having come and gone, MoveOn.org’s next feast day is April 15th when the observant will join a multi-city Tax March. Hey, it’s a living. Plus, if someone smashes a window or starts a fire? It’s great TV, and free publicity for the cause.
That’s just the problem, found Feinberg, et al.: The more extreme a protest or demonstration, the more media attention it gets. But the more extreme the protest, the less likely it is the folks at home will identify with its motivating spirit. This trade-off, between publicity and influence, they call “the activist’s dilemma.”
Extreme tactics, violent rhetoric or illegal actions, make protesters and their cause less sympathetic. Animal rights activists who broke into an animal testing facility and set the wards loose won less support from study participants than those who peacefully marched outside on behalf of the poor guinea pigs and chimpanzees. With the chant “Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon” removed from a news article about a Black Lives Matter march, the movement won wider support from a test group than it did among those who read the original.
Protesters who blockaded a busy street near a Trump rally, creating a potentially dangerous traffic jam, were so unsympathetic to the study participants that their tactics increased the respondents’ reported support for the candidate. But don’t take it from me: “An examination of the changes in Trump support in each condition showed a non-significant change for both Control and Moderate Protest conditions, Fs <.067, ps >.797, but a significant increase in support in the Extreme Protest condition, F(1, 108) = 5.80, p =.018. In other words, participants presented with extreme anti-Trump protesters responded by reporting greater support for Trump.”
When it’s more chaotic than carefully organized, more extreme than moderate, more violent than civilly disobedient, a protest gains greater notice but loses its sympathetic appeal. And extreme tactics can also backfire, serving the interest of the enemy. So it is assumed, if unproven, that the Weather Underground bombings, not to mention the amply televised protest riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, served Nixon far better than they did the antiwar movement.
“If you’re a protester, and you’re wanting to get attention and strategically raise consciousness, then you’re going to want to do something more extreme to get the media’s attention. But as our research shows, if you do that, you will risk undermining support for your cause and possibly having it backfire,” Feinberg told me.
Still, he doesn’t necessarily embrace the idea that this study serves either side of the current political debate. Activists who let his data be their guide might strengthen the influence of their ideas by toning down their tactics. And those who skew skeptical, or contemptuous, of boisterous political demonstrations get to be smug about the proven futility of protesters’ most attention-grabbing efforts. One takeaway from the activist’s dilemma might be that an ideal political discourse—an open enough exchange of ideas that the best ones win fair and square, for the good of us all—gets lost when ugly behavior makes ordinary people tune out.
Earlier research shows the correlation between extreme tactics and intensified media coverage—and demonstrates that people join protest movements because they identify with the people who are already fighting for the cause. Extreme tactics like blockades, violent language, and breaking and entering make the fight much harder to imagine oneself a part of.
The intentionally impersonal structure of a black bloc protest, for instance, allows for an anonymous collective violence. And, the data tell us, without a human face, a moderate approach, and a sympathetic argument, the black bloc’s recruiting power may be insufficient to overthrow the government.
“In order to persuade people, one needs to understand who they’re speaking to, who they’re aiming to persuade.” Protesters’ most effective tactics will target the hearts and minds of their opposition, to overcome the barrier between divergent perspectives.
Feinberg, whose earlier research has specifically focused on the psychology of political polarization and bias, earned his doctorate from Berkeley and his bachelor’s from Whittier College, where Nixon went. (He declined to speculate whether this specialized pedigree influenced his research focus.)
“Extreme Protest Tactics” follows a Feinberg and Willer study from two years ago that codified conservatives and liberals’ disparate moral frameworks, aiming to help the alien camps “bridge the gulf” between them. Conservatives best hear moral arguments that favor a certain “purity,” they found, while liberals prefer the touchy-feely “caretaking” vibe—so, frame your pitch accordingly. “You really need to understand what perspective they’re coming from and be able to speak to them within their perspective, if you want to be at all persuasive and have a productive dialogue.”
The practical takeaway here is much the same as Feinberg and Willer’s latest: A would-be influencer needs to consider his audience, or else risk alienating them. Nary a black-masked protester (nor even a pink-hatted one, for that matter) will pretend to aim for a “productive dialogue” at this point. But when they’re ready, leaving the Molotov cocktail at home will make a solid start—and that’s science saying so.
