Rogerian argument (or Rogerian rhetoric) is a rhetorical and conflict resolution strategy based on empathizing with others, seeking common ground and mutual understanding and learning, while avoiding the negative effects of extreme attitude polarization. The term refers to the psychologist Carl Rogers, whose client-centered therapy has also been called Rogerian therapy. Since 1970, rhetoricians have applied the ideas of Rogers—with contributions by Anatol Rapoport—to rhetoric and argumentation, producing Rogerian argument.
A key principle of Rogerian argument is that, instead of advocating one's own position and trying to refute the other's position, one tries to state the other's position with as much care as one would have stated one's own position, emphasizing what is strong or valid in the other's argument. To this principle, Rapoport added other principles that are sometimes called "Rapoport's rules". Rhetoricians have designed various methods for applying these Rogerian rhetorical principles in practice.
Several scholars have criticized how Rogerian argument is taught. Already in the 1960s Rapoport had noted some of the limitations of Rogerian argument, and other scholars identified other limitations in the following decades. 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.
Some empirical research has tested role reversal and found that its effectiveness depends on the issue and situation.
Origin
In the study and teaching of rhetoric and argumentation, the term was popularized in the 1970s and 1980s by the 1970 textbook Rhetoric: Discovery and Change by the University of Michigan professors Richard E. Young, Alton L. Becker, and Kenneth L. Pike. They borrowed the term and related ideas from the polymath Anatol Rapoport, who was working, and doing peace activism, at the same university. The University of Texas at Austin professor Maxine Hairston then spread Rogerian argument through publications such as her textbook A Contemporary Rhetoric,; ; ; ; . and other authors published book chapters and scholarly articles on the subject.
Rapoport's three ways of changing people Anatol Rapoport's 1960 book Fights, Games, and Debates described three persuasive strategies that could be applied in debates.; ; ; . He noted that they correspond to three kinds of psychotherapy or ways of changing people, 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".
Pavlovian strategy
The represents people "as a bundle of habits that can be shaped and controlled" by punishments and rewards. This strategy changes people by punishing undesired habits and rewarding desired habits. Some examples of Pavlovian techniques in the real world are behaviorist teaching machines, training of simple skills, and brainwashing, which Rapoport called "another name for training". Some fictional examples cited by Rapoport are the inquisitors in Shaw's Saint Joan, in Koestler's Darkness at Noon, and in Orwell's 1984. The Pavlovian strategy can be benign or malign, but a "fundamental limitation" of the strategy is that the user of it must have complete control over the rewards and punishments used to change someone's mind and behavior, and someone in a conflict is unlikely to submit to such control by a perceived opponent, except under draconian conditions such as imprisonment.
Freudian strategy
The represents people as consciously espousing beliefs that are produced by unconscious or hidden motives that are unknown to them; changing people's beliefs—and changing any behaviors that are caused by those beliefs—requires revealing the hidden motives. 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. Rapoport mentioned his own teaching as one example of this strategy, in situations where his students' resistance to new knowledge was dissolved by the teacher pointing out how the students' opposing preconceptions were caused by the students' memories of prior experiences that were illusory or irrelevant to the new knowledge. Another of Rapoport's examples was a certain kind of Marxist class analysis, used repeatedly by Lenin, in which the ideals of liberal intellectuals are "explained away" by Marxists as nothing more than a rationalization of the liberals' unconscious motive to preserve their social class position in a capitalist economic system. 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. But such complete trust is unlikely in most conflict situations, and the strategy can often be turned back against someone who is trying to use it: "It has been used by anti-Communists on the Communists (clothed in Freudian terminology) as well as by the Communists on the anti-Communists (clothed in Marxist terminology)."
Rogerian strategy
The represents people as usually trying to protect themselves from what they perceive to be threatening. This strategy invites people to consider the possibility of changing by removing the threat that the change implies. Rapoport noted that Freudian psychoanalysts often diagnose people's defenses against what is perceived to be threatening, since such defenses can be among the hidden motives that the Freudian strategy tries to uncover. But the Freudian strategy of changing someone's mind and behavior by explaining hidden motives will not work whenever a person perceives the to be threatening in some way, as is likely to happen when the explanation comes from a perceived opponent in a conflict. There are many ways that someone's statements could be perceived, consciously or unconsciously, as threatening: for example, the other may perceive some statement as being aggressive to some degree, or even destructive of the other's entire worldview. To remove the threat requires trying not to impose one's own explanation or argument on the other in any way.; . Instead, the Rogerian strategy starts by "providing deep understanding and acceptance of the attitudes consciously held at this moment" by the other,; quoted in ; also cited (but not this quotation specifically) in . and this attitude is not a subtle trick used to try to control or persuade the other; in the words of Rogers, "To be effective, it must be genuine." 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.; .
Rogers on communication 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",, which was cited or quoted in, for example: ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; . published in the same year as his book Client-Centered Therapy. Rogers began the paper by arguing that psychotherapy and communication are much more closely related than people might suspect, because psychotherapy is all about remedying failures in communication—where communication is defined as a process that happens both a person as well as people. For Rogers, the troubling conflict between a person's conscious and unconscious convictions that may require psychotherapy is similar to the troubling conflict between two people's convictions that may require mediation.; the word is Rapoport's: . Rogers proposed that effective psychotherapy always helps establish good communication, and good communication is always therapeutic. Rogers said that the major barrier to good communication between people is one's tendency to evaluate what other people say from within one's own usual point of view and way of thinking and feeling, instead of trying to understand what they say from within their point of view and way of thinking and feeling; the result is that people talk past each other instead of think together. If one accurately and sympathetically understands how others think and feel from inside, and if one communicates this understanding to them, then it frees others from feeling a need to defend themselves, and it changes one's own thinking and feeling to some degree, said Rogers. And if two people or two groups of people can do this for each other, it allows them "to come closer and closer to the objective truth involved in the relationship" and creates mutual good communication so that "some type of agreement becomes much more possible".
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.Third-party intervention is not mentioned (except in reprints of Rogers' 1951 paper) in the discussion of Rogerian argument in the textbooks: ; ; ; ; ; ; . Rogers suggested that a neutral third party, instead of the parties to the conflict themselves, could in some cases present one party's sympathetic understanding of the other to the other.
Rogerian argument is an application of Rogers' ideas about communication, taught by rhetoric teachers who were inspired by Rapoport, but Rogers' ideas about communication have also been applied somewhat differently by many others: for example, Marshall Rosenberg created nonviolent communication, a process of conflict resolution and nonviolent living, after studying and working with Rogers, and other writing teachers used some of Rogers' ideas in developing theories of writing.Kay Halasek, "The fully functioning person, the fully functioning writer: Carl Rogers and expressive pedagogy", in .
Relation to classical rhetoric
There are different opinions about whether Rogerian rhetoric is like or unlike from ancient Greece and Rome.One summary of the debates is: Richard M. Coe, "Classical and Rogerian persuasion: an archeological/ecological explication", in .
Young, Becker, and Pike said that classical rhetoric and Rapoport's Pavlovian strategy and Freudian strategy all share the common goal of controlling or persuading someone else, but the Rogerian strategy has different assumptions about humanity and a different goal. In Young, Becker, and Pike's view, the goal of Rogerian rhetoric is to remove the obstacles—especially the sense of threat—to cooperative communication, mutual understanding, and mutual intellectual growth. They considered this goal to be a new alternative to classical rhetoric. They also said that classical rhetoric is used both in situations—when two parties are trying to understand and change each other—and in situations—when one party is responding to an opponent but is trying to influence a third party such as an arbitrator or jury or public opinion—but Rogerian rhetoric is specially intended for certain dyadic situations, not for triadic situations.; later, concluded: "Rogers' principles have been treated most persuasively when applied to argumentation in dyadic rather than triadic situations."