by Richard E. Young, Alton L. Becker, and Kenneth L. Pike

Rogerian Argument

Rogerian argument rests on the assumption that out of a need to preserve the stability of his image, a person will refuse to consider alternatives that he feels are threatening, and hence, that changing a person’s image depends on eliminating this sense of threat.¹ Much of men’s resistance to logical argument seems explainable by this assumption. A strong sense of threat may render the reader immune to even the most carefully reasoned and well-supported argument. The Rogerian strategy seeks to reduce the reader’s sense of threat so that he will be able to consider alternatives that may contribute to the creation of a more accurate image of the world and to the elimination of conflict between writer and reader. As Rogers suggests, a willingness to consider alternatives is evidence of the establishment of real communication, which greatly increases the chances that a reasonable solution can be reached.

The writer who uses the Rogerian strategy attempts to do three things: (1) to convey to the reader that he is understood, (2) to delineate the area within which he believes the reader’s position to be valid, and (3) to induce him to believe that he and the writer share similar moral qualities (honesty, integrity, and good will) and aspirations (the desire to discover a mutually acceptable solution). We stress here that these are only tasks, not stages of the argument. Rogerian argument has no conventional structure; in fact, users of the strategy deliberately avoid conventional persuasive structures and techniques because these devices tend to produce a sense of threat, precisely what the writer seeks to overcome. We do not mean, of course, that the argument has no structure, but only that the structure is more directly the product of a particular writer, a particular topic, and a particular audience. The Rogerian strategy places a premium on empathy between writer and reader and on the peculiarities of the topic.

Conveying to the Reader That He Is Understood

Understanding here means something more than merely a grasp of the basic ideas of the opponent’s position. It goes considerably beyond categorizing the opponent’s position and noting its contrastive features. In “Communication: Its Blocking and Its Facilitation” Rogers explains that understanding means “to see the expressed idea and attitude from the other person’s point of view, to sense how it feels to him, to achieve his frame of reference in regard to the thing he is talking about.” It requires empathy, requires getting inside the other person’s skin and seeing the world through his eyes, or, to speak less metaphorically, it requires considering the beliefs and perspectives of the reader in the context of his attitudes, values, and past experience.

The task of the writer is to induce the reader to consider his position and to understand it. The writer tries to make the reader understand this position as it is interrelated with the larger system of values and beliefs that compose the writer’s image; he wants the reader to understand as an insider rather than an outsider. Curiously enough, one method of eliciting this response is to demonstrate that the reader’s position has been understood. To do this, the writer states the reader’s position as accurately, completely, and sensitively as he can, taking care not to judge it. Many conventional arguments fail either because the reader refuses to listen or because he distorts the argument, making it conform to his preconceptions of the writer and the writer’s position. In either case, the reader is not trying to understand; he is trying defend himself. He will, however, pay careful attention to a statement of his own position. The writer’s first task, then, is to state the reader’s position so carefully that the reader will agree that it has been well stated. If the writer “wins” this part of the argument, the reader is likely to continue listening. Furthermore, he is now motivated to understand the writer’s position, for the reader too wants to score a victory. Demonstrating to the reader that a problem has been understood from his point of view is a powerful method of threat-reduction; not only can it induce the reader to listen to another position and try to understand it, but it can also create in him a willingness to pursue the argument, to reconsider his own position, and perhaps, finally, to change it.

Delineating the Area of Validity

When a person argues, he usually seeks to refute an opponent’s position by evaluating it, pointing out what he considers to be its defective, or invalid, aspects. But [...] such a procedure is often threat-producing. The writer can mitigate this sense of threat by focusing on the aspects of the reader’s position that clearly are valid. Just as isolating the invalid aspects of a position implies the existence of valid aspects, so isolating valid aspects implies that there are invalid ones. Logically, the two acts amount to much the same thing; their effects, however, are different psychologically. Focusing on the valid rather than the invalid reduces the reader’s sense of threat and offers him further evidence that he is understood. It also encourages him to discover the valid aspects of the writer’s position. When writer and reader discover validity in each other’s positions, they discover important shared features that can form the basis of further interaction.

Generally speaking, a statement is neither entirely valid nor entirely invalid; its validity is relative to a context. [...] An awareness of this relativity makes it somewhat easier for the writer to understand opposing positions and to accept disagreement with his own position. Consider a trivial and obvious example: “Slate is hard.” This statement is true if slate is being compared with talc, not true if it is being compared with diamond. Out of context, the statement seems an undeniable truth with which no reasonable person could disagree. In different contexts, however (i.e., if slate is compared with talc, with diamond, and so on), the statement is subject to rational discussion. Many people engaged in arguments ignore the effect that different contexts can have on a statement; they often say flatly, “It’s true, and I can’t imagine how any reasonable man could disagree with it.” They might get further in an argument if they said, “If we consider it in such-and-such a context, or if we assume certain conditions, then it is true.” Consider another example. Suppose someone says that underdeveloped countries should import Western technology. To most Americans, this proposal would seem entirely reasonable, for we would contemplate how technology can free people from hunger and disease. Thus we would place the statement in a context in which it is reasonable and true. But someone else, someone with a strong anthropological or historical bias, might disagree, arguing that artificially imposed technological development would destroy the cultural values of the society, those values that give it order and stability, or that the introduction of technology would lead to the kind of suffering that was experienced in sweatshops during the Industrial Revolution. Here is still another example: “Literature is important to national survival.” This statement is not true if you consider it in a military context, for literature lacks the immediate force of arms. It may be true if you put it in a political or a sociological context, for literature can be a powerful propaganda instrument (e.g., much of modern Russian literature, or for that matter some of our own, particularly that written during times of national stress). The statement is also true in a psychological context: Literature can help people become more perceptive about human problems and human conflict, and as a result more willing and able to deal with them intelligently.

Opponents in an argument often, perhaps usually, disagree not because of fallacious reasoning or ignorance of the facts but because of the different contexts in which they see the problem. They may think that they are talking about the same subject when actually they aren’t. [...] People “edit” experience in different ways; hence the same problem may well seem quite different to men on opposite sides of an argument. Facts will have different degrees of importance; attitudes and values, different weights. Perceptions and their meanings are to a great extent determined by the image of the observer.

Ignoring the contexts of statements leads opponents to make categorical denials or affirmations; positions in the argument then become polarized, and the chances for reaching an agreement are reduced. A statement of the conditions under which a position is valid, however, encourages discussion; the argument tends to become provisional, and a problem-solving orientation is developed. “The opposing views,” says Anatol Rapoport,

stem largely from different criteria for selecting what to see, what to be aware of. Therefore, the object in a debate is to induce the opponent to admit stimuli which he had not admitted before, in short to enlarge his vision. To do this, some feel, it is best to show him not the limits outside of which he is wrong, but, on the contrary the limits inside of which he is right. They are, of course, the same limits! But putting it one way is likely to emphasize the threat to the image, while putting it the other way is likely to dilute the threat.

Definitions can be another source of disagreement. But the writer can often benefit from exploiting the fact that any definition is to some extent arbitrary He usually loses little by agreeing to use his opponent’s definitions (at least his denotative definitions) of key terms in the debate. And he may gain much, for he gives further evidence of his good will and understanding. Note, however, that before he can agree to use the reader’s definitions, he must he aware of all the dimensions of their meaning. Communist, worker, and capitalist may have roughly similar denotations for a communist and a capitalist, but their connotations may differ radically. Ultimately, the meaning of a term is not its dictionary definition, nor even the meaning that people agree to assign to the word in a particular situation. The meaning arises from the living contexts within which the word occurs in connected speech or writing. A word is ultimately defined by its distribution in relation to the other words with which it is used. [...] The word sincere, for example, ordinarily refers to a correspondence between a person’s inner and outer attitudes. Yet consider its meaning in the following context: “Always be sincere—whether you mean it or not.”

Denotative definitions (e.g., the kind used in the scientific description of objects) are often easy to accept, and by doing so, the writer can clarify some of the issues of the debate. Connotative definitions, however, often encompass areas of genuine disagreement, for they carry with them evaluations of a situation—evaluations that may reflect profound differences in values, beliefs, and experience. For example, the writer may be able to grant to the communist his denotative definition of capitalist—that is, one or more of its economic meanings—but its connotation for the communist of ruthless exploiter or enemy of the worker may be precisely what the writer is trying to change by means of his argument. The most that the writer can do in this situation is recognize the definition’s area of validity, accepting the truth that is there and hoping that the reader will come to see in what way the term is limited.

Rapoport explains that defining terms and delineating their area of validity is a necessary step in argument.

If by changing definitions or properly delineating the area of validity, we can accept some of the opponent’s assertions as true (whereas they had seemed false to us otherwise), let us do so. By doing so, we make it easier for him to do the same for us. If the issue of the debate evaporates on that account, then the debate was not really worth the effort.

Most serious debates are not simply about words; so we cannot, as a rule, expect the issues to disappear as a result of semantic analysis and improved communication. But this preliminary job of understanding must first be done to make sure that it is not only words we are concerned with, and if it is not, to get down to the real business.

The techniques that we have been discussing in this section can help minimize irrelevant opposition and emotional explosion. They can also help the writer to distinguish the areas of real disagreement from the areas of agreement, which may provide bridges over which changes can take place.

Inducing the Assumption of Similarity

The immediate goal of the Rogerian strategy is to get the opponent to reciprocate—to induce him to understand the writer’s position as the writer has understood his position. To some extent, demonstrating that the reader’s position is understood and establishing where its area of validity lies are both techniques that encourage the reader to reciprocate. Inducing the reader to acknowledge that his position has been stated well constitutes a kind of victory; the reader realizes that he too can “win” if he studies the writer’s position and states it equally well. He is also likely to become interested in pointing out the region of validity and invalidity in the writer’s position, since it is to his advantage to demonstrate that this position too has its limitations. There are other reasons for a willingness to reciprocate. If he has been relieved of his sense of threat, it is to his advantage to reciprocate in order to prevent the writer’s sense of threat from destroying the potential for cooperation that has begun to develop. Finally, a reader whose sense of threat has been reduced is more willing to consider alternative positions, including the writer’s.

Attempts at persuading the reader to treat the writer as he himself has been treated are likely to fail if the reader thinks that the writer is different from himself in significant ways. He may not even try to understand the writer’s position if he sees the writer as unreasonable, for example, refusing to grant what seem to the reader to be obvious, verifiable facts; or if he sees him as Machiavellian, deliberately using words as traps or employing arguments whose stated purposes mask different and unscrupulous ones. The Rogerian strategy requires that opponents confront each other as equals in an atmosphere of mutual trust. But how can the reader be brought to trust the writer, to regard him as worthy of being believed, and finally to understand his position?

The threat-reducing acts we have already discussed can help to create trust; a more explicit and direct method, however, is to show that writer and reader are similar in relevant ways. The writer can either build or discover bridges (e.g., shared attitudes, experiences, and values) that will encourage trust and lead to further interaction. Consider the following imaginary debate between a Russian communist and an American liberal. In this excerpt, the liberal is pointing out historical, cultural, and ideological features that are shared by the two societies.

Science is the common heritage in both our societies, and both societies are unquestionably adapted to utilizing the power which science confers on man over his environment—but only to a limited extent. The limitations of both sides stem from commitments to dogma, the antithesis of the scientific attitude. Dogma is that portion of one’s outlook which is immune to modification.

It will be futile for me to maintain that you as Communists are bound more rigidly by dogma than we, although it appears that way to us. Rather than try to measure the immeasurable, I maintain from the start that both our societies are impeded by dogmatic attitudes from developing their full potentials. The difference is that you recognize dogma explicitly and call it Marxism (or dialectical materialism in the natural science sphere), while we deny that our fetishes (like “liberty”) are symptoms of dogma. The effects are similar. In the name of liberty we dare not undertake measures to safeguard minimum standards of economic security and health, which we can well afford. In the name of the “only correct philosophy” you have failed to extend the realm of scientific investigation to the nature of man and society, which you have unequaled opportunity to do.

I believe that taking refuge in dogma is a fear reaction. The irrational fear of planning, so conspicuous in the United States, stems from a dread of overt restraints on the activities of the individual. As so often happens, an overpowering fear incapacitates one in dealing with real dangers. In our pathological avoidance of overt restraints, we have succumbed to innumerable covert ones and have drifted into a drabness of conformity.

Your irrational fear stems from the dread of “idealism.” You see “idealism” in any intellectual position which, however remotely, admits the perceptual or the cognitive structure of an individual in the start of a theoretical investigation. You keep fighting the intellectual battle of the nineteenth century the battle against the hegemony of religious dogma, an issue which has since lost all significance in the intellectual sphere.

* * *

The witch hunts in the years of our McCarthy eclipse are well matched by the outbursts of intellectual lynching of the type the Russians call razgrom. . . .

Trust is encouraged by showing the opponent that he is trusted. There is considerable wisdom in one of the techniques used for bringing about a military truce: The initiator of the truce deliberately exposes himself to attack by laying aside his weapons and going to meet his opponent. His act implies that although the opponent distrusts him, he considers the opponent worthy of trust. It also suggests that they share certain values and interests that could form the basis for some sort of accommodation. In his argument with the Russian, the American liberal deliberately exposes the shortcomings of his own side: He acknowledges the existence of dogma in American political thought, our resulting inability to solve pressing social problems, the conformity pervading our social life, the political “witch hunts” of the early 1950s, and so on. He also makes explicit a definition of dogma, which, if left unstated, might inhibit understanding. And he lists the important features that both societies share: their common scientific heritage, the ability to utilize this heritage for human betterment, the burdens of dogmas. What could be better evidence of good faith and willingness to cooperate than letting down one’s guard?

In situations involving great stress, where powerful values and beliefs clash, we tend to see our opponent as an extremist, as rigid, unreasonable, even dangerous; and no doubt we see ourselves as honest, reasonable, and responsible. But it is important to remember that our opponent is likely to hold the opposite view, to think that he is the one who is reasonable and that we are the unreasonable and rigid ones. We may increase our chances of being listened to and understood by imagining that our opponent shares the qualities we attribute to ourselves and by behaving as if he did. As Rapoport points out, “Maybe he does not, but maybe this ‘delusion’ of ours will induce a similar delusion in him about us.”

Rogerian Argument and Traditional Argument

Rogerian argument may at first seem somewhat puzzling and difficult to grasp. The cause of confusion may well be that traditional argument has been taught in schools so long and has been applied so extensively that it has shaped your image of what constitutes effective argument. The Rogerian strategy requires you to modify your image of effective argument; you may resist this change to some extent, since the characteristics of Rogerian argument may at times seem to contradict the techniques you are used to. In Rogerian argument, instead of stating your own case and refuting your opponent’s, you state the opponent’s case with as much care as your own, and you analyze the sound points of his argument. Instead of building up your own character and qualifications and attacking those of your opponent, you seek to gain your opponent’s trust, even at the cost of acknowledging your own inadequacies. Logic, too, is used differently: In traditional argument it acts as a tool for presenting your case and refuting your opponent’s; in Rogerian argument it serves an exploratory function, helping you to analyze the conditions under which the position of either side is valid. And language is used in different ways: Traditional argument often exploits language’s capacity for arousing emotion in order to strengthen a position; Rogerian argument emphasizes the descriptive, dispassionate use of language. The goals of the two strategies also differ. The goal of traditional argument is to make your position prevail, to replace some feature of the opponent’s image with one that you consider correct. The goal of Rogerian argument is to create a situation conducive to cooperation; this may well involve changes in both your opponent’s image and your own. [...]

One last difference is worth noting. Traditional argument is highly conventional and draws on an armory of persuasive techniques [...] Rogerian argument avoids conventional techniques and structures because they tend to be threat-producing. This absence of conventional structures, however, is more characteristic of oral argument than of written. Written argument excludes the possibility of continual readjustment of the discourse as the result of observing the opponent’s reactions. Your opponent cannot show you where you have failed to state his position adequately and give you an opportunity to modify your statement before continuing the discussion. In written argument, then, especially great care must be taken to state his position well the first time. Furthermore, since the opponent is not present, he cannot state your position for you; you must state it yourself, pointing out its regions of validity and invalidity just as you did with his. Written argument thus lacks the flexibility of oral argument. And if the writer does not use a conventional, sharply defined structure, there are at least phases to his argument. These phases can be ordered as follows:

1. An introduction to the problem and a demonstration that the opponent’s position is understood.
2. A statement of the contexts in which the opponent’s position may be valid.
3. A statement of the writer’s position, including the contexts in which it is valid.
4. A statement of how the opponent’s position would benefit if he were to adopt elements of the writer’s position. If the writer can show that the positions complement each other, that each supplies what the other lacks, so much the better.

We should here note that the assumption of similarity is best seen not as a phase of the argument but as an attitude revealed throughout the discourse.

If some people are puzzled by Rogerian argument, others react to it with skepticism. They grant its ethical attractiveness but object that it is impractical and self-deluding. Although reasonable, generous, and honest behavior under great stress is not to be dismissed lightly, Rogerian argument need not be defended exclusively on moral grounds. Its goal is an eminently practical one: to induce changes in an opponent’s mind in order to make mutually advantageous cooperation possible. And its means, strange as they may seem at first, have been proven effective in a wide variety of social situations. Essentially, the writer induces his opponent to listen to his position, to understand it, and to see the truth in it, by demonstrating that he has done the same with the opponent’s position. If we pause for a moment to consider how we would respond to someone who behaved in this way toward us, the strategy is not likely to seem so impractical after all. Reasonable, moral behavior can be a means to an end as well as an end in itself.

Notes

1. For an extended discussion and illustration of this idea, see Anatol Rapoport, Fights, Games, and Debates (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press, 1960), to which we are heavily indebted.