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.