How To Change Someone’s Mind, According To Science

Por Art Markman

https://www.fastcompany.com/3058314/how-to-change-someones-mind-according-to-science

Belief change is a war of attrition. There’s usually no one argument that can
suddenly get someone to see the light.

1 U.S. President Barack Obama arrives alongside his U.S. Supreme Court nominee, Judge Merrick Garland (R), and
Vice President Joe Biden (L), for the nomination announcement in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington,
D.C. [PHOTO: SAUL LOEB/AFP/GET

As soon as the news broke that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had died
last month, Senate Republicans made it clear they wouldn’t be holding a vote on
any candidate President Obama nominated. Two weeks ago, Obama went ahead
and nominated Merrick Garland for the vacancy. Now Democrats are trying to
change Republicans’ minds about holding a confirmation hearing. It won’t be
easy.

WHY PERSUASION IS USUALLY AN UPHILL BATTLE

Psychologically speaking, changing someone’s mind is pretty difficult, even when

you don’t have politics to factor in. A handful of Republican senators facing tight
re-election campaigns in November have shown signs of being a little more
flexible, but they’re in the minority. In politics, public statements are hard to roll
back, which makes Democrats’ push to confirm a new justice in the remainder of
Obama’s term a doubly difficult proposition.

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Our strongly held beliefs form a network of consistent concepts.

But changing someone’s mind about a high-stakes position is a challenge many

of us confront. Maybe your customers have preconceived ideas about your brand
or products that you’d like to influence, or perhaps upper management is leaning
toward a decision that you disagree with. In order to get someone to reconsider
their views, it’s important to understand the role of “coherence” in supporting
beliefs.

Going back to the 1950s, psychologists have recognized the interplay among
different aspects of knowledge that influence our overall set of beliefs. Building
off that research, the cognitive scientist Paul Thagard has more recently put forth
the concept of “explanatory coherence.”

The idea is that our strongly held beliefs form a network of consistent concepts.
For example, I might believe that multitasking is a good thing. I support that belief
with aspects of my own experience: Maybe I remember having especially
productive days while multitasking. I also know of other colleagues who multitask,
which strengthens my belief that it works.

Now, suppose I read about a study that shows that multitasking actually makes
you less efficient. This new piece of knowledge is inconsistent with the rest of my
beliefs, and that makes me a little uncomfortable. To resolve that discomfort, I
have a few options: I could decrease the strength of my belief that multitasking is
good. Alternatively, I could dismiss the value of the study; after all, if multitasking
were truly bad, wouldn’t I have more knowledge that it is?

SOWING INCOHERENCE

To change someone’s mind, you also need to address their emotional

attachment to what they believe.

When we’re confronted with information that contradicts the rest of our web of
beliefs, our first inclination is to discount it. To change people’s minds, it’s
important to undermine the coherence among the things that they do believe.
Make them feel worse about their current beliefs. Develop counterarguments to
their most significant sources of support. Then expose them to more pieces of
information that are consistent with the new belief.

It’s also important to provide all of this information from multiple sources. After all,
the easiest way for people to maintain their current beliefs is to decide that any
contrary information is unreliable.

What’s more, the sense of coherence many of us maintain over our beliefs
reflects both knowledge and emotion. Being settled in what you believe feels
good. Ambivalence doesn’t. So to change someone’s mind, you also need to
address their emotional attachment to what they believe. Feeling even slight
reservations about your current beliefs can set the stage for shifting more of your
support toward an alternative point of view.

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SUDDEN SWITCHES RARELY ARE

For a while, it will probably feel like your arguments are falling of deaf ears.
Because beliefs are driven by coherence, people will maintain the strength of
their initial beliefs for quite a while. The more information that people get that
supports an alternative, though, the more likely it is that the initial web of beliefs
will collapse and be replaced by a new, no less coherent network.

Many simply go from strong support for one position to strong support
for another.

From the outside, it may look like someone’s changed their mind suddenly, but
that’s seldom the case. Usually the steady accretion of facts supporting an
alternative position has taken time to build up. Some people may go through a
period when they’re explicitly ambivalent about what they believe, but many
simply go from strong support for one position to strong support for another.

What’s key, at any rate, is to recognize that people’s active resistance to efforts
to change their minds doesn’t mean that those efforts aren’t working. Belief
change is a war of attrition, not a search for the knock-down argument that gets
someone to see things differently in one fell swoop.

Art Markman, PhD is a professor of Psychology and Marketing at the University

of Texas at Austin and Founding Director of the Program in the Human
Dimensions of Organizations. Art is the author of Smart Thinking and Habits of
Leadership, Smart Change, and most recently, Brain Briefs, co-authored with his
"Two Guys on Your Head" co-host Bob Duke, which focuses on how you can use
the science of motivation to change your behavior at work and at home More.

BBI of Chicago
www.bbiofchicago.com