On The Art of Changing Someone’s Mind

“When I ask you about something that you believe in — whether you believe or don’t believe in climate change or whether you believe in some political position or other — as soon as I raise the question why, you have answers. Reasons come to your mind. But the way that I would see this is that the reasons may have very little to do with the real causes of your beliefs.” - Daniel Kahneman, “On Being with Krista Tippett”

Everyone’s stated answers to complex questions tend to be a bit unmoored from the full truth, at least according to Daniel Kahneman (e.g. why they vote Republican, why they quit their job, what they’re looking for in a relationship, why Liverpool is their favorite sports team, why they picked their major, etc.). Yet this daylight from truth isn’t intentional.

If you’re to change someone’s mind, you’ll need to recognize that their justifications for a complex question are usually just the starting point. And if you fail to make this distinction, you’ll fail to be persuasive.

Simple vs Complex Beliefs

“Yeah, and it’s a game because even if you did destroy the arguments that people raise for their beliefs, it wouldn’t change their beliefs. They would just find other facts to entrench their arguments,” -Krista Tippet, “On Being with Krista Tippett”

When your friend lists the reasons why Taqueria Azure is the best Mexican restaurant in the southside, you’ll likely be forgiven for picking apart their argument. “Best Mexican restaurant on the southside” is typically a simple belief. The stakes are low. It’s probably not a hill they’ll die on. You may even be able to change their mind once you remind them about Taqueria Jalisco’s homemade tortillas. At minimum, your unlikely to alienate them.

But when someone explains to you why they vote democrat or what they’re looking for in a relationship, the stated reasons will almost certainly mislead. The stated reasons are more likely to be peripheral points, part of a larger structure of mental support.

This is part of what makes changing someone’s mind an art; it resists immediate understanding and a direct approach.

Thus, we arrive at the main rule for changing someone’s mind: for important issues, you should always avoid trying to change someone’s mind on the spot (unless it’s urgent). Complex beliefs typically won’t change on the spot and you risk alienating them. Sometimes the shortest distance between two points is anything but straight. And taking time to change someone’s mind on complex issues, over day or months, also creates an opportunity for the missing pieces to be revealed.

What You Hear Isn’t All There Is

Avoiding the heavy-handed approach and playing the long game has the higher success rate for changing minds; it makes space for more information to be revealed and gives them time to digest new ideas. The long game can be tedious, but keep in mind, if you could quickly change someone’s mind immediately, what kind of big bad important beliefs could they have really been?

This hidden network of support could have been erected during childhood, built during formative years, fortified by a connection with a community or simply borrowed from the parents (the beliefs’ origins may even be forgotten). How many times is the answer really “I believe it because my parents did”? Perhaps that be unflattering.

Big beliefs are structured like trauma—deep-seated and requiring time to unwind. Wouldn’t it be something to reverse someone’s childhood trauma on the spot? Entrenched beliefs aren’t much different.

Conclusion: This Conversation Should Have Been an Essay

While every one of our beliefs isn’t a mile deep, for a few, we take the why-of-it too seriously. Like Kahneman suggests, our overzealous cognitive machinery is armed with reasons a bit too fast.

Unlike the essay format where explanations receive more time for clear thinking, conversations often lack the same level of depth. But this is more an indictment on the structure of conversation than anyone involved.

As with trauma, entrenched beliefs require time to unwind and, like leading a horse to water, there’s only so much you can do. Besides, if everyone was changing their mind all the time at the first sign of trouble, everyone’s unreliability would spell trouble for a functioning society.

Author’s Note

This idea has some affinity with stated vs revealed preferences

“So the real cause of your belief in a political position, whether conservative or radical left, the real causes are rooted in your personal history. They’re rooted in who are the people that you trusted and what they seemed to believe in, and it has very little to do with the reasons that come to your mind, why your position is correct and the position of the other side is nonsensical. And we take the reasons that people give for their actions and beliefs, and our own reasons for our actions and beliefs, much too seriously.” - Daniel Kahneman