The simple trick to change other people's minds

People will be far more open-minded than you realise if you adopt these simple conversational techniques.

"The growth of knowledge depends entirely upon disagreement," claimed the philosopher Karl Popper. He was writing about the dangers of dogma in science – but his words could equally apply to anyone's worldview. And if you want a disagreement to end by changing someone's mind, you have to do it in the right way.

As I found in my recent book on social connection, new psychological research can help us to have more constructive conversations about controversial issues. 

Some of the strategies surprised me. While some social media users are keen to remind us that "facts don't care about your feelings", studies suggest that people are considerably more likely to listen to our arguments if we talk about our personal experiences of the issues under discussion.

One of the main drivers of serious disagreement was apparent in the recent Friendship Study, which comprised a questionnaire I devised with psychologist Ian MacRae, offered to BBC.com readers in July and August of last year.

In one section, participants were asked to imagine a discussion with someone who disagreed with them about certain political or social issues. Afterwards, each participant was asked about their intentions – whether they aimed to persuade the other person, learn from them, or argue with them – and also their impression of the other person's intentions. Overall, the 1,912 participants overestimated how much other people wanted to persuade them of their point of view, and how much they were looking for an argument. At the same time, they underestimated how much the other person wanted to learn and understand the different opinions.

This is worth remembering whenever we find ourselves in a conflict: the other person may be more open to a good-faith discussion than we think, and we should treat them with the respect that entails.

Given that our conversation partner might underestimate our curiosity about their views, we should also make more effort to express our interest in their views. By demonstrating our good intentions to learn and understand, we will encourage them to lower their defences so that they are more open to an honest exchange of ideas.

Often it is as simple as asking the right question. In the late 2000s, Frances Chen and colleagues at Stanford University invited students to engage in an online debate about whether the university should introduce a new set of exams. Unsurprisingly, many students were dead set against the idea. Crucially, they thought they were chatting to their peers, but their debating partners were really the experimenters themselves – who followed very rigid scripts that varied depending on whether the participant was in the experimental group or the control group.

In half of the conversations, the experimenters asked the students to elaborate on their views. For example, they might listen to a student's argument and respond: "I was interested in what you're saying. Can you tell me more about how come you think that?" For the other trials, the conversation did not include any request for more information on the participants' beliefs.

It was a tiny change in the script, but the addition of the single question changed the whole tone of the debate by provoking a considerably more open-minded response from the participants. They were more willing to continue the conversation and to receive further information on the other person's arguments, for instance.

We might be a little sceptical of the results from a single experiment, but Guy Itzchakov at the University of Haifa in Israel and his colleagues came to very similar conclusions in a series of studies involving hundreds of participants. Actively asking questions about people's beliefs and the reasons they hold those views leads them to lower their defences, so that they are considerably more receptive to alternative opinions. 

After these kinds of conversations, participants were considerably more likely to agree with statements such as "I feel that I ought to re-evaluate the event now, after the conversation" – suggesting that they had become more thoughtful about the issues that they had discussed.

While exchanging opinions, you shouldn't be afraid of sharing your first-hand experience of the issue at hand; indeed, it may just strengthen your argument.

This fact does not seem to be widely recognised. When Emily Kubin at the University of North Carolina and colleagues asked 251 participants to describe the best ways to present their opinion on an issue such as same-sex marriage or abortion, 56% chose the presentation of facts and evidence, while just 21% selected the expression of personal experience.   

We saw similar patterns within our Friendship Study. When we asked people to rate seven persuasion strategies, "civility" was number one, followed by "logic and reason". "Personal experience" came in at number five.

Kubin's experiments, however, suggest that it can be a potent tool of persuasion. Her team asked 177 participants to read about three people's opinions on topics like taxation, coal mining or gun control, before rating their respect for each person, and that person's rationality. No matter what their initial stance, the participants gave considerably higher ratings if they knew that the person had personal experience of the issue at hand.

Reading short texts online may seem a far cry from real-life encounters, but Kubin has also tested the principle in face-to-face dialogues on gun control, using a further sample of 153 local people who lived near the university. Once again, someone using a personal experience to portray their views commanded more respect from their conversation partner and was perceived to be more rational in their views.

There are, of course, good reasons to be wary of purely subjective accounts if they are not accompanied by any statistics, and an overreliance on an emotional appeal could raise the other person's suspicions. But the two approaches do not have to be mutually exclusive, and your point of view may be better received if you combine the two.

Consider a recent examination of the 2018 midterm elections demonstrated. The study measured the progress of 230 canvassers, conversing on a range of political issues with 6,869 voters across seven US locations. Some were asked to make their case using purely statistical arguments – concerning, for instance, the common fear that immigration increases crime – while others were asked to exchange personal stories, in addition to presenting factual evidence.

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Each of the voters took opinion polls before and after they met the canvassers. The researchers found that the mutually respectful exchange of experiences was more likely to shift opinion than conversations that focused more on impersonal facts and statistics.

While the overall effects were small – resulting in a five-percentage-point shift in views on immigration, for example – this should be taken in context. On average, the conversations lasted just 11 minutes in total, yet a significant number of people started to change strongly held views. 

Throughout your conversations, you should make sure that you maintain a basic level of civility – not only to your discussion partner, but also when you are talking about anyone else who may be involved in the debate, including public figures. 

Research by Jeremy Frimer at the University of Winnipeg and Linda Skitka at the University of Illinois at Chicago has shown that rude behaviour is far more likely to alienate the person you wish to persuade than change their opinion, and it may even disaffect people who were already coming around to your point of view. They describe this as the Montagu Principle, named after the 18th-Century English aristocrat Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who declared that "civility costs nothing and buys everything".

By demonstrating genuine curiosity, sharing your personal experiences, and maintaining a civil attitude, you may be surprised by your potential to connect – and gain a wiser worldview in the process.

* David Robson is an award-winning science writer and author. His latest book, The Laws of Connection: 13 Social Strategies That Will Transform Your Life, was published by Canongate (UK) and Pegasus Books (USA & Canada) in June 2024. He is @davidarobson on Instagram and Threads and writes the 60-Second Psychology newsletter on Substack.

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