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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: persuasion if facts don't matter
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Josephine
Orthodox Belle
# 3899
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Posted
It appears that facts really don't matter. Your pre-existing opinion is all that matters, even for subjects as objective as math.
And when you move away from math to science, or pretty much anything else, folks just don't believe anything that contradicts what they already think.
So, if these are facts about how people reason, then how do you change people's minds? How do you persuade people?
[ 23. September 2013, 00:32: Message edited by: Josephine ]
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I've written a book! Catherine's Pascha: A celebration of Easter in the Orthodox Church. It's a lovely book for children. Take a look!
Posts: 10273 | From: Pacific Northwest, USA | Registered: Jan 2003
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
How?
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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W Hyatt
Shipmate
# 14250
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Posted
It's not easy, but I have found that if I ask questions designed to help me understand instead of putting them on the defensive, listen to the answers, figure out how those answers make sense from the other person's point of view, and use that as a starting point for further discussion, I can sometimes sneak around the barriers people put up to keep new information from changing their mind (especially when it's apparent that someone is trying to change it). But I have to watch out because otherwise I could end up being the one who changes my mind.
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A new church and a new earth, with Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life.
Posts: 1565 | From: U.S.A. | Registered: Nov 2008
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
It appears that facts really don't matter. Your pre-existing opinion is all that matters, even for subjects as objective as math.
I think what this study is showing is not that most people can't do math, it's that they don't do math. People take shortcuts - they look at the question, and decide that they know the answer based on some combination of previous experience, prejudice and intuition.
The fact that people do this is why "trick" questions work. If people actually parsed the words in front of them rather than seeing what they expect to see, they would never be confused about the number of people travelling to St. Ives.
Nobody has preconceptions about skin cream, so there's nothing to fall back on - everyone has to try and do the math. Plenty of people have opinions on gun control, so will tend to guess the answer.
You can get past this level of error fairly easily - once you drag the person by the nose and make him work through the math with you, he has to agree that your math is correct.
There's a significant chance, though, that he'll just fall back to the claim that your numbers are wrong, or not representative, or otherwise misleading, and that's harder to defeat.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
Hmmm. Respectfully, I don't think the idea is really new.
People tend to find what they're looking for, and tend *not* to find what they don't want to see. Example: the dwarves in "The Last Battle", the last of the Narnia books. They made it to Aslan's country (Heaven), but they were so locked into their ideas that they thought they were trapped in a filthy stable. Aslan let them be, 'cause there wasn't anything that even He could do at that time.
OTOH, people sometimes hold fast to beliefs in which they have a vested interest. Example: someone who is in a very grim, prickly religion, yet wants something better, may push aside any gentler theology, for fear of going to hell. But that one can go either way: the tormented believer may decide it's better to risk hell and have a healthier faith.
Sometimes, you can nudge someone into looking from a slightly different perspective. Or help them see they've been lied to. Or they may gradually grow into new beliefs on their own.
But I don't think you can make someone believe something. You can't even do your level best to show them the truth, and reasonably expect that they will see it. Most people just don't work that way. Changing belief involves a dynamic equation, which is part combination lock, part readiness, and part synchronicity/magic/grace.
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
I'd say it's because, by and large, intuition works.
There are many situations in which over-thinking does no good. We have many senses which are not conscious. This is often true when assessing whether we can trust a person. Intuition, in this aspect, beats reason almost every time, I find. But it's also the case in many other areas of life. (I have often gone with other's reason and later found that my intuition was right all along)
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Horseman Bree
Shipmate
# 5290
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Posted
Bertrand Russell: quote:
“If a person is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence.” - Bertrand Russell
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It's Not That Simple
Posts: 5372 | From: more herring choker than bluenose | Registered: Dec 2003
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Hairy Biker
Shipmate
# 12086
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
It appears that facts really don't matter. Your pre-existing opinion is all that matters, even for subjects as objective as math.
And when you move away from math to science, or pretty much anything else, folks just don't believe anything that contradicts what they already think.
So, if these are facts about how people reason, then how do you change people's minds? How do you persuade people?
There's a discipline called rhetoric which used to be studied as part of basic education. Perhaps the modern belief that science can explain everything has caused a loss of interest in formal rhetoric training. It seems like science is being asked to do too much - explain everything and convince people of it too - so we probably need to focus more on our rhetoric.
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there [are] four important things in life: religion, love, art and science. At their best, they’re all just tools to help you find a path through the darkness. None of them really work that well, but they help.
Damien Hirst
Posts: 683 | From: This Sceptred Isle | Registered: Nov 2006
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moron
Shipmate
# 206
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
And when you move away from math to science, or pretty much anything else, folks just don't believe anything that contradicts what they already think.
So, if these are facts about how people reason, then how do you change people's minds? How do you persuade people?
By using sound reasoning. ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
And Lewis was worried about the state of affairs then... now if you disagree with 'science' your brain is malfunctioning.
This is not likely to end well. ![[Paranoid]](graemlins/paranoid.gif)
Posts: 4236 | From: Bentonville | Registered: May 2001
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Josephine
Orthodox Belle
# 3899
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by moron:
quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
So, if these are facts about how people reason, then how do you change people's minds? How do you persuade people?
By using sound reasoning.
If you have false premises and a correctly constructed syllogism, your conclusion will be false. So it seems to me that, if one of the premises on which you based your ideas was shown to be false, and your reasoning is sound, you would reject your false ideas. But that isn't what happens. What happens is that folks reject any information that would require them to examine and possibly change the syllogisms, so that they can protect their conclusions.
I understand that. Holding onto certain conclusions may be absolutely essential to your position in your social group, for example. If your friends and family will reject you unless you believe that hormonal birth control is an abortifacent, or that vaccines cause autism, it's likely that you'll deploy all the reasoning power you have to protect those beliefs, and therefore to protect your position in your social group.
And because evidence can be equivocal, and not all bits of data carry equal weight, and not all experts are equally expert, it makes sense not to throw out a whole body of beliefs every time there's a single new bit of data that doesn't really fit. It makes sense to weigh it against what you already believe to be true, and to conclude that it must be an outlier. Because often it is. If you believe that calico cats are always female, and someone told you that their brother's neighbor's friend had a male calico, and that was confirmed by the veterinarian, and even written up in the newspaper, you would be excused, I think, for concluding that this bit of evidence wasn't enough to change your beliefs.
But there are beliefs that are of far more consequence than the gender of calico cats. "People on food stamps are lazy people who don't work and don't want to work. Most of them sell their benefit cards to buy drugs and booze and tattoos. Paul said that he that doesn't work shouldn't eat. Churches would do a better job than the government of providing for the few people who are truly deserving of our help. Therefore, we should abolish the food stamp program and other welfare benefits. No one who needed help would go hungry if we did that. Just lazy, drug-using frauds, and the threat of a little bit of hunger might be just the thing to get them to clean up their act and get to work." The premises there are all false, so the conclusion is false, and the results are potentially horrifying. But providing evidence of what's true seems to be about as effective as telling them about your brother's neighbor's friend's male calico cat.
So how do you get them to see what's true? Facts won't do it. Insults won't do it. What kind of rhetoric is effective at changing hearts and minds?
Lots of hearts and minds have been changed about homosexuality over the last 20 years or so. What worked there?
What would work on the subject of vaccines? Or food stamps? Or any of the other contentious issues we face as a society?
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I've written a book! Catherine's Pascha: A celebration of Easter in the Orthodox Church. It's a lovely book for children. Take a look!
Posts: 10273 | From: Pacific Northwest, USA | Registered: Jan 2003
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
We act on assumptions because it saves time.
Seriously. In neuroscience terms, it's fairly well established that the brain filters and ignores an awful lot of our sensory input to focus on 'important' things. Trick questions, optical illusions and magic tricks all rely on fooling those filters into making errors in deciding what's important, so that the truly important information is thrown out.
And most of all we filter out anything that we think hasn't changed. Your visual field tends to ignore static objects in favour of movement. Background sounds are 'background' because they carry on for long periods without having shown any significance. The brain likes assuming that most things are as they were.
A lot of meditation/relaxation techniques are about making you concentrate on things you normally ignore. Noticing your breathing, being quiet and focusing on the small little sounds you don't normally here, etc etc.
And a lot of psychological work is about examining your thinking patterns in a way that you normally don't. Considering the lines of thought that, in everyday life, you just use habitually without really considering what's going on.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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Hairy Biker
Shipmate
# 12086
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by moron:
quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
And when you move away from math to science, or pretty much anything else, folks just don't believe anything that contradicts what they already think.
So, if these are facts about how people reason, then how do you change people's minds? How do you persuade people?
By using sound reasoning.
No - that's the same as using science. The point is that people are not swayed by facts, figures, logical arguments, sound reasoning etc. etc. These are all very well to equip ourselves with right beliefs, but when it comes to persuading others, we need more.
That's why I gave the rhetoric link. We need to study what it is that convinces people; because we know it's not not logic. We use those methods and we will get the right message through with integrity, because we can be sure that the shits will be using all those techniques to get the wrong message through.
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there [are] four important things in life: religion, love, art and science. At their best, they’re all just tools to help you find a path through the darkness. None of them really work that well, but they help.
Damien Hirst
Posts: 683 | From: This Sceptred Isle | Registered: Nov 2006
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Timothy the Obscure
Mostly Friendly
# 292
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Posted
The problem is that human beings do not naturally think syllogistically. Even people (graduate students, because they're readily available subjects) who are formally trained in syllogistic and statistical reasoning are really bad at it when presented with a problem that isn't couched in academic terms (loads of studies on this). We think in stories, and a compelling narrative can overcome merely rational evidence, because it is rooted in emotional learning (the limbic system will always beat the frontal lobes in a crisis).
This, BTW, is why good therapists never give advice or argue with the client. You need to give them the experience of a different story about themselves that is more emotionally compelling. That's why the radical shift in attitudes toward same-sex marriage--as more gay people came out, and as they were portrayed more in the media (especially as characters that even straights could identify with), the emotional resonance changed and people could see the logic they couldn't see before. Something similar happened with African-Americans in the 60s and 70s (the process is not finished in either case, obviously).
This is only a problem if you believe that people should always be ruled by logic and it is crassly manipulative to use emotion to persuade. That's our Platonic heritage, of course, but IMHO most of what's wrong with Western Civilization can be traced to Plato....
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When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.
- C. P. Snow
Posts: 6114 | From: PDX | Registered: May 2001
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Hairy Biker:
That's why I gave the rhetoric link. We need to study what it is that convinces people; because we know it's not not logic. We use those methods and we will get the right message through with integrity, because we can be sure that the shits will be using all those techniques to get the wrong message through.
It's all in Aristophanes. Don't cloud the issue.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
As others have said, it's been known for millenia. Call it confirmation bias. I suppose the narrative fallacy is connected also, or seeing patterns, where there aren't any. This is one definition of religion!
I think when we're young, we try to change others' views; then we get older and realize we can't; then we get even older, and we don't want to.
Good points by Timothy the Obscure - don't argue with a client in therapy. But hopefully, their narratives about themselves are in flux anyway. Maybe I'm not a total shit/the centre of the universe?
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Mere Nick
Shipmate
# 11827
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
But there are beliefs that are of far more consequence than the gender of calico cats. "People on food stamps are lazy people who don't work and don't want to work. Most of them sell their benefit cards to buy drugs and booze and tattoos. Paul said that he that doesn't work shouldn't eat. Churches would do a better job than the government of providing for the few people who are truly deserving of our help. Therefore, we should abolish the food stamp program and other welfare benefits. No one who needed help would go hungry if we did that. Just lazy, drug-using frauds, and the threat of a little bit of hunger might be just the thing to get them to clean up their act and get to work." The premises there are all false, so the conclusion is false, and the results are potentially horrifying. But providing evidence of what's true seems to be about as effective as telling them about your brother's neighbor's friend's male calico cat.
It depends on the premises. If one said "All people on food stamps . . ." many of us know by examples we have personally observed that it isn't true. If one said "Some proportion of people on food stamps . . ." then many of us have personally observed that it is true. The "Therefore . . ." is also not necessarily true.
It is similar to the stock market. Oftentimes, unless and until two individuals who have years of training and experience analyzing financial data observe the same available data about a particular stock and arrive at opposite conclusions as to whether or not the stock should be bought or sold will a transaction take place.
quote:
So how do you get them to see what's true? Facts won't do it. Insults won't do it. What kind of rhetoric is effective at changing hearts and minds?
Facts, providing they are really facts and not just someone else's strongly held opinion, can do it. Up to about 1990 I used to believe that a gold standard would be a good thing. Seeing the fact that money is created and destroyed by the normal banking process of loans and the repayment of loans destroyed that belief.
quote:
Lots of hearts and minds have been changed about homosexuality over the last 20 years or so. What worked there?
It appears to be going back to how it seemed to be back in the early 80s, in my experience. During my last year of college in 1981 I left the dorms for a small apartment complex where many young folks from our church were living. Our landlord was homosexual. While we all consider it sin to engage in such acts, he is not answerable to us unless his choosing to engage in the act violates some right of ours for us and our stuff to be left alone. Likewise, he had the decency to not harp about how we were wrong and had to change our beliefs. Therefore, the only remaining question left at the time was whether or not he would be joining us for coffee and conversation in the cool of the evening.
It appears to come down to the Thomas Jefferson argument of whether or not it picks your pocket or breaks your leg.
quote:
What would work on the subject of vaccines? Or food stamps? Or any of the other contentious issues we face as a society?
Observation and time.
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"Well that's it, boys. I've been redeemed. The preacher's done warshed away all my sins and transgressions. It's the straight and narrow from here on out, and heaven everlasting's my reward."
Delmar O'Donnell
Posts: 2797 | From: West Carolina | Registered: Sep 2006
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S. Bacchus
Shipmate
# 17778
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Posted
I'm so glad you brought this up.
I've become increasingly worried about what I see as political stupidity. It seems to me that some people, perhaps even most people, seem to derive their politics from something that bears very little relationship to thought. For these, people, politics seems to be primarily an emotional issue. I don't understand this. Well, I guess I can partly understand it: when I was very young (say 14-16), I was quite a radical and very emotionally involved in politics. The thing is, I grew out of this sort of sub-intellectual approach to politics (at around age 17, irc). So I'm amazed to find grown men and women who still look at politics this way.
If I can give some examples of what I mean. On the left, a typical British example might be someone who hates 'bankers' or the '1%', but when questioned turns out to have only very fuzzy idea of what he or she actually supports and even fuzzier grasp of economics. Not, I hasten to add, because she thinks about economics in a left-wing way, but because she doesn't seem think about economics at all. On the extreme left version of this sort of thing, there seem to be a lot of conspiracy theorists (most of whom seem to be convinced that we're being 'poisoned' by various 'toxins', despite massive medical evidence pointing the opposite direction; anti-vaccine people are an extreme of the extreme). On the right, the targets are different, and the most popular are immigrants and the European Union. Not serious questions about these issues, but instead just a general hostility toward 'foreign things'.
Both types of political idiot seem to value highly emotive language and to undervalue, or even be actively suspicious of, research and rational thought. They invariably seem to believe that 'being angry' is some sort of virtue in and of itself, which is not a position I can even begin to understand. It seems an absolute triumph of 'the gut' over 'the brain'. Frankly, I find it terrifying. I think is was Isaiah Berlin who pointed out that this sort of attitude is the enemy of liberalism and the invariable and necessary precursor to fascism.
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'It's not that simple. I won't have it to be that simple'.
Posts: 260 | Registered: Jul 2013
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tclune
Shipmate
# 7959
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Posted
I find the idea rather strange that there is something amiss in people seeing what they believe to be there. We have developed a set of understandings that work quite well generally for us -- and these understandings may vary from person to person, but are nonetheless mostly good enough to get us through the day. The notion that we bring all the power of math and logic to bear on every thought we entertain is just bizarre. Life's too short and assertions too plentiful for that. Further, what kind of will-o'-the-wisp would we be if we rethought every conviction at every turn?
As Thomas Kuhn noted in "The Structure of Scientific Revolution," these things often require a new generation to change. But it is also clear that we can individually change our understandings over time as enough experiene contradicts our expectations. A spectacular example of that has been the rapid evolution from the social norm that "homosexuality is an aberration" to "homosexuality is within the norms of human sexuality." We do change, it's just not generally in response to a single challenge to our views. Or so ISTM.
--Tom Clune
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Posts: 8013 | From: Western MA | Registered: Jul 2004
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Jane R
Shipmate
# 331
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Posted
S. Bacchus: quote:
anti-vaccine people are an extreme of the extreme...
Anti-vaxers are just as likely to be right-wing as left-wing. On the face of it they are most likely to be (right-wing) neo-liberals; one of the most important aspects of vaccination from the public health point of view is the so-called 'herd immunity' which you get when a certain proportion of the population has been vaccinated, which then protects those who are unable for some reason to have the vaccination themselves. Moderates of all political persuasions will think this is an important goal; extreme individualists will not. Left-wing extremists are more likely to be collectivists.
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
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Hairy Biker
Shipmate
# 12086
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by S. Bacchus:
I'm so glad you brought this up.
Both types of political idiot seem to value highly emotive language and to undervalue, or even be actively suspicious of, research and rational thought. They invariably seem to believe that 'being angry' is some sort of virtue in and of itself, which is not a position I can even begin to understand. It seems an absolute triumph of 'the gut' over 'the brain'. Frankly, I find it terrifying. I think is was Isaiah Berlin who pointed out that this sort of attitude is the enemy of liberalism and the invariable and necessary precursor to fascism.
Stupid they may be, but if you can't influence them with facts, you sure as hell can't convince them that they are stupid. They might be quite smart and you're just misrepresenting them. In any case, it's pointless to rail against them. Just accept that's how the work and learn to do emotional influence. It is the case that the charismatic leaders will win the day, whatever policies they are espousing.
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there [are] four important things in life: religion, love, art and science. At their best, they’re all just tools to help you find a path through the darkness. None of them really work that well, but they help.
Damien Hirst
Posts: 683 | From: This Sceptred Isle | Registered: Nov 2006
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HughWillRidmee
Shipmate
# 15614
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Posted
yes - confirmation bias
quote:
Originally posted by W Hyatt:
It's not easy, but I have found that if I ask questions designed to help me understand instead of putting them on the defensive, listen to the answers, figure out how those answers make sense from the other person's point of view, and use that as a starting point for further discussion, I can sometimes sneak around the barriers people put up to keep new information from changing their mind (especially when it's apparent that someone is trying to change it). But I have to watch out because otherwise I could end up being the one who changes my mind.
We used to call it "Need Satisfaction Selling" and it's most successful when it satisfies both the needs of business and the (often very different) needs of the person doing the buying.
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The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things.. but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them...
W. K. Clifford, "The Ethics of Belief" (1877)
Posts: 894 | From: Middle England | Registered: Apr 2010
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L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
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Posted
Oh dear.
Ed Miliband has just shown just how little recall he has of his own time in office: and his party, and much of the left, are busy showing just how little they appreciate what utter balls (sorry Ed) he is talking about his energy "policy".
Forget the issue of 5% being wiped off the shares of energy companies: forget the issue of his pronouncement causing losses to the pension funds of millions (because pension funds are the major shareholders in generating companies).
No, what he is forgetting is that HE is the man who formulated the current energy policy. As Secretary of State for Energy & Climate Change he steered the wasteful and expensive Climate Change Act through Parliament and onto the statute book.
Why does this matter? Well, how many of you realise that by 2030 it will be illegal to heat your house with gas? No, I'm not making that up, its one of the provisions of the Act.
Of course, the fact that heating by electricity costs way more than gas is irrelevant because by 2030 most of the UK's electricity will come from offshore wing. But wait - Mr Miliband steered through more stuff that promises offshore wind generators THREE TIMES as much for their energy as that paid to gas-fired power station operators.
So, Mr Milband is telling us he can freeze the cost of our energy bills while at the same time guaranteeing that the people who produce the energy will be paid three times as much.
Can anyone explain to me how this will keep the lights on?
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Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
Posts: 4950 | From: somewhere in England... | Registered: Sep 2012
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TurquoiseTastic
Fish of a different color
# 8978
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Posted
"A man convinced against his will / Is of the same opinion still"
My late great PGCE Physics tutor gave a great example of how facts are not enough to convince. He told us of a pupil asked to compare two sides of a balance. One has water and sugar. One has the same amount of sugar and water, but the sugar is dissolved in the water. Which side goes down?
(An interesting aside is that 5-year olds tend to get the answer right, and so do 15-year olds, but 10-year olds get it wrong because they know about dissolving but not about conservation of mass).
Anyway he asked him - "What will happen" - "That's easy Sir, the side where the sugar dissolves will be lighter and so it will go up" - "Are you sure?" - "Yes definitely" - "OK, try it then".
Pupil does the experiment. Balance stays dead level.
"So what does that tell you?" - "Well, it shows I was right Sir" - "Really??? How does it do that???" - "Well you can see that the side with the dissolved sugar has risen up" - "Are you sure?" - "Yes." - "It looks dead level to me" - "Ah yes, but if you look *really closely* you can see that it has gone up *a really small amount*"...
The lesson he drew from this is that even in-your-face evidence is not enough, if you *don't give the person a new place to stand*. The boy had no "alternative conception" in his head which would have enabled him to abandon his previous model and adopt the new one.
And this was an example with no deep emotional commitment involved. Imagine how difficult it is to convince in a case where the person is going to be (as they see it) abandoning their most cherished beliefs / community values.
I think what you need to do is look at *why* that belief is important to the person in the first place. Can you provide a safe new place to stand, so that the person can move to the new place without excessive emotional trauma? And be prepared to look at your own ground too - are you as 100% right as you like to think you are?
I once had a conversation with a pupil who was moaning about creationists and how stupid they were. I took the line: "Think about how it would feel if you - hypothetically - began to wonder if creationism was correct after all. Imagine there was some really good evidence for it. Think how annoying that would be to you and how reluctant you would be to shift your ground. Then you can see why they find it difficult to come round to your point of view..."
Posts: 1092 | From: Hants., UK | Registered: Jan 2005
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shamwari
Shipmate
# 15556
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Posted
People believe what they want to believe.
Like the smoker who read a Readers Digest article on the danger of smoking and lung cancer resulting.
They wrote a letter to the Editor. "Your article was so convincing that I have decided to cancel my subscription to the Readers Digest"
[ 26. September 2013, 14:17: Message edited by: shamwari ]
Posts: 1914 | From: from the abyss of misunderstanding | Registered: Mar 2010
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