Psychology of Influence: Change Anyone's Mind Without Ever Arguing

You already know how this goes. You bring the facts, you stay calm, you point at the hole in what they said — and twenty minutes later they are more certain than when you started. That is not a failure of technique. A position is not made of reasons, so replacing the reasons does not move it. Worse: every fact you hand across the table gets picked up by the same machinery that built the position, and turned into better armour. This is what the research actually says happens inside a person when their mind changes, and the six moves that move people. All six are trainable. All six come out of real experiments, most of them run on strangers, in the field, with control groups. CHAPTERS 0:00 Everything you were taught is aimed at the wrong target 2:03 So facts work — the backfire effect did not replicate 2:08 Kahan: being better at maths made it worse 3:24 A zipper, a flush toilet, a helicopter 4:07 Fernbach: the one question that deflates a position 5:03 Why the instinct is always to bring more 5:52 The trap: pushing makes them fluent 6:43 Killing "just listen more" and steel-manning 7:33 Broockman and Kalla: ten minutes, three months 8:22 Law one — ask how it works, not why they believe it 9:05 Law two — never give the second argument 9:43 Law three — say the true part out loud, and first 10:34 Law four — let them say the sentence 11:28 Law five — argue with the claim, not with who they'd have to stop being 12:32 Law six — leave before they defend 13:39 What changes once you have practised these 14:13 Pascal, three hundred and fifty years ago 14:43 What I want to know SOURCES Wood, T., & Porter, E. (2019). The elusive backfire effect: mass attitudes' steadfast factual adherence. Political Behavior, 41(1), 135–163. Kahan, D. M., Peters, E., Dawson, E. C., & Slovic, P. (2017). Motivated numeracy and enlightened self-government. Behavioural Public Policy, 1(1), 54–86. Rozenblit, L., & Keil, F. (2002). The misunderstood limits of folk science: an illusion of explanatory depth. Cognitive Science, 26(5), 521–562. Fernbach, P. M., Rogers, T., Fox, C. R., & Sloman, S. A. (2013). Political extremism is supported by an illusion of understanding. Psychological Science, 24(6), 939–946. Broockman, D., & Kalla, J. (2016). Durably reducing transphobia: a field experiment on door-to-door canvassing. Science, 352(6282), 220–224. Anderson, N. H. (1971). Integration theory and attitude change. Psychological Review, 78(3), 171–206. Miller, W. R., & Rollnick, S. (2013). Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change (3rd ed.). Guilford Press. Pascal, B. Pensées. Of the six, which one do you think you would find hardest? Asking how instead of why. Giving only one argument. Conceding the true part first. Staying quiet long enough for them to say it. Separating the claim from who they would have to stop being. Or leaving before they defend. Be honest in the comments. #psychology #persuasion #arguments