Persuasion in Presidential Politics (and Business)
By Andrew Sullivan and Amber N. Ott
If you have ever debated politics on Facebook, the following scenario will be familiar. You notice a political point made by a friend in support of his preferred presidential candidate, and you feel your blood pressure rise. So you respond. A few minutes later, your friend responds with a series of arguments. Which gets you more upset, so you respond in kind, this time deploying facts, undermining his thesis, hitting him with logic and reason like Aristotle reincarnated. Does it work? Of course not. In fact, the back-and-forth seems only to harden your positions. In a couple hours you’ve both turned to Netflix, and are quietly wondering how you became friends in the first place.
The fruitless debates of this political season got us thinking about this question: why is it so hard to persuade someone of something, and should we even bother? More important, what are the implications for business and government leaders who have to convince people to support a position?
We are wired to resist changing our minds
Social science helps us answer these questions. Psychology teaches us that we both embrace information that reinforces our own point of view (confirmation bias) and explain away information that undermines our identity or sense of self (self-affirmation theory). If you feel that your friend isn’t really absorbing your arguments on Facebook, you are right!
People also shape their opinions to reflect the groups with which they identify (tribalism and cultural cognition theory). This means that you are not only trying to convince your friend to accept new information, but you’re also trying to persuade him to reject his cultural identity and his “team’s” values.
The climate change debate illustrates how this works. In a Nature Magazine article, Yale Professor Dan Kahan explains that “people with different cultural values — individualists compared with egalitarians, for example — disagree sharply about how serious a threat climate change is. People with different values draw different inferences from the same evidence. Present them with a Ph.D. scientist who is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, for example, and they will disagree on whether he really is an ‘expert’, depending on whether his view matches the dominant view of their cultural group.”
In another example, consider this November 4 interview with a married pair of North Carolina voters. A Republican, Sarah Leonard opens the interview by noting she and her husband “struggled with infertility for several years, and I just think that life begins at conception.” A personal detail consistent with the fact that she and her husband are opposed to abortion, a matter central to their choice of president. Hillary Clinton is ruled out.
Lessons in persuasion for business and politics
So what can be done about this? How do we communicate effectively with one another? Certainly there are lessons here for business and political leaders for whom persuasion is critical to success in a range of settings. Three points to keep in mind:
Identify and understand your target audience, whether that means voters, shoppers or investors. If you’re considering taking a position on a higher order, social issue — as many business and government leaders do — how does your audience view the issue? Is it something where cultural groups have clearly picked sides? Will it challenge your audience’s values? If so, proceed with caution or risk becoming ensnared in a polarizing debate.
Do what you can to separate your issue from ideology or notions of self-perception. Sometimes you just need to frame your message differently to make people more willing to embrace your argument. In a New Yorker article on persuasion, Maria Konnikova uses the theory of self-affirmation to form an argument against the raw-milk movement, which calls for legalizing unpasteurized milk, despite warnings from health officials. “Create messaging,” she writes, “that self-consciously avoids any broader issues of identity, pointing out, for example, that pasteurized milk has kept children healthy for a hundred years.” This approach will be more effective than telling them what they’re doing is bad for their kids.
Take steps to remind your audiences of something that gives them a positive view of themselves. As author David Ropeik puts it in Psychology Today, people who feel good about themselves are more likely to be open-minded. It’s an approach proposed by Claude Steele, the creator of the self-affirmation theory, whose research into test performance suggests affirmation helps people perform better.
Bottom line for all of us, particularly over the next 24 hours: when your relative posts a video you consider bonkers, restrain your inner Aristotle. Affirm him of his intelligence and thoughtfulness. And when you reply, don’t tell him he’s wrong, make a positive case which steers clear of his identity or values.