The Difficulties of Persuasion

(c) by Mark Dempsey

The likely answer to facts is far too often denial. People aren't interested in facts, they're more committed to tribal loyalty, or already-decided opinions...exactly like the fact-free prejudice they decry in their opponents.

It's hard to persuade others. A few counter-factual examples:

• Athletes tend to attribute their victories to training, strength and stamina, and their losses to unfortunate circumstances.
• 74 percent of drivers consider themselves better than average
• 94 percent of university professors think they are better than average (and these are the smarties, not the dummies!)
• Half of all students in one survey predicted that they would protest upon hearing an overtly sexist comment. When secretly tested, just 16 percent actually did. (from The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science by Will Storr)

Motivational Interviewing  is a counseling approach developed in part by clinical psychologists. It's a way to address disagreement with patients when the outcome can either be death (fantasy) or life (facts). It's been tested in persuading drug addicts to abandon drug use (or die), and advising heart patients to revise their diets and exercise routines (or die). Essentially it advises to work from agreement first. Fights, arguments and partnership are modes of conflict in order of increasing effectiveness.

As far as the effort to overcome the prejudice and inertia in disagreements, intellectual humility has many benefits, but comfort isn’t one of them, and it’s often hard work. Nevertheless, it has benefits:

• Novel solutions to problems often originate in not knowing (curiosity). 
• Relationships and tolerance improve–making others wrong seldom makes them eager to connect.
• More accurate self-knowledge is another result. Humility can unlock authenticity and personal development. 

(from The Curious Joy of Being Wrong – Intellectual Humility Means Being Open to New Information and Willing to Change Your Mind - By Daryl Van Tongeren, Associate Professor of Psychology, Hope College. Originally published at VoxEU)

Informing people contrary to their prejudices is a daunting enterprise, and one that often may not be possible in the short run. The alternative is to wait for the wheel of history to turn and make that persuasion easier. The presidency of LBJ was full of deception, lies, war crimes and turmoil. LBJ himself was a bigot, a philanderer with multiple mistresses, and never shy about deceiving to achieve his goals. In fact he was a lot like Donald Trump. Nevertheless, LBJ got civil rights legislation, Medicare, and the war on poverty. 

The biggest difference between LBJ and Trump is that Johnson grew up poor. Perhaps the poverty visited on the US by Trump's ham-handed management of the its economy will produce a new LBJ. In the meantime, counting on people to change their minds looks at least like a persistent difficulty.