Persuasion through curiosity: finding a window when the door is closed
A driver for my craft of storytelling has always been the science and the psychology of persuasion, how we use stories to shape hearts and minds and form the views of the people around us, by communicating our own beliefs and values. We’re living through such a time of disruption and disconnection, where the rifts in our societies have been laid bare and brought into the light. But in the divisions, we’re seeing opportunities to share the perspectives that are needed to start again, and build again.
But the question is, how do we do that when the discourse has become so toxic, so polarized and, often, so unreasonable?
When I came across this talk, When Facts Are Not Enough: Public Perception of Science by Dr. Allison Coffin, I thought, “alright, here's a scientist who actually studies these concepts, so let's look into it in a deeper way and start to come to grips with how it can impact the stories that we want to tell.” The lecture is insightful. And it’s bold. And it takes you through some often frightening realizations about the way truthful information, factual information is disseminated and consumed by varied audiences, and how that shapes our shared perception of the truth.
One of the main findings that I found to be the most interesting was that it's not the knowledge of scientific facts that makes people do things like wear masks, or believe in global warming or actually do something to change the world around them. It’s the presence of scientific curiosity.
That’s an important distinction: knowing vs wondering.
It's not simply about understanding something, or knowing anything about a topic, it's not about having a store of knowledge that you've built up to draw on. It's having an inherent curiosity to know more, a drive for discovery; and I think that's the big and important distinction that people often fail to understand; that maybe in our society, if we want to change minds about Black Lives Matter or about climate change, or about vaccinations, that process shouldn't actually start with presenting people with a bunch of arguments to try to change their minds.
We need to be having conversations about curiosity first.
In the video, Dr. Allison related a story. She talks about an encounter she had with a lady at a bar, who clearly had different views that she did. And instead of trying to convert this woman, she started asking questions like, what's your source? And anytime Dr. Allison had something to say in response, she also quoted her own sources. Her approach was to try to spark a conversation and a thread about where our knowledge comes from, in the hope not just that the woman would question her sources, but that she would gain enough of a sense of curiosity to find out more. But to take this a step further, Dr. Allison also took an approach of curiosity herself. It wasn’t just about a strategic maneuver to convince her counterpart. It seems to me that she really wanted to have a meaningful conversation and have an opportunity to learn from this woman. Curiosity and our desire for discovery needs to work both ways.
One of the things that I teach in my workshops is the importance of knowing and understanding your audience. With anti-maskers, devotees of alternative facts, and people who are skeptics of climate change, I think that we need to be asking ourselves, “are we talking to people who are curious, or are we talking to people who believe they have all the answers already?”
An audience can be sophisticated, intelligent, with a strong grasp of a range of subjects and materials, but if they have a belief that their knowledge of a topic is already comprehensive, and they don’t question and look for more information through their own interest in finding out more, it’s incredibly difficult to have any influence at all. On top of that, certainty is more comfortable than uncertainty, and admitting that one’s knowledge is NEVER comprehensive and embracing curiosity, one is, by definition, delving into the discomfort of less certainty. No wonder it’s hard.
Our approach needs to be different than if we're talking to people who are ignorant in the sense that they don't know something, but you can tell that they have a thirst for extending themselves, which I think is how I define curiosity.
I think that what we try to do as a society, too often, is to try to change people's minds too quickly and beat them over the head with an idea before they’re ready—and frequently that backfires. It actually can make people dig their heels in more. It can make people defensive, and less likely to give ground willingly, because they feel as though it’s being taken from them.
Idea: inciting curiosity as a way to shift the spectrum.
Jonah Berger wrote a good book recently called The Catalyst, and in it he talks about people’s “zone of acceptance” and the spectrum of belief; how on one side of the spectrum you might have people that agree with you and on the other side of the spectrum you have people that vehemently disagree. Between them lies a number of degrees—between what you think and what they think—and this really matters in how you shape your argument.
If you have people that are in the middle, sitting on the fence and behaving like swing states in an election year, they're more likely to be persuaded with like a rational argument.
These arguments work because people who are searching are already looking for reasons to shape their beliefs and actions, and they have that sense of curiosity out of the very nature of their being undecided. If they fall more squarely on an opposing end of the spectrum, they’re more likely to combat any new ideas, rational or not.
You have to really understand where people are on that spectrum and if they are all the way on the other side, your approach needs to be to just nurture that relationship because it could take weeks, months, even years to flip them, by making them feel heard, and making them feel like their mind isn't being changed.
Simply having a respectful conversation, and giving people the time of day, opening up their sense of interest in the acquisition of knowledge, can create an interest in divided groups of people. It could slowly could see them brought a little closer to the middle of that spectrum through exposure to ideas and the chance to develop a sense of curiosity about them.
It comes down to having simple, honest, open conversations with people.
In order to make someone feel heard, which opens them up to being persuaded a little bit more, you need to talk to them. And listen when they talk back. Because having open conversations gives you the opportunity to learn about your audience (and maybe even about yourself—if you’re a curious person!)
It’s often tempting to just say I don't want to dignify ideas that I don’t like with an answer or with a conversation. And maybe that's the wrong approach. We're not just giving them a reason to disagree with us more—we're closing off the opportunity to see eye to eye on what may be a really small thing.
I'm reminded of a commercial. It was a beer commercial where people from different walks of life came together to build structures, to build the components of a bar and then they were meant to have a beer. And it was a series of polarizing pairings - a chauvinist with a with a woman, somebody that was nationalistic and somebody that was an immigrant and stuff like that.
The idea behind the advertisement was that as you give people something common to work on, and something common to connect to, all of a sudden, their differences seem not so big and they can have a mature discussion about it and maybe even create some form of a relationship.
I think there’s an opportunity there. To find common ground and bring different perspectives into shared spaces in a way that is respectful and can leave room for more information seeking and more curiosity on all sides. And through those conversations we could start to foster a new way of persuading people and helping them understand new ideas that they might previously have rejected. Including ourselves.
But a big question remains in my mind: are there certain groups we just shouldn’t give an ear to? Is it morally wrong to hear out someone whose morals you disagree with? Maybe it’s morally wrong not to if listening to their perspective has a chance of changing the world for the better? Frankly, I don’t know, but I think it’s a question worth exploring together.