Persuasion Is a Gentle Art
How to persuade reluctant Covid-19 vaccine takers to get the shot? That was the question, but the insight and answers provided recently by a focus group of Trump voters apply to all efforts to persuade. The contrast with most of our political discussion is stark.
The focus group of 19 “vaccine hesitant” people was conducted by Frank Luntz, a well-known Republican pollster. In a two-hour-plus session they were presented with a variety of different messages and messengers. The group followed a “remarkable arc,” Luntz said. By the end, all 19 said they were “more likely” to get vaccinated. The focus group was covered in a story by the Washington Post.
We all talk. We all argue. Few persuade. To change a mind is a difficult thing; not everyone can be persuaded. We can improve the chances of success by considering the ideas underlying what the Trump voters in the focus group had to say.
People don’t want to be told what to think. Give them the facts, let them make up their own minds. The sentiment of the focus group: “We want to be educated, not indoctrinated.” People recognize the difference between a message intended to manipulate and a message intended to inform. The lasting casualty of propaganda is belief in the messenger.
People respond to honesty and discount hype. They know that nothing is sure; nothing is 100 percent. Saying something doesn’t make it so. The governors who leveled with their people, who spoke plainly about the dangers during the early months of Covid, who didn’t sugarcoat, were the ones most appreciated.
People don’t respond to political messages, don’t trust politicians. If people don’t want to be told what to think and they discount hype, it is understandable they don’t trust politicians. Public trust in government is near an all-time low. It has been falling since the 1960s and the Vietnam war when our leaders routinely told us the war was going great, while the images every night on television said the opposite.
Political spin, the practice of making white look black, and black look white, depending on what you want the audience to believe, has over the years created an audience that disbelieves. The focus group, even though made up of Trump voters, were not moved by words from current Republican leaders. They thought the ad featuring presidents Carter, Clinton, Bush and Obama was “propaganda”, and were not receptive to the idea of a Trump ad, saying they would be more responsive to their spouse or doctor. A Fox News pro-vaccine Public Service Announcement drew “shrugs”.
One message from a politician was effective. Former Republican governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, told his own coronavirus story, of being in intensive care for a week, of two family members dying of the virus, of the randomness of the infections, and the serious effects on even healthy people. His conclusion, however, was not: you should get vaccinated. Instead, “I really do believe the facts that I’ve learned, and the experiences I’ve had, should make at least everybody … think hard.”
People are not persuaded by confrontation and condemnation. Participants in the focus group all had reasons for being hesitant about taking the coronavirus vaccine. They objected strenuously to being condemned as “anti-vaxxers” who opposed all vaccines.
If we heed what members of this focus group had to say our approach would be different. That is, if our intent is to persuade, to change minds, rather than to express ourselves and our own views, anger and frustration. Most of the political messages in my inbox, most of the messages from politicians and commentators on television and radio are condemnatory. There is no effort to persuade.
Persuasion is a gentle art. It takes skill, it takes time, it requires respect for the intelligence and judgment of the other. It also requires humility and a letting go of the need to change the other person.
Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the Wharton School, says that you change a person’s mind when you help them find their own motivation to change.
In a recent column in the New York Times, he writes, “When we try to change a person’s mind, our first impulse is to preach about why we’re right and prosecute them for being wrong. Yet experiments show that preaching and prosecuting typically backfire.” Exploring “the nuances in people’s own thinking” however, results in them becoming more open in their views.
When I was chair of the Government Organization Committee of the Illinois House, we proposed a reorganization of state environmental agencies. Agency leaders objected strenuously. In the middle of one meeting that didn’t start well, I asked them, if they could have the best possible structure what would it look like? After about ten minutes of talking they realized their description came very close to what was being proposed. It didn’t take long then to agree.
Grant explains, “Try to understand their thinking and ask if they’re open to some rethinking. The rest is up to them.”
That attitude is not characteristic of our current political and social culture. We feel compelled to express our own feelings fully. Every example of bad behavior has to be called out and confronted, labelled and condemned.
There are times when condemnation is appropriate. There are also times when the advice of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is appropriate. “It helps sometimes to be a little deaf. … When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out. Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one’s ability to persuade. … fight for the things you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”
We are angry and tempted to condemn because so many of the issues we face are huge, have been around a long time and impact people’s lives. Little seems to change, so we lash out.
“But it’s precisely because the stakes are immense that we should try to learn from the science of persuasion and emphasize impact over performance,” columnist Nicholas Kristof writes in the New York Times.
“If Democrats want to get things done, they need to win over undecided voters in swing states. And there’s evidence that preaching from the moral high ground alienates those voters. … every time Democrats brandish their wokeness and wag fingers or call people bigots, they manufacture more Republicans.”
We find ourselves, particularly after the last four years, in an escalating war of words that leaves all of us more firmly entrenched in our own views, more alienated from each other, less willing to talk with each other.
To combat the coronavirus, scientists and public health professionals recommend the vaccine. For the political wars, social scientists who study the ways we communicate recommend the gentle art of persuasion. Although not 100 percent effective, it works. Something to think about.
Douglas Kane is the author of "Our Politics: Reflections on Political Life" published in 2019 by Southern Illinois University Press
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