Facts can be dangerously useless for changing minds on important matters.
Ah, that sweet dream of convincing someone on the internet that they’re wrong.
Gently lay that data down, and let’s use what works.
Something very odd about our human thinking has been laid bare, that we have only been able to make sense of with the new voyeur-tech of neurophysiology.
Being wrong, hurts. Biologically I mean, not just a sharp sting to the ego. The kind of hurt that makes us act a little crazy.
Think of a time you tried to set somebody straight — by pointing out the undeniable, double-blind, triple-checked facts that PROVE they’ve made a misjudgment of reality. Okay, got one?
Did this happen: your truth-adjustment remedy didn’t merely deflect off them, but shockingly, embedded their belief in even deeper. Did they come out believing their position with even more conviction?
What the flaming heck happened there?
How could they not see the blindingly obvious facts? THE TRUTH. Plain as day.
Frustration has a name.
The Backfire Effect.
The Misconception: When your beliefs are challenged with facts, you alter your opinions and incorporate the new information into your thinking.
The Truth: When your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger.
“Once something is added to your collection of beliefs, you protect it from harm. You do it instinctively and unconsciously when confronted with attitude-inconsistent information. Just as confirmation bias shields you when you actively seek information, the backfire effect defends you when the information seeks you, when it blindsides you. Coming or going, you stick to your beliefs instead of questioning them. When someone tries to correct you, tries to dilute your misconceptions, it backfires and strengthens them instead. Over time, the backfire effect helps make you less skeptical of those things which allow you to continue seeing your beliefs and attitudes as true and proper.”
— thanks David McRaney (You Are Not So Smart) #podcast
Our brains evolved a protective pain response as sharp and urgent as survival flight-or-flight to protect us from meandering into the danger of changing our minds. On the beliefs that are key to our identity. On the beliefs that help us fit in with a group.
The anterior cingulate cortex (which helps process acute pain in the limbic system) flares when we’re presented with beliefs we need to defend.
It doesn’t even bother getting confirmation from the higher thinking areas. It’s straight to the battle stations. We respond primally and painfully to an attack on closely-held identity marker beliefs.
[Quick warning: lest you assume this about those cognitively-unsophisticated people, let me put you at ease. This bug applies to all human brains by default. Suffered by even the very smartest among us. Once aware of it, we can consciously upgrade our thinking. If we can catch it, we can patch it].
It’s an evolutionary reflex. An ancient reality-distortion field app.
The threat of being shunned by our tribe for defecting on a key belief is neurologically painful — to keep us from being ostracised and booted into the wilderness.
Avoid any attempt at a head-first intellectual entry on “hot” convictions — politics, addiction, religion, race, nationality (anywhere we anchor our self image). The urge to convince with stats, news clips, research, seems sensible, but it entrenches opposition. Your efforts likely to wind up killed as propaganda! fake news! pseudoscience! and tossed on the barricades of defence.
Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer: there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.
— George Santayana.
Leader? This skill matters, now
Once this may have been an amusing quirk of humanity. But suddenly, it matters. Existentially. The Backlash Effect, coupled to the accelerant of social Web has enflamed and hardened extreme beliefs.
People are scattering out of the global commons, into their corners and barricading their beliefs with actions that endanger us all, because of the speed, scale and sophistication of those who exploit this cognitive weakness.
If you have a big mission that requires changing how people think and behave, it helps to realise the formidably ancient forces we’re up against.
Tech is easy, high quality solutions exist to remedy most of our toughest problems. Global risks can be met with brilliance and ingenuity, were it not for the bewilderingly complex humans who rarely conform to our logical technological plans.
For the most part the worst obstructions to progress, are not the “ignorant masses”, but other leaders.
If you have outsized influence, your understanding of the impact of the Internet coupling to these old, irrational social forces is critical now.
But if your battle plan of persuasion is based on presenting damning evidence, HALT! You’ll only deepen tribal allegiance on the other side and ramp up the radicals with rational argument.
In needing to be taken seriously, those who share findings are sanitised of story and evocative hooks for the imagination. Political-speak, academic impenetrability and industry jargon lock people out of relating or caring.
SO WHAT WORKS?
If you don’t have the luxury of ignoring or unfriending all those who are obnoxiously wrong, the persuasion professionals have guidelines for us:
- Acknowledge them. We long to belong, but humans also crave recognition from power. Recognise their backlash fear, don’t call it out. (Take care, trolls are not your target market, sweep on in that case).
- Rich stories. The more vividly appealing to the senses the better. Gently embed those facts in here. We know that there is no better format to transport information — intact and memorably — than through an easily shareable narrative. Especially ones that use activating emotions (anger, awe, anxiety, amusement). And if you haven’t learned by now, they don’t need to be true to have staying power.
- Easy = true. Messages that are simpler to understand, feel true faster. Apply cognitive kindness please. If something is complex or subtle, and needs explaining, then it needs more refinement to be stronger and clearer. Can it be captured in a catchphrase? Popped on a tee shirt/mug/hat? We are suckers for mental shortcuts. Perceptual fluency (a measure of how easy it is to think about something — though the phrase itself kills the point).
- Friendship! Did you discount this as the teenage girl option? If so, you are leaving the world’s most time-honoured and powerful behavioural modifier tool on the table. Loneliness makes us susceptible to capture by extreme groupthink. Helping people who feel left out, participate, rather than expecting them to assimilate is vital. Acknowledgement of their position makes it easier for them to be wrong safely.
- Deploy defectors and converts to make the case for you. People who were once been a recognised member of the group you’re trying to convince are often your unfair advantage as spokespeople. They know what it’s like to be an insider and can speak with authority for both sides, and more likely to heard without backlash.
- One with a huge warning sticker: take care with backing internal dissenters in leadership positions. It can feel exciting to find allies within the other camp who echo your stance. But too eagerly co-opting them as a hero for your side, can dilute the strength of their authority in the group, or have them branded as traitors. Stealthily sponsoring or bankrolling their faction, is perilous. History is littered with these investments gone awkwardly wrong and unleashed many a complicated war.
Does this all sound spookily like helping someone escape from a cult?
Good, it should. Guard against creeping backlash traps where you can, help others out of theirs.
Good citizenship reminder: there are very well-funded campaigns that exploit our cognitive glitches. Pay attention to which beliefs are attached to your identity that could do with a healthy shakeout, so that you are not an easy mark.
Carefully notice where you activate this protective forcefield. [Hint: you may have to ask for help seeing it].
We all have the Backfire Effect in operation somewhere — invisibly activating a safer, smaller simulation of reality than our true capacity.
“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.” — William Blake
REFERENCES.
Because subconsciously fooling ourselves to fit in is fascinating, and worth exploring:
