How Minds Change by David McRaney

McRaney starts the book by telling us about Charlie, once a prominent conspiracy theorist (“truther” or “misbeliever” as Ariely would call him), who changed his mind after meeting experts that presented evidence of the 9/11 attacks bring real (and not faked) and especially after meeting bereaved family members as part of the BBC show, Conspiracy Road Trip that, in an attempt to change their mind, had conspiracy theorists meet experts and consider facts.

Note that Charlie was the only one who actually changed his mind, while the other conspiracy theorists on the show still did not believe that 9/11 was real and that the crying family members were actually paid actors.

Charlie came out on YouTube with a video where he basically said he’d changed his mind after seeing all the evidence and meeting all the people.

And to no one’s (at least mine) great surprise, he was ostracised by the conspiracy community, accused of being a sell-out, his website hacked, his partner insulted, his sister traumatised through superimposed fake images, his employer told that he was a criminal, among other things. Eventually he had to change his name.

Dan Ariely’s observation in his book rings true then: “I have observed a lot of misbelievers and knew how quickly they resort to infighting.“.

I think this story does a good job of highlighting how entrenched our beliefs (indeed, sometimes about things that happened long ago or are completely unrelated to us) have become today that we’re willing to inflict great pain and conveniently ignore our morals when those beliefs are even indirectly threatened.

For our most fundamental beliefs, the information deficit model does not work: The information deficit model (IDM) is a theory that assumes that the public lacks knowledge about a topic, and that providing more information will change their beliefs and behaviours. Yeah, good luck with that.

Our beliefs are often intertwined with our values, identities, and social connections.

Simply providing more information rarely addresses these deeper layers. “That’s the only way into their brain. Through the heart.“.

Beliefs are separate from attitudes: The former are propositions we consider to be true, the latter are judgements/evaluations. We may be taught the most up to date facts, that may change our beliefs about what is true, but our attitudes on the topic may still remain unchanged. Between objective facts and subjective attitudes is a long, winding road where anything can happen.

Motivated reasoning: We tend to interpret information in a way that confirms our existing beliefs, even if it contradicts evidence. This “motivated reasoning” makes us resistant to changing our minds, even when presented with facts.

Emotional investment: Our most deeply held beliefs are often emotionally charged. This emotional investment makes them less susceptible to rational arguments or factual corrections.

Social reinforcement: Our beliefs are often reinforced by our social circles and communities. Changing our minds might mean risking social isolation or rejection, as happened with Charlie.

The backfire effect: In some cases, presenting contradictory evidence can actually strengthen misbeliefs, as people become more defensive and entrenched in their views.

Conspiratorial loops: If the conspiracy theorist discovers disconfirmatory evidence then that just means that the conspirators deliberately planted it to throw them off-track. It is simply proof that the conspiracy afoot is much deeper and insidious than thought.

Identity maintenance: When we feel updating our beliefs can challenge our position in the social group then we become resistant to changing our beliefs.

Introspection illusion: People wrongly think they have direct insight into the origins of their mental states, while treating others’ introspections as unreliable.

Epistemic vigilance: People do not trust incoming information blindly and tend to apply a skeptical view to it if it runs contrary to what is commonly accepted. “… human reason evolved to convince others (and be skeptical of other’s attempts to convince you).“.

Trust bottlenecks: When epistemic vigilance leads to false negatives. Often seen for those ideas that run counter to commonly accepted norms, but are in fact true.

Sleeper effect: A message initially deemed incorrect and a source initially deemed untrustworthy over time through repeated exposure are deemed correct and trustworthy.

We feel an attack on our deepest held beliefs as an attack on our very selves, no joke: “researchers found that people readily softened their beliefs for neutral statements, but for topics like abortion, same-sex marriage, and the death penalty, something else happened. As the arguments mounted, subjects responded to a threat to their convictions as if it was a threat to their very flesh and blood … Once these things [beliefs, attitudes, and values] become part of our psychological self, they are then afforded all the same protections that the brain gives to the body.”

The question then becomes: “Why do we hold some topics so dearly that we’re willing to dismiss clear evidence against our current beliefs even if it means we’re wrong?”

Because being “in” is more important than being right. Our identities are inextricably meshed with the groups we consider ourselves part of, and if we’re part of a group we feel safe and welcomed in, then we’d rather that situation be maintained and not upset. Much of our behaviour is motivated out of the behaviour we see in our social circles.

Humans evolved as hyper social animals and some of the oldest parts of our brains code for gregarious behaviour (for good reason).

Research indicates that people tend to “vastly preferred a smaller reward if it meant their own imaginary group would be better off than the imaginary outsiders.“.

Counterintuitively, it is rational for people to behave in such a way – See, when we feel very strongly about topics such as global warming being a hoax or a secret cabal of elites controlling medicine distribution, it is unlikely we will ever face an immediate and direct impact of being wrong about these opinions.

But the impact of changing our mind will see our social position immediately and palpably impacted if our allegiance is to a group that considers those controversial opinions to, in fact be, the truth.

“When we sense a threat to our place within a trusted group—if we feel like we might be considered untrustworthy for changing our minds—we avoid it.“.

The way out of one tribal group is another tribal group plus a degree of psychological safety, i.e., when we feel psychologically safe then we become more open to independent evaluation of the current group and whether it aligns with our values, and in case a of a gap if we have another (or several) social groups that we could become part of if it came to it, then we are more open to changing groups (and as a result dropping the “truths” of that group).

Prior experience, also called “priors”, shape our reality today in ways we are scarcely aware of.

McRaney talks at length about The dress, the viral internet phenomenon where people could not decide whether the colour of the dress was blue and black or white and gold. I remember the dress too, it was quite the thing back then. Cut to the chase, the reason people see the colours of the dress differently is because of the time they spend exposed to artificial light. People who spend more time exposed to artificial lights (indoors workers, night workers and such) are more likely to see the dress as blue and black, while those who spend more time outdoors will see the dress as white and gold.

The dress is a interjacent bistable visual illusion, as is the strawberry illusion. These are illusions where your mind decides what you see and you cannot change that.

The point is: “… when we are in unfamiliar and ambiguous territory, we disambiguate using our priors … AND “… when the truth is uncertain, our brains resolve that uncertainty without our knowledge by creating the most likely reality they can imagine based on our prior experiences.“.

The “without our knowledge” bit is most important – we’ve no idea our brain is deciding on our behalf and presenting to us only the output. We take the output on face value and assume it to be an accurate representation of reality. We fall prey to naïve realism.

And what happens with images of dresses or strawberries also happens with more important stuff like gun control, reservation, abortion laws, border control and so on. These complex scenarios are ever evolving with no clear objective answers, and that’s why the brain resorts to using priors.

“When we encounter novel information that seems ambiguous, we unknowingly disambiguate it based on what we’ve experienced in the past. But starting at the level of perception, different life experiences can lead to very different disambiguations, and thus very different subjective realities.“.

The term “SURFPAD” is used for this in the book: “When you combine Substantial Uncertainty with Ramified (which means branching) or Forked Priors or Assumptions, you will get Disagreement.“.

Also, people with similar experiences (priors) will tend to view and resolve ambiguous situations in similar ways.

“Post-truth” was the international word of the year in 2016; relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.

We live in the times of fake news, relativism, echo-chambers, filter bubbles, country specific versions of Stop the Steal and a general flood of information and misinformation that, if it does not convince, throughly confuses.

“… the sort of dead-end arguing that makes democratic collaboration difficult.“

I suppose if ever there was a time to understand how to effectively change people’s mind, it would be now.

Deep canvassing is a powerful tool to change minds: I covered this in a little detail in the previous blog where the big idea was that emotions are the real resistance to change masquerading as doubt over data and so on. McRaney talks about it in much more detail.

The central idea is that the only way people change their mind (for their most deeply held beliefs) is by changing their own mind. They need to convince themselves out of their previous position. It cannot be done by anyone else.

The deep canvasser (“professional mind changer”) helps people explore the roots of where their ideas come from.

In fact, for many realising that their ideas and values are not an immutable truth but the result of life experiences they once had, is in itself a revelation.

Once they realise that, then they can also consider the possibility that perhaps those ideas should be updated in light of new evidence. “… avoid arguing over a person’s conclusions, and instead work to discover the motivations behind them.“.

By being asked to consider how something actually works at a deep level (such as abortion laws) people engage in analogic perspective taking and exposed to their limited real understanding of the matter (illusion of explanatory depth),

Basically, deep canvassing, by being non-judgemental and curious, allows people the safe space and carves out for them the time (deep canvassing talks are usually 20 minutes) to think deeply and openly about their deepest beliefs.

“Belief-change blindness” is when people change their minds without realising that they’re changed their mind. And then they think they’ve always thought that (new) way because of consistency bias.

Unlike other techniques where, even if the person changes their mind, a tendency to revert to original beliefs is seen, such a tendency was not observed in deep canvassing.

A few more techniques similar to deep canvassing – Street Epistemology, Smart Politics, Motivational Interviewing: All of these build on the same principles as deep canvassing.

In fact, all four of these techniques can be classified into “technique rebuttal” – where the goal of the discussion is to find out the right way to think about thinking instead of debating the outcomes of different ways.

This is different from “topic rebuttal” where the focus is on the outcomes.

Topic rebuttal is better in broadly scientific settings where all parties are aligned to finding out the objective truth even if it means compromising their current position – in such situations the more facts the better.

Technique rebuttal is better for real life where people are very invested in their positions and need to be reminded about deeper and shared values before any discussion of technique or outcomes can be effective.

Its goal is to invite people to think about whether their current way of thinking is actually logical and aligned with their deepest values. Remember, the best way to change other minds is to let them do it themselves.

Assimilation and accommodation drive all mind change

Assimilation (a.k.a. conservation) is applying what you’ve already learned to an unfamiliar situation. No need is felt to learn something new or view things differently.

Accommodation (a.k.a. active learning) is learning a new way of thinking about and doing things.

We prefer to but can assimilate only upto a point (a.k.a. affective tipping point) when dealing with unfamiliar things. If something gets too unfamiliar then we have no option but to accommodate.

“It’s only when the brain accepts that its existing models will never resolve the incongruences that it updates the model itself by creating a new layer of abstraction to accommodate the novelty.“.

Another related concept is “threshold of resistance” which is the amount of counter-evidence or persuasion required to overcome a person’s resistance to change.

People can have a high threshold, which means they need a lot of “counter evidence” before they change their mind, while for those that need only a little counter evidence, we’ll call them the ones with a low threshold of resistance.

Which means that if enough other people in a social group, motivated by facts and data, change their mind about something – you will too, even though you may never encounter the actual facts that led to those others changing their mind. On average, it was demonstrated that when more than 30% of incoming information to an individual was incongruent with their current beliefs it would exceed the threshold of resistance and hence the affective tipping point would be reached.

Interestingly our confidence in existing beliefs increases up to the tipping point before falling off a cliff. That means, before our minds change we hold on even tighter to our beliefs.

We’re assimilating and accommodating all the time, but the pace of accommodation accelerates during periods of psychological trauma.

“… a ‘psychologically seismic event’ can ‘reduce to rubble’ many of the schematic structures that have guided understanding, decision making, and meaningfulness … When our assumptions completely fail us, the brain enters a state of epistemic emergency … In the end, so many of the facts, beliefs, and attitudes that populated your old models of reality are replaced that your very self changes.“.

For a message targeted at behaviour change, it is important for the recipient to accept the content.

The recipient can accept the content either through careful reflection and study, or by applying heuristics. Heuristics are mental shortcuts, like “if the argument has many bullet points then it must be right because it has so many bullet points”.

What they’ll exactly do that depends on how much motivation and ability they are willing to spend for the message – this is called “elaboration“.

Motivation is the willingness to spend energy on critically reflecting upon the message.

Ability is the cognitive wherewithal to be able to dissect the message.

Also, opportunity – which means that the recipient must be given the right environment to evaluate the message (more important for “high elaboration” as you’ll understand soon).

High motivation and ability mean a careful, considered, deliberate, reflective approach to accepting the message (“long route” or “high elaboration“). Low motivation and ability mean application of heuristics to accept the message (“shortcut” or “low elaboration“).

Both of these scenarios can lead to mind change. But only if the message is crafted correctly and matches the route (elaboration) the recipient is expected to take.

When we expect the recipient to take the long route, then we need to present them with arguments that are structured, detailed, logical and evidence based.

When we expect them to take the shortcut, we need to activate their heuristics such as providing simple, emotional explanations, reducing complexity and nudging them to engage rules of thumb.

Indeed, for important topics, we may choose to try and get people into a high motivation and ability state before giving them the message.

Sort of like a preparing ingredients before baking the cake.

Because research indicates that when people take the “long route” (i.e. engage in high elaboration) the message is more likely to result in long term attitude/behaviour change.

Though engaging the in the right kind of elaboration is only half the story, the elaboration must also produce a positive evaluation of the message.

“… if elaboration leads to a positive evaluation of the reasoning behind an argument, persuasion will succeed. If it leads to neutral or negative evaluation, the persuasion will fail.“.

Individual Characteristics:

• Prior Knowledge and Beliefs: The message should align with the individual’s existing knowledge and beliefs, and also with the group they consider themselves part of, or at least provide compelling reasons to reconsider them. “… the message can’t seem threatening to a person’s group identity, or the central [long route] route will remain barricaded.“.
• Motivation and Involvement: Individuals who are motivated and involved in the topic are more likely to engage in thoughtful elaboration and form positive evaluations.
• Cognitive Ability and Style: Individuals with higher cognitive abilities and a preference for analytical thinking are more likely to process information deeply and form strong evaluations.

Contextual Factors:

• Distraction-Free Environment: A conducive environment without distractions or interruptions can facilitate elaboration and positive evaluation. Also, nothing beats face to face communication.
• Mood and Emotions: A good mood raises openness to persuasion.
• Social Influence: The opinions and behaviours of others, especially those we trust or admire, can influence our own evaluations.

It says that people want to be “right”, which means hold opinions that are self serving, group serving or both (tribal monkeys remember?).

And that they’ll seek more information until they think they’ve got enough to consider themselves (or be considered by peers) “right”. That is, until they cross the confidence gap.

The “heuristic” part of HSM means that we can use heuristics to cross the confidence gap. The “systematic” part of HSM means that we (also, simultaneously) can use systematic, rational and deep thinking to cross the confidence gap. So, unlike ELM, it’s not either/or (between low and high elaboration) – HSM says both can (and do) happen together. The main goal is to cross the confidence gap.

The ELM is more of an ideal scenario, that is, it assumes that given high elaboration people will spend energy into taking the long route. The HSM is more realistic in saying that while people want to be correct, they’ll spend energy only when it is absolutely critical to do so (we’re misers when to comes to energy expenditure).

Both argumentation and reasoning can help remedy conspiratorial thinking and when several members of the society do this it often leads to the more people changing their minds.

But arguing or reasoning with someone is mentally taxing, that is, you have to think about various viewpoints and arguments against your position and figure out ways to defend it. That is why we offload the argumentation to others.

How? By not thinking too deeply about it and starting off with the argument that demands the least cognitive effort – if the other is convinced, well and good, if not, then we up the logical ante and so it goes.

Eventually, and especially if we’re arguing for others to expend resources (which they’ll not do without a fight), we get to our best arguments. When done at a societal level, this is what leads to scientific progress.

So, with so many people arguing online, why doesn’t the truth always prevail?

Because for argumentation and reasoning to work they need the right settings.

Social media is an unnatural place; the limited bandwidth of incoming information (text or video do not engage all our senses in the way a face to face conversation does) and the feeds generated by algorithms designed to prioritise engagement over truth creating filter bubbles as a side-effect.

“Arguing online can seem like deliberation, but if people are insulated from essential group dynamics, from outside perspectives, then individuals will essentially argue with themselves.“.

BTW we think that one can reason with themselves and dig themselves out of misbelief.

But because we are miserly when it comes to expending (mental) energy – without any counter arguments to ours, we will accept whatever we think of initially as the truth (and then want defend our position because we’d rather not spend more energy on the topic, which leads to confirmation bias).

This is why rarely do we see people self-correcting their biases, they need others to do that.

Here are the common features of all techniques aimed at changing minds about the most intractable issues: Though the following look like clean steps, getting through a single step may itself take ages, and you may have to repeat steps as well. That’s just how real life is, messy.

Establish rapport: Nothing can be achieved without this first step. If there’s no rapport then the other person will just block you out. “… in any persuasion attempt, your priority should be to curate the conversation in a way that strengthens the relationship between you and the other person, and every second work to demonstrate to the other person that you are not an other, that you are not a member of what they consider them. At the same time, do the same thing within yourself. Try your best not to see them as an other and not to frame them within the category of them.“. Ask non-threatening, open-ended questions. Summarise what you’ve heard to make the other person feel heard and respected. Find common ground between your values.

Clearly define claim and repeat understanding until they’re satisfied: Next step you want to understand from the person what exactly they’re saying, what their exact claim is. Be super careful about definitions here, McRaney gives the example of the word “government”, where you might think of it as meaning “elected representatives working to make their constituents like them” while the other might thinks of it as meaning “cabal of billionaires in cahoots to leech societal resources”. Same word, very different meanings. It’s stuff like this where one trips, “The problem with most arguments is that we often aren’t actually arguing, because our definitions of the terms aren’t the same as theirs.“.

Ask for numerical confidence in the claim: Then you want to find out how confident the person is in their claim. Like a confidence level from 1 to 100 where 1 is “least confident”, and 100 is “most confident”.

Elicit reasons as to why the number feels right, and the process they used to arrive at the reasons: If they offer several reasons then settle on the underlying theme of those reasons. Also, eliminate the reasons if they answer “No” to “Would you change your mind about this issue change if you realised that this particular reasons was wrong?”.

Then, most important, ask them to investigate what process they used to arrive at those reasons and why they feel that process itself was the correct one to use.

Most people do not think about thinking at this level, so many would be doing it for the first time in the conversation. Often coming up with reasons on the fly.

This is okay – your job is not to get the right reasons right there, but rather to make them realise “okay, so there IS an actual way to think about thinking that I’d probably not been doing up this point, huh, interesting”.

And if they understand that maybe their process wasn’t the best, consider it a bonus.

One way to get this going is by asking: “‘Could your method also be used to arrive at completely different and competing conclusions?’ and if so, “What does that say about the quality of the method you’re using to arrive at your belief?’“.

Repeat your understanding of why they feel the number is right and processes they used. Ask them if you’ve understood correctly and repeat until they’re satisfied.

Share information about how you think about the claim in a way that encourages thinking but does not alarm the mind (i.e. in the form of stories): This is why stories are so powerful, because they’re just stories. Unlike facts where the person might suspect you’re trying to play them – when you start off with a story, they let their guard down, because hey, it’s just a story. It’s not real life, and no way does it apply to them. But in this innocuous encounter we’re able to plant the seeds for thinking, and that is a win. Great if it’s your own story but even if it is someone else’s as long it as it is human, honest and relatable then it’ll work. “… I’ve realized that ridicule, being angry and telling people that they’re mistaken, is not going to help them. We’re all sort of in the same boat. We’re just grasping for reasons to justify the views that we’ve already built. Once you know that, you begin to feel empathy …”.

Wrap up and wish them well.

In other words, why does it happen that the techniques and principles mentioned above do not bring about change for ages, and then the same techniques and principles suddenly bring about massive change?

Because for change to occur, the environment needs to change first. “First comes the environmental change, then the cultural change; but the cultural change lags behind, sometimes for a long while.“.

When the environment is right, the same inputs can lead to output whereas earlier they did not. And because “most people are in the fat part of the bell curve, neither early adopter nor holdout, changes like these seem to come out of nowhere.“.

In other words, “change in environment” means that a sufficient number of people need to have arrived at their affective tipping point that accommodation at a social scale must now become mainstream and that assimilation is just not enough any more.

Example 1

Having large families was the expedient thing to do in the 1700s and not procreating was unimaginable.

But with the Industrial Revolution as the environment of the homestead and self-sustenance changed to the environment of city dwelling and salary earning – people did not (a) need to rely on kin to do everything (specialists got created that delivered your milk and cured your diseases) and (b) have as close contact with the old generation (which likely was left behind in the villages) and hence were unencumbered by their world views.

As a result, the culture shifted where it was okay for people to have smaller families or none at all. The environment changed first, and then the culture followed.

Example 2

It was unimaginable that peasants enjoyed the same dignity as the aristocracy.

“But when technology led to factories, and factories led to political clout and wealth among laborers, the concept of a working class emerged. It was a new category, and people within it demanded representation in the government and respect from society … it became illogical to treat people with greater levels of dignity only because they were born into a certain economic stratum”. Dignity was redefined. It soon encompassed class, then gender, then race, and then all of humanity.“.

The environment changed first, and then the culture followed.

Example 3

It was unimaginable to think that people could not go to office and still be paid.

But when Covid-19 changed the environment and forced businesses to choose from either getting no work done or getting some work done (with employees working from home), combined with the fact that over the last 3 decades knowledge work was becoming more mainstream, it was suddenly okay for people to login from their homes and still be considered as working.

The environment changed first, and then the culture followed.

Let’s be clear about what “environment” means here:

Broadly it means the current state of the world in terms of climate, resources, geopolitical stability, state of technology and so on. Because nothing ever remains as it was, these things are always changing – sometimes driven by man, sometimes by act of God.

Also more specifically, “environment” means the current state of people in terms of their affective tipping points and threshold of resistance (whether or not they’ve reached it for a particular topic).

Needless to say, the broader environment we find ourselves in impacts our affective tipping point and threshold of resistance, and because that environment is constantly changing it means that our affective tipping point is also constantly changing (though we may not be aware of it).

IRL we have strong bonds within our social group whose values we cherish and opinions we consider before deciding to act, but we also have ties with people outside those core social groups.

Imagine a scenario with three groups of people “A”, “B” and “C” – “… in each group, people are paying attention to what the others are thinking, feeling, and doing. But in each tightly connected group there are some people with regular contact with individuals in other groups.“.

There needs to be a trigger, a spark, a prime mover, some person (or persons) whose threshold of resistance is breached and who communicates a change in values to the people they know and in doing so starts a cascade mind change in the group.

Now imagine a guy in group “A”, let’s call him “David”, who due to some change in the broader environment reaches his threshold for topic “X” – say, at “10%” – that is, the moment the proposition of counter evidence in the information David was consuming reached 10% he changed his mind. David becomes the trigger.

David communicates a change in his values within his group but also to Justin in group “B”.

Justin is someone with a low threshold (5%) on the topic and readily changes his mind when he sees David has changed his mind.

Now Justin starts communicating a change in his values in his group (“B”) and thus starts a cascade that eventually reaches Rosh whose threshold of 20% is breaches.

Meanwhile the cascade started by David in his own group (“A”) has “changed enough minds” (in other words “generated enough counter evidence”) that Mark, who has a threshold of 40%, also changes his mind.

Mark is friends with a person from group “C”, Pete. Pete’s tipping point is 30%, and since he sees Mark changing his mind at 40%, he changes his own mind about topic “X” as well and starts a cascade in his own group by communicating the change.

Finally, Cory, with a very high 80% threshold, part of group “C” – who was friends with Rosh (from group “B”) and did not change his mind when Rosh did (because Rosh’s threshold was much lower at 20%), now starts seeing people in his own group change their mind due to the cascade started by Pete and hence ends up changing his mind.

In this way the cascade started by David not only impacted his own group but also let to chain reactions in other groups. When done at a societal level, with several thousands of chain reaction started by a few prime movers, change can seem to come on very rapidly (provided the conditions are right).

And it should also be clear from the image above that when the environment is not right, i.e. people’s thresholds do not overlap, then change will not occur.

“The fact that the state of the network determines whether global cascades are possible explains not only why some ideas catch on and others do not, but why some ideas appear over and over again and go nowhere until one day they change everything.“.

Also, “The old advice was that anyone looking to get information or behaviors to spread should seek out the ultra-connected nodes in a network, the people that others look to for guidance on how to think and act. In reality, though, anyone can start a cascade.“.