How to reach people who are wrong
(Second of two parts) By NICHOLAS KRISTOF The New York Times
I wonder if we liberals, having helped to preserve American democracy over the last four years, are getting cocky and self-righteous — and the boast in the first half of this sentence might be an example of that.
Both left and right often see the world, indignantly, through a tidy moral prism, but the world is messier than that.
After #MeToo, progressives embraced the slogan “believe women” but struggled when a woman accused Joe Biden of sexual harassment. Some liberals embraced the slogan “defund the police” and hurt the election prospects of Democratic candidates who actually favored alternative social spending. Moving further to the left, utopians in Seattle last year set up a six-block “no-cop zone” that would be free of police violence, but the subsequent shootings there of six people in 10 days confirmed the value of the police. A much-read New York Times article last week chronicled how Smith College rushed to apologize and suspend a white janitor whom a Black student accused of racism; an investigation found no basis for the accusation.
The world is complicated, and we should all be cautious about shoehorning facts into our ideological constructs.
That’s one reason for intellectual humility: The search for truth is bumpy and complicated. My favorite philosopher, Sir Isaiah Berlin, emphasized that we’re fated to live in a world with competing and incommensurate values; that’s not terrain suitable for grandstanding.
Another reason to recalibrate is that 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. President Biden seems to understand all this better than some others in his party: He gets that every time Democrats brandish their wokeness and wag fingers or call people bigots, they manufacture more Republicans.
“Humility is often a more effective persuasive tool,” Grant told me.
Research suggests that what wins people over is listening, asking questions and appealing to their values, not your own. Grant cites evidence for “complexifying” issues so they become less binary and more nuanced, enabling someone on the other side to acknowledge areas of ambivalence.
Researchers find that it is easier for people to reach agreement on difficult issues if they have been prepped to see the world as complicated and full of grays. It’s a painstaking, frustrating process of building trust, keeping people from becoming defensive, and slowly ushering them to a new place.
All this is tough to do after four traumatic and polarizing years, especially when fundamental moral issues are at stake. 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.