Why facts don't change minds
I've recently binge-listened to The New Gurus, a podcast on the digital spaces created by gurus as an alternative to mainstream medicine, politics and media. It’s incredibly interesting, particularly around the role of evidence.
The cover image of the New Gurus: a figure with arms outstretched is superimposed on a phone against a stained-glass window
I'm a big fan of podcasts and the democratisation of media. I've come across so many thoughtful examinations of issues that are often overlooked. There is a flipside though. There is no longer one single version of the truth, and ultimately, it is harder to tell who you can trust. One of the taglines in the New Gurus is that “as our trust in institutions waivers, we're looking to charismatic individuals to tell us how to live.” In an episode where Will Blunderfield shares why he drinks his own bodily fluids, one of his followers minimises the role of modern science:
“I believe that we are all scientists, and that science in its primal form is about observation. You don't have to be a scholar or something to say what's right or wrong.”
Whilst it's tempting to see such statements in the context of shadowy internet communities and obscure theories, there are real world implications. BASW's podcast on Social Work in a conflict zone talks about how good quality information gives people control and agency in critical and complex situations:
“Social workers recognised that people make good decisions for themselves when they have good information… how people could access free public transport, which countries were offering places for people to go.”
How can we better communicate evidence?
This fascinating paper from Anne H. Toomey on 'Why facts don't change minds' is illuminating – not just for the conservation research on which it is focuses, but wider evidence and research too. It looks at how science is commonly communicated and what a better approach might look like.
Do facts change minds?
I have been told that facts don’t change minds, stories do. The paper suggests that there is “limited usefulness of ‘improved dissemination’ of the best evidence for practice and policy.” Just giving people information isn’t enough, we need to tell our stories in an engaging way.
We fight for what we believe in
It’s nice to think that sharing evidence is enough, but things get murkier when you factor in human behaviour. We tend to think that working with individuals will eventually build momentum that will lead to a shift in collective opinion. It turns out that people are much better at arguing their point than they are at making logical decisions. Working to increase scientific literacy alone is not enough. We need to understand the power of values, emotions, and experience if we want to change people's minds and behaviour.
Losing the snobbery
Going back to the podcast, one of the things that Helen Lewis does well as the host is to listen respectfully to people who very often have been ignored and sidelined. She doesn't make fun of people whose perspectives are easy to poke fun at. She stops short of judgment of any interviewee, even those that have no factual basis for their beliefs. This helps us to understand what it is about these counter beliefs that lead people to buy into these alternative systems. The strength of a single narrative overcomes the strictly logical factual account. Going back to Will Blunderfield's scepticism of medicine:
“Mere facts can't beat a story, and Will has a story about vaccines… if you piece together his life story though, his unhappy encounters with medicine as a child, the gay bashing after which he was offered pills rather than therapy, his concerns about his own masculinity, you can begin to see where his suspicion of mainstream medicine, what he calls allopathic medicine, comes from.”
Toomey's paper asks us to stop placing the blame on the “receivers” of evidence and instead think about how we can engage with people and topics in complex scenarios. For those of us who are seeking to change minds, this study at Yale University shows the benefits of 'arguing to learn' (here's a helpful overview). We can't just expect to convince people that we're right. We need to listen in order to understand someone's point of view if we're ever going to support people to change their minds and behaviours, as well as develop our own views and perspectives of the world.