How to make people change their views.

Neuroscience, Psychology, and Health
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They analysed reddit comments in a community of /r/Changemyview . There is an option of adding “delta” to a comment that changed the author’s view about his original forum post. Since this is a forum, and reddit is a forum, these tips might be really helpful.

THE BEST WAYS TO WIN AN ARGUMENT EVERY TIME Timing: Typically, the first person to reply to the thread has a greater chance of swinging the original person's (OP) view than someone who joins the debate later on. Alternative terminology: Use words that are different to those used in the post. For example, if discussing climate change, describing it as global warming in a reply makes more of an impact than using the same terminology as the OP. Use calm language: The study suggests using 'calm' language to make a point is more effective than swearing or using aggressive terms. In the paper, examples of 'calm' words include those that are softer-sounding such as 'librarian' and 'dull' than harsh, 'sharp' words such as 'terrorism' and 'erection.' Length: Longer replies in general also tend to be seen as more persuasive. Evidence: Using numbers, statistics and examples to back up opinions make people sound more convincing. To push this point, commenters should specifically write 'e.g', 'for instance' or 'i.e' before presenting these arguments to strengthen their persuasiveness. Links: Quotes and quotation marks play little role in trying to convince someone, but linking to examples and outside sources does. Hedge your bets: Hedges indicate uncertainty, and an example is: 'It could be the case'. Although this sounds like it might signal a weaker argument, the researchers said it may make an argument easier to accept by softening its tone. Check the language in the original post: People can 'pick their battles' and decide whether or not it's worth engaging in an argument by studying the terms used by the OP. Personal pronouns, such as 'I' suggest a person is more open-minded to persuasion, but the use of the words 'we' and 'us' suggests they are more stubborn. Stubborn people use more emotive and decisive words including 'certain', 'nothing' and 'best.' Know when to give up: Finally, the researchers found that after four or five 'back and forth' posts have been made, the chances of swaying someone's view significantly drops.

I’ll notify delta to a comment that changes my view about this post. A good argument would be that this is a psychology study, thus not replicable. And if by chance the first reply changes my view, it’s a paradox.

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Good tips, especially in an election year for the US. :slight_smile:

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I have also had an interest in politics, mainly focussed on why Trump did so well in the election, so I’ll use that as a reference here. Strangely enough, what I found there and what I read here have some major differences. I could do a lot of speculating on why that is, but I’ll mainly aim to comparing the two. Perhaps we could take this to another topic if r30 wants to, but having a little chat on forum persuation vs. real life persuation might be fun! I also got the advice to put down links, so I will post mainly wikipedia articles to give you a nice, central starting point in case you want to know more about it. Wikipedia also shows a whole list of references, should you want to know more.

One of the key differences I noticed is the evidence. Just look at a single video on Trump and you know what I mean. He has 0 facts, 0 statistics, 0 evidence. Pulling that line even further, he mainly uses unfalsifiable anecdotes, stories of things that seemingly happened to him, you just have to believe him on that. —Little sidenote here, anecdotes are a tool used by the best of public speakers as they tend to grab our attention.— Yet seemingly the mojority of the public loves him. Around here in the Netherlands we face a similar problem with a politician, Wilders, who is even facing a trial for his dicriminating campaigns.

I have actually talked about this by someone who was a grad student in Political Science, who did research to it. What he told me is that the general public actually wants zero evidence, they want someone to get rid of problems they are facing, they want more action and less talking, they want to get things done rather than discussed, and they also want someone (preferably someoen who is not them) to be blamed for the problems. In psychological terms, what the “popular” politicians do is create an us-versus-them effect, also called “ingroups versus outgroups”. This has actually also been done by a scientist, by creating the “third wave”, a really interesting experiment that explains so much about why a lot of people follow a leader who is actually the biggest rascist around, all while saying that they themselves are not rascistic at all. Another thing I also loved, while not being scientific, is someone quoting what he says is Trump, while in reality he is quoting Hitler. A nice, funny representation of how some people on the recieving end of the manipulation seem to be “brainwashed”.

The key to this difference, I think, is the audience. Politicians aim towards everyone, and they don’t even need over 50% of the population to become the highest on the list, they just need more than the other candidates. Given eleven candidates, of which A gets 10% of the votes and B to K all get 9%. A wins the election, while 90% of the population didn’t vote for him. A possible reason for that would be that 90% of the population would be reading into the facts. On a forum, you already have an audience with a shared interest. If I would tell you guys that a daily consumption of 5 glasses of beer would improve memory, you would debunk me because you know the facts and you can bet on it that once someone comes with scientific researches that proves that I am wrong, the rest of the forum will also believe I am wrong, until I come with my own scientific backup. Yet the us-versus-them still plays a big role, can go into that deeper if needed.

Ingroups and Outgroups: In-group and out-group - Wikipedia
The Third Wave: The Third Wave (experiment) - Wikipedia
Hitler Quotes: https://www.facebook.com/SoFloVideo/videos/1248561588518426/

Not sure if you had it in school, but I learned about Ethos, Pathos and Logos. Logos being the things like statistics and facts. Ethos are the things that make someone trustworthy. Pathos refers to emotion, mainly emotion in the audience. While on forums seemingly the focus lays on Logos, in real life politicicians prefer to focus on Pathos. Trump also does that in a great way, by combining it with ingroups and outgroups. He doesn’t aim towards 100% of the people, but the majority groups. He then adresses a problem, tells the audience that a minority group is the problem, and basically his only trustworthyness is his money and his name. When looking at what he says, he says totally nothing, but he makes it sound like it is a lot! NerdWriter on youtube also has posted an analysis of his language use on Youtube.

NerdWriter video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aFo_BV-UzI

Finally, I want to add that you do seem to be right and I totally agree with the research when looking at it logically. Similar points are actually used by psychologists. Calm language is actually one of the main things, staying calm and professional gives off a more trustworthy image which helps in persuation. Length and Evidence are things that are more situational, though we need to have evidence ready when we need to persuade, usually in terms of results of a method.

I loved reading the article you posted, and I loved how the research creates so many more opportunities for other researches!

thank you for the post!
(hope the reply was long enough :P)

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Not a big deal, but I think you’ve mixed Pathos and Ethos.
Despite that, interesting read :slight_smile:

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I indeed mixed them up! :stuck_out_tongue: thanks for pointing it out :slight_smile: I changed it, so now it should be correct