3 Steps to changing anyone’s mind

Here is an example of a post that I made demonstrating all 3 steps to this process.

Let’s unpack what’s happening:

#1 Validate —

So we know that telling someone they’re wrong definitely doesn’t work. What I like to do is start with the complete opposite! Start by talking about common ground, and things you can both agree on.

The main focus of this step is to confirm the person’s existing beliefs on the topic.

Phrases that are good for this are going to be “I know that…” and “I think we can both agree…”.

In the example above, the first portion of my post is dedicated to confirming the beliefs of the person I was responding to.

“I was called ableist for having ‘auto playing music’ on my Tumblr at some point. Somehow that is offensive to the deaf. To that I say, ‘What about the blind?’ But I think PC culture involves being quick to offend.”

Another key about validating existing beliefs, is minimizing.

If you find that you are having trouble fully agreeing with the person’s position, try to find a less extreme position that is palatable to you.

For me, the belief that “Being politically correct is not important” is extreme. But I can say comfortably that the “culture” of being politically correct involves calling out perceived injustice, and sometimes in doing that people are hasty to get upset about an event.

In Neuro Linguistic Programming, this concept is called pacing and leading. “Pacing”, responding to the words being said or the thoughts/feelings being implied, is a key part of building trust and rapport with someone — mandatory if you expect this person to listen to you.

The key takeaway from pacing and leading, is that while you’re in this Validate step try to match the emotions and intensity of the person you’re speaking with for this step to be the most effective.

#2 Reframe —

In the Reframe step, you’re shifting to the “leading” of the pacing and leading.

At the end of the day, don’t you just wish that the person you’re arguing with thought a little bit differently about the issue?

That’s exactly what you’re trying to do by Reframing.

In the example above, I move into the Reframe step at “At the same time, I think there’s nothing wrong with…”

You’re trying to get them on board “for” something that you think you could both support.

What exactly this winds up being will depend on the situation.

In my situation, the author wrote an article for a position that I disagreed with — so I already had his platform spelled out in front of me. His line of thought is that being PC had evolved from a well meaning movement, to something that is not entirely required anymore AND something that creates fear in backlash against what one says (and that the backlash could be against anything perceived as offensive).

Here is my way presenting “a different way” to look at political correctness (the full reframe section):

So minimizing is going to be a key skill when you’re trying to change someone’s opinion.

If I only said something along the lines of “Language can be abusive and violate other people’s rights”, do you think that would have went over well? No.

Why?

Because if I just make a statement about how “Language does hurt people”, he may have read my statement as “I am telling you that your statement hurt people”. Even if I did believe that (which I don’t in this case), we’ve established that flat out telling him that actually you are wrong what you said IS offensive would not have worked.

A key part of minimizing is using modifiers. Look again at what I wrote and you will see the phrases “some people” and “to say the least”. You want to make what you are saying easy to agree with. Not easy to agree with for you, you have to scale back your beliefs so that they are more neutral and easy enough for anyone to agree with.

Other good phrases are “can”, “different” (instead of “wrong”), and in general just picking less extreme synonyms for verbs and adjectives. So don’t say that something is “cruel” say that it’s “mean”, or even “not nice”.

I didn’t say that Mark Fuhrman was a racist (wouldn’t have went over well with the author), I said that he “Doesn’t treat everyone fairly under the law”.

Can you disagree with that?

Sure, but it would be hard to when there are 14 hours of tapes of him speaking about being a bad cop, and his negative opinions of a HOST of groups he comes into contact with on the regular (African american people, hispanic people, women).

Is it disagreeable to say that it is important for a police officer to treat everyone equally under the law while on the job? Not really.

One of the other important tools for Reframing are questions.

Again, if I made the statement “There is a point where language becomes violence.” do you think that would have been effective?

Probably not. It is clear from the article that myself and the author have a different perspective on whether or not it even matters if people’s feelings are hurt by words.

Making those disagreeable statements into questions, though, will just raise the possibility in the other person’s mind — as opposed to making a direct statement, which if it contradicts their beliefs then we’re in Backfire effect territory.

Reframing takes the most finesse out of all the steps, to be totally honest with you.

The reason is because you need to at least have some understanding of what the person values, how it is different from your current position, and decide on how to bridge that gap between where they are in a way that speaks to what they value.

Again, in my situation I was responding to someone who wrote an article — so it was pretty easy for me to see what they valued.

But if you are in an anonymous internet fight, there is still some hope for you!

If you know where the person falls on the political spectrum, there are certain values that consistently speak to Democrats/liberals and Republicans/conservatives — you can read the published research here, and find the book here.

The “values” come from Moral foundations theory, which basically says that the differences in people’s opinions comes from assigning different levels of importance to 6 main values: Care, Fairness, Liberty, Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity.

Additionally, people who are conservative are more likely to value arguments that are based off of constitutional rights. Not that liberals don’t value constitutional rights, but their value comes more from the dislike of others being treated unfairly.

For conservatives, I think that constitutionally based arguments resonate better (and actually have a weight of their own, unlike liberals who the “weight” of the argument again comes from someone being treated unfairly — not necessarily because it’s the Constitution) because it aligns with some of their other values like Authority and Liberty.

This is why I decided in my situation, to reframe part of the argument as a potential violation of Constitutional rights (I was implying that Mark Fuhrman violated the 14th Amendment rights of people he discriminated against), in addition to some of the other points.

#3 Confirm —

Phew! You’re done a lot of work so far, now it’s time to bring it all home.

You close the conversation by asking them, basically, whether or not they accepted your reframe.

When I close, I also like to try to incorporate another element into the confirmation. So in the example above, I preface the confirmation with another instance of confirming existing beliefs.

“I understand that the PC culture of being quick to judge and demonize is agonizing. But there is also a conversation to be had about the role of language and violence at least, don’t you agree?”

When confirming, you want to re-state the reframe and ask it as a positive question. My two go-tos are “Don’t you agree?” and “Don’t you think?”, you can pretty much make a statement and tack one of those onto the end to transform the statement into a question.

Why do you want to turn the statement into a question? Refresher: Questions are raising possibilities, statements are telling the other person they’re wrong.

Why do you ask them to confirm?

Because it is incredibly powerful if they say “Yes”.

Dr. Robert Cialdini explains this phenomenon in his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

During the Korean War, many American soldiers found themselves in prisoner-of-war camps run by the Chinese Communists.

Now, these soldiers are guys who are trained to give nothing but their name, rank, and serial number. But something the Chinese did made them incredibly more effective at getting the soldiers to inform on each other, a striking contrast to POW’s in WWII.

“In fact, nearly all American prisoners in Chinese camps are said to have collaborated with the enemy in one form or another.” — Dr. Cialdini

Weirdest of all, there was no brutalization or torture.

So what gives, how did they do it?

The first problem facing the Chinese was how to get the soldiers to cooperate at all. The answer was simple then: Start small, and build.

For example, while being interviewed prisoners were asked to make statements that were very mildly anti-American or pro-Communist, so mild that it seemed inconsequential (“The United States is not perfect.” “In a Communist country, unemployment is not a problem.”).

Once you agreed though, you found yourself pushed to submit to even more requests.

A soldier who had just agreed with his Chinese interrogator that the US isn’t perfect might be asked then to list some of the ways that it’s not perfect.

He may then be given a pen and paper and asked to write down what he just talked about, his statement that “The United States is not perfect” and his list of reasons, then to sign his name to it.

Later he might read his list in a discussion group with other POWs. He might be asked to write an essay later, expanding his list and discussing the problems in greater detail.

He might then have his essay read aloud the anti-American radio broadcast beamed not only to HIS entire camp, but to all of the other POW camps in North Korea, and to American forces in South Korea.

If he was tortured into doing this, the man may have no problem separating himself from what he said.

But faced with the fact that he had written these statements without any strong arming, many times a man would change his image of himself to be consistent with his “collaborator” actions.

Often, he would then participate in even more extensive acts of collaboration!

What does this tell you?

Something extremely powerful happens when people commit their opinion to text (“Yes, I can agree that…”) with their face and name next to it.