1) Forgetting Past Experiences

Many vegans have previously been carnists themselves. It is important not to forget this. In theory, former carnists should be better attuned to appreciating the mental obstacles that prevent others from recognising the misalignment of their beliefs and behaviours.

Personal story: prior to our transition towards a vegan lifestyle, my wife and I — compelled by environmental factors — decided to buy less meat. We consequently decided to use the financial savings to enable us to buy more “humanely-slaughtered” meat.

Now, be honest with yourself… did you just scoff at the notion of “humanely-slaughtered” meat? I’ve certainly found myself doing this once or twice. Laughter plays a valuable social role when surrounded by like-minded people who can share in the experience. It feels good, and it reinforces those important social bonds that were necessary for our evolutionary survival. But it doesn’t feel good to be laughed at, especially when you’re on the outside of the respective group. In fact, such behaviour will likely be perceived as antagonistic, and result in the individual distancing themselves from your group. In short, highlighting someone’s cognitive dissonance with mockery is unlikely to be an effective strategy for getting them on your side.

A better approach is to share your own experiences, in order to emphasise similarities, rather than differences. Show the individual concerned how veganism reflects many of their own beliefs and values.

To do this effectively, you need to listen.

2) Not Listening Properly

Talking too much can be a sign of intellectual arrogance (the enemy of compassion).

“My point of view is so valuable; everyone will want to hear it!”

Maybe this is true? However, if your goal is to promote a particular lifestyle effectively, you need to first establish the barriers that exist in the mind of the person you’re engaging with. If their goals are misaligned with yours, you could be wasting your time.

Effective listening allows you to determine what is salient to the person you’re speaking with. Are they a purported animal lover; do they care about the environment and the planet they’re leaving behind for their children; is health a primary motivator for their behaviour? There are many reasons why someone may choose to go vegan — listening will allow you to determine which of these is most important to the person.

However, listening effectively is only half of a good conversation.

3) Over-Reliance on Facts

We are often told that we live in a post-truth world. This can be understood in many ways, but for our purposes, one factor stands out as particularly important: appealing to facts and reason alone is rarely effective at convincing someone to change their worldview.

Facts are like boats on a stormy ocean — without an anchor they’re likely to float away. The “anchor” here is the affective (emotional) response felt by the individual, and the “ocean floor” is their lived experience that shapes and grounds the affective response.

It is important to be aware that the facts you present will not always be received in the neutral, objective manner you may intend. When we receive new information, before evaluating whether it represents a statement of truth or falsity, we automatically and intuitively form a gut response that primes the information in a particular way (e.g. does the information disgust you; does it fit with your worldview?). This automatic, affective response is a fundamental part of any evaluative judgement, and even the most neutral of information is handled in this manner. For example, the statement 3+4=7 will generate an intuitive (and affective) feeling of validity in a way that 3+4=51 does not. Our affective systems do a very good job of processing this information quickly, but do not always reflect a rational, or deliberative process.

Consider the back-fire effect: a situation where, in the face of contradictory evidence, someone’s targeted beliefs do not change but actually get stronger. Perhaps you’re in a heated discussion with someone who maintains that fish are unable to feel pain, and you proceed to offer up detailed facts about fish neurophysiology. According to the back-fire effect, presenting these facts could back-fire on you, and result in the other person reinforcing their belief. This effect has been well documented (especially in the political sphere), and helps to explain why sharing what you see as self-evident truths about veganism, may not only be ineffective, but potentially destructive.

This also reflects another reason why it’s so important to listen — we need to understand what a person cares about. For example, if someone is motivated primarily by healthy living, then they’re likely to be more receptive to facts about health and wellbeing. Equally, this includes facts that appeal to disgust — a powerful affective response that elicits avoidance behaviours (e.g. facts about the hormone content of dairy and its impact on the endocrine system).

By all means, drop those truth-bombs, but make sure you understand your target first, or you could end up causing collateral damage.

4) Failing to Honour Autonomy

Failing to honour an individual’s autonomy is a close cousin of ‘Not Listening Properly’ and ‘Over-Reliance on Facts’. What is meant by this sin, and how can you avoid it?

In his many, great YouTube videos, James Aspey — a vegan activist — demonstrates a technique known as the Socratic method (named after the Ancient Greek philosopher, Socrates). Instead of merely informing, Aspey asks questions, and guides his partner to their own conclusions. NB: I strongly recommend you watch some of his videos after reading this article, in order to see a great example of compassionate vegan activism.

The effectiveness of the Socratic method lies in the fact that the answers offered (to your carefully considered questions) will be connected to the person’s sense of agency, and in turn elicit a deeper sense of trust because they are felt to be under their volitional control (i.e. the answers came from them). In short, asking a question requires the person you are speaking with to actively engage with you, and offer their own view on the issue. By contrast, humans often distrust things we cannot control, and being lectured by a well-intentioned vegan activist represents an example of something outside of a person’s control. The result will likely be that they stop listening or engaging altogether.

Instead, beliefs that arise from answers offered to carefully selected questions (e.g. “are you aware of how easy it is to be vegan nowadays?”) are more likely to compel actions in those who possess them, because they will compel the individual to commit to beliefs that have arisen from their own sense of agency. In addition, when you do offer information, the individual will be more likely to listen.

Ask questions, and listen carefully to the answers!

5) Arguing

By now, you’ve likely noticed that these “sins” are connected to being a powerful persuader. However, this does not mean I am trying to encourage you to engage in arguments.

Dale Carnegie is famously known for writing ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ — a best-selling book about how to be more persuasive. In this book, Carnegie states that the only way to win an argument is to avoid it in the first place. Arguing is never an effective influence strategy; it is antagonistic and combative, and does nothing to help promote your worldview.

The persuasion techniques discussed by Carnegie, were also later developed by Robert Cialdini — a professor of psychology and marketing who studied influence techniques in many relevant settings, including sales. Cialdini outlined six techniques that can help an individual be more persuasive, and one of these techniques is called ‘likability’. In short, if someone likes you, you will be perceived as more persuasive than if they dislike you. Of course, this is somewhat irrational, but then, as is well-known by psychologists (and vegans), humans tend to act irrationally.

No one likes someone who is argumentative, and no one likes someone who comes across as intellectually arrogant. Therefore, it is in your best interest to embody the principles of compassion authentically, and to ensure that you are liked by the people you’re trying to persuade.

There’s no such thing as winning an argument.

6) Moral Superiority

A form of intellectual arrogance is moral superiority — regardless of whether it is intended or not.

Vegans are not morally perfect, and are often the first to point this out. Many will recount their own “lightbulb moment” in which their eyes were opened, and the true extent of their cognitive dissonance and moral imperfections were laid bare before them.

It is also common to hear vegans appeal to previous moral defects that society has been plagued by in the past (e.g. slavery or inequality). What is implied in this reasoning is that society will eventually wake up to the present-day injustices that befall all living beings, and when this happens we will progress morally as a species. However, it doesn’t take much unpacking to see some potential concerns with this line of reasoning.

Firstly, it leaves open the possibility that there are certain everyday practices, which we are not currently aware, that will be judged unfavourably from the moral lens of future societies. If this is true, intellectual humility would require us to remain open-minded about the possibility of further moral improvement, including our own.

Secondly, there are many practices that (for systemic reasons) currently result in non-vegans and vegans-alike producing significant suffering to other living beings. A good example of this is the practice of mining precious minerals for smartphones. So-called “conflict minerals”, which enable your smartphone or tablet to tweet your favourite pictures of vegan food, have been linked to funding of armed groups that cause untold human suffering in the African countries where they are mined. Admittedly, many vegans actively protest these practices, but many more are oblivious to them, and the suffering that they are caught up in.

This is not to be taken as a moral imperative to change your practices towards smartphone or tablet purchases — after all, what do you think I’m writing this on? Rather, the point is to make clear that getting on one’s high horse and appearing morally superior is not only a sure-fire way to erect barriers between yourself and the person you are conversing with, but it is also a form of intellectual arrogance.

Be humble, and open to the possibility of improvement.

7) Impatience

Climate change has been on the scientific agenda for much longer than people think — certainly before the release of An Inconvenient Truth. Nevertheless, after almost a century of being discussed, there is still substantial resistance to the vast piles of scientific evidence (i.e. facts) that have been collected.

In a similar vein, the vegan society was formed in 1944, but veganism has only received a significant amount of public support in the last decade or so — I won’t try to speculate on the reasons for why this may be.

As these examples demonstrate, it takes time to change people’s worldviews, and a lot more to change behaviours.

Beliefs do not exist in isolation; they are intimately interwoven in a huge web that form a person’s total worldview. Like a social network, some beliefs will connect to many further beliefs, whereas others will be relatively secluded. Those beliefs that have the most connections will be vigorously defended — after all, if they are shown to be faulty the consequences for the rest of the system will be vast.

In the case of deeply held social beliefs, the challenge is exponentially more difficult, and understanding their foundations and connections can be immensely complicated. For example, is someone’s unwillingness to consider veganism a result of the belief that it will be too hard; a social attitude towards individualism that means they hold dear their right to self-expression; or a religious belief that animals were placed on this planet for our use and dominion over. I’m sure you can think of additional reasons, but also try to reflect on how each of the above will be interconnected with other aspects of their worldview (e.g. religious attitudes encouraged by tradition and familial connections). This should help you to appreciate why patience really is a virtue.

Not all change happens at once, and sometimes it’s enough to be content with merely planting a seed. This also means learning to not be angry at yourself when a conversation fails to achieve your intended goal.

Be patient, and don’t forget to show compassion to yourself!