How to Change People’s Minds

Summary

Neuroscientist and political theorist Stein Lubrano makes the “heavily researched” case, from her first book ‘Don’t Talk About Politics’, that debate barely moves anyone: there’s “zero evidence that televised debates change election outcomes”. Because our political views are “tied in deeply to our sense of self”, changing them takes “a lot of work and surgery on the self”. Two things do change them: “changes in our network of social relationships”, and changes in what we do every day; as Donald sums it up, “we do and then we think”. Which makes the “structural atrophy” of the places where people meet and act together a deeply political problem. Stein Lubrano’s answer is to build together, like the food co-op whose members end up in front of a neighbour’s door to stop an eviction. It’s “hard work but it’s fun”, and it spreads: “we take small action and then we take bigger action and then we transform society.”

Rationale

Sarah was one of the collaborators in our Deep Narrative Studios, and her research backs one of our central findings: that people change through who they’re with and what they do together far more than through what they’re told.