EUREKA; How to Move a Mind
By MAGGIE KOERTH-BAKER
Published: August 19, 2012
Forget for a minute everything you know about politics. Barack Obama now openly supports gay marriage. Mitt Romney now opposes roughly the same kind of health care reform he fought for as governor of Massachusetts. What if they weren't two politicians calculating how to win an election but instead just two guys who changed their minds? They didn't ''flip-flop''; they experienced, as social scientists say, an attitude change, the way any of us do when we become a vegetarian or befriend a neighbor we used to hate or even just choose to buy a new brand of toothpaste.Scientists have been studying attitudes and preferences for more than a century; those topics are bound to the origins of social psychology itself. Some of the earliest research, like William Thomas and Florian Znaniecki's five-volume set, ''The Polish Peasant in Europe and America,'' published in 1918, revolved around the attitudes of immigrants: how they lived, what their neighbors thought of them, how they changed as they became Americans.
In the last decade, psychologists have focused increasing attention on moral attitudes. Jonathan Haidt, professor of psychology at the Stern School of Business at New York University and author of ''The Righteous Mind,'' told me that researchers have been especially interested in the way emotions and attitudes interact. Moral attitudes are especially difficult to change, Haidt said, because the emotions attached to those preferences largely define who we are. ''Certain beliefs are so important for a society or group that they become part of how you prove your identity,'' he said. ''It's as though we circle around these ideas. It's how we become one.''
We tend to side with people who share our identity -- even when the facts disagree -- and calling someone a flip-flopper is a way of calling them morally suspect, as if those who change their minds are in some way being unfaithful to their group. This is nonsense, of course. People change their minds all the time, even about very important matters. It's just hard to do when the stakes are high. That's why marshaling data and making rational arguments won't work. Whether you're changing your own mind or someone else's, the key is emotional, persuasive storytelling.
In 2006, researchers from Ohio State University and Colorado State University demonstrated that a well-written TV drama can change the political opinions of college students. They split 178 students into two groups. One watched a crime show that told a persuasive story about the value of the death penalty. The other group watched a different, unrelated drama. Afterward, both groups were interviewed about their personal beliefs and their opinions on the death penalty. The students who watched the crime show were more likely to support the death penalty. In fact, support for the death penalty was about the same whether those students self-identified as liberal or conservative. That wasn't true among the students who watched the other show. There, political ideology strongly predicted their opinions on the death penalty.
Timothy Wilson is a psychology professor at the University of Virginia and the author of the book ''Redirect,'' about how we change our minds and behavior. Stories are more powerful than data, Wilson says, because they allow individuals to identify emotionally with ideas and people they might otherwise see as ''outsiders.'' Wilson says researchers speculate that children who grew up seeing friendly gay people on TV will be more likely to support gay marriage as adults, regardless of other political affiliations and religious beliefs. Once you care about a character, Wilson says, you can find a way to fit them into your identity.
Our identities, of course, are also stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. In some cases -- if we want to think of ourselves as thoughtful and open-minded -- we can adopt identities that actually encourage flip-flopping. This is why juries function, and it's what places pressure on scientists to form opinions based on reliable data. In 2009, the Oregon Legislature mandated the creation of the Oregon Citizens' Initiative Review, panels made up of random residents assigned to review and assess ballot initiatives in ''citizens' statements.'' The panelists know they're expected to base their opinions on hard evidence, and this expectation becomes part of their temporary identity.
Under those conditions, says John Gastil, professor of communication arts and sciences at Penn State, facts suddenly matter. He points to Measure 73, a widely popular mandatory sentencing initiative, which the citizens' panel voted against, 21 to 3. The panelists felt obligated to consider the measure more carefully than they otherwise would have, Gastil says, so they noted the high costs and thought about people who might be unfairly punished. Only a minority of voters knew the panel existed, so the measure still passed -- though by a smaller margin than expected. In a study he performed on the public response to Measure 73, Gastil found that the panel's opinion significantly changed the minds of those people who read its findings. ''You got a shift from two-thirds in favor to two-thirds against just by reading the report,'' Gastil says.