NYT, 3 March, Nicholas Kistoff: How to Reach People Who Are Wrong, subtitled, In the post-Trump era, research suggests the best ways to win people over.
A fine essay, that keys off Adam Grant’s new book THINK AGAIN, which I have sitting here in my to-be-read-soon stack.
The main points of this essay (and apparently of Grant’s book) are familiar from some of my recent provisional conclusions. It’s about intellectual humility, and how the world is not black and white.
Research finds that the best people at making predictions (did you know that there are prediction tournaments?) aren’t those who are smartest but rather those who weigh evidence dispassionately and are willing to change their minds.
Likewise, math whizzes excel at interpreting data — but only so long as the topic is banal, like skin rashes. A study found that when the topic was a hot one they cared about, like gun policy, they blundered. Passion swamped expertise.
…
There’s reason to think that American men may be particularly vulnerable to this intellectual arrogance. In one study, teenagers around the world were asked to rate their mastery of 16 areas of math, including three that don’t exist: “declarative fractions,” “proper numbers” and “subjunctive scaling.” Those who boasted of their skill in nonexistent fields were disproportionately male, affluent and North American.
And
The world is complicated, and we should all be cautious about shoehorning facts into our ideological constructs.
…
Research suggests that what wins people over is listening, asking questions and appealing to their values, not your own. Grant cites evidence for “complexifying” issues so they become less binary and more nuanced, enabling someone on the other side to acknowledge areas of ambivalence.Researchers find that it is easier for people to reach agreement on difficult issues if they have been prepped to see the world as complicated and full of grays. It’s a painstaking, frustrating process of building trust, keeping people from becoming defensive, and slowly ushering them to a new place.
This of course reflects my predilection, this past year, to consider issues on ranges from simplex to complex. From black and white, to grays, to full color spectra.
