“How to Engage in a Genuine Dialogue (and Help People Reconsider Their Views)”
Theology in the Raw Patreon Blog Post, Jan 2022
Preston Sprinkle
Over the years, I’ve become fascinated with the nature of belief. That is, why do people hold to the views they do, especially when, from my perspective, their views seem so obviously and terribly wrong? I’ve recently found out that psychologists have understood this phenomenon for quite some time; that is, why good people disagree on things like politics and religion. The first psychologist I read along these lines is Jonathan Haidt, whose book “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Disagree on Politics and Religion” forever shaped the way I think about the nature of belief. I used to think—and was often told—that our beliefs are simply formed from rational logic. We look at evidence for a particular viewpoint, consider the evidence, and follow the evidence where it leads to the correct viewpoint. When we don’t have all the evidence, or rely on faulty evidence, that’s when we form wrong beliefs. And so, when someone else holds to a belief we think is wrong, we think that they simply need to be supplied with more, or more accurate, evidence. Why else would we simply provide a person with rational arguments in order to change their viewpoint, if we didn’t think that what they lack are rational arguments?
But this is not at all how beliefs work. As Haidt has shown, about 90% of why we believe what we believe has to do with our intuition not our rational thinking.
Moral intuitions arise automatically and almost instantaneously, long before moral reasoning has a chance to get started, and those first intuitions tend to drive our later reasoning. If you think that moral reasoning is something we do to figure out the truth, you’ll be constantly frustrated by how foolish, biased, and illogical people become when they disagree with you (Righteous Mind, xx).
Our intuitions are the president of our believes, while our rational thinking acts as its press secretary—always defending and explaining our beliefs, but never truly reevaluating them. A press secretary can hardly be reasoned into going against the president’s orders. In order to get people to change their minds, we must speak to their presidents—their intuitions. We need to get them to desire a different sort of belief before they can rationally be persuaded.
After becoming exposed to Haidt’s work, I’ve learned that all of this is pretty well established among moral and cognitive psychologists. Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman writes about similar things in his highly acclaimed book Thinking Fast and Slow, and organizational psychologist and best-selling author Adam Grant applies similar principles in his book Think Again—a book about how to rethink your own beliefs and help others do the same.
I’m not a psychologist, but having lived in the space of, shall we say, controversial issues for over a decade, I’ve seen these principles lived out in the flesh. I recently finished Adam Grant’s incredible book and can sign off on every single piece of advice that he gives to people who want to actually help others rethink their beliefs. Here are a few pieces of advice he gives to those who find themselves in a potentially heated debate over politics, morality, or religious beliefs.
First, be genuinely willing to rethink your point of view. If you’re not, why would you expect someone else to?
Second, be a genuinely curious person. Be curious about the other person and their viewpoint. This does not come easy for almost every human who believes their viewpoint is right and everyone who disagrees is wrong. It’s tough, I know. But being curious about the other person’s point of view—genuinely curious—is essential if you ever want that same person to actually consider your point of view.
Third, be a good listener. What Adam Grant says is so true: “When we try to convince people to think again, our first instinct is usually to start talking. Yet the most effective way to help others open their minds is often to listen.” (Think Again, 151). I can’t tell you how often I’ve found this to be true in my own life. If you’re not able to genuinely listen to another person’s viewpoint, what makes you think they’ll listen to yours? Let me illustrate this. Say your spouse or roommate planned for the two of you a 6pm dinner and an 8pm movie and they had to make reservations and buy tickets in advance. You come home at 8:30pm. You bust through the door filled with anxiety, expecting them to be super upset. “I’m sooo sorry,” you burst out, “I was kept late at work because my coworker’s wife died, so he rushed home early in the afternoon, and my boss said I needed to stay late to make up for him. I was going to call, but my phone died and no one had a charger, and plus, I was so busy and feeling terrible over my widowed friend…” As you look up from your anxious speech, wouldn’t you want to peer into the eyes of a person that’s genuinely listening to what you are saying and trying their hardest to see things from your perspective? Now, just turn it around. When your friend is telling you why Trump was a much better president than Biden, or why Biden is a much better president than Trump, be that person with the listening eyes.
Fourth, ask questions. Genuine questions, not leading questions or interrogative ones. Part of the reason we should ask genuine questions is so that we can actually have a good, clear, honest understanding of the other person’s viewpoint. Because strawmanning the other person’s view by painting it in the worse light (or simply not representing it accurately) will do little to open up the other person’s mind to genuinely consider what you have to say. “Most people immediately start with a straw man,” write Adam Grant, “poking holes in the weakest version of the other side’s case.” Instead, take a “stealman” approach where you try your best to understand and represent accurately the strongest part of their argument. “[A]sking people questions can motivate them to rethink their conclusions” (Think Again, 136-37).
Fifth, find some point of agreement. “When we point out that there are areas where we agree and acknowledge that they have some valid points, we model confident humility and encourage them to follow suit” (Think Again, 112). Telling someone that you actually agree with them on certain points can be disarming. And, if you’re genuine in your agreement, it shows that you’re more interested in discovering the truth than you are in simply winning an argument or defending your viewpoint at all cost.
Okay, this last principle is going to sound counterintuitive and might be the hardest of them all to do.
Lastly, don’t be overly confident. Express some uncertainty in your beliefs. “Communicating it [your beliefs] with some uncertainly signals confident humility, invites curiosity, and leads to a more nuanced discussion” (Think Again, 117). What Grant means by “uncertainty” is without 100% certainty. I mean, all of our beliefs are going to have some stone unturned, some argument unexamined or underexamined. Remember, 90% of our beliefs are held by intuition. Are we really going to say that our intuition is rock solid and not subject to error? Only Jesus can claim 100% certainty. And when we come off as being 100% certain of 100% of our beliefs (I’m looking at you, Enneagram 8’s), we don’t come off as more convincing but more foolish to others. “Here’s where I’m at right now…” “based on the things I’ve read and the people I’ve talked to, I believe that…but I’m open to another viewpoint.” Statements like these—if genuinely meant—again show that you too are on an authentic quest for the truth, and you see the other person as a fellow traveler on the way, rather than a roadblock to be blown over.
These principles are only few snippets from (primarily) Adam Grant’s book and other psychologists; I highly encourage you to read the whole thing!
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