Humans need an accurate view of the world to survive. If your model of reality is different from the actual world, you battle to make successful moves every day.
Here, truth is not the only thing that matters to humans. They also seem to have a deep desire to belong.
Humans are herd animals. We all want to fit in, bond with others, and earn the respect and approval of peers. Such inclinations are an important element of our survival. For most of evolutionary history, our ancestors lived in tribes. Becoming separated from the tribe—or worse, being cast out—was like a death sentence.
When it comes to understanding the truth and being part of a tribe, these two desires often work well together, yet they come into conflict.
In many circumstances, social connection is more helpful to your daily life than understanding the truth of a particular fact or idea. We don't always believe things because they are correct but, because they make us look good to the people we care about.
False beliefs can be useful in a social sense even if they are not useful in a factual sense, call this approach “false, but accurate.” When we have to choose between the two, people often select friends and family over facts.
Thus, persuading somebody to adjust their perspective is the way towards persuading them to change their tribe. If they abandon their beliefs, they risk losing social ties. Nobody wants their worldview torn apart if loneliness is the outcome.
The fact is that people who are most likely to change our minds are the ones we agree with on 98% of topics. If someone you know, like, and trust believes a radical idea, you are more likely to give it a thought. But if someone different than you propose the same idea, well, it's easy to dismiss them as a crackpot. Any idea that is different from your current worldview will feel threatening. In conversation, people have to consider their status and appearance. When confronted with an uncomfortable set of facts, the tendency is often to double down on their current position rather than admitting to being wrong. And the best place to ponder a threatening idea is in an innocuous realm. As a result, books are often considered a better vehicle for transforming beliefs than conversations or debates. With a book, the conversation takes place inside someone's head and without the risk of being judged and influenced by others.
Contentions resemble a full front-facing assault on an individual's personality. Reading a book is like sowing the seed of an idea into a person's brain and letting it grow on their terms. There's enough wrestling going on in someone's head when they are overcoming a pre-existing belief. They don't need to wrestle with you either.
Another way to change people’s minds is to become friends with them, to integrate them into your tribe, to bring them into your circle. Now, they can change their beliefs without the risk of being abandoned.
If you want people to adopt your beliefs, you need to act more like a scout and less like a soldier. Scouts are like intellectual explorers, trying to map the terrain with others. When we are in the moment, we can forget that the goal is to connect with the other side, collaborate with them, befriend them, and integrate them into our tribe. We are so caught up in winning that we forget about connecting. It's easy to spend your energy labeling people rather than working with them.
It is not difference, but the distance that propagates tribalism and hostility. As proximity increases, so does understanding!
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