How you approach someone in a conversation can drastically change the
way they respond. But can it also drastically change the way they
think?
I think it is common knowledge that the way you phrase a
question in a survey or even on a voting ballot has a tremendous impact
on the way people answer. I remember reading through the questions on
the primary ballot I filled out last year. Some seemed reasonably
neutral (which makes sense as the political party is trying to find out
what its constituents think on certain issues) but others were obviously
biased. "Should we vote to stop wasting money on X?" is clearly trying
to get a specific response.
Why bother? If you're going to phrase your questions in such a way
as to get the answer you want what is the point? I guess it's useful to
try and convince people that your constituents are on your side, but
that seems to defeat the point of what you're trying to do. You're
eventually going to have to deal with your constituents complaining that
you didn't really do what they wanted. Unless repeatedly asking the
question in that form lets you control the narrative around the story.
Then you can convince people that they want what you want even when
presented the same argument in a different light they wouldn't want it.
This is one thing I really don't like about people. When I say
people I include myself. It is too easy to use our brain's natural
tendencies against us. If you prime people with certain words their
brain kind of pre-caches related words and ideas. You have to lean
heavily on the rational deliberate part of your brain to cut through the
spin. The hard thing is letting the cruise-control part of your brain
know to alert the rational deliberate part of your brain that now is the
time to kick in. If you don't have a reflexive push-back against the
idea being presented you aren't terribly likely to say "Let me make sure
there is no trickery going on here".
One thing I have changed my mind (slightly) about is gun control.
I'm not for mass gun restrictions but I am definitely in favor of ending
the ability to buy a weapon with no waiting period from a gun show or
on the internet. Having any kind of 'don't have to register it'
loophole is also incredibly bad. I was reading an opinion piece today
by a Senator who was against this happening. A few years ago I probably
would've read his article (without really understanding the piece of
legislation it was referring to) and agreed with what he said. We do
need to defend the right of the populace to bear arms.
But when I knew what the piece of legislation was about it changed
my reading of the entire article. I wasn't pre-disposed to agree with
him. The "we need to make sure we keep the right to arm ourselves"
argument had no relevance to the legislation. I do agree that people
should be able to own weapons (even guns). I do agree that this
legislation wouldn't have stopped a majority of the mass shootings (we
in fact as a society really need to improve our views of and access to
mental health care). But his entire premise that it's ok to have an
unregistered gun I don't agree with. However if I hadn't already had
some thoughts in my head about the gun legislation I could easily see
myself reading that article and agreeing with everything he said,
because my brain wouldn't have loaded all the necessary context in.
So it's important to watch this trait in myself. I'm very glad my
brain tries to be efficient and pre-load information it thinks is
relevant to the discussion at hand. But it doesn't always pick right
and if those assumptions I'm running on aren't clearly stated I can waste a lot of time arguing with someone I don't
necessarily disagree with.
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