Is There a Difference Between a Private Epiphany and an Introspection?

4min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Deep canvassing is a form of political persuasion. It involves asking people to explain why they feel the way they do. Scientists have found that it works more powerfully than any other type of persuasion. But i'm not calling it something else, I'm never going to call it 'persuasion', because there's no such thing as 100 per cent success rate. If you're coming into this and create enough change in attitudes then one person could win an election or two by just taking small steps along the way.

To the Founding Fathers it was free libraries. To the 19th century rationalist philosophers it was a system of public schools. Today it's access to the internet. Since its beginnings, Americans have believed that if facts and information were available to all, a democratic utopia would prevail. But missing from these well-intentioned efforts, says author and journalist David McRaney, is the awareness that people's opinions are unrelated to their knowledge and intelligence. In fact, he explains, the better educated we become, the better we are at rationalizing what we already believe. Listen as the author of How Minds Change speaks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about why it's so hard to change someone's mind, the best way to make it happen (if you absolutely must), and why teens are hard-wired not to take good advice from older people even if they are actually wiser.