How to Convince Someone to Change Their Mind

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There's an idea in psychology called elaboration. And what it comes down to is nd you're trying to convince somebody to change their mind about something or see a different perspective. You have to, you can't start at the end of the process. It's a process that conbe invisible to yourself. That's why facts can work in a good faith environment where everybody's playing by the same rules. But when you're just walking up to another person, like i, it's very difficult to establish that kind of good faith environment.

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.