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Fighting Disinformation

Coping in the Age of Disinformation: Part 8 – Talking To People You Disagree With

Two goats butting heads
Advice for when you go head-to-head

This is part eight of a ten-part series on coping with disinformation. For part seven, visit What You Want To Hear.

We talk with people we disagree with almost daily, people who hold views diametrically opposed to us, people we’re certain are operating under the influence of disinformation.

You need to know how to talk to them. Sometimes that’s because they’re related to you: your cousin may be convinced that fluoride in drinking water is a government plot or your sister may believe aliens have landed. It could be a colleague, your boss, a friend… anyone.

The most important thing to remember when talking with someone labouring under the influence of disinformation, is that trying to prove them wrong is useless. Thanks to a number of cognitive biases that kick in to protect our ego, humans will perform elaborate mental contortions to avoid admitting they’re wrong. In fact, trying to prove someone wrong is more likely to make them double down on their beliefs and dig in.

Psychologists recognize that getting someone to change their mind means creating a safe space for them to consider alternate points of view. That means you need to abandon confrontation and find common ground. For example, with the vaccine hesitant, it’s important to find out why they’re hesitant.

  • Are they worried about their health? Who isn’t? We all want to stay healthy.
  • Are they mistrustful of the government? That’s not unreasonable: every government in history has been less than truthful at some point in their tenure.
  • Did they read something that made them concerned? Reading to inform yourself about important issues is good, even if you don’t agree with the source in this instance.

Recognize that there’s a reason why these people are acting the way they are, even if you think it’s not a good reason, and start from there. Treat any attempt to get people to change their mind as an exercise in negotiation. As with any negotiation, there are a number of tools you can use:

  • Active listening: let the person know you hear them, and try to feed back what you’re hearing.
  • Stay curious: as soon as you’ve convinced yourself you’re right and they’re wrong, or they’re stupid and you’re smart, the conversation is over. Staying curious doesn’t mean you agree with them, just that you’re trying to understand them.
  • Ask questions: why do they think the things they do? Where did they get their information from? Who did they hear it from?
  • Give them a golden bridge: make it easy for them to change their mind by giving them an “out,” a way for them to start a shift their opinion while saving face and without threatening their ego.

We all want to change someone’s mind at some point, or at least get them to consider alternatives. Treating it like a debate never works; treating it like a conversation can.

Categories
Fighting Disinformation

Coping in the Age of Disinformation: Part 7 – What You Want To Hear

Two Meerkats
Lemme tell ya....

This is part seven of a ten-part series on coping with disinformation. For part six, visit Cognitive Bias.

The best politicians and salespeople take advantage of a universal truth: tell ’em what they want to hear, and they’re yours.

“The art of propaganda is not telling lies, but rather selecting the truth you require and giving it mixed up with some truths the audience wants to hear.”

It’s insidious enough in a sales pitch, but when a politician does it, it’s infinitely more dangerous. History’s rife with examples.

The obligatory Donald Trump anecdote

A key plank in Donald Trump’s platform was reducing immigration, and he claimed “They’re taking our jobs. They’re taking our manufacturing jobs. They’re taking our money. They’re killing us.” That message got traction, especially in Rust Belt towns hard hit by the death of manufacturing: people are never more vulnerable than when their way of life is endangered. Trump knew that and told them what they wanted to hear: unemployment wasn’t their fault; it was the fault of the immigrants taking their work.

Unfortunately, immigrants don’t steal jobs. They’re actually a net gain for the economy. But simple narratives often win out over subtler ones, especially when we’re vulnerable and they tell us something that makes us feel good.

Hitler knew this and used it to convince large parts of the German populace that they didn’t lose WW I, but were stabbed in the back by Marxists, Jews, Bolsheviks and even their own government. To a nation living with defeat, crippled by a decade of reparation payments, the idea that they didn’t actually lose the war was a siren song millions readily accepted, even if it was demonstrably false.

Of course, telling people what they want to hear doesn’t have to be as grandiose or earth-shattering as all that. Every day we’re subjected to sales pitches, and every marketer and salesperson worth their weight knows to compliment the person they’re selling to. The trick is to take a moment to recognize when you’re being targeted.

It’s about ego

We love hearing what we want to hear, because of our ego. Whether it’s a compliment or a balm to soothe an emotional hurt, it just feels good. That feeling is your warning call.

When someone inside your trusted circle tells you something that makes you feel good, that’s one thing. But when someone outside that circle tells you something that tickles a part of you deep inside, stop and ask yourself, “Why do I like that so much? I don’t even know them.”

Taking that moment to stop and think can make the difference between being complimented and being taken advantage of.

Categories
Fighting Disinformation

Coping in the Age of Disinformation: Part 6 – Cognitive Bias

Illustration of two people with megaphones for heads, arguing
"No, YOU'RE an idiot!"

This is part six of a ten-part series on coping with disinformation. For part five, visit Skepticism is a Virtue.

Cognitive biases are the shortcuts we take when thinking. And like many shortcuts, they can leave you lost in the woods instead of at your destination. An ounce of awareness is worth a pound of cure, so let’s look at a few of the big ones:

  • Confirmation bias
    The tendency to look for information that supports your view, ignoring information that contradicts it, and stopping when you find support for it.
    The Danger: if you’re looking for information that only supports your point of view, you’ll find it, whether that’s as mainstream as a given political stripe or as out there as world lizard people leadership .
  • Cognitive dissonance
    Our ability to embrace things we know are objectively inconsistent, contradictory or nonsensical, if it means avoiding admitting we’re wrong.
    The Danger: if you’re willing to go to any lengths to avoid admitting a mistake, you risk embracing increasingly dangerous, fringe ideas. Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, but he and his supporters continue to double down on the idea of “the big steal” rather than admit defeat.
  • Availability heuristic
    The idea that we overemphasize things that loom large in our mind or memory, even if they’re not that significant.
    The Danger: Threats loom larger than they really are, and opportunities seem golden when they’re actually “meh,” leading to bad decisions.

You can find an exhaustive list of cognitive biases on Wikipedia, more than you’d probably ever want to explore, but to confront disinformation, you need to become aware of your own cognitive biases. Then, you can begin to understand how to talk to people about theirs, the topic of our next installment.

Further reading: Nobel-prize-winner Daniel Kahneman’s best seller Thinking Fast and Slow.