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by cainxinth·4y ago·view on hn ↗
The best technique I’ve heard of for nudging someone away from a deeply held (but maladaptive) belief is called deep canvassing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_canvassing

The idea is basically that if you attack a strong belief head on, the person you’re talking to will reject your arguments instinctively. It’s a natural psychological defense mechanism. No one likes being wrong, particularly about things that are tied to their identity.

Instead of dictating facts, you start a dialogue and ask questions that encourage critical thinking. If you are empathic, patient, and non-threatening, they sometimes (sometimes!) start making realizations on their own that change their opinion.

And as many a good therapist has said, the patient has to want to change.

8 comments
I see asking question as an ultimate offensive tactics. Because in Russian culture, at the very least, answering with a question is unpolite, very close to show rudeness.

So with Russians, at the very least, you cannot be non-threatening if you are the one asking questions.

I also had the privilege to be a team lead for some short period of time. What I found being one is that simple propaganda tactic works quite well - if you tell the same thing several times, almost literally word-for-word the same, people start to show understanding. This is almost miraculous, getting from blank stare to collaboration in three repeats of the simplest problem explanation.

What all that means to me is that I cannot be non-agressive or non-authoritharian inflicting change in people's minds. That's a deduction for me, at the very least. May be someone can be non-agressive changing people's mind, but even Jesus bore that proverbial sword.

I have also found that the simple propaganda tactic of telling the same thing several times, almost literally word-for-word the same, works. People will start to show understanding. It's almost miraculous, going from blank stares to collaboration in three repetitions of the simplest problem explanation.
Humans are complicated. It's likely they're showing something else than understanding, it's just you're not noticing it
In this regard, humans are not complicated. Simply, we learn through repetition -- we are creatures of habit.
1. I get it ;)

2. Wouldn’t then noticing repetitive use of concepts and sound bites a good Litmus test for propaganda?

If 2. is correct then what are we going to do about the massive incessant brainwashing of our own population with divisive, dehumanizing. And extremely dangerous propaganda?

Repeating isn't a proof of "propaganda." Repetition is used heavily in education. I am also constantly telling my kids the same thing over and over again (which makes me question whether repetition really works...)
As a former parenting educator, what works, in order of influence:

1. What you actually do - modeling.

In terms of relationships- How you act toward them or how they see you act toward their sibling or your partner.

For example if you reward or punish them, the lesson is not the particular goal of the rewarding / punishment, but to use reward and punishments to get people to do what one wants.

All rewards and punishments are a form of bullying, violent in nature, leading to loss of trust.

2. Observed actions are the top influence, followed by instruction, but very far behind. So if you ask them to do something they don’t see you do, or see you, or your partner or other adults do differently, then the repetition won’t make much of a difference.

Also, kids are placed in circumstances without much autonomy which leads to a lot of frustration and resistance.

The natural state of learning is play directed by one’s own interest and environment.

Sitting still in school and for homework, for over 6-8h/day is a completely unnatural and obviously not spontaneous. The willpower a child needs to exert to twist themselves into these normalized but unnatural circumstances, day after day, depletes the executive function as a resource.

These are just some vectors of influence to consider with kids :)

By simply telling people the same thing several times, almost literally word-for-word, people will go from blank stares almost miraculously to collaborating with and understanding the simplest explanations. Or else.
Ah. Now I get it!

By repeating something to people a few times you can get them to start to absorb it and eventually understand it.

That's correct. It's a simple propaganda tactic but telling someone the same thing several times, almost literally word-for-word the same, works. People will start to show understanding.
I think you missed the sarcasm here. techbio's point is that by repeating something over and over, you aren't necessarily convincing people, you're just making it clear that non-belief or arguing with you about it is a dead end and they have to comply. Then you mistake their parroting your own words back at you for 'understanding'.
If I may, I would like to tell you a couple of anecdotes from a colleague of mine and myself, which lead me to notice what is going on (and made fun of up there).

That former colleague of mine, being student, once had to make presentation for Sociopsychology (some complex area outside of tech student typical field of expertise) class and he has two days to do so - he was that lazy. And all he got for his work were two dictionaries, one for Psychology and another for Sociology and nothing else. Frustrated, he repeatedly read dictionaries' definitions of keywords from the theme of his presentation, for three hours straight, as he told me. At the end of that third hour he started to somehow connect these two things together and started to look for other things that he felt are connected to the theme. Next day he had quite solid presentation sprouted from definitions from the dictionaries and common sense and knowledge. He got hard 5 for his work (top score).

I myself experience something like that when I tried to understand video compression standard - intermittently reading just glossary for several days brought me enough understanding that actual text of the standard just filled some of the not quite important gaps.

Repeating the same thing allows my vis-a-vis to connect dots he or she missed the first time, if the answer is clear misunderstanding. It allows him or her to link what I am trying to convey to his or her experience - with life, code base, user experience, etc.

And, of course, repeating not quite sensible things that cannot be ruled outright as nonsense is a propaganda tactic - and this make regular people to fall to a propaganda as they manage to connect dots that were missing.

You might want to consider reading this thread a little more carefully. There's a point you may be missing. :)
The resistance to modify an opinion in the face of contrary evidence is called cognitive conservatism

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_(belief_revision)

Challenging a deeply held opinion whether with logic, examples, or facts only reinforces the prior held belief. Most typically this has nothing to do with perceptions of wrong, but rather negative social stature associated with ones beliefs called loss of face where on the other hand reinforcement results in positive social statue described as pride. The social repercussions of face and pride are dynamically and mutually reinforced within a social reference group.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_(sociological_concept)

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride

Given these dynamics the best way to change a person's opinions is to provide a connection that benefits their presence within their social reference group whether by enhancing a person's perceived status within their group or by modifying/redefining the group. This line of thinking works the same whether you are selling soda or convincing people to join an underage sex cult.

Back when I was a cultist I was proud of how effectively I could canvas. :-)

For context: If you look into street epistemology, it's similar to what I was doing. From the other side, so to speak. We then played doubt (I think the SE creator calls it the pebble in the shoe) into action, and as long as we could suggest the action, in the absence of other suggested actions, the actions we suggested were taken.

Pray in this way, listen for the answers we tell you to listen for, act as if God told you to do this, add this new structure to your life, keep this one, subtract that one. Review what you're grateful for and be happy feeling content with all these amazing blessings...BTW did we mention that you have successfully changed your life, the thing you told us you wanted?

You spread this across months of friendly visits against a backdrop of loneliness in a chillingly pragmatic society...I mean we taught people how to visit, respect and take care of their elders, which is STILL not something that's exactly on blast in modern society.

Cults have pros in addition to the cons, those pros are where followers come from, the followers look at the cons and say "everything has faults," bada-bing, they're in, and that's the simple truth you have to come to terms with.

It's infuriating to think about now in a lot of ways, but this is also a good lesson in how human psych works in general.

Using these techniques I was told that I got doubters into the church at about 9x the average rate for our first-world region. I gave all credit to the big guy.

I went to a funeral for a Jehovah's Witnesses once. The priest came and talked to me and my 2 atheist friends afterwards. He asked if we were baptized. And then said how in his church they wait until people are older to decide for themselves. We all nodded in agreement, sounded sensible. But in hindsight he was just canvasing us. Prompt some critical thinking and plant an idea that people will lazily agree with. Total bs of course as to an atheist a baptised baby is exactly the same as an unbaptised one!
Sounds familiar...I was kinda that guy a lot. I also had a weird pride in being on HN, reading phys.org, participating in FOSS projects alongside scientific community members, meeting up with them and hosting them at my house...but also being so extra as to know even more than these scientists, in some incredible ways! I hoped someday they'd see the truth. (Sigh)

There's this power of location and meeting context in your example too. When I was young and not yet even part of leadership, we were taught to invite people to come to our favorite spiritual locations with us. Then, while there, we would gently and firmly declare our beliefs and ask the other if they could deny that they felt the truth in it...and by that point they are, even just relationally speaking, posed with one hell of a problem.

BTW organizing funerals for people you don't know very well is stressful AF.

> If you look into street epistemology, it's similar to what I was doing.

I don't see that what you were doing is all that close to what they do in street epistemology. Sure, you're both canvasing, and you're both attempting it instill doubt in people by asking questions, but the SE folks are trying to teach people better epistemological skills to evaluate any belief they hold or claim they come across. You were just attempting to fill the doubt void with some new claim, without teaching the people you talked to anything about how to evaluate the truth of a claim.

I didn't describe how I used the SE-like techniques, just the context in which they were used. Watch the recent Mormon Stories podcast with Shawn McCraney having SE used on him by Anthony Magnabosco and you'll see a good sample of A) how I talked to people a lot of the time and B) exemplary failure cases for SE based around ethics and subjective considerations.

SE is in large part based around the metabolization of logic, specifically subjective-contextual logic, which I think the founder did a good job (humbly) showing has important boundaries as well. With some psychologies it will be like bringing MMA skills into an aerial dogfight. You have to decide if you want to win by holding out somehow or reassess the situation and toolset, maybe even ditching the win/lose idea if that's the way the situation started.

> Instead of dictating facts, you start a dialogue and ask questions that encourage critical thinking. If you are empathic, patient, and non-threatening, they sometimes (sometimes!) start making realizations on their own that change their opinion.

Check out Street Epistemology if you haven't already, as this is exactly what they're doing. They ask random people on the street if they'd like to pick a belief and discuss it. Any belief is acceptable, often it is politics or religion, but sometimes people want to talk about ghosts, or seat belt laws, or karma, or whatever. If the person is interested, they ask questions to try to get them to think about why they hold the belief, how confident they are, and if that may or may not be justified.

There are a ton of videos on YouTube of these conversations and many of them are fun to watch. They really do get people to think about things, and most of the time the people leave still on friendly terms, which is a difficult thing to do when questioning people's beliefs.

https://streetepistemology.com/

Agree 100%. This got me thinking about a quote that I heard recently that has stuck with me - it was something to the effect of “being right and being effective can be two very different things.”

Unfortunately, a lot of the time the person who is trying to do the convincing is just as unwilling to let go of their desire to be proven right, so they aren’t willing to employ more effective but less satisfying approaches like this.

Similar distinction for me is the difference between being right (or being convinced that you are right to be more precise) an needing others to know that you are right.

Often being willing to settle for the first can keep you out of a lot of trouble.

This reminds me of a scene in The Sopranos where Tony talks about homosexuality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=688XMcEchFQ

Tony starts going off on a homophobic rant, the therapist asks the right questions, and Tony slowly realizes that he doesn't really care about a person's sexuality.

Interesting, I've never heard of it called deep canvassing but it's something I'd been aware of for a long time. That essentially you can't get what you want through arguing. It's much more effective to act with patience, and in time either both people will compromise or one will accept the others idea as if it was their own.
Very weird to see this rebranding of a 2000+ year old technique.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method#Method