How to convince others of your opinion: Both in professional and private life, success often depends on changing other people's minds and convincing them of your own opinion. Dissuading someone from a deep-seated conviction is surprisingly difficult, and few have a talent for it. How do you change people's minds when they have a different opinion?
Especially in discussions on the internet, many people mistakenly think that you can change other people's opinions by insulting and belittling them, preferably in capital letters. Those who haven't noticed yet: This method never works. On the contrary, verbal challenges and insults harden the other person's opinion and make it even harder to convince them.
How to convince others of your opinion
Those who are smarter support their argument with an accumulation of facts to convince the other person. However, this tactic is not much more successful than the first. Facts do not normally change a person's mind because his conviction predetermines which facts he considers valid or relevant. The stronger his conviction, the more effective he is at ignoring proven facts that might undermine his opinion. Often, contrary facts seem to strengthen rather than weaken the opinion.
How to form a strong opinion
To dissuade another from their opinion, one should first understand how strong the conviction is and where it comes from. Strong opinions are formed through:
- Frequent repetition. When people hear or see an opinion repeated and reinforced several times through the selective presentation of facts, they believe it more strongly. The concept of advertising is based on this tendency.
- Workplace. When people feel that they have to believe something in order not to lose their job, they will cling to that belief despite a mountain of contradictory facts.
- Security. When persons feel that their way of life is threatened, they cling to any belief that promises them security in the future.
- Identity. The strongest beliefs are those that define one's identity. For example, if a person has grown up in a strictly religious culture, it is very difficult to change their mind about that religion. Criticism of that religion is interpreted as a personal attack.
Pressure creates counterpressure
Any opinions that come from the above factors cannot be changed directly. The more facts one brings up to support one's point of view, the more the other person resists and hardens his or her point of view. The same applies if one tries to make the other person's arguments invalid.
If someone tries to change someone else's mind, the rule is that "pressure creates resistance". The more pressure you apply, the more counter-pressure the other person brings back.
Because too much pressure creates resistance, it is pointless to try to change someone else's mind through a direct attack.
How do you retune other people?
Instead of going against the other person's beliefs and thus creating resistance, you should show the other person how their beliefs actually support your point of view, not the point of view they themselves currently hold. This can be done in three steps:
- Acknowledge the opinion of the other person. Just as "pressure creates resistance", so too does "acceptance creates flexibility". If you show that you understand the other person's beliefs and accept them as valid, even if you do not agree with them one hundred percent, the other person does not feel attacked and thus does not completely resist the arguments.
- Weakness the associations. Lead the other person to see flaws in their logic that links their opinion to the conclusion you want to change. This is best done by asking questions, rather than making statements, because questions do not back the other person into a corner, but make them look at their belief from the centre, whereas statements can be interpreted like an attack.
- Create new associations. Show how the other person's beliefs - when taken as a whole - are more credible in leading to different conclusions or opinions than those they had before. In other words, never try to impose your opinion on another. Just show them how an alternative conclusion better reflects those beliefs.
