🌱 How to Reach People Who Are Wrong

Research finds that the best people at making predictions (did you know that there are prediction tournaments?) aren’t those who are smartest but rather those who weigh evidence dispassionately and are willing to change their minds.

Likewise, math whizzes excel at interpreting data — but only so long as the topic is banal, like skin rashes. A study found that when the topic was a hot one they cared about, like gun policy, they blundered. Passion swamped expertise.

Both left and right often see the world, indignantly, through a tidy moral prism, but the world is messier than that.

Researchers find that it is easier for people to reach agreement on difficult issues if they have been prepped to see the world as complicated and full of grays. It’s a painstaking, frustrating process of building trust, keeping people from becoming defensive, and slowly ushering them to a new place.

All this is tough to do after four traumatic and polarizing years, especially when fundamental moral issues are at stake. But it’s precisely because the stakes are immense that we should try to learn from the science of persuasion and emphasize impact over performance.