Why We Struggle to Change Minds: The Psychology of Persuasion and Political Polarization

Tim Newman [00:00:10]:
What if the reason we can't talk to people we disagree with has almost nothing to do with the facts? Because changing your mind isn't always just about admitting you were wrong. Sometimes it means questioning your identity, risking your place in a group, or even wondering who you are if you no longer believe what you've always believed. So maybe the real challenge of civil discourse isn't learning how to argue better. Maybe it's learning how to create a conversation where someone, including us, actually feels safe enough to change their mind. Welcome back to Speaking with Confidence, the podcast that helps you build the soft skills that lead to real results— communication, storytelling, public speaking, and showing up with confidence in every conversation that counts. I'm Tim Newman, a recovering college professor turned communication coach, and I'm thrilled to guide you on a journey to becoming a powerful communicator. Today's guest is JonRobert Tartaglione. JonRobert is a psychologist and behavioral scientist, world-renowned expert on influence, and the founder and CEO of Influence 51.

Tim Newman [00:01:14]:
He is driven by a single question: what moves people? Combining research-backed insights from multiple academic domains. He teaches clients across the globe about the science of persuasion, strategic communication, and how we can change the way people think, choose, and behave. JonRobert, welcome to Speaking with Confidence.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:01:34]:
Tim, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

Tim Newman [00:01:37]:
I've been looking forward to this conversation for a while, and I told you before we started, one of the last things you mentioned in our last conversation was the research showing that identical twins raised apart can still end up with surprisingly similar political orientations. And that really made me wonder, if 2 intelligent, decent people can hear the same facts and still reach completely different conclusions, what is actually happening psychologically?

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:02:06]:
So, man, we are jumping right in here.

Tim Newman [00:02:09]:
Right into it.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:02:10]:
I love it. So let me first— let's take a step back and talk about this. insight that you're citing, right? Because this is definitely something that, especially for people who aren't in the field of psychology or biology or neuroscience, you know, this can be misinterpreted. What we have when we talk about nature versus nurture, the kind of gold standard for disentangling nature versus nurture claims is looking at twins. And that's because there are 2 types of twins, right? There are monozygotic or identical twins, which share 100% of their DNA. And then there are dizygotic or fraternal twins, or sorry, dizygotic or fraternal twins, which share 50% of their DNA, just like any other sibling.

Tim Newman [00:02:57]:
Anybody else, right.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:02:59]:
Now, what we find in the literature is we find that not only do the political orientations of monozygotic twins tend to be more strongly correlated than the political orientations of dizygotic twins. But when these types of twins are raised apart, dizygotic twins tend to not have political orientations that have any correlation whatsoever, whereas monozygotic twins, these identical twins, still often have political orientations that correlate with one another. And this is kind of pointing to this idea that political orientation, there is a heritability component to political orientation. And this is, again, I want to be sensitive with how we talk about this because this is something that's very misconstrued. Right. But what this means, right, is in the literature, broadly speaking, we tend to find that anywhere between like 30 to 60% of our political orientations are heritable, right? There is certainly heritability components to it. But this does not imply any type of destiny. I like to think about this idea of heritability.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:04:11]:
If you think of, let's imagine that political orientation was a spectrum from 0 to 100, right? Where if you were close to 0, you were, you know, staunchly, staunchly liberal or progressive and close to 100, you were staunchly, staunchly conservative. The blank slate theory, right, that we're all born blank slates. Mm-hmm. Takes that everyone is born with their slider on 50, and it's just na— uh, just nurture that kind of drags us one way or another. What we find in the literature is that's not exactly the case, is that people are kind of born into this world predisposed— that not predestined, not predetermined, but predisposed to kind of feeling, um, more aligned with kind of seeing the world more clearly through one of the ideological lenses. Now, this doesn't mean that they're— someone born at, like, let's say, a 40 is destined to become a liberal. They can very much through nurture, through experience, become staunchly conservative. And similarly, someone that's born a 70 isn't destined to become a conservative.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:05:23]:
They can still, through experience, become very, very liberal throughout their lives. But what we find in the literature is that to say that nature plays no role seems to be untrue. The big challenge becomes is communicating this in a way that is really clear and really tactful. And one of the anecdotes I always share when we talk about things like heritability, because it is a very controversial thing for people to learn about if they're not kind of steeped in the academic literature, is There was this sperm bank at one point that was going around collecting exceptional sperm, right? They were going to exceptional people, mostly Nobel laureates, and trying to get them to make donations. And one of them, when approached, said, oh, you're looking for Nobel Prize sperm, like the type of sperm that comes in Nobel Prize? You should go get it from my father, who was a plumber or who was a garbage man. I don't remember exactly, right? But he lived a very modest life. He wasn't exceptionally intelligent, and yet he he produced a remarkably intelligent offspring. This was just an anecdote to show that genetics, heritability, none of it has anything to do with destiny.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:06:34]:
It's all probability. But to say there's no probability whatsoever, we find that the literature just doesn't support

Tim Newman [00:06:42]:
that. Yeah. So would it be fair to say, if we look at it from, from a biological perspective, somebody who has genetic predisposition to heart disease.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:06:54]:
Yeah,

Tim Newman [00:06:54]:
that, that can still be mitigated by, by lifestyle changes. Um, it's still there and you may still end up with heart disease, but disease, but you can do things that either, um, stave it off a little bit or, uh, mitigate it. Let's just, just put it that way.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:07:12]:
Yeah, I think, I think it's, it's good to look at it in terms of likelihood, in terms of probability, right?

Tim Newman [00:07:17]:
Right.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:07:17]:
Someone born slightly predisposed towards conservatism, you know, um, they have a higher likelihood of when they become adults embracing this, right? It's just a— it's a longer road to embracing liberalism. It's not to say that that is a road they can't go down, and many of them very much do go down that road, but it's just we are born with our dials, so to speak, a little bit more predisposed towards one end than the other. And so it's all about likelihoods more than anything, right? But again, someone can literally— if we were to kind of stick with this, you know, slider metaphor, which is not perfect by any means— but even someone born at a 0, right, who is like staunchly predisposed towards liberalism from a very young age through heritability, through genetic heritability, they can become 100 through their experiences in life if they are repeatedly met with experiences that push them towards seeing the world in a much more conservative lens, through a much more conservative lens, they can very much walk their way up the whole way across that spectrum.

Tim Newman [00:08:22]:
Right. It's just so interesting. But, and I think that just kind of begs the question for people to go just a little bit deeper in that. So, when we're arguing about a conclusion, When the real difference or the real disagreement is buried several layers beneath it in what we individually believe about people, justice, fairness, and how the world works. Yeah,

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:08:48]:
I think for me, you know, like the information we have on these kind of biological or genetic differences is undoubtedly fascinating. It's also— many of these differences are mild to moderate. Okay. They are kind of blown up or sensationalized once they get press that, you know, oh, we're born, you know, absolutely different or we're born liberal or born conservative. That's not really true. Right. Like these differences are real, but they're not so dramatic as people make them out to be. Okay.

Tim Newman [00:09:21]:
Right.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:09:21]:
Right. But what you're getting at is what I feel much more strongly about. And this is this idea that if you want to talk about the differences between liberals and conservatives, most people just look at the symptoms, right? How they disagree on policy. Right. For me, I think there are 3 fundamental disagreements that are much more philosophical in nature that drive a lot of the divergence you see in the political realm. Okay. For me, and I'll kind of explain them, it's really interesting because these are, these disagreements are apolitical. They're not political by nature, but they have political repercussions.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:10:02]:
Okay.

Tim Newman [00:10:02]:
Right.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:10:03]:
First one is, how do you define human nature? What is human nature? Now, this is really interesting, because if you look at the literature, if you look at liberals and conservatives in aggregate, now, of course, there are exceptions to these rules, there are going to be outliers and anomalies. But in aggregate, we tend to find that there are differences between how liberals conceptualize human nature and how conservatives broadly conceptualize human nature. Conservatives tend to see human nature more as a fixed entity, that people are kind of born with a certain degree of good and bad to them, that the world, like society itself in aggregate, has a certain degree of good and bad. And it's really hard to change those things. For some, it's impossible to change those things. And so they see human nature more as fixed. Liberals, on the other hand, tend to see human nature more as malleable, as improvable, maybe not perfectible, but improvable. So if someone is born with a certain degree of good and bad to them, they're not destined to have that for their entire lives.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:11:04]:
They can change, they can become better, their proportion of good and bad can be improved. Now, again, this belief, the first thing to understand about this belief, like the other 2 beliefs I'll talk about as well, is that this is often unspoken. Okay. We don't typically explicitly talk about our beliefs about human nature, but these are often kind of lying beneath the surface of a lot of our disagreements. And why I say that is because, number 2, look at how something like just a belief on human nature impacts policy preferences, right? If you have a fixed view of human nature that humans can't change, and someone proposes social programs designed to kind of benefit individuals and change individuals, well, listen, if I believe in a fixed view of human nature, I see that as a waste of time, right? Why are we wasting resources on a task that can't be accomplished? Whereas if I hold a more improvable vision of human nature, right, that people can be changed, well, guess what? I think it would be cruel not to invest in things like social programs that could potentially make that change. But the point is, Tim, is that yes, the symptoms are political disagreements. But lying beneath them, what's kind of informing them are these more philosophical disagreements that often go unspoken. And human nature is just the first of, in my opinion, 3 of them.

Tim Newman [00:12:22]:
What are the other 2? Because I do want to talk about human nature because that also— if you get into a conversation with somebody like that who's that staunch, is it almost pointless to think that they've got an open mind to even listen to the other side and have a conversation and be willing to listen, understand, and be willing to change?

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:12:48]:
It's a really good question. I think it's something we should get into a little later in the conversation because honestly, what you're going at is a— it's a mechanic of persuasion. And by the way, we'll talk about persuasion because persuasion has a really negative connotation. And guess what? I agree that it's earned that negative connotation, but I also think persuasion when done well, is worthy of redemption. I think persuasion is something that can be done really— I mean, for me, it's one of the most human things we can do to try to change someone's mind. But we can also do it in really humane ways. And we find that actually, the most effective persuaders, so to speak, tend to be the individuals that approach people like they're people, and they're not like locks to be picked. And so we can talk about that.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:13:31]:
I'll quickly get to the other 2 disagreements, and then we can kind of make our way towards

Tim Newman [00:13:37]:
Yeah.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:13:38]:
Are people— can we change, you know, people's minds on these things? Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Newman [00:13:42]:
Okay.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:13:42]:
The second one would be beliefs about the world. What type of world do we live in? Right. Do we live in a world that is competitive and hierarchical and dangerous, or do we live in a world that is more cooperative and egalitarian? Now, this is a really interesting one because, again, conservatives as a group tend to be more likely to think of the world as hierarchical and competitive and dangerous, whereas liberals as a group tend to see the world more as like potentially cooperative, more potentially egalitarian. And again, this belief about the world in and of itself is, is not necessarily political. This is kind of an apolitical view. But its repercussions, its consequences are very political, right? They're very kind of tied to the political domain, because if you look at something like perceptions of immigration, right? Open borders. Right. If you believe the world is hierarchical, if you believe it's competitive and dangerous, well, open borders poses a threat, right? It's a threat to our well-being.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:14:43]:
It's a threat to kind of our, you know, our safety. Whereas if you tend to believe the world is a place where cooperation is kind of the dominant state of nature and that egalitarianism is something that we're striving for, well, guess what? Open borders become an opportunity. And so again, we take this kind of views that are often unspoken, but we all seem to have pretty strong opinions on them, whether we realize it or not. And these end up informing our kind of political positions as well. But because we don't realize what the root of them are, we end up kind of arguing about the policies themselves rather than the actual origins of our feelings about those policies. So that's number 2. Number 3 for me, is beliefs about right and wrong, right? Conceptions. How do you think about something like right and wrong and morality and justice? And we have really, really interesting— there's a bunch of different perspectives in the literature about kind of where liberals and conservatives tend to differ on these things.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:15:41]:
One of the more interesting ones for me is Ronnie Janoff-Bulman has this framework she uses where she calls it moral motivations theory. And basically, she makes this argument that in her research, she tends to find that conservatives tend to see morality in a more proscriptive fashion, meaning that morality is more defined about what you shouldn't be doing. Don't harm people. Don't do this. Avoid doing that. And so morality is much more about kind of restraint than anything. Whereas for liberals, they tend to see morality more in a prescriptive fashion, right? Morality is about actively helping other people, actively going out and trying to make people's lives better. And so again, you have kind of this fundamental mismatch about what even right and wrong is.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:16:31]:
So when someone says, oh, you didn't do the right thing, well, guess what? Sometimes you have these 2 groups starting from different premises about what the right thing even is.

Tim Newman [00:16:41]:
You know, it's just so fascinating as you're talking about it, and I'm thinking, And maybe that's why the majority of people are in that— we're more closer to that 50 on the slider than we are on the outskirts. But it seems to me that the vocal minority on the outskirts are the ones that are driving the conversation and are driving the the narratives.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:17:14]:
I couldn't agree more, Tim. You know, I think for me, you know, political psychology is this field that is both endlessly fascinating and very frustrating at times, because, you know, you kind of learn that the way in which the world is perceived is not always the way in which it actually is. And so, right, you know, a great example of this is exactly what you're talking about. We have research to show that polarization in the United States has been increasing over the past few decades, right? We have kind of—

Tim Newman [00:17:45]:
Mm-hmm.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:17:46]:
I'm talking about half a century of longitudinal data to show that there's been kind of a steady increase of polarization in the United States. But what's really interesting that most people are not aware of is that perceived polarization has not only been above that line statistically, for the past 50 years, but it's increasing at a higher rate than actual polarization, meaning that for 50 years we have believed we are further apart than we actually are. And that belief is becoming more and more exaggerated. And the reason why many of the theorists completely agree with what you just said, a lot of times what we're seeing and what we're hearing are the most extreme versions of both The people that are most vocal are often the people that are most extreme in their views. And what ends up happening is kind of twofold. You know, on the one hand, let's say I happen to be a really moderate liberal or a really moderate conservative, either one, right?

Tim Newman [00:18:45]:
Demetric.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:18:46]:
I look and I see the extremists in my group yelling about what we in our group believe. I start to wonder, you know, is that what a lot of us actually believe? Like, I might not believe that, but maybe if that's the only voice I'm hearing, I start to believe that my group does think like that. And if I'm only hearing the most extreme voices from the other group, well, I start to believe that most of them tend to believe that stuff as well. You kind of create this caricature of what the group actually believes. And we call this in psychology pluralistic ignorance, this idea that, you know, I kind of don't know what's actually happening. And so I might not speak up because I think no one else shares my view. Right. When in reality, there's a lot of people just as moderate as I am who share my view.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:19:32]:
And what we find in the literature, which is really, really interesting, is that even on some of those polarizing issues, somewhere between like 60 and 70% of individuals on both sides of the political aisle can find at least one person who shares their exact opinion on these issues, right? So like—

Tim Newman [00:19:52]:
Right.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:19:52]:
To give you a quick example, if you put an issue like gun control and you say from 0 to 100, how much do you support gun control? What we find is that on average, these— they're very big differences, right? The, the conservative average might be 20, the liberal average might be 80. But when you actually map the entire distribution of how those groups are responding, you see a huge overlap. Yeah. You see members on both sides who can find someone who shares their exact opinion in the enemy camp, so to speak. So it is hope, there is potential, but we have these misperceptions that are really pervasive.

Tim Newman [00:20:33]:
So let me ask this question because being in the United States, we don't, at least I'm saying we, I'm generalizing, I don't get a whole lot of news or perception about what's happening in the rest of the world outside of the, the main stories? You know, which, you know what, I don't want to bring them up because it's, it's all negative stuff, but, but is, is, is the same type of thing happening in other parts of the world that's happening in the United States?

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:21:02]:
Well, it's, it's interesting because, you know, polarization certainly exists elsewhere, right? There's certainly polarization elsewhere, and, you know, pretty much any country in the world, you're going to see individuals who can be loosely defined as, as liberals or progressives and individuals who can loosely be defined as conservatives, because these are just kind of philosophical beliefs about how you should structure a society, right? Conservatives want to kind of keep what has always worked. They want to maintain that tradition, hence conserve, right? Whereas progressives want to see, can we get better, right? Conservatives see change as a risk, progressives see it as an opportunity. And so broadly speaking, you have these disagreements across all societies, but the type of polarization, and especially the type of rhetoric that has become very, very common in the US, does have some things that are very, very unique about it, and not in the nicest way possible, right?

Tim Newman [00:21:56]:
Right, right, right.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:21:57]:
The US has kind of become a bit of a spectacle when it comes to the kind of polarization, because at this point, polarization has stopped being something that is being driven necessarily by competing views of the good or competing views of organizing society, and it's become this shouting match of which group is evil, you know. And I think that that fundamentally shifts, you know, not only the conversations but also the orientation toward one another. It's no longer that we just don't agree on kind of what good might be or what just might be or what right might be. It's that if you don't agree with me, you're evil, you're immoral, you're ignorant.

Tim Newman [00:22:39]:
Right. And that, that's where, where you lose me completely. Right. Because, you know, I say you brought it up. I say 90% of the issues we, we agree on because I bring this up all the time. I've never spoken to anybody who says that they don't want clean water. Never spoken to anybody that says they don't want clean air. Now, how we get to clean water and clean air, that's a different discussion, right? But if we— I think if we were to approach things from a different perspective and not think that somebody is evil or somebody is immoral for how they get to their clean water, clean air solution, that's where the— That's where the gold is, right? I think, and that's I come back to listening and being open to listening.

Tim Newman [00:23:30]:
What are your thoughts? And where does listening fall? And when can listening just be a tool of persuasion?

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:23:39]:
Oh, now we're gonna get into some great conversations, Tim. You know, I think for me, let's talk about persuasion for a second, right? Let me take

Tim Newman [00:23:46]:
it

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:23:46]:
back and I'll set— let me set the scene for persuasion because I want to acknowledge that Persuasion is, is something that a lot of people hear and they, they kind of, you know, they're— they get— they give them an ick, right? Like, people have heard persuasion. Persuasion has been maligned, and I think fairly so. And it's because persuasion has been misused. The individuals who have taken the most interest in persuasion over the past few decades have been the kind of slimy snake oil salesmen who are trying to trying to kind of change your mind against your will. And a lot of people that have kind of taught about persuasion in the, you know, not academic space, but kind of have used academic articles to try to, you know, create their own Frankenstein brand of persuasion, have treated human beings like a lock to be picked, right? They've talked about bypassing rationality and bypassing logical thought and basically trying to trick people. And that's manipulation, right? Right? And so, you know, I don't blame people for feeling icky when they hear the word persuasion. But for me, persuasion is something that's very worthy of redemption. Um, and it's worthy of redemption for me because— I'll give you a quick example, right? And then we'll get into listening because it's such an important part of it.

Tim Newman [00:25:01]:
Yeah.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:25:03]:
There are two— when I talk about persuasion, one of the first questions is always, how do you define persuasion versus manipulation? It's a really, really important For me, there are 2 very clear red lines where if you cross them, you're going into the domain of manipulation. The first is coercion. If you will try to force or unduly pressure someone into making a decision or thinking a certain way, you have gone from persuasion to manipulation, right? The second one is deception. If you try to lie, if you need to falsify facts or misrepresent something, that is also no longer persuasion. It is now manipulation. What's really interesting is if you look at the research, not only are these 2 kind of red lines, you know, that, that separate persuasion from manipulation wrong, but they're actually antithetical to true persuasion in many ways.

Tim Newman [00:25:55]:
Right.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:25:56]:
They can be counterproductive to persuasion. So when you talk about coercion, the literature shows that When people are— when you try to push someone to do something, their instinct is to push back. Perfect example, Tim. When you see a do not touch the art sign, what's the first thing you want to

Tim Newman [00:26:11]:
do? I'm going to go touch it.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:26:13]:
You want to touch the art, right? It's the weirdest phenomenon, but it's something that psychologists have studied. It's called psychological reactance. Basically, when people feel that their autonomy is being constrained, that their freedom to do or choose as they wish is being compromised, we instinctively push back. It's kind of an anti-coercion device that we have built into human nature. And so the first thing to understand is that when you try to coerce someone into something, that's not just bad persuasion or manipulation, it's, it's counterproductive because what you get is not persuasion, you get compliance. And there's a very big difference, right?

Tim Newman [00:26:51]:
Yeah. Okay.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:26:51]:
Yeah. Once that coercion is gone, once that pressure is gone, people bounce back to their other, other way of thinking, their other way of doing, and sometimes they bounce even further back. Deception, for me, the other, the other kind of line in the sand, for me, persuasion, true persuasion, is not about giving someone new data or new facts. It's not about making something up to prove a point. True persuasion is about helping someone see the same data or the same issue they've looked at for years in a slightly different way. And this doesn't require giving them any type of new or fabricated information. It requires changing their perspective or the vantage point that they've taken to look at some issue for a long time. That's kind of the true art of persuasion.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:27:36]:
And that involves really gentle techniques like message framing and storytelling, which we can get to in a moment. But I want to come back to this idea of listening, because for me, when we talk about this idea of coercion, Right? Forcing someone, it backfires, right? I like to call this the paradoxical physics of persuasion, meaning when we think about moving someone, our intuitions kind of betray us because we think that people are moved in the same way furniture is moved. You got to push harder, right? And so we give, we try to give better arguments and more forceful conclusions. And we don't realize that the harder we try to push someone, the more they tend to push back.

Tim Newman [00:28:14]:
Push back. Right.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:28:15]:
That's the art, exactly. And so for me, it's most effective to think of another person's mind as private property. And what I mean by that is you can't force your way onto someone's private property and expect for them to entertain you, right? They're, they're going to push back. They're going to get hostile and aggressive. They're going to push you off. And in the same way, you can't force someone to change their mind if they're not ready to change their mind, to have that conversation. And so the first part of persuasion has nothing to do with content. It has nothing to do with your argument.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:28:48]:
It's all about your approach. Can I approach someone in a way where they're willing to have a conversation with me, where they're willing to entertain another point of view? And so the way you look at it is persuasion is at the beginning less of a content problem. It's more of an access problem. And something like questions are the perfect way to get an invite onto someone's private property. Because questions— we're not trying to force them to think something. We're not trying to shove our opinions or our arguments down their throat. We're trying to open a dialogue and say, hey, listen, I don't have all the answers. I know my opinion might not be right, but I'm curious to learn, when did you start thinking like this, right? What, what led you down this path? Why? Have you ever had doubts? It's questions that kind of open the door to a dialogue that might actually move the needle when it comes to change.

Tim Newman [00:29:39]:
And you bring up a number of really good points, but we as the people asking those questions, we have to be willing to change our minds as well. Otherwise, it's not persuasion, it's coercion or it's—

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:29:56]:
Yeah.

Tim Newman [00:29:58]:
So if we're not willing to, if we're trying to change other people's minds or change their perception or their their position and we're not willing to do it ourselves, that's not persuasion is what I'm trying to say. Is that accurate? That's what, that's what I would think.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:30:13]:
I think that's a very valid perspective. There's disagreement on that. Right. But I think that's a perfectly valid perspective. I think for me, Tim, at the very least, you have to be able to go in with an acknowledgment that even if I hold a strong opinion, I recognize it's an opinion. Right? I know that it might not be fact. And this is something that is very hard for individuals to do. But there's something incredibly beautiful about this approach.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:30:38]:
So one of the things that really disheartens me is we have reached a point, especially with dialogue in the United States, especially if you're talking about like cross-political dialogue, right? Where hedging your language has become a bad thing to do, right? It's soft. It's whatever it may be. And people are always trying to get soundbites where they're making these very forceful statements about how exactly right they are, how everyone else is wrong and stupid and immoral. And listen, there is a place for that type of certainty. There's a place for that type of kind of mobilizing your own group. But when it comes to actually trying to change someone's mind, that type of certainty, that type of concreteness is counterproductive. And so,

Tim Newman [00:31:24]:
yes,

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:31:25]:
you want to approach someone, you have to be willing— if they're going to be willing to kind of interrogate their own point of view and potentially admit weaknesses in it, you have to be willing to do the same thing. We call this conversational receptiveness in psychology. And what's really incredible about conversational receptiveness is that we find that it is reciprocal. We find that individuals who approach a conversation who say, hey, listen, I do have strong opinions on this. I know we don't agree, but I know I'm not always right. I know there's probably room for, for me to be corrected. And, you know, I really want to hear where you're coming from. This receptiveness is contagious.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:32:06]:
The other side tends to feel like they need to reciprocate that too. And so just being willing to hedge and admit that, hey, there might be weaknesses or flaws in my view, even though I might hold it strongly, opens the door for them to do the same thing. There's a lot of power in that.

Tim Newman [00:32:22]:
Yeah, there is. And I talk about it from the listen like you're wrong perspective. And that's powerful because you have to accept that from yourself that, you know what, I may be wrong. I may, and be willing to be open to admitting that. And that's a hard thing to do for a lot of people. And let's take it a step further because now we're not just talking about changing somebody's mind. We're also talking about their perceived self, their perceived self within a social group or their perceived self within a community. And I mean, you see what happens over here.

Tim Newman [00:33:03]:
I mean, there's people that go no contact with parents. There's people going no contact with their brother and sister, with their friends, over something that Again, I'm not going to diminish anybody's, you know, position, but it's really— you're going to disown your family over something that's— it's not trivial, but it's not something— over a thought. It's over a thought, really.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:33:30]:
I think, you know, this idea of the kind of social implications is a really important thing to understand, Tim, you know. So Something I talk about quite frequently is this idea that belonging, our kind of need for belonging, is a survival instinct. And I mean that quite literally. I mean that if you were to go back 30,000 years, 40,000 years, right, and you go back to when humans were living in small tribes, if you were ostracized from that tribe, if you were kicked out of the tribe, it was a death— it was a death sentence. Okay.

Tim Newman [00:34:09]:
Right.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:34:09]:
You— there were predators that you could not survive one-on-one against, and there was prey that you relied on for food that you could not take down without the help of the group. And so being not a part of the group quite literally meant you were likely to die. And so we have evolved to experience social rejection in a very similar way to how we experience physical pain. And that's because Both of these things represented threats to our survival from an evolutionary standpoint, and so this desire to belong, to be accepted by the group, is incredibly powerful—one of our most powerful drives that we have, especially as such an intensely social species as humans. And this matters; it matters because if you look at where most people try to change political minds is. the exact space where minds are least likely to change. And that's on social media. I'm sure, Tim, you don't have to go very far.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:35:07]:
You don't have to go very far to see people arguing about politics on social media. And I would be fascinated if you've ever seen at any degree of regularity people saying, oh yeah, okay, my mind's changed now. Like, it just, it simply doesn't happen.

Tim Newman [00:35:23]:
There's no nuance. There's no, it's, it's, It's just plain and simple and black and white. And that's why I tell people, I said, if you're doing that, then that's the definition to me of insanity. Because—

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:35:36]:
Yeah.

Tim Newman [00:35:37]:
I mean, it doesn't matter which side you take. You're either half the people are going to love it, half the people are going to hate it. And now all of a sudden we've got arguments and people unfriending or whatever it is over simple To me, it's— if I want to have the conversation, let's have a conversation. Let's not type it out.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:35:59]:
Yeah. And you know what? That intuition, Tim, is really, really valuable when it comes to actually standing a chance of making a change. And the reason why is when you are in a public space, a social space, changing your mind is not just an intellectual activity, right? It's not that you and I are arguing. You know, we're arguing on Facebook. We're arguing on Instagram. you make a— let's say you make a great point and I, you know, internally am like, oh shit, that's a really good point. Excuse my swearing. Right, that's fine.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:36:31]:
That's, that's a really good point, right? Even if I believe that personally, I often won't say it. And I won't say it because I know there are social consequences for my membership, my belonging in the group, if I do that, right? If I admit to the quote-unquote enemy that, hey, what you said is actually a really good point. I worry, will my group still accept me, right? Will I still have a standing in the group? Right. So this kind of represses a lot of opportunity we might have to finding common ground because people worry about the social consequences. And so your intuition about, you know, if you really wanna have this conversation, let's have it offline, is exactly right. Because what we find is that true change, like meaningful change, very rarely starts with someone being shouted at in a public space. Yes. Right? That engenders our defensiveness, right? Where it starts is 2 people privately, one-on-one, engaging in that conversational receptiveness, creating a safe space, so to speak, where like, I can actually admit to doubts I might have.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:37:38]:
I can actually admit to weaknesses my argument might have and hear the strengths of yours. without the fear of judgment from my group, right? We find that these are kind of where the seeds of change are actually planted, because any seeds you try to plant on social media, if, if those aren't thrown back immediately, you know, your group looks at you as potentially a traitor. And that's just a risk most people are willing to take.

Tim Newman [00:38:04]:
Yeah, it's, it's, it's so true. You know, as an educator, I, I tried very, very hard to take my political and my positions out because I don't see that as my role. And I would always play, didn't matter what came up, I would always play devil's advocate. Yeah. Okay, so if this is what you're thinking, what do you think about this? Just to kind of create a dialogue. And I've got a friend who's a former student now who's running for political office. They posted stuff on Facebook and I I responded to it because I stay out of it. But my point was that this individual is trying to— he talks about making change in his community and he's doing something about it.

Tim Newman [00:38:49]:
And that's what I'm championing. Not necessarily his ideas, but his idea of doing something about it as opposed to just talking about it or letting it go. Yeah. And that's where I think, you know, there's— people could also get involved from that perspective. You know, good for you. You're taking some steps because you see something. You want to do something about it without the negativity.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:39:17]:
Yeah. Yeah. No, I think there's certainly opportunities for that, you know, and I think part of it, right, that prevents individuals from doing that is this belief that we, you know, the US has kind of backed itself into this this corner where even being nice to someone on the other side, even being civil at times, you know, certain members of your group are going to look, look, you know, not very fairly or not very fondly upon that. And, and that, I think, is, um, it's a very challenging situation to be in. It's a very challenging situation to get ourselves out of because you do have, on the one hand, you know, opportunities to find common ground, you have opportunities to develop civil relationships and return a little bit to civility. But at the same time, you know, right now, the potential consequences for that often outweigh the potential rewards, right? The idea of being chastised or ostracized by your group is something that for most people is too much of a risk to take. And so it's a very, very unfortunate situation to find ourselves in. And I don't know how you get out of something like that.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:40:23]:
I don't know the exact way.

Tim Newman [00:40:25]:
Well, I'm getting ready to ask you that question. Let's just say, let's just say, for example, you know, you've got 2 people that genuinely disagree on something. And your job is not to change one or the other's mind, but to put them in a position or create conditions where either one could. How would you design that conversation?

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:40:45]:
It's an awesome question. A few things that I would say we would want to do. The first thing is to create this space where change is possible, right? And this is the space we were talking about, you know, this idea of being invited on the property. You're only invited on the property if you create that space where someone feels like they can actually interrogate and have a conversation without the worry that it's going to be weaponized against them, right? And to give you an idea of just how important important that is, Tim, right? Have you, have you ever had a conversation, uh, with a conspiracy theorist?

Tim Newman [00:41:21]:
Oh yeah.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:41:22]:
Okay. All right. Have you ever changed their minds? Have they ever left the conversation saying, you know what, you've changed my mind? Okay. No, it's just, it is notoriously hard to change a conspiracy theorist's mind, right? Uh, to the point where in psychology it is fascinating when we can get any type of, of non-null results, where you get significant results when it comes to attitude change with conspiracy theorists, because often they're, they're just impervious to reason. A few years ago, literally about 3 years ago, I think researchers were able to durably reduce conspiratorial beliefs in conspiracy theorists. That in and of itself was a fascinating finding. Wow.

Tim Newman [00:42:02]:
Yeah.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:42:02]:
What was even more fascinating was that it wasn't human beings that did it. It was AI chatbots. Now, When you tell people about this research, the first thing they want to understand is like, what arguments did the AI use? What tactics did they use when it comes to rhetoric and kind of, you know, shifting their opinions? And those are good questions. Nothing wrong with those questions. But I think that most people miss something that these AI chatbots did that probably has a very underappreciated role on someone's willingness to change. If you look at the actual transcripts of these conversations, The way they worked is the conspiracy theorist would begin by saying what their conspiracy theory was. And there was a whole host, a whole range of different conspiracy theories. Most of them, you know, pretty much all of them were pretty ridiculous to anyone who's not in that domain.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:42:54]:
And then the AI chatbot would kind of reiterate what their beliefs seemed to be just to make sure they understood them correctly. Once the conspiracy theorist said, yes, that's basically it. the AI chatbot had its turn to kind of change its mind. But you'll notice in these transcripts that they didn't start off with saying, here's why you're wrong. Okay. Right. The first 2 sentences went something like this. Hey, thank you for sharing your opinion on this particular matter.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:43:22]:
Given the complexity of the situation, given the kind of murkiness of some of the data out there and the rumors that are floating around. It's understandable why someone might hold this point of view, but here's why I think you're wrong, right? Regardless of how absurd these views were, they started off by thanking them and by saying, it's understandable, right? I don't think you're stupid. I don't— even if they might have, right? Even if a human might have and might have a good reason to do so, they didn't say that, right? But what they did in this way is kind of more human than most humans, right? They created a space where now this individual could potentially acknowledge doubts they might have, weaknesses in their claims, Right. without worrying that it's going to make them look like an idiot, like they're going to be weaponized against them. And what happens with these conversations sometimes is we put people in this situation where, on the one hand, they can either admit they're wrong and have someone say, see, you're so stupid for believing that, Or just continue to say, I'm right and you're wrong, and then do the same thing, right?

Tim Newman [00:44:30]:
Yeah.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:44:31]:
And oftentimes in those positions, it's preferable to just argue with someone than admit you're wrong. And so you have to start off by creating this space. And ultimately, these AI chatbots— I think this is one of the most underappreciated things they did in the whole conversation— they started off by giving this person the space and the grace to say, hey, listen, I understand why you might believe this. Here's why I think you're wrong. And that changes the kind of risk-reward of the entire conversation.

Tim Newman [00:45:03]:
Right. And obviously it takes the emotion out of it. You know, I actually called somebody an idiot, you know, last week because they were doing something that— they were doing something That idiot too. Exactly. And now, as you're saying that, I said, wow, maybe if I had approached that differently, there would've been a different result.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:45:31]:
It's hard.

Tim Newman [00:45:32]:
It is hard, especially when you're in the moment and you let that emotion creep in because that's also human, right? Absolutely. It is what it is. But so you've been doing this and doing this research pretty much your entire adult life.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:45:52]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Newman [00:45:53]:
What about all this from a persuasion, political psychology, polarization perspective? What belief of this are you personally least certain about?

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:46:08]:
In terms of my political beliefs?

Tim Newman [00:46:10]:
No, of theoretical terms, in terms of persuasion, political psychology, polarization, and the theory behind it?

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:46:19]:
Gotcha. Okay. I think individuals— one of the things, one of the ways I can answer that question, maybe this is a satisfactory answer, maybe it's not. You can push me if you don't think it's satisfactory. I think one of the things that most people believe is unquestioned, but it really should be questioned a lot more. is that humans are rational creatures, that humans are perfect.

Tim Newman [00:46:43]:
Yeah. Okay.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:46:44]:
Like logical decision makers, right? Like most of us operate under the assumption that the human brain works like a computer does, right? That it kind of prioritizes accuracy and objectivity and truth, right? The search for truth. That's not really what we see. And not only just in political psychology, but in moral psychology and evolutionary psychology and behavioral economics, we find that the human brain is not like a computer. If the human brain— let's put it this way. Rather than thinking about humans as perfectly rational creatures, it's probably more appropriate to think of humans as rationalizing creatures. And there's a really important distinction there. If humans were rational creatures— now, humans can think rationally. I want to be very clear about that, right? We have the capacity to do that.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:47:33]:
But if we were perfectly rational creatures, our brain's default, so to speak, would be to kind of look at data like a scientist does. It would take every piece of data, it would evaluate each of them objectively and impartially and try to render the best possible, the most accurate possible decision. In reality, we find that our brains operate much more like a trial lawyer does, where they have particular opinions and beliefs that they want to defend. And they go about preferentially selecting data and evidence that allows them to defend those beliefs, right? And so it's not that, you know, our belief comes from the evidence, it's that we use our evidence to support our beliefs that we want to

Tim Newman [00:48:15]:
defend,

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:48:16]:
right? Yeah. And so it's a really important understanding to have, because so much of our frustration around persuasion and change comes from, it starts with this misapprehension that humans are these perfectly logical decision makers because you approach someone with a logical argument and you believe truly that you have the most logical argument and they don't budge. And you're like, that's not how it's supposed to work. But that's exactly how it's supposed to work. Right. That's how our brain works. Our brain works to kind of defend what we already hold to be true rather than trying to continually figure out what the truth might actually be.

Tim Newman [00:48:56]:
Exactly. So it's, it's kind of like AI. I mean, if our brains operated like AI, it would— that would— then we'd be rational.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:49:04]:
Yeah, you can change with logic all the time. You know, you give a more logical answer, that's fine. But that's, it's not how our brains work.

Tim Newman [00:49:10]:
And it's how it works.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:49:11]:
Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Newman [00:49:13]:
And it's also interesting, you know, how we could be in, let's just say, in a geolocation and we think this one thing, but we move to a different geolocation and we think something completely different. Right. Take the whole idea of our views on alcohol.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:49:39]:
Yeah.

Tim Newman [00:49:40]:
Views on alcohol in Europe are way more liberal than they are here in the United States.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:49:46]:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's one of those things that's really interesting, Tim, where, you know, any type of belief that you hold with certainty can probably be, be budged by traveling somewhere very different from where you currently are, right? It's, it's what it does is it creates this fundamental perspective shift, right? It's, if you live your whole life, you know, I'll give, I'll give an example from my own life, right? It's not, it's not the most polarizing or controversial example. But I grew up in the US, right? When I thought about my future as a young man, I would always imagine myself living in the US. I knew nothing else, right? If someone were to ask me, you know, well, would you go somewhere else? The answer was always no, like, of course not. Like, this is what I know. Why would I ever think about that? I'm talking to you, by the way, from London at the moment, where I've been living in London for the past 6 years, and 7 non-consecutive years I've spent in London over the past 10. And so, you know, for me, I remember the moment, like, when I first came to London, it was supposed to be a 1-year thing. And about 2 months into it, I remember having this feeling of, like, the world opening up to a degree, because I was like, oh my God, like, I can be happy living elsewhere.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:51:08]:
Like, I don't have to just, you know, live in the US. Like, it doesn't need to be constrained. My belief doesn't need to be constrained in that way. And I think so many people find such value in traveling, not just for an appreciation of other cultures, but also for this kind of exposure to other ways of thinking and seeing the world and realizing that, like, hey, yes, it's very different but it's not necessarily wrong, right? Right. You start to get, to a degree, more of, you know, if you're willing to open your mind, a little bit of a willingness to embrace moral relativism, right? And I'm not making a pitch for, like, unbridled moral relativism, that there is no right and wrong. Like, I don't think I want to go that far. But the point is, is that I am a firm believer is that there are many ways to live a good life. There are many ways to do the right way, you know, and if you only have one perspective, it's very hard to convince someone of that because it just doesn't feel right to them.

Tim Newman [00:52:08]:
Right, right. It's so interesting. I'm so glad we had this conversation. Where can people connect with you to learn more about how persuasion really works and how we can communicate more effectively with people that disagree with us?

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:52:21]:
I appreciate it, Tim. The best place is going to be influence51.com. That's my website. It's influence51.com. A lot of what I think are cool things on there. There's a free test where you can kind of, you know, figure out what your default influence style is when you try to change someone's mind. There's leadership guides for leaders who want to be more effective, more persuasive communicators. There's a bunch of videos.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:52:46]:
If you're not sick of hearing me, you know, after 50 minutes, you can go on there and listen to some more videos of mine. And of course, ways to connect with me. And I'm also, Tim, I'm on LinkedIn. I admittedly have a bit of a distaste for LinkedIn. But when it comes down to it, anyone who friends me on LinkedIn, anyone who sends me a message, I always answer the messages. I always send something back. And so, if you can figure out how to spell my name and find me on LinkedIn, happy to connect there as well.

Tim Newman [00:53:10]:
That's awesome. Thank you. I'll make sure I put those links in the show notes. And I'll spell your name right too, hopefully. JonRobert, thank you so much. I've loved this conversation. It's probably been one of the best I've had in a long, long time. You've really opened my eyes, and I know you've opened our listeners' eyes on some things too, given them lots to think about.

Tim Newman [00:53:33]:
So thank you so much.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:53:34]:
Tim, I was so looking forward to this conversation. It did not disappoint at all. It's my pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

Tim Newman [00:53:41]:
All right, my friend, you take care and we'll talk soon.

JonRobert Tartaglione [00:53:43]:
You too.

Tim Newman [00:53:45]:
Be sure to visit speakingwithconfidencepodcast.com to get your free ebook, Top 21 Challenges for Public Speakers and How to Overcome Them. You can also register for the Formula for Public Speaking course. Always remember, your voice has the power to change the world. We'll talk to you next time. Take care.