The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals about Our Power to Change Others
244
The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals about Our Power to Change Others
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Overview
A cutting-edge, research-based inquiry into how we influence those around us and how understanding the brain can help us change minds for the better.
In The Influential Mind, neuroscientist Tali Sharot takes us on a thrilling exploration of the nature of influence. We all have a duty to affect others—from the classroom to the boardroom to social media. But how skilled are we at this role, and can we become better? It turns out that many of our instincts—from relying on facts and figures to shape opinions, to insisting others are wrong or attempting to exert control—are ineffective, because they are incompatible with how people’s minds operate. Sharot shows us how to avoid these pitfalls, and how an attempt to change beliefs and actions is successful when it is well-matched with the core elements that govern the human brain.
Sharot reveals the critical role of emotion in influence, the weakness of data and the power of curiosity. Relying on the latest research in neuroscience, behavioral economics and psychology, the book provides fascinating insight into the complex power of influence, good and bad.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781627792660 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Holt, Henry & Company, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 03/26/2024 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 244 |
| Sales rank: | 189,847 |
| File size: | 11 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Does Evidence Change Beliefs? (Priors)
The Power of Confirmation and the Weakness of Data
Thelma and Jeremiah are happily married. They see eye to eye on most issues; they agree on how to raise their kids and how to handle their finances; they have the same beliefs with regard to politics and religion, similar humor and cultural preferences, and even share the same occupation — both are attorneys. This is not surprising. Research has shown again and again that the best predictor for a long-lasting marriage is not passion or friendship; it is similarity. Opposites, contrary to popular belief, neither attract nor remain an item when they do.
There is, however, one topic Thelma and Jeremiah disagree on. This is not startling, either. Most couples, as compatible as they may be, will argue for years over one issue or another. Maybe it is whether they should have kids, how many to have, how to achieve a work-life balance, or whether to adopt a pet lizard or a guinea pig. For Thelma and Jeremiah, the conflict is over where to settle down. Thelma was born and raised in France, Jeremiah in the United States. Both believe their native country is the best place to raise a family.
Thelma and Jeremiah are not alone. Surveys show that when asked for the ideal place to live, work, raise children, and retire, most people say it is their home country. Only 13 percent of the world's adults would like to leave their country permanently. The grass, it appears, is greenest exactly where you are. If people must immigrate, they prefer to move next door: the French to the United Kingdom, Austrians to Switzerland.
Unfortunately, the solution to Thelma and Jeremiah's problem cannot lie in meeting the other person halfway. Just as having half a kid is not an answer for couples who disagree on whether to expand their unit, Thelma and Jeremiah are unable to build a home in the Atlantic Ocean, midway between Europe and North America. The only solution, then, is for one to convince the other that their view is correct.
You would think that Thelma and Jeremiah are perfectly suited for the task. As I mentioned, they are both attorneys. Their life's work is to persuade a jury to take their side. They have set out to solve their marital problem as they would a professional legal problem — each presents the other side with facts and figures to support their argument in an attempt to smash the opposition. Jeremiah shows Thelma data suggesting that the cost of living is lower in the United States, while Thelma provides Jeremiah with numbers proving that attorneys make more money in France. Jeremiah e-mails Thelma an article arguing that the education system is superior in the States, while Thelma finds a different piece claiming that kids are happier in France. Both regard the "evidence" provided by the other as unreliable and refuse to budge. Over the years, they each become more and more grounded in their belief.
The approach taken by Thelma and Jeremiah is one that many of us adopt. Our instinct, when arguing or debating, is to burst in with ammunition that reveals why we are right and the other side is wrong. We articulately present our logical arguments and support them with facts, because these sound very convincing to us. Yet think about the last time you argued with your spouse or participated in a dinner party that transformed into a late-night political debate. Did you manage to nudge people's beliefs? Did they take note of your well-thought-out arguments and carefully researched data? If your recollections are genuine, you probably recognize that, alas, facts and logic are not the most powerful tools for altering opinions. When it comes to arguing, our instincts are wrong.
The Weakness of Data
Your brain, like most people's, is programmed to get a kick out of information. This makes our current digital era an explosive celebration for your mind. While the agricultural age gave us easier access to nutrition, and the industrial age dramatically increased our quality of life, no other era provided as much stimulation for our brains as the information age. It is as if, finally, the human brain has succeeded in building its own amusement park, complete with thrill rides, which are perfectly customized ... for itself.
Consider the numbers: there are 3 billion Internet users worldwide; every day we produce approximately 2.5 billion gigabytes of data, perform 4 billion Google searches, and watch 10 billion YouTube videos. In the short time it took you to read the last sentence, approximately 530,243 new Google searches were executed and 1,184,390 YouTube videos played around the globe.
It would seem that the digital revolution should come in handy when we are trying to alter people's beliefs. If people love information, what better way to influence their beliefs and actions than to offer data? With big data at our fingertips and powerful computers at our disposal, we can run analyses to expand our knowledge and then share the resulting facts and figures. Seems straightforward, right?
That is, until you attempt to present your carefully collected data and thoughtfully constructed conclusions to the person you are hoping to influence. At that moment, you quickly realize that data is often not the answer when it comes to changing minds.
This epiphany came as a terrible blow to the scientist in me. As a cognitive neuroscientist, I work at the intersection between psychology and neuroscience. Like most scientists, I love data. Some people collect precious rocks; others collect first-edition books, stamps, shoes, vintage cars, or china dolls. I collect data. My computers hold hundreds of folders with thousands of files, each containing rows and rows of numbers. Every number represents an observation: a person's response to a decision problem or their reaction to another human; other numbers indicate the activity in a person's brain or the density of their neuronal fibers. Numbers on their own are useless. The reason I love data is that those rows and rows of numbers can be transformed into something beautiful: meaningful graphs, which, every so often, reveal an exciting new insight into what makes you and me, Homo sapiens, tick.
So you can imagine my dismay when I learned that all those numbers, from numerous experiments and observations, pointed to the fact that people are not in fact driven by facts, or figures, or data. It is not that people are stupid; nor are we ridiculously stubborn. It is that the accessibility to lots of data, analytic tools, and powerful computers is the product of the last few decades, while the brains we are attempting to influence are the product of millions of decades. As it turns out, while we adore data, the currency by which our brains assess said data and make decisions is very different from the currency many of us believe our brains should use. The problem with an approach that prioritizes information and logic is that it ignores the core of what makes you and me human: our motives, our fears, our hopes and desires. As we will see, this presents a serious problem; it means that data has only a limited capacity to alter the strong opinions of others. Established beliefs can be extremely resistant to change, even when scientific evidence is provided to undermine those beliefs.
The Power of Confirmation
Three scientists, Charles Lord, Lee Ross, and Mark Lepper, recruited forty-eight American undergraduates who either strongly supported the death penalty or strongly opposed it. They presented them with two scientific studies; one offered evidence regarding the effectiveness of capital punishment, and the other data showed its ineffectiveness. In reality, the studies had been fabricated. Lord, Ross, and Lepper had made them up, but the students did not know that. Did the students find the studies convincing? Did they believe that the data provided good evidence that should alter their minds? They did!
But only when the study reinforced their original view. Those students who strongly supported capital punishment thought the study that demonstrated its effectiveness was well conducted. At the same time, they argued that the other study was poorly executed and not compelling. Those who were originally against capital punishment assessed the studies the other way around. As a result, believers in the death penalty left the lab supporting capital punishment with more passion than ever, while those in opposition to it ended up opposing capital punishment with more zest than before. Rather than enabling people to see both sides of the coin, the exercise polarized everyone involved.
Information can lead to polarization of opinions in domains ranging from abortion and homosexuality to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. My colleague Cass Sunstein (the administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs during the Obama administration and a current Harvard Law professor) and I wanted to know whether the same was true for beliefs about climate change. We first asked a group of volunteers about their opinions regarding climate change. (For example: Did they believe that man-made climate change was occurring? Did they support the Paris agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?) Based on their answers, we divided them into weak believers in man-made climate change and strong believers. We then informed everyone that climate scientists estimated that the average global temperature would rise by approximately six degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, and asked them for their own estimates of the likely temperature rise by 2100.
Then came the real test. Half of the volunteers were told that in recent weeks prominent scientists had reassessed the data and concluded that the situation was far better than previously thought, suggesting a likely temperature increase of only one to five degrees. Half were told that in recent weeks, prominent scientists had reassessed the data and concluded that the situation was far worse than previously thought, suggesting a likely temperature increase of seven to eleven degrees. All the participants were then asked to provide a new personal estimate.
Did people change their estimates in light of the experts' assessments? Once again, we observed that people altered their opinions only if they'd received information that fit their original worldview. The weak believers in man-made climate change were influenced by the comforting news that the situation was better than previously thought (their estimate dropped by about one degree), but the alarming news had no impact whatsoever on their new estimates. Strong believers showed the exact opposite pattern — they were moved by learning that scientists now thought the situation was even worse than previously believed, but were less influenced by the news that scientists now thought the problem was not as dire.
When you provide someone with new data, they quickly accept evidence that confirms their preconceived notions (what are known as prior beliefs) and assess counterevidence with a critical eye. Because we are often exposed to contradicting information and opinions, this tendency will generate polarization, which will expand with time as people receive more and more information.
In fact, presenting people with information that contradicts their opinion can cause them to come up with altogether new counterarguments that further strengthen their original view; this is known as the "boomerang effect." Thelma, for example, found many faults in the article Jeremiah sent her that argued that the education system was better in the United States. "The article was written by an American," she thought to herself, "what do they know about education, anyway? Americans teach 'modern' literature and 'new' history while ignoring ancient writings and Old World narratives."
Did you notice what Thelma did? Not only did she discard any unwelcome evidence, but she came up with new reasons for why the education system was better in France — arguments she had never considered before. As a result, she grew more confident in her initial conviction. Being confronted with evidence that seemed to oppose her strong views made Thelma feel uncomfortable, and so she resolved this negative feeling by rationalizing away the contradicting opinion and reinforcing her own. This is why by marrying Jeremiah, Thelma became a stronger advocate for France. If she had married her old high school sweetheart François, I suspect she would have had a less idealistic view of her home country.
Google Is (Always) on My Side
There is no single truth we all agree on. In a letter to Jean-Baptiste LeRoy in 1789, Benjamin Franklin famously wrote, "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." Franklin borrowed this phrase from the English writer Daniel Defoe, who in his 1726 book The Political History of the Devil said, "Things as certain as death and taxes, can be more firmly believ'd." While the "death and taxes" expression is commonly used, neither of these things are in fact truths we all conform to. Some believe death can be overcome, perhaps by cryonics or engineering. Even if we acknowledge the end is certain, there are many diverse views on what lies on the other side. And there are certainly a number of tax evaders and "tax protestors," people who dismiss the idea that taxes are a necessity. If we do not all agree on the certainty of death and taxes, you can imagine we are bound to disagree on a large number of other "truths."
Whether living in France is better than living in the United States is a matter of opinion. Whether capital punishment is morally right is also a subjective question. What happens when a disagreement involves hard facts? For example, consider the question of where Barack Obama was born. The controversy over Obama's birthplace started in 2008 when anonymous e- mails were released that questioned whether he was in fact a natural-born citizen. If Obama had not been born in the United States, he would not have been eligible to run for president. "Evidence" supporting these allegations soon appeared on the Internet. The issue created such a media firestorm that Obama decided to address the question directly and supply his birth certificate. Yet a validated certificate from a U.S. president was not enough to change people's opinions. Surveys showed that a non- negligible percentage of Americans were still not sure that Barack Obama was eligible to serve as president.
"There is a mechanism, a network of misinformation that in a new media era can get churned out there constantly," Obama noted in 2010. This was his response to the revelation that two years after the presidential election, 20 percent of Americans (fully one-fifth!) still did not believe he had been born in the United States. By "mechanism" and "network," Obama was most likely referring to the technology boosting the spread of misinformation.
In today's world, the ease by which we can find "data" and "evidence" to discredit any opinion — and, at the same time, uncover new information to support our own — is unprecedented. It takes less than a second to turn up articles suggesting that strawberries are bad for you (it seems their thin skin allows unwanted chemicals in) and butter in your coffee is good for you. The latter trend is known as "Bulletproof Coffee." Apparently, Bulletproof Coffee "has a massive impact on cognitive function" and "will keep you satisfied with level energy for six hours if you need it ... programming your body to burn fat for energy all day long." It takes another second to find just as many articles suggesting that strawberries are in fact good for you, because of their great nutrients, and butter in coffee is a very bad idea. It seems that saturated fat is good, but humans did not evolve eating such massive amounts of it. As a result, there have been reports of dramatically elevated cholesterol levels due to Bulletproof Coffee.
Paradoxically then, the wealth of available information makes us more resistant to change, because it is so easy to find data that support our own vision. This is true even for extreme views, such as believing that your own race is genetically superior to others. We carefully read blogs and articles that support our opinions, and we may avoid clicking on links that offer a different take.
This is only half the problem, though. What we are not aware of is that cherry-picking information is done for us under the radar. We are oblivious to the fact that often we are presented with filtered information to suit our preestablished beliefs. This is how it works: when you enter a search term into Google or another search engine, you get results that have been customized for you, according to your past searches and Web activity. In other words, if you are a Democrat searching for the latest stats on the presidential debate, your search will most likely spit back news articles and blogs from Democrats who think the Democratic candidate did superbly. The links will include news websites and opinion blogs you have visited previously and others associated with them. Given that the first twenty results you get all praise the performance of the Democratic candidate, you are left with the impression that, indeed, she or he delivered an outstanding performance. Everyone thinks so. In fact, your Twitter and Facebook feeds provide further evidence of the superiority of your candidate, making you more and more confident of the upcoming election result.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Influential Mind"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Tali Sharot.
Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Prologue: A Horse-Sized Syringe -- The Surprising, Mysterious, Baffling Case of Influence
1. (Priors) Does Evidence Change Beliefs? -- The Power of Confirmation and the Weakness of Data
2. (Emotion) How We Were Persuaded to Reach for the Moon -- The Incredible Sway of Emotion
3. (Incentives) Should You Scare People into Action? -- Moving with Pleasure and Freezing with Fear
4. (Agency) How You Obtain Power by Letting Go -- The Joy of Agency and the Fear of Losing Control
5. (Curiosity) What Do People Really Want to Know? -- The Value of Information and the Burden of Knowledge
6. (State) What Happens to Minds Under Threat? -- The Influence of Stress and the Ability of Overcome
7. (Others, part I) Why Do Babies Love iPhones? -- The Strength of Social Learning and the Pursuit of Uniqueness
8. (Others, part II) Is "Unanimous" as Aeassuring as Tt Sounds? -- How to Find Answers in an Unwise Crowd
9. The Future of Influence? -- Your Mind in My Body
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