There's a lot of evidence that if you're trying to change someone's political opinion (e.g., that people who commit crimes should be treated with more kindness, or that drugs should be legal), appeals to reason have been shown to be ineffective at persuading others. Instead, people are persuaded by emotional factors. For example, people are far more likely to be accepting of gay people if they know someone who is gay, and Yale psychology professor Paul Bloom has suggested that American sitcoms have helped promote acceptance, too, just because seeing a gay actor on TV makes gays more human.
So my question to you is this: because appeals to rationality rarely change people's opinions on drugs and the treatment of criminals, what does work? What are the emotional factors that persuade people and change their opinions?
To_Sweden14 karma
There's a lot of evidence that if you're trying to change someone's political opinion (e.g., that people who commit crimes should be treated with more kindness, or that drugs should be legal), appeals to reason have been shown to be ineffective at persuading others. Instead, people are persuaded by emotional factors. For example, people are far more likely to be accepting of gay people if they know someone who is gay, and Yale psychology professor Paul Bloom has suggested that American sitcoms have helped promote acceptance, too, just because seeing a gay actor on TV makes gays more human.
So my question to you is this: because appeals to rationality rarely change people's opinions on drugs and the treatment of criminals, what does work? What are the emotional factors that persuade people and change their opinions?
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