Changing someone’s mind on a hot-button issue is hard. A US study suggests a more modest goal is within reach: getting people to think more richly about their own position, simply by letting them watch two people with opposing views talk to each other.
Adults who watched a short debate between two actors explained their own views at greater length and with more nuance than those who saw the same arguments delivered as two separate speeches. Asking people pointed follow-up questions about their position, by contrast, made their thinking simpler.
The study is by Deanna Kuhn, Sybille Bruun and Caroline Geithner. It was published online in Cognitive Science on March 14, 2024.
Ben, Sam and the DACA question
A young female interviewer approached adults in parks and outside coffee shops in a large city in the northeastern United States, asking for help with a school project. The question was what should happen to young people brought to the US as children and now living there illegally, the issue behind the DACA programme.
Seventy participants first watched a video of two actors, Ben and Sam. Ben argued the immigrants should be sent back because they broke the law, take jobs and burden the economy. Sam argued that deportation does not work, that immigrants deserve a better life and can contribute. Half saw the two men in a respectful back-and-forth exchange. The other half saw each man present the same ideas in a separate segment.
Another 111 people served as controls and saw no video. Almost everyone sampled favoured letting the young immigrants stay, so the analysis focused on those with that view. Participants were then asked to explain their position as fully as possible, including to someone who disagreed.
Dialog beat monolog on every measure
People who watched the debate said more. Their explanations averaged 186 words and 5.9 distinct ideas, compared with 138 words and 4.1 ideas after the monologues, and about 98 words and 3.3 ideas with no video.
They also reasoned more completely. In the dialog group, 46% addressed both the stay and the go options, against 29% in the monolog group and 25% in the main control group. One in five directly weighed opposing reasons with a “but” or “however”, such as noting that something was against the law but still beneficial. That happened in only 6% of the monolog group and 4% of the controls.
More than half of the dialog viewers, 54%, stepped back to comment on the issue itself, calling it complex or linking it to wider immigration policy. That compared with 26% after the monologues and 33% without a video. Dialog viewers were also nearly twice as likely to refer to the video in their answers, at 40% versus 21%, though that gap was not statistically significant.
When probing backfired
All interviewed participants were also asked a series of follow-up questions meant to make them examine the edges of their view. Should the parents be allowed to stay? The grandparents? Aunts and uncles? Close friends of the family?
Rather than adding nuance, the questions seemed to flatten people’s thinking. In the main control group, 73% gave only a single reason for their position and 81% said yes to every follow-up. Controls who got the questions before explaining themselves were less likely to consider both sides, 4% compared with 25%. Median ratings of how strongly and how certainly people held their view were 10 out of 10.
The authors suggest cognitive laziness and a wish to appear consistent in front of a stranger. Extending a yes to everyone was easier than drawing lines. As they put it, asking people to explore their own position, “meeting people where they are,” can alter where they are.
The groups were small, with 35 people in each video condition, and the sample leaned heavily toward one side of the issue. Still, the study adds to a line of work showing a benefit of observed debate. A video of under four minutes showing two people respectfully disagreeing did more for viewers’ reasoning than either the same arguments delivered separately or a series of probing questions.
Study Details:
- Title: Enriching Thinking Through Discourse
- Authors: Deanna Kuhn, Sybille Bruun, Caroline Geithner
- Journal: Cognitive Science
- Publication Date: March 14, 2024
- DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13420