And This Why You're Wrong...

Have you ever tried to persuade someone to change their mind? I don't mean disagreed with someone, I mean really set out to alter their outlook on a topic. Did it work? If so, do you remember how you did it? For that matter, if you didn't, do you remember what you did wrong?

It's no secret that while there's little clear correlation between IQ and non-belief in the general population, those who are non-believers tend to be more "intelligence-oriented".

By "intelligence-oriented", I refer to focus, not ability. Non-believers like the idea of intelligence. They value rational thought, tend to be readers, and maybe, just maybe, feel a little superior for having thought their way to their beliefs, rather than having had them handed to them.

But here's the thing. Those proclivities often go hand-in-hand with a certain lack of social aptitude. Not that there are no gregarious, charismatic rationalists, mind you, they are just a rather rarer commodity in rationalist circles. To be blunt, rationalists/atheists/non-believers tend to skew a bit geeky!

This, in my opinion, is not a problem, in general. If we tend to be a bit more direct than most, to the point of tactlessness, call it 'efficiency'. If we tend to be slightly obsessed with the subjects we enjoy, we have a leg up on trivia night. If we are strong in our opinions because we've spent a lot of time researching and thinking them through, it gives us confidence.

There is one arena where these tendencies often fail us, however. Communication and persuasion. "Efficient" statements tend to be terse, assuming the hearer is already in possession of certain information and familiar with certain thought processes in common with the speaker. They really fail to come across well to minds used to pre-digested messages, which are the norm in our society. Also, blunt statements offend, because they tend to deflate the ego of the listener (see the title of this article, for example). Likewise, intellectual confidence is often construed by others as arrogance or closed-mindedness, both of which are viewed negatively by our society.

I believe that this weakness is the basis for many of the "Angry Atheist" preconceptions in society. We talk over peoples heads, because we assume they have already thought things through and researched as much as we have, and become frustrated when they seem unable to make all the logical jumps we do, or accept our facts. There is hope for us, however.

There are people who have a natural facility for communicating. We call them "charismatic" or "born leaders", but what it comes down to is an intuitive grasp of how to present information to others so that it will be accepted by them as meaningful and correct. However, the fact that some people are born with a talent does not mean that those who aren't cannot learn how to do the same things. They just have to work at it.

Certainly, learning to be an effective, persuasive communicator is a large and complex topic, far more than can be presented in a little article like this, but there are a few basics we could all stand to keep in mind.

While it is true that facts and logic should be all it takes to convince someone of your position, the human animal doesn't work that way. To convince your listeners, you need to address their emotions, as well as their intellect. The ancient Greeks formalized rhetoric (the art of persuasion) as having three equal parts: Logos, the facts and logic referred to above (aka "what you should know and why it's right"), Ethos, or convincing the listener of your authority/trustworthiness/ethicality (aka "trust me, I know what I'm talking about"), and Pathos, which involves manipulating your listeners' emotions so that your position *feels* right (aka "think of the children!!!").

As a thinker, those last two points can seem a bit weasel-like. In a perfect world full of rationalists, we shouldn't need to be manipulative for the truth to win out. It annoys and frustrates us to have to put effort into such trickery to communicate. However, at the end of the day, human nature makes them vital to include in any attempt to really, truly persuade someone to change their mind. Otherwise, you are only delivering a third of the message, while your opponents are happily delivering the full monty!