Changing Our Minds

By Raymond Barranco, Professor of Sociology, MSU

One of the most frustrating parts of being a parent is knowing exactly what's going to happen and being completely unable to stop it.

Good parents know that punishments should come with explanations. It doesn't do much good to punish a child without explaining what they did wrong. That's how children learn what behavior is acceptable and what isn't. They don't know enough – or have enough experience – to figure these things out entirely on their own. They need parents, teachers, and other adults to help show them the way.

Teenagers, however, are another story.

By the time they start driving and gaining some independence, many feel they've accumulated enough experience to make decisions for themselves. They don't need their parents telling them what choices to make. As parents, we warn them about certain dangers: if you do this, this bad thing might happen. But as everyone knows, teenagers already know everything.

Or at least they think they do.

More often than not, they have to learn the lesson for themselves. They need to fail, make a mistake, or watch one of their friends make the mistake first. That personal experience is often far more powerful than any warning their parents could provide.

The frustrating truth is that adults aren't much different.

The older we get and the more experiences we accumulate, the more confidence we develop in our beliefs and convictions. We may not be as certain as teenagers, but many of us still feel we've seen enough, experienced enough, and learned enough to know what's true and false, right and wrong.

And to some extent, that's reasonable. Our experiences matter. They shape how we see the world.

The problem is that our experiences are limited.

Most of us have never experienced what it's like to be a different race, sex, religion, nationality, or socioeconomic class. Most of us have never owned a large business, served in combat, fled another country, battled a life-threatening illness, or raised a child with special needs. Yet those experiences profoundly shape how people understand the world around them.

This is one reason changing minds can be so difficult.

When we disagree with someone, we often assume we're debating facts or logic. But many disagreements run much deeper than that. We are often asking people to reconsider lessons they believe life itself has taught them.

When someone says, "I know that's not true because I've lived it," they aren't simply making an argument. They're defending years – sometimes decades – of personal experience. Maybe it's the small business owner who's certain regulation is strangling them, or the combat veteran who's certain a policy looks different from the ground than it does on paper. They aren't wrong to trust that. It's the most honest data they have.

And that's hard to overcome with a five-minute conversation.

There's an important difference between being told something and discovering it for yourself. One asks us to trust someone else. The other allows us to trust our own experiences.

This doesn't mean people can never change their minds. They do it all the time. But meaningful changes rarely happen because someone was shouted down, embarrassed, or defeated in an argument. More often, people change because they encounter new experiences, build new relationships, gather new information, and slowly begin to see the world differently.

If we want to persuade others, that reality matters.

The next time you find yourself in a disagreement, try asking a different question than you normally would. Instead of asking what evidence someone has, ask what experience shaped what they believe. You may not change their mind. But you'll understand why it's there – and that's usually the first step toward actually being heard yourself.

Changing minds is possible. It just takes more patience – and a lot more understanding – than most of us would like.