Why is it so hard to change your mind?

“The Hardest Subjects,” Novelist Leo Tolstoy once wrote“can be explained to the slowest man, if he has not yet formed any idea of ​​them; but to the most intelligent man the simplest thing cannot be explained, if he is firmly convinced that he already knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what is before him.”

Until recently I would have agreed. A number of psychological studies have indicated this many people are extremely resistant to change of mind and there is very little we can do to remove their blinkers. This, combined with the rise of social media, has been seen as the cause of increasing political polarization over the past two decades.

So you can imagine my joy at the find on new paper which offers some reason for optimism. According to Stephanie Dolbier at the University of California, Los Angeles, and her fellow psychologists have already uncovered many techniques to open our minds—and it all depends on our ability to resist emotional discomfort.

Like many psychological traits, openness naturally varies across populations. You can measure this by rating your agreement with a series of statements such as:

• People should consider evidence that contradicts the conclusions they favor
• When faced with a puzzling question, we should try to consider more than one possible answer before reaching a conclusion

AND:

• Changing your mind is a sign of weakness

As you might expect, people who strongly agree with the first two statements and strongly disagree with the third are considered more open-minded than those who believe it is best to agree on a single point of view without considering other options or updating their views based on new evidence.

Active open thinking brings many benefits. Philip Tetlock at the University of Pennsylvania and his colleagues, for example, found that it improves people’s ability predict the outcome of geopolitical events. In a two-year competition involving more than 700 participants, he succeeded found that the best—which he calls “superforecasters”—were much more willing to change their views in the face of new evidence than the average person. Mental flexibility of this kind can also protect us from irrational beliefs such as conspiracy theorieswhich usually rely on people’s tendency to jump to conclusions about how the world works.

However, for most of us, thinking with an open mind is often easier said than done. At the very least, we may feel some embarrassment in admitting that our judgment was wrong in the past, so we cling to our old opinions in order not to lose face. Even worse, our faith is often intertwined with major elements of our identity, such as our religion or political identity, in a complex tapestry. Untie one of these knots and it can seem like our entire sense of self is about to unravel, which can be a terrifying prospect.

To protect our egos, the brain therefore engages in “motivated reasoning,” which involves finding justifications to reinforce our underlying assumptions, even if it relies on logical fallacies and misinformation or makes us criticize people who question us.

Keeping an open mind therefore takes considerable strength to resist this mental discomfort – and that can start with greater emotional awareness. Dolbier and her colleagues point to research from 2019, for example on “wise thinking”. People who offer more detailed descriptions of their emotions have been found to be better able to consider different perspectives than those who simply label their moods as “good” or “bad.”

It makes sense. If I have high emotional awareness, I might recognize that I’m not so much angry at someone else’s stupidity because I can’t see something from my point of view, but frustrated by my own lack of anchoring when trying to convey an idea to them, and afraid of looking stupid myself. This realization may then encourage me to consider my argument more critically—and possibly change my mind. That said, they may not be wrong, but I’m letting my emotions figure it out.

The role of emotional awareness may explain why mindfulness it helps some people think more rationally. By paying attention to their internal weather, they are better equipped to discern and avoid typical knee-jerk reactions to the opinions of others, and as a result develop more balanced opinions.

If meditation doesn’t appeal, we can consider a a little role playing. In one study, people were taught to take an internal act and respond to events “like scientists, objectively and analytically.” After this training, they tended to be more open about some of the most polarizing topics, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Remarkably, follow-up experiments found that the benefits of this brief intervention lasted for at least five months after the initial test.

Alternatively, we can place the point of disagreement in the broader context of our lives. In the heat of disagreement, we often forget that we are multifaceted beings with many values ​​and talents, and feel that our entire sense of self-worth depends on proving ourselves right on this one point. So briefly describing one of these other qualities to ourselves—whether it’s our loyalty to friends, creativity, or sense of humor—can reduce the sense of threat when we have different opinions. However, this only seems to work if one is already aware of their own potential for bias based on their existing beliefs, again underscoring the importance of self-awareness.

Finally, we can reframe difficult feelings as signs of growth. Experiments have found that simply reminding people of their ability to build cognitive skills can encourage them respond more constructively to people with opposing views. With this mindset, we can see our mistakes as learning opportunities, making it easier to accept that our previous opinions may have been wrong.

Dolbier and her colleagues emphasize that many of these techniques need to be more thoroughly tested in a greater variety of contexts, and many more may emerge along the way. But the existing research at least offers a place to start—and I’ll definitely put some of these strategies into practice myself the next time I find my beliefs challenged.

David Robson’s latest book is The Laws of Connection: 13 Social Strategies That Will Change Your Life. If you have a question you’d like answered in his column, please send him a message at davidrobson.me/contact.

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