How to Change Hearts and Minds | Robert Perez | True Snacks

TRANSCRIPT

Roger: Years ago, I reached out to you to ask you about the role of data in storytelling and affecting change. And you had replied that, as humans, we love stories. We learn by stories. But the stories speak to the emotional side, whereas data speaks to the logic side. And that when we are trying to affect change, we need both.

The stories, the emotional side and the data or the logic to make connections. Do you still believe that to be true?

Robert: What we do at Wonder is audience research done on socially sensitive and emotionally complex issues to understand how people make decisions and how to take that understanding and use it to develop what we call messaging interventions that untie the psychological knots that prevent people from being the good, compassionate, caring, thoughtful, reflective people that they have the capacity to be there is something about storytelling.

That is very powerful and effective as a mode of communications, in part, because we,  we've been telling stories for tens of thousands of years as homo sapiens. Uh, but what I now understand is that there are psychological reasons why stories are more effective as a tool for. For changing one's mind, sometimes political messages, messages that advocates push out, they tell you how to think, feel or act.

And as human beings, that takes away our sense of agency. And so what we learn is that when you craft the right story, it is less likely to trigger what psychologists would call reactance, which is having your agency removed from you. And, and data and facts do play a role. As long as you don't overwhelm with data and facts, there are actually many things that are, that are needed in stories.

And so we're, we're sort of unpacking what we've seen over 10 years of research on what, what the stories need to accomplish, and there are essentially on, on socially charged issues, uh, stories and just any type of messaging. Strategies or campaigns need to accomplish five things psychologically.  they need to build trust.

They need to acknowledge the complexities of issues. They need to calm the concerns that people have about making the wrong decision and potentially all the negative repercussions that come from making the wrong decision. Uh, they need to nurture compassion for either themselves  if it's individual change that you're trying to nurture or compassion for a group of people that a policy might benefit.

And finally, they need to activate.  one way that we think about this is,  our, our brains and the ways that our, our, our brain has evolved over tens of thousands of years.  It's really focused on keeping us alive. It's it's a survival mechanism.  so we have a part of our brain that's similar to all animals on the planet to most animals on the planet.

 that is looking at scanning. The environment is looking for things that might.  put us in harm's way that might kill us when that part of our brain is activated.  we often, I wonder, we'll call it the downstairs brain based on a great book called, uh, the whole brain child that talks about the upstairs brain and the downstairs brain when we, when our downstairs brain is triggered.

It, it hijacks our thoughtful upstairs homosapien brain, our amygdala, our downstairs brain.  this is the part that's keeping us. I'm alive. It's scanning the environment. It's a very good thing. But in the modern context. It is,  triggered far more often and maybe for not, and not the best ways and a day to day basis.

So,  we may not be dealing with a saber tooth tiger today. We may be dealing with an email from an irate email from a boss at one o'clock in the morning. That might be the thing that's triggering our downstairs brain. And then we have our, our prefrontal cortex is just right behind our, our, our forehead.

And this is, this is our homo sapien brain. This is the thing that is human. And this is where compassion. Where reflection,  planning,  decision making,  empathy reside. The challenge is, is if our downstairs brain is triggered, it, uh, it hijacks our upstairs brain. It actually just takes it offline.

Because if you do have a saber toothed tiger chasing you, being rational about how to get away from that saber toothed tiger is not going to keep you alive. What it's going to keep you alive is like running as quickly as possible to get the hell away from the saber toothed tiger and in a modern context When the downstairs brain hijacks the upstairs brain and takes your upstairs brain your prefrontal cortex offline It means you can't be thoughtful.

It means that you are that your your pathway to empathy and to compassion are cut off and so What we try to do is develop, we try to understand in the research that we do and we listen to understand the things that trigger people's downstairs brains on socially sensitive and emotionally complex issues.

And then the way that we think about messaging today, the way that I think about messaging today is really different than the way I thought about it when I first started my career 30 years ago, I actually think of them as psychological. Psychological. interventions that are meant to untie the psychological knots that prevent people from being thoughtful, compassionate, empathetic.

Stories are, uh, are powerful because they connect with us as human beings on an, on an emotional level. And that we, they allow us to decide for ourselves. So stories more often than not, don't say you need to think this way. And political messages often say, you need to think this way. And instead, someone says, I'm going to tell you,  about my own experience and, and the conflict that I felt about this issue and how I changed my mind.

And when we tell those types of stories, we give people the capacity to decide for themselves. So it's really a combination of the two. You want to appeal to people's emotions. And. You want them to at the end say, and the reason I think this is because of this one, this one. So there is a role,  and you're, but the more important part is you're trying to meet a range of psychological needs for the person who you're trying to persuade or convince.

Roger: But I loved what you were talking about the upstairs brain and the downstairs brain and, uh, those five components of trust, complexity, safety, compassion, hope. Some of those safety, trust, um. Those, those feel like things that unlock the door between downstairs and upstairs. And then once you're upstairs, that gives you time and space for complexity, compassion, and hope.

And I, I understand hope is that combination of agency plus a plan. So I, I love that the visual you just gave about the upstairs and the downstairs and the unlocks and how all these pieces,  interact. It makes a lot of sense to me. Robert, your superhero power is heart wiring. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

What does that mean to you?

Robert: In 2017, a close collaborator, Amy Simon, who is a public opinion researcher and I co wrote and co developed a Strategy guide for change makers called heart wired they play on hard wired and What we did in heart wired was to tell the story of how we've used audience research to better understand The conflict that audiences bring to a range of social change issues and how we've leveraged that understanding to craft more effective ways to communicate with our target audiences,  and more effective, meaning that we've actually helped to win on a range of issues.

Of social change issues from, uh, the freedom to marry for same sex couples, which is now guaranteed in all 50 states to, uh, allowing someone who is terminally ill, meaning they have six months or less to live the legal option to request life ending medications from their doctor if their pain or suffering becomes too great.

Now, what. The common denominator of those range of issues is, is they're very emotionally complex and as we've talked about, they have the ability to trigger the downstairs brain,  which hijacks our ability to be thoughtful, compassionate, reflective, so Heartwired ,  the synopsis, the Cliff's notes of Heartwired  is that there are five things that tend to shape people's attitudes.

and behaviors on socially sensitive issues. And those five things are people's emotions, their identity, their lived experiences, their values, and or their beliefs. And when we feel a certain way about an issue, when we're supportive of an issue, it may be the case that those are all of those, uh, five Heartwired  factors are in alignment, or they're a source of fuel as a reason to be supportive of an issue.

So, think about, let's just think about marriage or same sex couples for a sec, for a second. I know, uh, queer people. I have a lot of queer friends in my life. I have relatives who are queer.  I see the ways in which they are in loving relationships and I want them to be able to get married. So therefore, uh, I am Heartwired  to support marriage for same sex couples.

But if you go back to 2010, where the LGBTQ rights movement had lost 31 straight times at the ballot box. Every time the question was asked, should we legally allow same sex couples the right to get married? Every time that was on the ballot, we lost every single time. And for the people who were voting against us, uh, it, it wasn't that even that some people were just like, I'm very, very anti gay, maybe they wouldn't describe it that way, but there may be people who were just not available to us.

But there were a lot of people who were available to us. and who were deeply conflicted, maybe because they were people of faith. Maybe they had queer people in their lives, but they were also raised in a church where they were taught that being gay was a sin. So we use research to understand how the five hardwired factors, again, people's emotions, their identity, their lived experiences, their values and beliefs are either a source of fuel as a reason to be supportive of an issue or a source of friction.

That causes people,  internal conflict and cognitive dissonance. And then we take that understanding and craft messaging interventions that help people to manage that internal conflict. And to be supportive. Because if there's conflict, we're working with something. If people just tell us they're 100 percent opposed, they're not open to us.

But if people say, well, on the one hand, I love my cousin, who is a lesbian. On the other hand, I was raised in a state tradition and I'm worried about internal, you know, burning in hell. We need to give them something to help, help manage that, that cognitive, uh, Dissonance and the good news is it's possible to do and, uh, the work that has been done, including some amazing work with by,  my collaborator, Amy Simon, who co wrote hardwired with me, uh, we turned the tide and starting in 2010, we were actually starting to win.

So change is possible. It is hard work and it really requires fundamentally changing the way that you communicate about. An issue so that you're communicating in a way that meets the emotional needs of the audience that you're trying to persuade.