A common belief holds that nobody ever changes their mind about anything important. The evidence says otherwise. People change their views often, though usually slowly, privately and without admitting it in the moment. What rarely works is the dramatic public takedown. What works more often looks quieter: a conversation in which someone feels respected, a value they already hold applied in a new way, a relationship that makes a new idea safe to consider.

Deep canvassing

The most rigorous evidence comes from political canvassing. In 2016 the political scientists David Broockman and Joshua Kalla published a field experiment in the journal Science. Canvassers in Miami-Dade County, Florida, went door to door to talk with voters about transgender people. In conversations of about ten minutes, they asked voters to recall a time they had been judged for being different, and to connect that memory to the experience of transgender people. The canvassers mostly listened. The study found that a single conversation of this kind reduced prejudice in a way that lasted at least three months and held up when voters later saw opposing ads.

An earlier, famous paper had claimed even larger effects from similar conversations. While trying to build on it, Broockman and Kalla found irregularities in the data, and in 2015 the earlier paper was retracted after they uncovered problems with its data. Their own careful study then showed that a real but more modest effect existed. It is a reminder that findings about persuasion deserve the same skepticism as any other claim.

Later work by Kalla and Broockman, published in 2020, found that what mattered most was a non-judgmental exchange of personal stories, rather than facts or arguments delivered at the voter. The conversations worked on attitudes toward immigrants as well. The key ingredient seemed to be that voters did not feel accused.

Speaking the other side's moral language

The psychologist Jonathan Haidt and colleagues have argued that people build their moral views on a handful of foundations, including care, fairness, loyalty, authority and sanctity, and that political groups weigh them differently. The theory is debated, but it inspired a practical idea. Matthew Feinberg and Robb Willer tested moral reframing: making an argument in terms of values the listener already holds. In one study, liberals were more open to military spending when it was framed as giving poor and minority Americans a fair path out of poverty. Conservatives were more open to same-sex marriage when it was framed in terms of patriotism and loyalty to fellow Americans.

Moral reframing is the steelman again, turned into persuasion.

Sacred values

Some values resist trade. In a 2007 study, Jeremy Ginges, Scott Atran and colleagues asked Israeli settlers and Palestinians about hypothetical peace deals involving issues they held sacred, such as land or the right of return. When deals added money or material benefits as a sweetener, many participants became angrier and more opposed, as if they had been offered a bribe to betray something holy. But when the other side offered a symbolic concession, such as an apology or recognition, opposition fell. People protecting a sacred value often need to see it respected before practical talk can begin.

Changing your own mind

Disagreeing well also means being willing to lose. The ancient Greek poet Archilochus wrote that "the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." The psychologist Philip Tetlock used this image in a long study of expert predictions about world events. He found that the "foxes," experts who drew on many ideas and adjusted their views readily, forecast better than the "hedgehogs," who explained everything through one big theory. Researchers now call the related trait intellectual humility, the recognition that one's beliefs might be wrong, and studies link it to greater openness to opposing views.

People who changed

Megan Phelps-Roper grew up in the Westboro Baptist Church, known for picketing funerals with hateful signs. She left the church in 2012 after years of patient conversations with strangers on Twitter who answered her with questions instead of insults. Daryl Davis, a Black musician, spent decades befriending members of the Ku Klux Klan; by his own account, many of them later left the organization. Neither story proves that kindness always works. Both show that the people who changed were not shouted out of their views. They were given room to walk out of them.

Worked example: the town hall

Kofi supports a new wind farm near his rural town. His neighbors fear it will ruin the landscape their families have farmed for generations. Kofi's first instinct is to argue about energy prices. Instead, he asks a neighbor to tell him what the land means to her, and shares a story about his grandfather's farm. He learns that for many neighbors the hills are close to sacred. He stops offering payments as the main argument, which he now sees could feel like a bribe, and instead supports a design that keeps the ridgeline clear and a public commitment to honor the land's history. He also admits that he had underestimated how much the view mattered, and changes his own position on where the turbines should stand.