Many people want to try to persuade others to agree with them. And many more people think they know exactly how it should be done. Most of those people are probably not entirely correct. I had the pleasure of talking about persuasion in science opinion writing this morning at the AAAS meeting. I’m posting my slides here (along with notes), for those who couldn’t make it or who want a reference. I’m also posting the bibliography.
Much of this is new to me, and I am probably missing some literature on the subject. I hope that I will be getting better as I go. Also, I realized after I turned it in that the title of this talk was wrong. It’s backward, this isn’t about data improving persuasion. But about persuasion improving data.
We’re going to go through some of the ways in which scientists often try to communicate with the public. Why those ways can really flop, and what the science of science communication can do to make it better. I’m including some notes here from my own science communication career, stuff I thought was clever at the time, but now? I’d do it differently.
There are many popular ideas about what to do to help people understand scientific issues. We’re going to start with a couple of things that we think work, but are not as effective as they seem.
These are some popular ideas about how people communicate both sides. None of them are WRONG. They are in fact correct. But the implementation of them is often severely flawed.
This is the idea that any misunderstanding of science comes from a place of ignorance. If only people knew the FACTS about climate change or vaccines, they would, of course make the right decision. It is the basis of many, many forms of scientific outreach. It is not wrong. It is just incomplete.
No one takes in scientific information (OR ANY OTHER kind of information) in a vacuum.
There’s a known correlation between textbook knowledge and favorability of scientific attitudes. (Evans and Durant 1995, among others)
Yes, we can teach people about science, but we need to teach them in context of what they already know and care about. People do not take in scientific knowledge into an empty brain, they do it caring about some things more than others, trusting some people more than others. People are more likely to weigh risks as very important if those risks are really really close to them. Like vaccines and people’s fears. People do not see the disease, they see the awful stuff on the internet. They do not weigh risks in a merely mathematical sense.
Emotion can be used for good or ill to promote facts or myths. Fear is a hugely powerful motivator. Pictures of a child with the measles (at left) present a fear appeal to parents to vaccinate. It actually has the opposite effect, people DO become more fearful. But they also become less likely to vaccinate. Pictures of a sad child getting stabbed with unrealistically huge syringes? A fear appeal NOT to vaccinate. Any time people writing PRO vaccine use images of screaming children with syringes…you add a negative emotion to your information. Why would you do this?
We like to think that the words we are writing are powerful on their own. But the Internet is the most visual medium of communication the world has ever known. Your words do not speak for themselves, the images that go with them present their own appeals.
Most people think that there aren’t two sides to a debate if one side is fake. Sure. But it’s also a very valuable way to teach critical thinking to students.
When people teach both sides, there are many reasons they might do so. Some are bad. But some are GOOD. When teachers teach both sides of the climate change issue it’s not always because they actually BELIEVE both sides. Some actually don’t know how strong the scientific consensus is (we can thank politics and the media for this one). Others are worried about pushback, because they don’t feel they understand climate science enough. Because climate science IS COMPLICATED.
And still others present both sides of the debate because they know that students need to understand the science, and yet also need to make their own decisions. They give students the deep understanding of the science, give them the context, give them the denier position, and allow the students to have moderated discussions about climate change. They make up their own mind, important both for forming independent conceptions of the world and for critical thinking.
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This is a scientist who prides themselves on their outreach. They send tweets like this all the time, ‘busting’ myths and arguing with people. These are popular, they got a lot of likes and RTs. They were probably really satisfying to write and probably satisfying to read for people who agreed with them! Yeah! Science!
But it’s not the best science communication. No one ever got anywhere in sci comm by telling people they were stupid.
The REASON it’s not great Sci Comm is the backfire effect (for more, see here). The more people repeat myths, the more others begin to remember them as true. This is partially a quick of human memory, but also partially because a lot of times, myth busting backfires severely when people already believe the myth. They don’t want to look stupid or feel wrong. They fall back on what they believe.
So now let’s talk about methods of science communication that can help you get to your audience.
Melanie Tannenbaum first introduced me to Petty and Cacioppo’s Elaboration Likelihood model, in which there are two methods of persuation, depending on the audience. The first is direct, with a motivated audience already educated on a topic. This audience is most likely to be persuaded by strong logical arguments.
The second is the peripheral route, with an audience that is unmotivated, uneducated on your topic, and rather easily distracted. Basically, any audience on the Internet. This audience relies more on heuristics. These are automatic mental shortcuts we make that make our lives easier most of the time. Some of these include appealing to consensus. Famous message sources. Or just…a really LONG ARTICLE. #LongForm, persuasive for more than one reason.
When you are trying to write opinion, you are trying to sell your science. That’s not a bad thing.
When people have started a pattern of agreeing, they become less likely to disagree. This is called the “foot in the door” method.
People really hate to be seen as flip-floppers, no one WANTS to face proof they are wrong, especially in public. So if you can get someone to agree to something right off, raise the stakes slowly, and keep them agreeing.
This means finding a way to make your point of view CONGRUENT with someone’s existing opinions. You may not change their mind right off. But you will have a higher chance of keeping them listening.
You see this a lot with anti-vaccine rhetoric. They start with things that people can agree with, you WANT what’s best for your kids, you don’t WANT them to suffer. Vaccines do have some small risks because nothing is 100{9f43b4361d9a125bc126dd2a2d1949be02545ec69880430bc4fed2272fd72da3} safe, and kids getting a lot of shots certainly hate it a lot. These things are all things people can agree on, things they feel emotional about, and from there they can build their argument. IF they can do it, why not us.
So the same persuasive method will not necessarily work for every audience.
This means you need to know your audience. Are you writing an oped for a local paper? A blog post that will be read mostly by other scientists? A national or international outlet?
A local motivated audience with some knowledge of your topic, say if you’re talking about water policies and water science in California…will be more likely to respond to direct data and logical arguments. Whereas if you’re writing for somewhere national or international, you will need to find a national or international angle, or bring in heuristics, like the scientific consensus, to help propel your argument forward.
Above all things: listen. Listen to the replies, the tweets, the facebook comments. Yes. READ THE COMMENTS. There may be a real disconnect between who you think your audience is and who it really is. You need to listen to people’s concerns, engage them honestly. Communication, real persuasive communication, is a two way street.
Lewandowsky, a cognitive psychologist now a the University of Bristol, actually has an excellent handbook on how to do effective myth busting. He emphasizes that busting myths involves filling the gap in knowledge. You can’t just say “hey, you are totally wrong about creation.” That just leaves people with a gap. It needs to be filled with facts, filled with what is RIGHT.
And it needs to be done without repeating the myth. Or when you do, state explicitly “I’m about to tell you a myth.”
Don’t repeat the myths. Give the facts. Repeating a myth makes people remember it. Here, Tyson does a great job of just sticking the facts. He doesn’t repeat the myth. And importantly: he does not call B.o.B stupid. In fact he later says he likes his music.
Of course, it may not have convinced BOB specifically. After all, when beliefs are very strong, so is the backfire effect, if BOB really did believe that the Earth was flat Tyson probably did not convince him. But he did open the door to other people who might wonder if the earth is flat, and say, hey, there are facts over here.
Send your early writings to your friends and family, especially those who aren’t in science. Take their feedback and their questions seriously.
Stay humble. I’m serious. Many scientists like to say they are humble. But in our own fields of expertise….we really do tend to think we are smarter than other people. That can come across in your writing or your outreach. It’s not a good look. Replace arrogance with enthusiasm, and with a willingness to engage. Do not default to calling people stupid.
Once, I believed a myth. It was a really really stupid myth about bees and cell phones. Someone called my repetition of the myth STUPID. Most people probably would have gone on the defensive. Luckily, I found someone who would answer my questions. I asked them some very stupid questions and engaged them on the topic. And I learned a lot. And I changed my opinion. If I can do it, others can too.
On this note…we are not all of us right all the time. We all have weaknesses in our knowledge. Acknowledge when you have those. There’s a lot of respect to be gained in admitting you were wrong, in correcting your beliefs, in doing more research… heck this is what scientists DO, right? We correct our findings over time as we realize they were wrong or just incomplete. If we can do that for our own work, we should be able to recognize it and foster it in others.
Need more persuasion? Our book, “Science Blogging: The Essential Guide” is out on March 1, and contains an entire chapter on persuasion from the fabulous Melanie Tannenbaum. She covers several of these effects in depth, and also has a lot to say on how to create the kind of comment section it doesn’t hurt to read.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Tannanebaum, M. “Persuading the unpersuadable: Denialists, cynicals and trolls.” Science Blogging: The Essential Guide. March 1, 2016. Yale University Press.
Fischoff, B. “The sciences of science communication.” PNAS. 2013 Aug 20; 110(Suppl 3): 14033–14039.
Sturgis and Allum. ‘Science in Society: Re-Evaluating the Deficit Model of Public Attitudes” Public Understand of Science, 2004
Plutzer et al. “Climate confusion among U.S. teachers.” Science, 2016.
Wise, Sarah. “Climate change in the classroom: Patterns, motivations, and Barriers to Instruction among Colorado Science Teachers.” Journal of Geoscience Education, 2010.
Peter and Koch. “When Debunking Scientific Myths Fails (and When It Does Not): The Backfire Effect in the Context of Journalistic Coverage and Immediate Judgments as Prevention Strategy” Science Communication, 2016.
Ecker, Cook, Lewandowsky. “Myth Debunking: A Tool for Education & Science Communication” Myth Debunking Handbook, 2012.
Petty and Cacioppo. “The Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion.” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 1986.
