Proving vs. Persuading: What Brexit and Autism Have in Common
Friday, June 24, 2016 was an eventful day to turn on the morning radio news. Within the first ten minutes, I learned that Britain had just voted to leave the European Union and a woman on a Chicago subway train had been stabbed to death. It was an overwhelming way to start the morning.
Within hours of the Brexit announcement, news analysts churned out commentaries on what the U.K. leaving the EU would mean for the country, Europe and the rest of the world. Numerous speculations emerged for the upcoming U.S. presidential election.
The range of reactions to the British voting result spans the spectrum.
Some are jubilant. The head of the U.K. Independent Party and a Leave Campaigner, Nigel Farage, reminded everyone that “The EU’s failing, the EU’s dying.” One can only imagine the joy of victory he must have felt.
Some are sarcastic and despondent. I saw many varieties of “…googling immigration to Canada…” on my Facebook feed. And even more, especially economists and world leaders, are incredulous at how the British public could make such a decision in the face of plentiful and obvious facts that leaving the EU means huge troubles for years to come.
Facts, Schmacts
Tim Harford, author of the book The Undercover Economist Strikes Back, noticed something more shocking—at least to me— than the referendum result. “I was struck by how little people seem to be interested in facts,” Harford, a Brit himself observes. “And also by the fact that the leave campaign [is]… leading with… an alleged fact that was just demonstrably untrue about how much the EU cost the country.”
If voters (at least some of them) don’t care about facts, then what do they care about?
Let’s start with what else they do NOT care about. They don’t care to be told by experts and intellectual elites what they should think and do. “The rest of the world, for what it's worth, was telling the Brits not to do this,” NPR reporter Frank Langfitt commented. “Economists almost uniformly were against this… But the voters—to some degree, I think, tired of being told what to do by the elites—made up their minds.”
Even if you side with the Remain camp and consider people in the Leave camp a bunch of ungrateful, xenophobic old timers who are out of touch with reality (the descriptions thrown about get more colorful after this), you may want to pay attention to this tidbit about humans.
Humans want to be the masters of our own destiny.
Proving vs. Persuading
When my oldest child was in first grade, she learned something that I hope will serve her for the rest of her life. One day her English teacher, Ms. Jamie, taught her class the difference between fact and opinion. When my daughter told me about this lesson later that day, I quizzed her to make sure she had really grasped the concept. “What IS the difference?” I asked her. “Fact is what is true,” she proudly pronounced. “Opinion is how you feel about facts.”
Whether you are deciding what to eat for lunch today or where to go on your summer vacation, you incorporate some facts in your decision-making. What drives your ultimate choice, however, is how you feel. This is true with more trivial decisions like picking a red apple or green apple. This is also true with much more important decisions like who should be the next president of the United States. Without connecting with our emotion, making decisions is nearly impossible.
When the outcome of these decisions impacts us on a collective level, we want to get as many people to agree with us as possible. Therefore, we need to persuade others, not just prove the facts supporting our side.
What is the difference between proving and persuading?
Proving is the analytical process of using evidence and evidence alone to demonstrate truths. Often, the proving process is dictated by a particular subculture’s set of norms and expectations. For example, in order to get published in scientific journals, researchers must demonstrate that they have conducted their study by following the rigor, process, modeling and such that are deemed worthy of the journals’ standards. The same principle applies in the court of law even when the process and burden of proof are different. Even in my house, where I demand evidence from my kids that they have washed their hands every time they come back from playing outside, I expect them to prove it in ways acceptable to me.
Persuading, on the other hand, means you are making a case that includes not only a selection of facts, but also an appeal to your audience’s emotions and to their intuitive sense of the merits of your case. Politicians persuade likely voters. Organized religions persuade would-be followers. Prospective suitors persuade potential mates. Marketers persuade future customers. Unfortunately, the Remain campaign in Brexit overestimated how much facts alone would sway those in opposition, and underestimated the drawing power of emotion.
Fact Alone Is Insufficient. Sometimes It Can Backfire.
Take the connection between the rising prevalence of autism and the proliferation of vaccines as an example. Autism in the U.S. has been on the climb since 1970s. Naturally, this distresses parents and families affected by it. Understandably, they ask questions. Why are there so many more cases of autism? How did it happen? What caused it?
Then, in 1998 a scientist named Dr. Andrew Wakefield published a study in the medical journal The Lancet establishing a link between autism and vaccines. Imagine a child of your own, or of someone close to you, is autistic. How would you react to this finding? For many, they took the discovery as is and forever swore enmity with vaccinations, the companies which produced them, and the government bodies who defended the merits of vaccinations.
Then years later, Wakefield admitted that he fabricated the whole study. Wouldn’t this revelation completely reverse how people feel about vaccinations? No, unfortunately not. In the intervening years, even though dozens of studies were conducted on this very same question and established no link between autism and vaccines, it failed to remove the false connection from many people’s minds.
In fact, a study by political scientist Brendan Nyhan demonstrated that when parents were given up-to-date scientific facts in support of vaccines, they were actually less likely to want to get their kids vaccinated—especially if they had already been against vaccines to begin with! Facts alone can sometimes backfire.
Whether you are in the Remain campaign or simply wish to persuade others more effectively, you may want to do more than just proving by using facts.
“Many communities are fed up with cuts,” said Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition Labour Party. “… [they are] fed up with economic dislocation and feel very angry at the way they’ve been betrayed and marginalized.”
Indeed, voters in the Leave camp have not been properly acknowledged. Their frustration and indignation are powerful emotional forces. Their perception of a bleak future with the EU, no matter how unfounded, has not been respectfully addressed. When emotion takes hold in people’s minds, facts have little chance.
What, then, can anyone do?
Start with Acknowledgement
“How we’re feeling—and most especially whether or not we feel acknowledged and appreciated—influences our behavior, consumes our energy and affects our decisions all day long, whether we’re aware of it or not,” wrote Tony Schwarz, CEO of The Energy Project, in a Harvard Business Review blog.
In order for behaviors to change, beliefs to shift, and actions to follow, feeling acknowledged is a prerequisite. Parenting coaches and authors Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish advised mothers and fathers everywhere to acknowledge their children’s feelings before launching into questions and advice when they find their children engaged in behaviors they disapprove of. Seasoned sales executives know that in order to persuade customers and clients, they must first acknowledge their pain, but without patronizing them.
Here is a brilliant example.
Early 2015, Glenn Hollister, a principal of ZS Associates, did mega acknowledging when he presented an impending technology change to over 400 frontline sales executives at one of the major airlines in the U.S. Hollister’s charge was to unveil a new sales dashboard he and his team had designed and implemented.
He did not start with a list of this-is-what’s-wrong and this-is-how-we-fixed-it. In other words, he did not launch into facts and information to prove his case. Instead, he persuaded his audience by illustrating a day in the life of a frontline sales manager at this company.
To kick off a presentation of this kind with the outline of a typical day for the audience seems odd. After all, why do they need to hear what they have already been doing every day? Yet, that is precisely the magic of acknowledgement. It is a human mirror; it shows audiences that the presenters understand their plights, that they and the presenters are in the same tribe.
Not only was Hollister’s audience engaged, they giggled, they laughed and at one point, they clapped. They were reacting to the absurdity and therefore hilarity of how much of their time was wasted because current technology just wasn’t supporting the demands placed on them. They felt acknowledged!
Then, and only then, did Hollister unveil the new dashboard. The new product demo was a hit because with new features came new benefits. These benefits addressed insufficiency in ways their outgoing system could not. And though adopting new technology involves change, something universally despised, these sales executives walked away from the presentation with hope and anticipation for their new dashboard.
What kinds of changes do you need the people around you to make so that, together, your organization or industry can improve? If your first impulse is to marshal facts that will prove your case, push past that. Facts can help. No doubt about it. But facts are helpful only as part of the larger task of persuasion, which involves acknowledging that you understand your audience.
If you’re thinking through the best way to acknowledge your audience, contact us for a complimentary consultation session! And sign up for our Monthly Guide to Better Storytelling. It’s packed with information on free events, tips and coaching sessions.
Photo credit: Fernando Butcher via CreativeCommons.org
