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The two most common mistakes in political conversation, in my observation, are 1) insulting or feeling insulted and 2) relying too heavily on facts.

In kindergarten, we learned what happens  when we insult people. It took a little longer, but most of us eventually learned the value of not taking offense even when it is handed to us, even we still have a hard time with that practice.

But using facts? Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? I’ve been circling around writing about this for a long time, but Colin Beavan beat me to it. So I’m reposting his commentary from the Spring 2017 issue of Yes! Magazine. I love his story about the dairy farmer!

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Some years ago, the communications psychologist John Marshall Roberts said that there are three ways of converting people to a cause: by threat of force, by intellectual argument, and by inspiration.

The most effective of these methods, Roberts said, is aligning communication about your cause with the most deeply-held values and aspirations of your friends, relatives, neighbors, and fellow citizens. To get people’s total, lasting, and unwavering support, in other words, we should try neither to cajole them judgmentally nor convince them forcefully. We should inspire them toward a vision that they—not we—can really care about.

Which points to the potential problem of blindly using facts and science—be it climate science or demographic science—to “prove” the righteousness of our causes. Research shows that people tend to embrace data that support their life views and reject data that refute them. Whether we like this or not, it is a truth about how humans evaluate and make decisions. Having the “facts on our side” to make an argument more forcefully may not help if those facts and arguments refute someone’s view of life and the values that are precious to them.

The communication challenge, then, is to use our facts and science to skillfully and compellingly connect our causes not to what we think our friends, relatives, and fellow citizens should care about, but what they already do care about.

During the Vietnam War, a dairy farmer told a friend of mine the story of how he got recruited into the anti-war movement. The farmer happened to sit on a plane next to an anti-war activist. They got talking, and the activist said that he was campaigning against the U.S. use of fire-bombing.

We should inspire them toward a vision that they—not we—can really care about.

The cow farmer said, “I know it’s awful, but we surely wouldn’t use that weapon if we didn’t need it to win the war.” The activist told him that crops were being burned and villagers were starving. The dairy farmer felt sympathetic but said the weapons might ultimately bring a faster end to the war. The activist mentioned children getting burned, forests turned to cinder. The farmer felt awful about the suffering, but his view remained unchanged. Finally, in frustration, the activist said, “Even the cattle are dying!” The dairy farmer said, “Wait! What?! They are killing the cows?!”

We may think the cow farmer should have cared about the crops, villagers, children, and forests. Yet trying to force more information—science and data—about them down his throat might have risked alienating him. Instead, finding his true soft spot—the cows—and being willing to enter into his life view was what eventually recruited him into the anti-war movement.

In another example, when activists with the California-based Leadership Lab knock on voters’ doors in its efforts to defeat anti-LGBTQ prejudice, they don’t start by talking about homophobia—they start by asking what personal experience of prejudice and bigotry the voter has had. Then, Leadership Lab volunteers tell a story of an LGBTQ person experiencing homophobia. They ask a question: “Do you see a connection between the prejudice you experienced and homophobia?” Recognizing that prejudice is the same wherever it is found, many voters are inspired to combat it.

In converting friends and fellow citizens to our causes, we should not blindly attempt to use facts and science to bolster the arguments and stories that appeal to our own values and experiences. Instead, we are challenged to listen to and understand the people we are trying to convince. Then, we can marshal the facts and figures that prove that our cause can help support their values.

Facts and figures are wonderful tools, but they are not a communications strategy.

In the case of renewable energy, for example, our friends may care more about national security than climate change. We can tell them about the security advantages of generating energy at home; trying to force them to believe in climate change by explaining the scientific details of the greenhouse effect, on the other hand, may not help. The point is to begin by asking questions in order to understand the values we need to appeal to, and then to use our facts to build a story that inspires the people we are talking to—rather than trying to force our own inspirations on them.

Facts and figures are wonderful tools, but they are not a communications strategy. Let’s not let our convictions blind us to the fact that other people have theirs. We need to hear our audiences’ stories and then retell ours in a way that mirrors their challenges and aspirations. We need to be empathetic and know that our stories are their stories. And that the challenges we face in being human are one.

Colin Beaven (aka No Impact Man) wrote this article for Why Science Can’t Be Silent, the Spring 2017 issue of YES! Magazine. Colin helps people and organizations to live and operate in ways that have a meaningful impact on the world. His most recent book is “How To Be Alive,” and he blogs at ColinBeavan.com. 

Main idea:  I use my observations of Clinton supporters’ arguments (personal attributes are key) and Sanders’ supporters’  (policy considerations are key) to illustrate the point that we can all speak more effectively to each other if we: 1) remain alert to noticing values; and 2) provide arguments that connect with our conversation partners’ values rather than focusing entirely on our own.

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Empathy, among other things, is the ability to see—at least momentarily—from the perspective of another, and to do this without passing judgment, just to understand it.

When you agree with someone, it’s easy.  But when we disagree, empathy takes effort and practice.

In this presidential election year, I get twenty opportunities every day to both practice and observe empathy. My friends include both Clinton supporters and Sanders supporters, and—you may have noticed—tensions are high between them just now.

My conclusions: Clinton supporters and Sanders supporters share almost all the same foundational civic values—freedom, justice, a nation that pulls together and works cooperatively to achieve equal opportunity and shared prosperity for all.

But they have come to support different candidates because of where they look to find evidence of those values in the candidates.

My sister and brother-in-law provide a clear illustration. He supports Sanders, she Clinton. I asked them at lunch the other day to give me three reasons why they initially decided to support their candidate.

Their answers won’t surprise you.  As you read their answers below, appreciate and accept the fact that each is sincere. Notice they both have their facts straight.  Notice the absence of conflict in their core values. But notice that they look at different things to find those values in the candidates.

My brother-in-law said he was drawn to Sanders by: 1) Regulation of the financial industry. He believes that Wall Street is causing most of the biggest problems hurting Americans right now, and believes that we need to regulate their conduct more effectively. Sander’s positions on Wall Street regulation precisely agree with his own. 2) Use of America’s military force. He believes America’s foreign policy has been too reliant for too long on military power, and that creates more terrorists than it stops, costs us too much money, and is immoral. He likes Sanders’ positions on military policy. 3) College expenses. Sanders won him over with his early, clear, and strong focus on higher-education debt as a significant factor limiting opportunity for an entire generation of Americans, and his bold proposals to address it.

My sister-in-law said she was drawn to Clinton by: 1) Her experience. She has worked in many jobs, at very high levels, for a very long time. That amount of experience gives Clinton the most impressive resume of any presidential candidate ever. 2) Her ability to weather storms of criticism. She has endured years of the most vitriolic and relentless criticism that any public figure has ever had to endure—some of which could have sent her to prison had her accusers prevailed—and she just kept going. Didn’t crumble. Didn’t surrender. 3) Her gender. Having a woman in the White House will be of benefit to the entire nation because it will provide undeniable proof that women can do anything.  That will help millions of American women achieve their individual potentials, and that will help the entire nation.

Do you see what I see?  The Sanders voter looks at policy positions for evidence of a candidate’s value. The Clinton voter looks at personal attributes.

For months, I’ve been analyzing the posts that roll by on my Facebook feed. Nearly every pro-Sanders/anti-Clinton comment has a policy focus. Nearly every pro-Clinton/anti-Sanders  comment has a person focus. Most of the exceptions come when they are heavy into debate mode, grabbing any argument that might stick.

What breaks my heart is when I see attempts at reaching across the divide that fail because the participants neither perceive nor address the other perspective.

For example, one exchange I’ve encountered several times is when a Sanders supporter asks something like “Please, Clinton supporter, tell me how she’d make a good president. If you can do that, I’ll be willing to do this ‘unity’ thing. Make your case. I’m listening.”

Nine times out of ten, the Clinton supporter responds with a string of ‘person’ arguments, perhaps along the lines of:  “Clinton’s experience with weathering horrible personal attacks makes her  more likely to win in November, despite what the polls now say.  The Republicans will call Sanders a “Socialist,” and so forth.

The Sanders supporter then claims he or she hasn’t heard a single argument in favor of Clinton, which makes the Clinton supporter perceive the Sanders supporter as pig-headed.

But the Sanders supporter truly did not hear any relevant arguments—because those ‘person’ arguments are little more than noise to a voter who focuses on policy.

There’s no magic solution, just a suggestion that we try to be as non-judgmentally alert as we can to each other’s values and perspectives. That won’t be wasted effort. As I’ve written in this blog before, I don’t think any of us ever changes another’s mind anyway—at least not directly and immediately, and particularly not in a single conversation.

Changes of minds happen in the shower, or when chopping vegetables, when we are alone with our thoughts, reviewing the conversations we’ve had or the new information that has come our way.

In any single conversation, if we do no more than successfully connect with each other—that is, if we come to understand the other’s point of view and succeed in expressing our own in a way that can be understood by the other–we will have given each other the raw materials that enable us to reach consensus over time.

Main idea: If your conversation partner insists on refuting an argument you are not making, consider the possibility that he or she agrees with your arguments but is not yet emotionally ready to accept the conclusion.  If that is what is going on, your conversation partner is subconsciously panicking and will not likely be able to engage in rational discussion on that issue. Back off, and come back to the topic later.

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Two years ago, I mused about the strange phenomenon of people who engage in debates by asserting their conversation partners believe some ridiculous idea they actually do not. (Let’s you and me argue. You be the kook.) At that time, I could not figure it out.

A debate last night might have given me a clue.

I didn’t play an active part in the discussion among five friends who consider themselves Democrats. I don’t, so I mostly just listened. All five support Sanders for the party’s presidential nomination.The question that started their debate: “Will you vote for Clinton if she gets the nomination?”

Among the five, only one was ready to pledge to vote for the Democratic nominee no matter who it is—I’ll call him Roy. He quickly began to argue against the proposition that “Both parties are exactly the same.” Yet none of the others had said that. In fact, I didn’t notice him respond directly to anything his friends actually said. He was completely wrapped up in his debate with the phantom advocate for the idea that both parties are exactly the same.

As I listened, I tried to tune into Roy’s emotions, his logic, and his illogic. Here’s what came to me:

Appearances aside, Roy had correctly heard his friends when they expressed their objections to Clinton’s foreign policy record; her ties to Wall Street financiers; her support for warrantless surveillance of US citizens; and her record of support for international trade agreements that favor multinational corporations. And he wasn’t having auditory hallucinations that twisted his friends’ actual words into “Both parties are the same.”

Roy desperately wants his friends to support Clinton if she is their party’s nominee, so he felt compelled to say something. At the same time, he couldn’t refute the arguments they they were actually making. In fact, he likely agreed with them.

That, I believe, is why his subconscious came to his emotional rescue and created an imaginary kook against whom he could make effective arguments. Debating the kook would satisfy his strong desire to stand up for his beliefs, while freeing him from having to engage with the points his friends were actually making.

I don’t think he was aware of this. My guess is that if he’d been pressed harder, he would have claimed that “Both parties are exactly the same” was the unavoidable conclusion of what his friends were saying. The subconscious is a powerful thing.

Going back to my post from two years ago, I’m thinking my Facebook friend might have been having the same sort of problem. She might very well have agreed with the point I was actually making—that consumers must continuously be on guard because pharmaceutical giants have so much influence over federal drug regulators. She desperately wanted vaccinations to be safe, but couldn’t argue with my point about lax regulation. So her subconscious conjured up an anti-vaccination kook, and she argued with that phantom instead of responding to me.

The next time this particular short-circuit derails a political conversation I had expected to be reasonable, I’m going to look for signs that my conversation partner actually does agree with my arguments but for some reason feels compelled not to concede the conclusion.

Which brings us to the question of what to do about it. My guess: the key is to find a way to calm the panic, even if it means changing the subject. When your conversation partner has already lost control of his or her reason, and is already ignoring everything you say, you’re going to have to save the persuasion for later anyway.

My Democratic friends might have had some success simply changing the subject with a remark like, “Well, the obvious conclusion is that we all need to work as hard as we can to get Sanders nominated.” No one in the room needed to decide that night what he or she would do if Clinton gets the nomination. They could have let Roy off the hook until he calmed down a little.

And I might have been able to save my relationship with my Facebook friend had I simply posted a comment along the lines of “Glad to see we’re both in agreement on the need for vaccinations. Let’s talk later about the best way to make people feel good about getting them.” Had I realized her weird conversational behavior was caused by panic, and that her panic was caused by her awareness that what I was saying was true, it would have been easier for me to step back and let her gather her wits.