Better Conversations: You Don’t Have to Change Someone’s Mind

Years ago, I had a political conversation with someone and thought very little of it afterward.

We disagreed. We talked through the issue. Nobody announced that the other person had made a brilliant argument. Nobody changed sides before we left. As far as I knew, it was simply one of many political conversations I’d had.

About six months later, that person brought it up again.

Something we’d discussed had stuck with them. They had continued thinking about it, and over time they began to see the issue differently.

I don’t know exactly what happened during those six months. Maybe our conversation started the process. Maybe something else happened later that made the argument click. Maybe they heard the same idea from someone else, or an experience caused them to reconsider something they had previously taken for granted.

What I do know is that if I had judged the success of that conversation by whether I changed their mind that day, I would have judged it incorrectly.

We tend to think about political persuasion as if there are only two possible outcomes: I changed your mind, or I didn’t.

Human beings don’t usually work that way.

Moving From 2 to 3 Is Still Moving

Imagine political beliefs on a particular issue running from 1 to 10.

You’re at 10. The person you’re talking to is at 2.

You make your best argument. They listen. They challenge you. You answer some objections and probably fail to answer others. When the conversation is over, they’re at 3.

Did you fail?

They’re still much closer to their original position than yours. If there were an election tomorrow, they might vote exactly the same way they would have before the conversation.

But you changed their mind.

Just not as much as you wanted.

Politics has a strange way of making us dismiss that kind of movement. We reserve our approval for people who arrive at the correct destination—meaning ours—and spend less time noticing whether they’re moving, questioning, or reconsidering.

That kind of reconsideration isn’t unusual. Pew Research Center found that most Americans who discuss the news with others say those conversations at least sometimes lead them to change their own opinion about an issue.

If someone moves one step toward you and you attack them for the nine steps they haven’t taken, don’t be surprised when they stop moving.

This doesn’t mean you have to pretend 3 is good enough. It doesn’t mean splitting every political difference down the middle. There are positions where the midpoint makes no moral or practical sense at all.

You can still believe 10 is right.

Just recognize that someone who moved from 2 to 3 is no longer exactly where they were.

Sometimes the First Step Is Making the Other Side Seem Less Crazy

There’s an even smaller form of movement that we tend to overlook.

Suppose you explain your position carefully and the other person doesn’t change their view at all.

But they do change their view of you.

Before the conversation, perhaps they thought nobody could reasonably believe what you believe. Anyone taking your position had to be stupid, selfish, brainwashed, hateful, naïve, or simply detached from reality.

Afterward, they still disagree, but something has changed:

I don’t agree with that, but I can understand why a reasonable person might.

That matters.

It’s difficult to seriously consider an argument when you’ve already decided that only terrible or foolish people make it. Once a position becomes understandable—even without becoming persuasive—the argument itself has a chance to be heard.

Maybe you didn’t convince someone that you were right.

Maybe you convinced them that you weren’t crazy.

That may not feel like much of a victory, but you’ve removed an obstacle that made future persuasion much harder.

Plant Something Worth Thinking About

Some arguments work immediately. Others become part of a longer process. Research on interpersonal political conversations has found that, under some conditions, changes in attitudes can persist for months afterward.

You raise a question the other person can’t quite answer. You point out an inconsistency they hadn’t noticed. You describe an experience they’ve never considered. You offer an example that doesn’t fit neatly into the way they’ve been thinking about an issue.

Then the conversation ends.

There’s a temptation to keep pushing. If the argument was good enough to make them hesitate, surely another twenty minutes will get them the rest of the way.

Maybe.

Or maybe you’ve already done the useful part.

There’s a reason “planting a seed” is such a good metaphor. A seed doesn’t become more likely to grow because you keep digging it up to see whether anything is happening.

Give people room to think.

They may reject your argument today and encounter something six months from now that causes them to remember it. They may gradually notice other examples that fit what you were saying. Your conversation may turn out to have been one small part of a much longer process.

You don’t control that process.

And you may never know that your conversation was part of it.

Remember How Long It Took You

I’ve seen another version of this happen among people who were deconstructing their evangelical faith.

Many of them had started out fairly conservative. As they reconsidered religious beliefs, authority, morality, identity, and other parts of their worldview, some also moved considerably to the left politically.

For many, that didn’t happen overnight.

It could take years.

One belief changed. Then another became harder to reconcile with it. New experiences mattered. New relationships mattered. Conversations mattered. Questions accumulated. Eventually someone could end up politically very far from where they started.

What struck me was what sometimes happened afterward.

Once people had made that journey, some seemed to forget what the journey had actually been like.

They could look at someone who still believed what they themselves had believed a few years earlier and wonder how anyone could possibly think that way. Worse, they could expect that person to make in one conversation a journey that had taken them years.

That’s an easy mistake to make, and certainly not one limited to former evangelicals or liberals.

Once we’ve changed our minds, our new position starts to feel obvious. We remember where we ended up more easily than all the uncertainty that came before it.

So think about something important you’ve changed your mind about.

Did one person defeat you in an argument and cause you to immediately adopt the opposing position?

Maybe. It happens.

But perhaps the process was messier. A conversation created doubt. An experience complicated something you thought was simple. You met someone who didn’t fit your assumptions. You read something. You changed a little, then changed back. Eventually enough pieces accumulated that the old position no longer made as much sense as it once did.

If that’s how you got here, give other people some room to travel too.

Don’t Confuse Patience With Surrender

There is an obvious objection to all of this.

Some issues matter enormously. Some political decisions hurt real people. Some beliefs are false, cruel, discriminatory, dangerous, or simply indefensible. Telling the person affected by those beliefs to patiently celebrate someone’s journey from 2 to 3 can sound absurd.

That’s fair.

Nobody is obligated to personally guide someone else through every stage of changing their mind. You don’t have to tolerate abuse in the name of productive dialogue. And recognizing incremental movement does not require pretending the remaining disagreement doesn’t matter.

This isn’t an argument for lowering your principles.

It’s an argument for being realistic about persuasion.

If you’re choosing to have the conversation because you hope to change someone’s thinking, then it helps to understand that changing someone’s thinking and getting them to agree with you are not necessarily the same thing.

You can challenge someone strongly and still leave them room to reconsider. You can tell someone they’re wrong without requiring them to admit you’re right before the conversation ends. And you can recognize movement without pretending the destination doesn’t matter.

You May Never See the Result

Political arguments encourage immediate scorekeeping.

Who had the better comeback? Who couldn’t answer the question? Who conceded the point? Who “won”?

But some of the most important effects of a conversation aren’t visible while it’s happening.

The person you’re talking to may need to encounter the idea again. They may need an experience that gives it meaning. They may need time away from the social pressure of admitting something to you. They may need to arrive at the conclusion in their own way.

Or they may never agree with you.

That’s possible too. Planting a seed doesn’t guarantee anything grows, and listening respectfully isn’t a magic persuasion technique.

If the only political conversations we consider successful are the ones that end with somebody changing sides, we’re going to miss a lot of what productive conversation can actually accomplish.

Maybe someone moves from 2 to 3.

Maybe they still disagree but no longer think your position is insane.

Maybe you leave them with one question they can’t quite dismiss.

Maybe nothing happens for six months, and then something clicks.