How to Change Minds: 3 Principles of a Healthy Conversation

It’s been around 2 years since a memorable conversation about veganism that permanently changed my approach

My friend’s friend, let’s call him Alex, visited my town and we all sat outside. It was a sunny day. When it got dark, we went to grab a bite to eat. There’s a cozy little place near my friends’ apartment, so that’s where we went. I ordered my usual “vegan number two,” durum with falafel. I don’t remember what others ordered.

When we sat down, Alex turned to me and said, “So, what’s the deal with you? How come you don’t eat meat?”

By then I had been vegan for about four years, so I’d experienced my share of these conversations. People asking — sometimes out of genuine curiosity, sometimes from the sense of wonderment, and sometimes because they just can’t grasp it — why is it that I turned my back on meat? And my answer is as it’s always been: I did a month-long experiment without meat. After the month was over, I was feeling both physically as well as mentally so good that, even though I still liked meat, I couldn’t imagine going back. And so I never did. The whole philosophy of not harming animals and the environment has evolved from this simple, visceral experiment.

Alex was an inquisitive one, so the discussion dragged on until we got to the point of discussing different worldviews and values. And that’s right about when I got smacked in the face with: “I believe humans should control all other species on the planet. I mean, we’re clearly superior.”

After I let that sink in, my reaction wasn’t exactly pleasant. Voices were raised and fists shaken. Minds, on the other hand, left that cozy little place more calcified than ever.

That brought me to a question: How can you have a productive conversation with people like Alex? How can you communicate your beliefs so that you increase the chances of someone like Alex leaving the place wondering whether there’s something he’s overlooking.

For that, you first have to understand where these people come from.

Vegans as bubble busters

We humans are funny. When we don’t want to face something, we choose to simply ignore the facts and look for arguments supporting our worldviews. We all do it. And we are all experts at it.

With meat-eaters, this is easy enough: They buy their salami and steak as a product in the supermarket. Wrapped in tons of plastic, these products don’t resemble anything that was living and breathing just a week ago.

There’s a bubble of normalcy that follows each person. When it bursts, out come the rationalizations:

• “I don’t eat that much meat.”
• “I only eat locally sourced grass-fed beef.”
• “Meat is healthy and necessary.”

But we vegans poke a hole in this bubble just by our mere presence. Suddenly, there’s a person who makes the sacrifice. Suddenly there’s a person who shatters the rationalizations.

All that carefully crafted ignorance is gone. The state that ensues is called cognitive dissonance. At the risk of oversimplifying things, cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort you feel when you hold two pieces of information that aren’t compatible. It’s like thinking that both Coke and Pepsi are the best. Your mind can’t have that such tension and so you’re motivated to release it.

And that’s what happened with me and Alex. I burst his bubble. What happened afterward could’ve admittedly gone better. But I learned my lesson.

Planting a seed

Since then I’ve had many more productive conversations and they all revolved around a few key principles that, when followed, increase the chances of someone changing their minds. But let’s get you first into a state that you can actually use them so that you don’t blow your fuse as I did.

The first step is to acknowledge that no matter what you do, you won’t make the other person stop eating meat. Trust me, I tried. And not only me, but researchers all over the world also find it extremely hard to change people’s eating habits.

An aside: Anything you do daily is hard to change: commute, energy use, etc.

A change like this happens over years, maybe even decades. You can’t uproot the other persons' belief system during a single discussion. That’s not how humans work.

The best you can hope for is to plant a seed.

When that is clear in your head, you can begin to lay the groundwork for a productive conversation.

Find common ground

In his book Catalyst, Jonah Berger talks about how you can influence people, not by persuasion, but by removing roadblocks. Once such a roadblock is distance: when two opinions are too far away from each other, there’s no common ground. You can imagine it as a conversation between the hippiest liberal and the staunchest conservative. Those people just won’t see eye to eye. For minds to change, the two parties first need to be in the zone of acceptance.

An example

My friend has a list of your favorite science fiction and it contains Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Game of Thrones. My list sports Star Wars and Lord of the Rings as well, but my third would go to the Stormlight Archive. You’d think that this is a minor thing but then you’d be wrong. It’s big. And like the nerds we are, we’re gonna argue about our choices, each standing our ground.

Books signed by authors will fly and insults only Comic-con fans will understand will see the light of day. Nasty.

So what would the common ground look like here? Well, one way would be to expand our favorite lists: I could read Game of Thrones and my friend the Stormlight Archive. Or we could find another area where we agree, like our most favorite game. The idea is to shift the perspective so that the point of conflict is no longer in the foreground.

You need to move from the meat-eating paradigm into something else.

Small steps, not big changes

A small group of determined and like-minded people can change the course of history. — Mahatma Gandhi

Once you find the common ground, you can try to sell the idea. But not of veganism — that’s too radical. Small steps are the name of the game. Instead of asking for a ground-up change, you pick one thing to focus on.

It might be a meat-free Monday, for example. One day in the week that the person doesn’t eat meat.

When you see that the other person shows interest, drill down.

This is how a minority can change the views of the majority: by having a consistent message. History is peppered with examples. Take Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi. They both changed beliefs of millions by consistently preaching their message in a peaceful yet persistent manner.

The key is to be consistent and not ask for much.

3 principles of a healthy conversation

1. Plant a seed. Don’t try to uproot the whole belief system.
2. Find common ground. Shift the perspective to something you share.
3. Ask for less and drill down.

These principles aren’t a silver bullet. They won’t save every conversation. Sometimes you’ll feel like throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks. Sometimes you’ll deal with people who won’t budge. Sometimes you’ll deal with people who will outright insult you.

But that’s kind of part of the game, isn’t it?

Outliers will always suffer the wrath of the majority. That’s how things are. But outliers also have their own strengths. I’ve shared with you some of mine, and I hope they help.