“How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb?  One, but the light bulb has to want to change.”

Basically, people (with rare exceptions) do not want to change their belief systems, for the reasons explained in previous pages, and a few more to be documented forthwith. People actively resist changing their beliefs to the point of Googling for bias confirmation after having been presented with knowledge that rejects their beliefs.

Waste an afternoon on Twitter/X and you’ll see this in action … several hundred times a second.

But humans are not entirely inflexible. There are things that don’t and do nudge them into at least rethinking their beliefs if not walking away from them entirely.

Yet, people are different due to gumption and perspective, and thus situations differently. A simplistic breakdown of how people deal with the unknown might look like:

• Ignorance: has to guess (faith)
• Biased: seeks confirmation (beliefs)
• Informed: gathers knowledge and makes gut-level triangulation (knowledge)
• Academic: blank slate data gathering and tests all hypothesis (facts)

But this shows how people might respond given their depth of perspective. It does not help you change your beliefs, unless you are an honest academic (dishonest ones are in the propaganda racket) and it doesn’t help you win a debate with your cousin Tammi at Thanksgiving. 

Facts don’t work, by and large. Throwing facts and knowledge into the face of a mind you wish to change is counter-productive. Anything resembling an assault on a belief system is likely to ignite a defense reaction instead of informed conversion. What does work if appealing to beliefs.

Beliefs are Hierarchical, So Start Low

Rarely does a single belief stand alone. Hence why we have belief systems, which are integrated sets of faith, beliefs, knowledge and facts that construct very individualized matrices of perspective – the rubrics for understanding life, the universe and everything including Vogon poetry.

Most beliefs have some hierarchical nature. For an overly simplistic example, you cannot have a belief in what your God wants you to do unless you first believe in God. In economics, you cannot believe in communism unless you believe capitalist economies are rigged, and you don’t believe in free markets unless you disbelieve centralized planning improves efficient selection. You can’t believe your political party has all the right answers unless you believe they have a desirable philosophical foundation.

One way to nudge people into changing belief systems is to explore what their more foundational beliefs are and appeal to those in order to confine or alter the higher-order beliefs.

For years, I conducted a social experiment with people I met who were either politically center-right or center-left. For each, I would get them to express support for the U.S. Constitution by first appealing to how it supported one of their higher-order beliefs, confirming the value of the Constitution itself. Then I would show them how this foundational belief conflicted with another higher-order belief. In other words, exposing how their political belief conflicted with the Constitution, which was foundational. This worked, but not reliably because not everybody completely adores the Constitution.

For people on the right, I’d start by expressing admiration for the document, to which they agreed. Then I’d express how lucky we were that it protected our ability to converse and even disagree thanks to the First Amendment, which was met with wise nods and smiles. Then I’d express how in a pinch the Second Amendment ensured we could enforce the First, and they would express earnest agreement. Then I’d say we were blessed to also enjoy equal protection of rights, including the First and Second, and they would practically hurrah. Then I’d say how it will be well tested when gays got the right to marry (this was before the Supreme Court ruled so).

Their expressions changed. Occationally there was a little back-and-forth, but nearly 100% of these center-right folks went “Grumble, grumble, grumble … yes, you are right.” People in the political right have deep belief systems about the sanctity of the Constitution and when forced to accept rights they might not appreciate, they changed their higher order beliefs.

The political left was not so flexible.

For them, I’d start by expressing admiration for the document, to which they agreed. Then I’d express how lucky we were that it enforced equal protections and got rid of Jim Crow – healthy head nodding ensued. Then I’d say loving things about a free press (First Amendment) to steady agreement except that they didn’t like Fox News. Then I’d express how the right to a jury trial was a great anchor in jurisprudence, and though there was agreement some thought it clumsy and expensive. Then I’d note how the Second Amendment gave everyone in the room the right to defend their rights.

About 95% argued until their oxygen supply was exhausted.

The generalization is that center-left people are more attuned to the ideal of democracy (majority rule for everything) and less in love with the letter and intent of the Constitution. For those on the right, fidelity to the lower-level belief was critical because it was dearly held. Those on the left did not have the same degree of affection for a constitutional republic with rigid rules, and thus would defend their higher-order beliefs since their lower-order belief was weaker.

New Perspectives on Old Beliefs at the Root

Changing a belief requires changing perspective. But commonly people are savagely disinterested in trying to view things through other people’s lenses.

This is not evil. It is merely avoiding work and frustration. Since nobody can instantly look through another person’s eyes, share their lifetime of experiences, or fathom the nuances of their evolving reality, most folks don’t try. After all, why challenge your own beliefs when it takes so much effort to understand another person’s?

Hence, to change a belief you begin with a person’s own perspective and locate where either their more foundational belief contradicts their other beliefs or find a conflict so acute that it forces reflection of their set of beliefs.

We covered above how appealing to more foundational beliefs in a belief system hierarchy can be effective, but let’s look at other modes.

Confronting internal hypocrisy

In the early days of Internet commercialization, I started an online public opinion polling system. Our first survey was on abortion because I wanted to drive participation and start building an online panel of participants.

We had a longish list of questions on the basic topic (i.e., do you oppose or support access to abortion services) followed by personal attitude questions. One of the latter was “If you had a teenage daughter who became pregnant, would you allow her to get an abortion?”

The number of ardent opponents to abortion access who would have allowed their own daughter to get one was very high. They demonstrated a conflict of two different beliefs: a belief that abortion was wrong (for whatever foundational reasons in their world-view rubric) and a belief that their teenage daughter should not suffer early single parenthood.

We did not measure if this conflict changed any minds, but more than a few people who exposed their personal hypocrisy left notes stating that they now “felt conflicted”. Unintentionally, we had forced them to view the situation through a different perspective.

This does not always work.

In the revolutionary era, a Quaker abolitionist by the name of Robert Pleasants wrote to all of the founding fathers who spoke of freedom but owned slaves. Patrick Henry (who I have an ancestral connection to), the man who said, “Give me liberty or give me death” bluntly replied that he did not emancipate his slaves because “I am a hypocrite” due to slavery making him “comfortable in my position.” Henry was, if nothing else, blunt and willing to admit his hypocrisy but not willing to change his behavior.