7/8/16

Facts don’t change opinions.  Emotions do.

When it comes to politics, liberals and conservatives have different, intuitive emotions tied to values that determine whether we approach a fact or avoid it.  Those leanings may well be hard wired into the brain, so they're very, very important!


Liberals are focused on things like care/harm and fairness/equality. If you want to push my liberal buttons, make it about being fair. I’ll listen to you. Equal pay is about fairness. Labor unions, dear to liberal hearts, are in part about fairness. That's not a coincidence. 

Conservatives are focused on a broader array of things that include loyalty, authority, sanctity, purity (in-group similarity), and liberty as well as equality and harm. They're interested in fairness and avoiding harm, but they're also interested in all these other things.

Yelling at people or presenting charts of data don’t work because people don’t first connect with them emotionally. As a result, they won't change people's minds  As the Redneck Liberal says, Hillary Clinton could sell his Social Security number and a photo of his nude wife to Kim Jong Il, and he still wouldn’t vote for Donald Trump. 

If you want to get a liberal to listen to conservative facts, you first need to indicate respect for the things that liberals value.  That gets them to pay attention. Then show how those values can be applied to conservative issues.

If you want to get a conservative to listen to liberal facts, you need to do the same thing.  Appeal to their patriotism, for example. Show that it is important and valuable. And then show how that value of patriotism can be applied to liberal issues. For example, if you want more conservative buy-in to the notions of a diverse and inclusive society, make it about values that conservatives already hold.  Make it about patriotism. Make it about Americans. And get John Cena, 250 pounds of red-blooded American male, to sell the notion to the American people. 

YouTube Link

(Note the use of patriotic imagery throughout the video. There's as much red, white and blue as there are facts about diversity.)