Why is it so hard to change your mind?

“The most difficult subjects,” novelist Leo Tolstoy once wrote, “can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.”

Until recently, I would have agreed. A whole host of psychological research had suggested that many people are extraordinarily resistant to opinion change and there is precious little we can do to remove their blinkers. This, combined with the rise of social media, was thought to lie behind the increasing political polarisation of the past two decades.

So you can imagine my delight at finding a new paper that offers some grounds for optimism. According to Stephanie Dolbier at the University of California, Los Angeles, and her colleagues, psychologists have already uncovered many techniques to open our minds – and it all depends on our capacity to withstand emotional discomfort.

Like many psychological traits, open-mindedness naturally varies across the population. You can measure this by rating your agreement with a series of statements, such as:

• People should take into consideration evidence that goes against conclusions they favour
• When faced with a puzzling question, we should try to consider more than one possible answer before reaching a conclusion

And:

• Changing your mind is a sign of weakness

As you might expect, people who agree strongly with the first two statements and disagree strongly with the third are considered to be more open-minded than those who believe it is best to settle on a single point of view without considering the other options or updating their opinions based on new evidence.

Actively open-minded thinking comes with many benefits. Philip Tetlock at the University of Pennsylvania and his colleagues, for instance, have found that it improves people’s capacity to predict the outcome of geopolitical events. In a two-year competition involving more than 700 participants, he found that the top-performers – whom he dubs “superforecasters” – were far more willing to change their opinions in the face of new evidence than the average person. Mental flexibility of this kind can also protect us from irrational beliefs, such as conspiracy theories, which typically rely on people’s tendency to jump to quick conclusions about the way the world works.

For most of us, however, exercising open-minded thinking is often easier said than done. At the very least, we may feel a certain embarrassment at admitting that our judgement was wrong in the past, so we cling to our old opinions to avoid losing face. Worse still, our beliefs are often interlinked with core elements of our identity, such as our religion or political identity, in an intricate tapestry. Loosen one of those knots and it may feel like our whole sense of self is about to unravel, which can be a terrifying prospect.

To protect our ego, the brain therefore engages in “motivated reasoning”, which involves searching for justifications to bolster our core assumptions, even if that relies on logical fallacies and misinformation or causes us to lash out at the people who are questioning us.

Maintaining an open mind therefore requires considerable strength to withstand that mental discomfort – and this may start with greater emotional awareness. Dolbier and her colleagues point to research from 2019, for example, on “wise reasoning”. It found that people who offer more nuanced descriptions of their emotions are better able to consider different perspectives than those who simply label their moods as “good” or “bad”.

It makes sense. If I have high emotional awareness, I might recognise that I am not so much angry at another person’s stupidity for not seeing something from my point of view, but frustrated at my own inarticulacy in trying to get across an idea to them, and scared of seeming foolish myself. That realisation may then encourage me to consider my argument more critically – and potentially change my mind. That is, maybe they aren’t wrong, but I’m letting my emotions get in the way of finding that out.

The role of emotional awareness might explain why mindfulness helps some people to reason more rationally. By paying attention to their inner weather, they are better equipped to recognise and avoid the typical knee-jerk reactions to others’ points of view, forming more balanced opinions as a result.

If meditation doesn’t appeal, we might consider a little role-playing. In one study, people were taught to put on an internal act and respond to upsetting events “like scientists, objectively and analytically”. After this training, they tended to be more open-minded about some of the most polarising topics, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Quite remarkably, follow-up experiments found that the benefits of this short intervention lasted for at least five months after the initial test.

Alternatively, we can place the point of disagreement in the broader context of our lives. In the heat of a disagreement, we often forget that we are multifaceted beings with many values and talents, and feel that our whole sense of self-worth comes to depend on being proven right about this one point. Briefly describing one of those other qualities to ourselves – be it our loyalty to our friends, our creativity or our sense of humour – can therefore reduce the sense of threat when we face a difference of opinion. This only seems to work, though, if someone is already conscious of their own potential for bias based on their existing beliefs, which again underlines the importance of self-awareness.

Finally, we may reframe the difficult feelings as a sign of growth. Experiments have found that simply reminding people of their capacity to build their cognitive abilities can encourage them to respond more constructively to people with opposing views. With this mindset, we can see our mistakes as learning opportunities, which makes it easier to accept that our previous views may have been wrong.

Dolbier and her colleagues emphasise that many of these techniques need to be tested more thoroughly in a greater variety of contexts, and many others may emerge along the way. But the existing research at least offers a place to start – and I’ll certainly be putting some of these strategies into practice myself the next time I find my beliefs challenged.

David Robson’s latest book is The Laws of Connection: 13 social strategies that will transform your life. If you have a question that you would like answered in his column, please send him a message at davidrobson.me/contact.