The old joke says that you only need one psychologist to
change a light bulb, but the light bulb has to want to change. Part of
wanting to change is changing your attitude toward some behavior. A smoker needs to start thinking about why
the dangers of smoking outweigh the benefits before she will have success
quitting.
What can you do to change your mind about something?
One possibility is that you should try to convince
yourself. That is, you could generate a
set of arguments about a topic that you think are most convincing for
yourself. Another possibility, though,
is that you should act as though you are trying to convince someone else. In that case, you would generate arguments
that you think would be most convincing for some other person.
Which is better?
This question was addressed in a paper in the May, 2012
issue of the Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology by Pablo Briñol, Michael McCaslin, and Richard
Petty. The answer is a little
complicated.
Sometimes, you try to change your mind by making yourself
even more convinced of something you already believe at least a little. For example, most college students would be
in favor of a proposal to decrease tuition at their school. In this case, people are more convinced if
they generate arguments to convince someone else than if they generate
arguments to convince themselves.
In one study, for example, the participants were college
students, and they were asked to generate arguments in favor of lowering
tuition. They were asked to imagine
either that they were trying to convince themselves or that they were trying to
convince another person. Later, they
were asked about their attitude toward a proposal to lower tuition. The people who generated arguments for someone
else were more strongly in favor of the proposal than those who generated
arguments for themselves.
A different pattern was obtained when people had to convince
themselves of something that they do not believe. In this same study, some students were asked
to argue that tuition should be raised.
Again, some people made this argument to convince themselves, while
others made this argument to convince someone else. In this case, students ended up feeling more
favorably toward a proposal to raise tuition when they tried to convince
themselves than when they tried to convince someone else.
Why does this happen?
It all comes down to effort.
When you are arguing about something you already believe,
you don’t have to work that hard to convince yourself. If you think tuition should be lowered, you
aren’t going to try that hard to convince yourself of it, because you already
believe it. If you are trying to
convince someone else, though, you will work harder and generate better
arguments. As a result, you end up
convincing yourself even more strongly.
When you are arguing about something you don’t currently
believe, though, you have to work harder to convince yourself. In this case, you end up being more effective
when you try to convince yourself than when you try to convince someone
else.
In the end, then, if you are truly trying to change your
mind, you need to argue with yourself rather than with someone else.
