Facts, once more with feeling
I saw in the Letters to the Editor section of The Oregonian today
Burial at sea? I and now most Americans do not believe that Osama bin Laden was really killed by the United States. Most feel that it is a lie by the Obama administration.
Hmm. Just like that pesky birth certificate.
Which, in fact, did just what I predicted. The evidence just made the beliefs stronger.
Why are we surprised? Since when do facts play a role in politics? Whether debating health care or summer vacation plans, most of the time, debates are driven by feelings, not facts. Studies show decidedly that facts rarely, if ever, change people’s minds. And here is what we’re seeing now with the so-called ‘birthers’: Not only do facts rarely change minds, they even solidify them. As a well quoted article in the Boston Globe last year stated:
when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.
So the question is: does this mean we should make more room for emotions in debates or less? If we are using facts to fuel our emotions maybe we should learn how to have more intelligent emotional debates?
As someone who has coached politicians, activists and other “opinion formers” I would say that facts have actually got very little to do with what is called debate or discussion. I always advise to speak emotionally and to focus on getting an emotional reaction. At all costs I council avoiding the use of facts, particularly statistics. A story that touches the heart is far more effective at communication.
The truth is we are far more emotional beings than factual or rational ones.
Where we need to move to is having dialogue – not discussion or debate – where we acknowledge and address the emotional content of our conversation. This takes eldership where one acknowledges and names the emotional content and impact of our communication as speaker and listener. It requires owning the emotional viewpoint that defines the “facts” that we are using to support the viewpoint that created the “facts” in the first place!
Hi Tim, thanks for writing from your experience. I know you are writing from your perspective in Ireland, and the cultural differences on this point between countries interests me. It’s interesting here in States, how facts vs. emotions play out. Politicians who are too factual, i.e., seen as too intellectual, or deliberate, are criticized, tend to have lower approval ratings, then more ‘emotional’ ones. However, being deliberately emotional doesn’t wash either. It’s a covert use of emotions to play upon fears and biases that troubles me. if it were more out in the open, perhaps we’d be less prone its manipulative use.
Hi Julie, Hi Tim,
Thank you for your posts. I think this is an important discussion to have these days, with the big world events in Japan and in the Middle East and the changes they have created … when we think about how we want to locally deal with the bigger questions these events rise around energy choices and living and making decisions in a community, … and how these events are related to our personal and collective histories and to today’s everyday choices for the future. (As a historian, these days, I think a lot about the relationship between histories and today’s choices and how we could have more aware, public discussion about them).
Like Jim says, I think it is crucial to become aware of the feelings and deeper believes behind the process of creating facts and the general feeling atmosphere in which they are then brought forward. I think that this kind of awareness would actually help that feelings are not misused or are used manipulatively.
In Switzerland, when it gets emotional, people often call for a “sachbezogene” discussion (fact-related) which in my understanding doesn’t feel complete as people can’t really be personal and can’t formulate their concerns, fears, hopes and passions. I think, discussing community issues as “matters of concern” (instead of matters of fact), consciously bringing our feelings in and really learning how we talk about them as such, like the French philosopher Bruno Latour describes… I think that might be a way to make this world a safer place!? At least it would be worth trying!
Love,
Barbara
Thanks for a thought provoking conversation… a fascinating area for research & training with applications galore! love,Carol
Hi Julie
As one who has tried, not always successfully, to stay a little detached while also still holding on to strongly felt sense, in the face of these massive collective energies whipped up in recent weeks, ranging from Japan and Middle East to the Royal Wedding and Bin Laden death report, I still find myself searching for what my inner voice tells me are ‘the facts’ behind the situations.
– then maybe I can best embody the deeply democratic change I want to see by listening to those other opinions, by recognizing and respecting that they may be just as strongly held, just as susceptible to being ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ as mine, and therefore just as legitimate and not as my own.
Has Japan been intentionally blasted by HAARP as well as upheaved by natural earth movements?
Are movements in the Middle east democracy in action and/or ferment whipped up by other manipulative would-be power users and abusers?
Is the happy young royal couple setting out innocently with idealism and optimism on their joint life journey, just that, or further evidence of a deeply rooted and carefully staged system of inequality led by people who have no intention of yielding their privilege and power?
Was Obama telling truth and/or lying through his teeth or telling truth on Sunday night about Osama’s death?
My inner voice and jury are currently ‘out’ on just about all these issues. Can any of us state categorically about any of them that we know the truth?
The only thing i ‘know’ as I go about my deliberations, is that I have grown up in a world where I have been constantly lied to and had ‘the facts’ withheld by many heads of organizations as well as those in government to whom I have given my vote and not.
By now my inner skeptic has been fed more than enough to last it this lifetime, if I want to believe that Obama lied. And I am living now in a time when it is easier than ever before to read, see or hear every possible shade of opinion about any issue being presented as ‘fact’.
I think two things are important for me just now. One is to keep on listening for my inner voice to tell me what it ‘knows’. It may of course be wrong on any single issue, but I do know that when I have waited patiently and listened to my inner voice, instead of over-riding it any time since the age of six, it has usually served me well.
And two, once I have decided what I know, is to notice myself, and try to hold back and listen more carefully whenever I meet an opinion that is different than my own and yet just as strongly held.
For I was also reared in a world that structured itself largely by debate in preference to dialogue. In that world if I am ‘right’ then you must be ‘wrong’ and vice versa.
So if I want to change the world and – sigh! – oh dear it seems that meddlesome me still does
Strange and testing days indeed. much love to all, midi
Lively and informative discussion. Emotions and “facts” are always part of any perspective, so I am intrigued with how they are framed and engaged when we communicate. Persuasion seems to be an underlying concern in the conversation. Not sure how to address that though. Thank you.