How to Win Your Next Political Argument

Hard as it may be to believe, you can actually win [political] arguments. Here’s how.

Forget facts
Psychologists who study political belief and persuasion think it’s adorable how obsessed argumentative people are with those cute little things called facts. When it comes to winning arguments, truthfulness and details simply don’t matter as much as we think they do.
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“People think emotionally, and they very often will have these gut moral intuitions that certain things are right or wrong,” said Matthew Feinberg, a psychologist at Stanford. The process of belief formation runs in the opposite direction than we’d hope: People “come to the conclusion first, and then the reasons they kind of pull out just to support their beliefs.”
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This runs counter to a lot of what we learn when we’re writing term papers in school or reading our favorite authors, of course — in these contexts, logical precision is key. But when you’re engaging in a live argument with someone who views the world very differently than you do, it’s important not to get too hung up on factual accuracy.
Let your opponent hang him or herself.
When people are asked to explain their beliefs about how a given thing works, they’ll actually become less confident in those beliefs.
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This phenomenon is known as the “illusion of explanatory depth.” If you ask the average person to explain why they hold a given opinion, “They will come to realize the limitations of their own understanding,” said Frank C. Keil, a Yale University psychologist who studies intuitive beliefs and explanatory understanding. Keil cautions that this won’t necessarily lead to a change in point of view, but said that if you ask them gently and non-aggressively to walk you through their point of view, they’ll likely see the holes more.”
Don’t be such a dick
This one can be tough to remember, but even in a heated debate with a distant cousin whose political beliefs would make a Neanderthal blush, there’s a tactical upside to being nice.
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“When people have their self-worth validated in some way, they tend to be more receptive to information that challenges their beliefs,” said Peter Ditto, a psychology professor at UC-Irvine who studies emotion and its connection to political and religious beliefs. This is partly because our mood determines a lot about how receptive we are to new information or ideas: If we’re happy and confident and at ease, we’re more likely to be open-minded.
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The problem is that political arguments, by their nature, tend to make their participants angry and frustrated. So it’s easy to be self-defeating here: When you’re arguing with Uncle Bob, who fervently believes certain things about 9/11, you may think you’re making a cutting, incisive point that reveals his stupidity for the world to see. But if you’re antagonizing him or openly implying that he’s nuts, he’s only going to feel backed into a corner — and that, the research suggests, will harden his beliefs further. (This effect is likely only amplified in big group settings, which bring greater opportunities for “point-scoring” and embarrassment, meaning smaller gatherings are more conducive to substantive debate and persuasion.)
Defuse disgust
Not every hot-button political issue can be traced back to disgust, but many of them can. A long line of research has shown just how intimately connected our politics and our sense of disgust are. And if you look around, you’ll see political arguments couched in disgust everywhere.
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So what should you do if you find yourself locked in debate with someone who is grossed out, and you suspect his disgust, rather than a more substantive argument, is fueling his belief? One paper by Feinberg and some colleagues suggests simply asking your adversary not to be disgusted could be a surprisingly successful strategy. The researchers had participants watch a video of two men kissing. Some were instructed to simply watch, while others were asked to “try to think about what you are seeing in such a way that you don’t feel anything at all.” The latter condition was designed to short-circuit feelings of disgust, and political conservatives in that group “subsequently expressed more support for same-sex marriage than conservatives in the control condition,” as the study’s abstract put it.
Change the frame
Here’s where you can earn your black belt in political argument. One of the most prominent current theories through which psychologists explain differences in political beliefs is called Moral Foundations Theory, or MFT. MFT posits that there are five foundations to moral beliefs: care/harm (whether other beings are being hurt); fairness/cheating (whether people are treating others fairly); loyalty/betrayal (whether people are exhibiting loyalty to their group); authority/subversion (whether people are playing by the rules); and sanctity/degradation (whether people are sullying physical or spiritual things that are sacred). According to the theory, liberals and conservatives view these concerns differently. For liberals, care/harm and fairness/cheating are the most important of the five, while conservatives are more into loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation.
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This is pretty powerful knowledge, because it can help you know your opponent’s “weak points,” in a sense — which aspects of morality will resonate for them, and which won’t.
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During a debate, you’re more likely to make progress “if you can appeal to the moral concerns of the people that you’re talking with,” said Jesse Graham, a USC professor who helped develop MFT. All too often, though, “there are ways in which liberals and conservatives can talk past one another in these debates.”