Don't Talk About Politics by Sarah Stein Lubrano: Believe it or not, debates don't change minds

Is democracy dying? In many countries, as Sarah Stein Lubrano points out in her thought-provoking debut work, ‘trust in society and interest in politics have hit a nadir’.

Many areas of public life seem broken but we do not trust our politicians to mend them. The fundamental problem, she argues, is that we cling to the notion that just talking about politics can change people’s minds.

Most of us persist in believing in two myths about how political thinking works. The first is the myth of the ‘marketplace of ideas’. Allow people to encounter the widest range of ideas and the best will inevitably rise to the top.

This was a doubtful proposition at any time but, in the era of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, it seems increasingly absurd. Musk has said that he sees X as ‘the digital town square’ where people can gather for discussion.

In what Lubrano wittily describes as an ‘age of digital screaming’, using X doesn’t seem like a rational exchange of views. More often, it ‘feels as if the worst guy at the party has trapped everyone else in a one-sided, unending conversation’.

The other myth Lubrano endeavours to demolish – with much success – is that debate is effective in changing people’s minds. Particularly political debate. With many politicians, the more they speak, the less we like them – and the less likely we are to agree with them.

Research suggests voters enjoy the spectacle and drama of debates but that they don’t influence their personal beliefs in any significant way. If debate is largely ineffective, what does work to influence our beliefs?

Alarmingly, it seems that many people will change their minds to avoid thinking too rationally. Before Trump was found guilty of falsifying business records last year, only 17 per cent of Republican voters believed that felons should be able to be elected president; after his conviction, the number shot up to 58 per cent.

To reconcile two contradictory beliefs (that felons shouldn’t be president, but the felon Donald Trump should), large numbers simply changed their minds.

Happily, Lubrano has more encouraging thoughts about how people can be persuaded to think differently on important subjects.

Actions can speak so much louder than words. Abstract debate about climate change is unlikely to change opinions; providing incentives to install solar panels might well convert sceptics. Hectoring people about how bad cars are for the environment will merely antagonise them; give them other feasible options to get to work and they might leave their cars at home.

Politicians can’t reach people with words alone. As she puts it: ‘If you want to change people’s minds, you must change their lives.’