After going through the fire of 3,000+ conversations with pro-choice people, we’ve learned a lot of things that create an environment in the conversation where the other person is more likely to change their mind. These are some of those nitty-gritty dialogue tips.
It was spring, 2010. I was at Pasadena City College with Justice for All. I was standing inside the barricades protecting the large 18-foot-tall pro-life display. It was a quiet hour on campus. Most students were in class.
I saw her coming from a block away.
She was with her friend “Michelle,” and they were storming toward me. She locked eyes with me long before she got to me. I could tell from her expression that she was angry. I braced myself.
The Washington Post reports something I’ve noticed in my dialogues with pro-choice people: “Forcing eye contact when trying to change someone’s mind may actually cause listeners to become more stubborn, a new study shows.”
In a persuasive context, people tend to be on the defensive, like when a speaker is addressing an audience or when two people are debating a political issue. According to the study, being forced to stare into the eyes of another person, as opposed to looking elsewhere, can make that person less open-minded.
We are so used to organizations trying to manipulate us that we’re always on the alert in persuasive contexts. I know that I’m in full “skeptic mode” when I see any advertising campaign because so many deceptive commercials have been debunked in the past.
I prefer not to directly face pro-choice people when I’m in a dialogue with them. If I’m directly facing the person I’m talking to, it feels more like an argument than a dialogue. But if I’m standing shoulder-to-shoulder with them or if we’re both angled towards a common object, I tend to have a better dialogue.
A reader asked me for some tips for reaching out to pregnant, abortion-minded women in internet forums, and she gave me permission to share with you my response.
Here’s an edited version of the question that was sent to me. (All names have been changed to protect their privacy.)
I published a listener mail video at the Life Report site that I think is worth highlighting here.
I got a wonderful email from Andres in Santa Barbara who was in a dialogue about abortion and used an analogy about being hooked up to a machine in order to demonstrate that your personhood isn’t based on your dependance. But the person he was talking to retorted, “Are you comparing a woman to a machine?!” Andres wants to know what I would suggest we do to avoid throwing people off when the analogies we use seem, at a surface level, to demean pregnant women.
I recorded the above video with six tips for making clear analogies and responding to people who continue to misinterpret them. Several people requested an article version, so if you don’t want to watch the video, I’ll summarize the six tips below. Ideally you would only need to use the first two or three, but if the problem persists, I have some additional things you can try.