Getty Images A man and woman facing each other outside with greenery in the background (Credit: Getty Images)Getty Images

People will be far more open-minded than you realise if you adopt these simple conversational techniques.

"The growth of knowledge depends entirely upon disagreement," claimed the philosopher Karl Popper. He was writing about the dangers of dogma in science – but his words could equally apply to anyone's worldview. And if you want a disagreement to end by changing someone's mind, you have to do it in the right way.

As I found in my recent book on social connection, new psychological research can help us to have more constructive conversations about controversial issues. 

Some of the strategies surprised me. While some social media users are keen to remind us that "facts don't care about your feelings", studies suggest that people are considerably more likely to listen to our arguments if we talk about our personal experiences of the issues under discussion.

Be curious

One of the main drivers of serious disagreement was apparent in the recent Friendship Study, which comprised a questionnaire I devised with psychologist Ian MacRae, offered to BBC.com readers in July and August of last year. 

In one section, participants were asked to imagine a discussion with someone who disagreed with them about certain political or social issues. Afterwards, each participant was asked about their intentions – whether they aimed to persuade the other person, learn from them, or argue with them – and also their impression of the other person's intentions. Overall, the 1,912 participants overestimated how much other people wanted to persuade them of their point of view, and how much they were looking for an argument. At the same time, they underestimated how much the other person wanted to learn and understand the different opinions.

Alamy In a recent study, participants overestimated how much other people wanted an argument (Credit: Alamy)Alamy
In a recent study, participants overestimated how much other people wanted an argument (Credit: Alamy)

This is worth remembering whenever we find ourselves in a conflict: the other person may be more open to a good-faith discussion than we think, and we should treat them with the respect that entails.

Given that our conversation partner might underestimate our curiosity about their views, we should also make more effort to express our interest in their views. By demonstrating our good intentions to learn and understand, we will encourage them to lower their defences so that they are more open to an honest exchange of ideas.

Often it is as simple as asking the right question. In the late 2000s, Frances Chen and colleagues at Stanford University invited students to engage in an online debate about whether the university should introduce a new set of exams. Unsurprisingly, many students were dead set against the idea. Crucially, they thought they were chatting to their peers, but their debating partners were really the experimenters themselves – who followed very rigid scripts that varied depending on whether the participant was in the experimental group or the control group.

While exchanging opinions, you shouldn't be afraid of sharing your first-hand experience of the issue at hand; indeed, it may just strengthen your argument

In half of the conversations, the experimenters asked the students to elaborate on their views. For example, they might listen to a student's argument and respond: "I was interested in what you're saying. Can you tell me more about how come you think that?" For the other trials, the conversation did not include any request for more information on the participants' beliefs.

It was a tiny change in the script, but the addition of the single question changed the whole tone of the debate by provoking a considerably more open-minded response from the participants. They were more willing to continue the conversation and to receive further information on the other person's arguments, for instance.

We might be a little sceptical of the results from a single experiment, but Guy Itzchakov at the University of Haifa in Israel and his colleagues came to very similar conclusions in a series of studies involving hundreds of participants. Actively asking questions about people's beliefs and the reasons they hold those views leads them to lower their defences, so that they are considerably more receptive to alternative opinions. 

After these kinds of conversations, participants were considerably more likely to agree with statements such as "I feel that I ought to re-evaluate the event now, after the conversation" – suggesting that they had become more thoughtful about the issues that they had discussed.