The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone's Mind

Berger, Jonah

Introduction

Whether trying to change company culture or get the kids to eat their vegetables, the assumption is that pushing harder will do the trick. That if we just provide more information, more facts, more reasons, more arguments, or just add a little more force, people will change.
Unfortunately, that approach often backfires. Unlike marbles, people don't just roll with it when you try to push them. They push back.
Rather than pushing, they lower the barriers to change.
It's not about pushing harder. And it's not about being more convincing or a better persuader. These tactics might work once in a while, but more often than not they just lead people to up their defenses. Instead, it's about being a catalyst'”changing minds by removing roadblocks and lowering the barriers that keep people from taking action.
Good hostage negotiators take a different tack. They start by listening and building trust. They encourage the suspect to talk through their fears and motivations and who's waiting for them back home. Even talking about pets in the middle of a tense stand-off, if that is what's required.
Because the hostage negotiators' aim is to ease the pressure, rather than banging down the door. Gradually lowering the suspect's fear, uncertainty, and hostility, until they look at their situation and realize that the best option is likely the one that seemed unthinkable at the start: coming out with their hands up.
Because rather than asking what might convince someone to change, catalysts start with a more basic question: Why hasn't that person changed already? What is blocking them?
That's what this book is all about: how to overcome inertia, incite action, and change minds'”not by being more persuasive, or pushing harder, but by being a catalyst. By removing the barriers to change.

Principle 1: Reactance

When pushed, people push back.
To lower this barrier, catalysts encourage people to persuade themselves.
tactical empathy.

Principle 2: Endowment

unless what they're doing is terrible, they don't want to switch.
why the upsides need to be 2.6 times larger than the downsides to get people to take action,

Principle 3: Distance

If new information is within people's zone of acceptance, they're willing to listen. But if it is too far away, in the region of rejection, everything flips.

Principle 4: Uncertainty

To overcome this barrier, catalysts make things easier to try.
reducing risk by letting people experience things for themselves.
lenient return policies increase profits, why

Principle 5: Corroborating Evidence

Reactance, Endowment, Distance, Uncertainty, and Corroborating Evidence can be called the five horsemen of inertia. Five key roadblocks that hinder or inhibit change.
These five ways to be a catalyst can be organized into an acronym. Catalysts reduce Reactance, ease Endowment, shrink Distance, alleviate Uncertainty, and find Corroborating Evidence. Taken together, that forms an acronym, REDUCE. Which is exactly what great catalysts do. They REDUCE roadblocks. They change minds and incite action by reducing barriers to change.
Chapter 1: Reactance
Warnings Become Recommendations
People have a need for freedom and autonomy. To feel that their lives and actions are within their personal control. That, rather than driven by randomness, or subject to the whims of others, they get to choose.
Doing the forbidden thing becomes an easy way to reassert their sense of being in the driver's seat.8
Restriction generates a psychological phenomenon called reactance. An unpleasant state that occurs when people feel their freedom is lost or threatened. And reactance happens even when asking people to do something rather than telling them not to.
In the absence of persuasion, people think they are doing what they want.
to reestablish a sense of autonomy, people often react against persuasion. They do the opposite of whatever is being requested.I
people have anti-persuasion radar. An innate anti-influence system that shields them from being swayed. They're constantly scanning the environment for influence attempts, and when they detect one, they deploy a set of countermeasures.10 Responses that help them avoid being persuaded.
To avoid reactance and the persuasion radar, then, catalysts allow for agency. They stop trying to persuade and instead get people to persuade themselves.
Take one of the first 'truth' ads that ran soon after. Two regular teens, sitting in their regular-looking living room, call a magazine executive to ask why the publication accepted tobacco advertising, given they have a youth readership.
The ad didn't demand anything from teens. There was no message at the end telling them not to smoke, what to do, or what would or wouldn't make them cool.
In just a few months, the 'truth campaign,' as the program came to be known, led more than 30,000 Florida teens to quit smoking.11 Within a couple years it cut teen smoking rates in half. It was the most effective large-scale prevention program. Ever.
The truth campaign got teens to stop smoking because it didn't tell them to stop smoking.
To reduce reactance, catalysts allow for agency'”not by telling people what to do or by being completely hands-off, but by finding the middle ground. By guiding their path. Four key ways to do that are: (1) Provide a menu, (2) ask, don't tell, (3) highlight a gap, and (4) start with understanding.
Guided choices like these let children retain a sense of freedom and control while helping parents reach their desired outcomes.
makes them feel like they have more of an active role in the process14'”
Try to convince people to do something, and they spend a lot of time counterarguing. Thinking about all the various reasons why it's a bad idea or why something else would be better. Why they don't want to do what was suggested.
But give people multiple options, and suddenly things shift.
Rather than thinking about what is wrong with whatever was suggested, they think about which one is better.
Another way to allow for agency is to ask questions rather than make statements.
Questions do a couple things. First, like providing a menu, questions shift the listener's role. Rather than counterarguing or thinking about all the reasons they disagree with a statement, listeners are occupied with a different task: figuring out an answer to the question. How they feel about it or their opinion. Something most people are more than happy to do.
people may not want to follow someone else's lead, they're much more likely to follow their own. The answer to the question isn't just any answer; it's their answer.
start by asking questions. Visiting with stakeholders, getting their perspectives, and engaging them in the planning process.
Giving people a menu, or asking rather than telling, avoids usurping their sense of control. But another route to self-persuasion is to highlight a gap'”a disconnect between someone's thoughts and actions or a disparity between what they might recommend for others versus do themselves.
They realized that the most convincing speaker wasn't the foundation or celebrities; it was the smokers themselves. To really quit, people had to convince themselves. The foundation designed the Smoking Kid campaign with that insight in mind.
The Smoking Kid campaign worked because it highlighted a gap, a disconnect between what smokers were suggesting to others (kids) and what they were doing themselves.
Highlighting the gap between students' attitudes and actions drastically reduced water use.
Before people will change, they have to be willing to listen. They have to trust the person they're communicating with. And until that happens, no amount of persuasion is going to work.
Consequently, seasoned negotiators don't start with what they want; they start with whom they want to change.
Working to gain insight into where that person is coming from. Comprehending and appreciating that person's situation, feelings, and motives, and showing them that someone else understands.
bridge. By letting the person talk, without judgment and without inserting himself, he starts forming a relationship.
So-called tactical empathy helps negotiators understand what the underlying issue really is: why a suspect is upset or what they need. By staying in the person's frame and making it about them, smart negotiators both build connection and lay the groundwork for influence.
Because when people feel like someone is truly listening and cares about their well-being, a sense of trust begins to form.
Inclusive pronouns create a world where Greg is going to help and protect the person as much as he can, but the person needs to help him do that.
paraphrasing and mirroring.
listening and reframing
to stop trying to persuade, and encourage people to persuade themselves.
Chapter 2: Endowment

Even though the new thing is technically better, people still cling to the old. They follow the same processes and maintain the same courses of action. And while it's easy to attribute this to nostalgia, something subtler is at play.
The status quo bias is everywhere. People tend to eat the same foods they've always eaten, buy the same brands they've always bought, and donate to the same causes they've always supported.
Chance of losing $? The potential win has to be at least $ before most people will take that bet.
if the potential gains barely outweigh the potential losses, they don't budge.
A new approach can't just be slightly more effective; it has to be significantly more effective.
switching costs. The financial, psychological, or procedural (e.g., time and effort) impediments to switching products and services, but also suppliers, doctors, payment systems, routes to work, or basically anything.
If a product or service fails completely, people go out and find a new one. But if it repeatedly underperforms just slightly, there's not as much impetus to change.
when things aren't terrible, or are just okay but not great, it's harder to get people to budge. If the old thing wasn't that bad to begin with, why go to the trouble and incur the costs of doing something new?
To overcome endowment, then, we need to help people realize the cost of doing nothing'”that, rather than being safe or costless, sticking with the status quo actually has a downside.
if changing means costs now and benefits later, they do nothing.
Business author Jim Collins once said that 'good is the enemy of great'¦ We don't have great schools, principally because we have good schools.
while doing nothing often seems costless, it's often not as costless as it seems. The status quo may be fine'” decent, even. But compared to something better, it's worse. And although the difference may seem small, or even inconsequential, added up over time, it becomes quite large. So, to change minds and ease endowment, catalysts surface the cost of inaction. They make it easier for people to see the difference between what they are doing now and what they could be doing.
highlight how much people are losing by doing nothing.
Surfacing the costs of inaction encourages the realization that doing nothing isn't costless. But when endowment is really strong, sometimes change requires going one step further. And those situations may warrant burning the ships.
less drastic versions can be applied to a broad set of situations in which people are stuck on the status quo. Not completely taking the old option off the table, but making people realize and bear more of its true costs.
sometimes inaction needs to be taken off the table. Or at least no longer subsidized.
Catalyzing change isn't just about making people more comfortable with new things; it's about helping them let go of old ones.
Reactance and endowment are two important barriers that prevent change. But to understand why information often fails to shift people's position, we have to appreciate the importance of distance.
Chapter 3: Distance

Exposure to opposing views did change minds, but in the opposite direction. Rather than becoming more liberal, Republicans exposed to liberal information became more conservative, developing more extreme attitudes toward social policies. Liberals showed similar effects. Democrats who followed a conservative account became more liberal, not less.
When trying to change minds, we hope that evidence will work. That giving people facts, figures, and other information will encourage them to move in our direction.
Unfortunately, that doesn't always happen.
Rather than changing false beliefs, exposure to the truth often increased misperceptions. Giving people correct information made
When dealing with issues that people feel strongly about, start by finding the movable middle. Individuals who, by virtue of their existing positions, are more likely to shift because they're not so far away to begin with.
In a business context, consumers who've complained about a competitor on social media.
Trying to get a new product to take off? Rather than trying to convince everyone how great it is, find the subgroup that already needs it.
without. Rather than going after anyone, catalysts start by finding the people who see their offering as a painkiller.
Trying to change minds in a meeting? Start with the people whose position is closest to begin with.
Having a tough time changing someone's mind? Try asking for less rather than pushing for more. Dial down the size of the initial request so that it falls within the zone of acceptance.
Rather than just asking for less, then, it's really about chunking the change. Breaking big asks into smaller, more manageable chunks.
Asking for less shrinks the distance. It provides a stepping-stone. And in so doing, it makes that final ask ever closer and ever more reachable.
But when someone is really dug in, there is one more technique that is often useful. And that is to switch the field. Find a dimension where there's already agreement and use that as a pivot point.
find a parallel situation from their own experience.
Deep canvassing works because it switches the field. Rather than starting with the contentious issue, or the field on which people are far apart, it finds a dimension where people are closer together. Where they agree rather than disagree. An unsticking point.
But deep canvassing changes the conversation. It's no longer an abstract debate about how someone thinks they should feel. It's not even about transgender rights. At least, not directly. Instead, it's about love and adversity. About caring. Or about how it feels to be ostracized. To be judged negatively or discriminated against for being different. Something anyone can relate to, regardless of how they feel about this particular issue. Chapter 4: Uncertainty
Scientists haven't run this exact experiment, but they've run dozens if not hundreds like it. Give people a choice between a certain, good thing and an uncertain but potentially better thing and see what they pick.
people are risk averse.
like knowing what they are getting, and as long as what they are getting is positive, they prefer sure things to risky ones.I Even if the risky choice is better, on average.
Change almost always involves some degree of uncertainty.
rather than moving ahead and doing something new, uncertainty makes people wait and stick with whatever they have always been doing. At least until that uncertainty resolves. If it ever does.
The easier it is to try something, the more people will use it, and the faster it catches on. Drug treatment programs that participated in
When it launched free shipping, Zappos got a lot of pushback. No one thought it would succeed, and it was an expensive gambit. But it worked because it removed the main barrier to purchase. It reduced uncertainty.
Beyond Zappos, though, free shipping was the catalyst that made e-commerce into the behemoth it is today: Just think about Amazon Prime. Success came not from dropping prices, or devising a clever slogan, but by removing the roadblock that was hindering change.
[The Acura / W Hotel Campaign] changed minds by driving discovery. Because if people don't know something exists, or don't think they'll like it, they're unlikely to go looking to try it.
Just like reducing up-front costs, shrinking back-end friction encourages action. Like free shipping and free trials, lenient return policies help change minds because they reduce people's hesitation about trying something new. Knowing you can return something anytime helps de-risk the process and makes people more comfortable taking action.
Indeed, giving people more time to return things can actually make returns less likely.