A talk with psychology researcher Matthew Hornsey about group psychology, polarization, and persuasion. Hornsey has been a researcher on over 170 papers, with many of those related to group psychology topics.
Want a transcript of this talk? See the transcript.
Topics discussed in our talk include: why people can believe such different (and sometimes such unreasonable) ideas; persuasive tactics for changing minds (including in polarized dynamics); tactics for reducing us-vs-them animosity; why groups mainly listen to in-group members and will ignore the same ideas from out-group members; the effects of the modern world on political polarization; social media effects, and more.
Episode links:
Here are some resources mentioned in our talk or related to our talk:
- Matthew Hornsey’s professor page
- Hornsey’s paper Deviance and dissent in groups.
- Hornsey’s paper Attitude Roots and Jiu Jitsu Persuasion: Understanding and Overcoming the Motivated Rejection of Science
- The book Rebels in Groups, which Hornsey edited
- My piece on why criticizing one’s own group is important
TRANSCRIPT
(transcript will contain some mistakes)
Zach Elwood: The idea that groups don’t respond well to criticism from outsiders is a theme Matthew Hornsey has explored in his research. His research has delved into the psychological dynamics between groups, and how messages can be persuasive or not depending on whether they come from an in-group member or an out-group member, and what other factors make such messages likely to be persuasive versus ignored or disrespected. So his work is very relevant to anyone interested in reducing us-vs-them polarization, and I think reducing polarization is hugely important not just to the United States, but to the entire world. Because studies have shown that most countries in the world have become more politically polarized since 2005.
A little more about Matthew: he’s published over 170 papers, and in 2018 he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Scientists in Australia. If you like this talk and are interested in group psychology and being more persuasive with your communications, I recommend checking out his papers, which you can find at Google Scholar. I’ll include some links to his work on the entry for this episode at my site behavior-podcast.com.
Okay, here’s the talk with Matthew Hornsey:
Hi Matthew, thanks for coming on the show.
Matthew: Thanks for inviting me.
Zach: So it seems like a major theme of your research is examining why people can believe such different things. Is that an accurate way to put the theme of a lot of your research? And if so, maybe you could talk a bit about why that theme of research interests you.
Matthew: Yeah, I think that’s a pretty close description of the various things I’ve done. If I try and throw a blanket over all my research projects, I sometimes think, “Well, I’m really interested in why people resist apparently reasonable messages.” And I think that — I don’t know if you’ve heard that phrase, quite often researchers gravitate towards things that they’re terrible at. And, you know, historically I think I was pretty terrible at persuasion. I was no good at influencing people. And I sort of lowkey blame my dad for this; when I was a kid my dad used to used to tell me, “Matt, you really don’t have anything to fear about speaking your mind, even if what you have to say is confronting to people. They might get defensive in the short term but if you have right on your side, if you have the facts on your side, then your argument’s going to win out in the end.”
That sounded like a noble and appropriate way to live your life. And so I went into my adulthood and I guess I became quite mouthy and assertive at speaking out because in my mind ‘good arguments win out in the end,’ right? I had nothing to fear. But over time, it became pretty clear that this wasn’t really working out for me. Yes, people were getting defensive. But no, this defensiveness wasn’t going away like my dad had predicted. And also, I wasn’t really changing people’s minds. If anything, other people seemed to be able to change people’s minds better than I could. And so at some point I had to stop and say, “Dad, I love you, but your advice was terrible.” And I had to go back to the drawing board and ask myself that question, “Why is being right not enough?”
And so that started me on this 20-year journey examining the science and the art of persuasion and influence. And I’ve carried that through. I started off looking at why people resist apparently reasonable criticisms of the grip culture, and then I was looking at why people resist reconciliation efforts from outsiders. I also do a lot of stuff about why do people reject conceptual views on science around vaccination, around climate change, etc.
Zach: When it comes to the divergent narratives that we can have about the world and about reality, is that divergence of narratives something that concerns you? Do you see it as one of the existential threats the human race faces; our tendency to get in these highly conflictive divergence of narratives?
Matthew: Well, look. Yes and no. I mean, many of these divergent narratives don’t really harm anyone. People can fight as much as they want about the origin of our species and about evolution versus creationism, but I struggle to see the victim sometimes, other than my internalized sense of scientific honor. And, you know, you’d have to say, “Look, would you wish it away if you had a magic wand and you could create a world where there was no diverging narratives and everyone thought the same thing and there was no conflict around ideas… Would you want that kind of world?” Because that could get a bit cult-like and creepy.
But then one of the reasons I’ve focused on climate change and vaccinations, for example, is that these are core existential threats. We need to know how to respond to a pandemic. And we need to know how to respond to climate change. And scientists are trying to help us there. That’s where I started to get concerned. And you see these schisms and society and cultural wars developing over high-stakes situation that actually we need to be agreeing on.
Zach: Yeah, it seems like there’s different areas in there because there can be differences in opinions or differences of perceptions of issues and various topics, but then you’ve got the highly polarized kind of Us versus Them stances, which are often so emotionally driven. And I guess that was the thing I was more thinking about of these narratives of perceiving the world in an Us versus Them, Good versus Evil way, which then kind of informs various other narratives and topics. That seems to be the real destructive form of divergent narratives. At least that’s what I was thinking about.
Matthew: That’s right. I mean, if I had to create a world, I’ll create a world that allowed people to disagree and to have conflict. But ultimately, I’d like to think that it was with a view to creating consensus. Like, the fighting and the differences of narratives and the conflict is just a painful way of getting to the truth. That’s my preferred mental model of how humanity should work.
Keep reading: For the rest of the transcript, see this post.