How to change someone's mind
Post date: 15-Jul-2016 14:52:40
Dave Fleisher lives in Los Angeles and is Director of The Leadership LAB, part of the LA LGBT Center. According to their website, The Leadership LAB "organises and empowers communities to defeat anti-LGBT prejudice locally, on the ground in campaigns across the US, and through hands-on mentorship with activists from around the world".
For many years Dave has been developing a technique of canvassing that is designed to engage with people and allow them to discuss their prejudices and preconceived ideas in a non-threatening way. In doing so, Dave and his team have struck upon a way of changing people's minds on firmly held views on issues related to sexuality. While many interventions are driven by theory, this is an example of where practice, experience and intuition have been the driving forces and resulted in a programme that seems to work.
For more information on this you can listen to the latest episode of the podcast "You are not so smart", titled "Epsiode 80: Deep Canvassing" or read this article in the New York Times.
Broockman, D., & Kalla, J. (2016). Durably reducing transphobia: A field experiment on door-to-door canvassing. Science, 352(6282), 220-224.
