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Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
Colin Marshall 0:00
Persuasion is kind of a bad name. Like, if you pull up a lot of books about persuasion, if you go like on Amazon and look at the covers, you see a lot of like marionette pictures or like puppetry, like all the stuff that feels sneaky and like morally slimy. And so, of course, good people, like I don't want to do any of that stuff. I'm not a creep.
PJ Wehry 0:25
Hello and welcome to Chasing Leviathan. I'm your host PJ Weary, and I'm here today with Dr. Colin Marshall, professor of philosophy at the University of Washington, and we're here to talk about his book coming out this September. Just hear me out: How to change minds without lies, bullshit, or moral compromise, Doctor Marshall. Wonderful to have you on today.
Colin Marshall 0:46
Thank you so much for having me. It's a treat.
PJ Wehry 0:49
So, Doctor Marshall, why this book? I mean, this one. I think most people they see this title and they're like, "I need to know how to do that. And I did appreciate you're like, I'm going to assume that you actually are on the right side when you're trying to persuade people, right? But I think in our current climate, people immediately see the reason for this book. But if you could lay that out for us, and maybe how you came to study and write about this,
Colin Marshall 1:17
yeah, totally. I think the thing that really got me going was the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Like for a lot of people, it was really revealing. Where I thought a whole bunch of us in America were on the same side of things, and then realized, whoa, we're really in very different headspaces here. And that kind of got me knocked out of this vein of philosophy I'd been doing before, which was very much sort of pure theory and trying to figure out really subtle problems, and started figuring, trying to figure out like any of this theoretical stuff actually be useful given what we're sort of up against. And the thing that got me going on persuasion, especially, was realizing that there were a lot of morally good people out there who weren't trying to persuade anybody, and I was like, "That's interesting. Why are good people reluctant to try to change other people's minds? And after fishing around, came up. There's like a couple different reasons. One, and this kind of came from my wife the first time I mentioned this to her. It's like there's something a little bit off about trying to persuade someone. Seems sort of presumptuous or kind of obnoxious, and I get that. There is like a worry that you can just go in and be talking at someone and just be kind of a jerk. And then there's this other worry that you know, persuasion has kind of a bad name. Like, if you pull up a lot of books about persuasion, if you go like on Amazon and look at the covers, you see a lot of like marionette pictures or like puppetry, like all the stuff that feels sneaky and like morally slimy. And so, of course, good people like I don't want to do any of that stuff. I'm not a creep. creep, so that kind of got me worried, and I had the sense that there's there's got to be like there's success stories. There's people who have done it who have changed other people's minds, and they don't seem creepy. They don't seem like jerks. There's got to be some way this makes sense. So that kind of got me digging into some social psychology and some ethics and trying to figure out what what is there some sort of recipe here for doing it, and then I started finding some really cool examples that were inspiring, and I started teaching a class on it, and sort of sent my students out into the field, like go try it, try be respectful, and try changing people's minds about really divisive stuff, and some stuff worked, and sometimes it didn't. But you know, when it didn't, there were patterns and seeing why not. And then the book kind of came out of that process of trying to figure out what worked and what didn't, and then putting myself on the line, doing a good amount of political phone banking, which is a you know really great test of persuasive stuff, and you know, like ran into some walls there. But then eventually, I started like once I kind of got into the right rhythm, I was like, "Oh yeah, people do respond to being treated well. Lots of people want like they can tell if you are being genuine with them, if you're really engaging, if you like care about them even a little bit, even as a stranger. People respond to that. Solves and I started becoming kind of optimistic about all this.
PJ Wehry 4:32
Yes, and so and for this is coming out of your theoretical side, you kind of pair that beginning of respect and compassion with Kant and Schopenhauer,
Colin Marshall 4:44
yeah.
PJ Wehry 4:44
Which I'm assuming is the theoretical, the fine tuning stuff you're doing earlier. How did you find that helpful in writing the book?
Colin Marshall 4:54
Yeah, I started my job as a scholar of German philosophy. That was my kind. Thing and I just I just like that era of philosophy. There's lots of cool ideas in play and like very different approaches to morality and reality and politics and so yeah I'd had Kant and Schopenhauer in my head. You know Kant is like mr. Respect. He's like the model of you're a rational being, I'm a rational being. Let's deal like respectfully with each other. And Schopenhauer is this very different character who believes it's fundamentally about compassion. Rationality isn't that important, really. We need to treat other people with compassion. And I kind of had both of them nagging at me as I was thinking about this. That I was finding people who would pull off some persuasion, and they would be talking about respect, or they'd be talking about compassion. And I realized, yeah, you kind of, you kind of need both of these. If you if you're just respectful, that can work sometimes, but you're missing something. And if you're just treating with people with compassion, that can be work sometimes, but you're also missing something. So yeah, those two characters in my head kind of came together and like meshed with the real world, and I started realizing there's there is kind of a coherent approach here that actually that actually can kind of work.
PJ Wehry 6:16
How so? You have kind of the respect approach and the compassion approach. How do you hold those at the same time when you're trying to persuade someone? What does that look like to have those two together?
Colin Marshall 6:28
Yeah, it's it's hard, and one of the reasons I think why lots of good people are reluctant to try to persuade is is exactly that, like holding on to the respect side and the compassion side at the same time is tricky. If you're just compassionate, someone can tell you're not taking them seriously. That you're just being like overly nice or treating them with kid gloves, and people will bristle at that. And if you're all about respect and you're like arguments and you're asking for their arguments and their evidence, you can be a little bit of a jerk. So. it's hard. So the when people pull it off, it looks like it. It you need the right context, and sometimes you have to create that context. A simple example is it's really hard to respectfully persuade somebody at the Thanksgiving table because like there's all sorts of stuff going on, and so thinking about how do I engage with you, how do I have a serious argument with you, and how do I not make you feel attacked at the same time? That's hard to do when there's food going around and there's all sorts of family dynamics. But if you take that same person and you say, "I'd actually like to hash this out with you sometime, could we like go get coffee? Could we go get a beer? Could we talk on some time? That can actually work, and that has worked. Like I've tried it, my students have tried it. You just you get it to a place where you can actually pay attention to a little more stuff, and you can have that respect piece and the compassion piece.
PJ Wehry 8:03
Some of that is like, especially the Thanksgiving example. The conflicting purposes. Most people, when they come to Thanksgiving, well, obviously this happens a lot. It's it's kind of a trope, right? So there are people who come to Thanksgiving with the desire to persuade people, and then there are people who come to Thanksgiving, and they're just excited to see their family. Yeah, and they, it's a you know, it's like, and that those two are not going to play play well. Like you can even see that play out where people are literally like, "Can we just not? And it's like we are just sitting as a family. We're just talking, and it's like, no, we're not. You know, like
Colin Marshall 8:38
right, right, right.
PJ Wehry 8:39
And that's you could just see the, and some of that depends so much on family makeup too. What are some besides the Thanksgiving pushing it aside? And I do want to talk about the attention-friendly context because I think that's an incredible. That's a very useful thing to highlight. What are you mentioned earlier? What are some keystone examples of persuasion that really informed the way you wrote this book, like so. You were like, "Oh, that was like that's what persuasion should look like.
Colin Marshall 9:09
Yeah, one was this musician named Daryl Davis, who's he's been in the news occasionally. He's a he's a black RMB and blues pianist who has this incredible record of persuading people to leave the KKK. There was a documentary came out about him a couple years ago. He's written a fair amount, and over and over when he talks about how it works, he talks about respect. Like I treat these people with respect, and you can see some recordings of him with you know people in the clan, and he just like sits down and he has a serious conversation with people, and it's amazing how effective it is. And when he started doing, like he almost got shot, you know, he's put himself in extremely dangerous positions, but people. Klan members have responded to him, and he now has a collection of robes from former KKK members who have left extremist movements, like because of conversations with him. So he's amazing. Following him, I was able to to talk to him a little bit to get some some more stories. That that made a big impact. Another example is going back further. Jane Addams, who was the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, she was sort of one of the founders of social work in the country, and she was a really powerful advocate for women's suffrage. So she wrote this. I got tuned into this really amazing essay she wrote. Why women should vote, defending women, right to vote. And what was really incredible about it was, yes, it was respectful. She was making real arguments. She wasn't trying to trick anybody, but she also showed real compassion for the people who disagreed with her. She wasn't belittling them. She wasn't treating them as the enemy. There was this real sense of like she actually kind of cared about where they were coming from and could sympathize a little bit. It was willing to work with them. So that was really cool, and then a few others. But the third I'll mention now is the case of Megan Phelps Roper, who was in the Westboro Baptist Church. It's an extremist group known for protesting soldiers' funerals. And what was amazing about Phelps Roper is she grew up in the church, totally steeped in this ideology? They believe they were the only true Christians. That like everyone else was going to burn in hell. From the crib, she's raised in this. She spends lots of time at protests. You know, people are yelling at them, throwing bottles at them. You know, they accept all of it. She actually gets persuaded to abandon the Westboro Baptist Church, and she does so largely over Twitter, which we think like nobody's persuaded over social media, and yet she actually was. She actually had her mind changed largely because of conversations with a couple people over Twitter. One was an Orthodox Jew, the other was a guy who she eventually ended up marrying, and they just like they never pretended that they agreed with her, but it was persistent. It was charitable. It was like, no, I think you're wrong. You're kind of funny, but you're wrong. Here's why. And eventually, like it clicked, and she was like, "Wait, this doesn't. No, we're not loving our neighbor. I thought we were loving our. This that's not actually what we're doing here. And it took a long time, but eventually she was persuaded, and she left. And it was a whole thing. It was really hard. She wrote an amazing book. It's called Unfollow. I found really eye opening. And on her account, she emphasizes like, no, you need to make the argument. You know, when people are wrong, like talk to them honestly, make the argument to them. And so that case also, alongside Daryl Davis and Jane Addams, I was like, yeah, there's a common theme running through this.
PJ Wehry 13:17
Now I'm curious because you mentioned the respect piece with Daryl Davis, but when we did, you see anything about of compassion in there, and what did that look like from Daryl Davis to a Klan member?
Colin Marshall 13:34
It's in there. Davis is not as explicit about it, but I think that the way the way it manifests is, I think for him when he's engaging with someone, and when it was when it was first ones with this this clan leader named Roger Kelly, when he approached him, he says he did it out of a spirit of curiosity. Like, how can you hate me because of the color of my skin? And I actually think that element of curiosity, which you know, comes up in some other discussions of persuasion. There's a way in which being curious about someone is in the direction of compassion, like it's not an oppositional thing. It's kind of I'm trying to sort of tune in to where you're at, and I think that's there in Davis too. Even though he doesn't talk as much about compassion as about respect,
PJ Wehry 14:36
and is this part of why it's it's good? And I'm just trying to figure this out-that you have two poles because different contexts demand kind of weighing that out differently.
Colin Marshall 14:52
I think it's important in both contexts, but we're more likely to miss one poll in some contexts than in others. So, with say talking about parenthood, like with young kids-not really young kids, but say preschoolers-it's really easy to be, for me at least, to lapse into one of those or another. Like either I'm talking to you, and you know this is respectful, and I'm explaining to you. Well, this is not appropriate behavior, and you know I'm not showing compassion, and so of course it's not going to work because I'm like trying to have a rational discussion with a preschooler who's having a meltdown. Really, I need more compassion in this situation, or with my kids. I've gotten it wrong the other way, where they're trying to talk to me about something, and I'm like, "Sweetie, you're hungry, and they blow up. They're like, "No, I'm not just hungry. Like, there's a problem here, and I want to talk to you about it. Dude, that's with kids, but I think that same thing can play out with with grownups too.
PJ Wehry 15:57
And for respect, is it just about? It's not just giving it; it's also demanding it in some in some way. Or am I am I correct in in saying that
Colin Marshall 16:07
demanding might be a little
PJ Wehry 16:10
encouraging?
Colin Marshall 16:11
Yeah, yeah. There is an element of self respect where, like everyone deserves to be taken seriously by other people, and if other people aren't taking you seriously, that changes the moral landscape. And especially if they're not taking you seriously and you're in danger, then I think the moral pressure to be respectful in turn
PJ Wehry 16:37
is off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's where we talk about disengagement, right? That's the
Colin Marshall 16:41
yeah, yeah. Sometimes you're like, I'm out, or you just you start faking it. You start pretending like you're being respectful, but actually you're working them psychologically to to save yourself or take care of people you love.
PJ Wehry 17:00
But if it's if it's kind of low grade, calling it out that sort of thing, being like, "Hey, I you know I thought we were having a respectful discussion, or you know, and there's different ways of saying it, depending on the context,
Colin Marshall 17:11
right, right, yeah, self respect matters, and it's easier for some. Yeah, one thing I want to say in all this is maintaining self-respect is a whole lot easier for some people than others. Like if you're in a position, you're in some context where people just don't take you seriously, whether it's because of your, you know, race or gender or religious identity or whatever. Like that self-respect piece, you can feel the pressure, and that just makes it harder to pay attention to other ethical things, and that might be also a time when you need to shift context and be like, okay, this isn't this isn't working right here.
PJ Wehry 17:52
And that almost seems like its own kind of capacity, in the same way that being able to articulate arguments, articulation, logic, but there's also charisma. Might be too too strong of a word, but that the ability to exude self confidence is like that's a big part of what makes someone a good persuader. Okay,
Colin Marshall 18:15
and it doesn't have to be it doesn't have to be Daryl Davis level, like Daryl Davis's level confidence is almost superhuman.
PJ Wehry 18:26
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Colin Marshall 18:28
But it can be enough. So there's this recording of mr. Rogers testifying for Congress. This is, you know, everyone should look it up. It's it's worth a watch. And he basically manages to persuade Senate committee to keep funding public television, and he's clearly nervous when he goes in. Like you can tell, he's not a big guy. There's like a big congressional committee. He's getting grumpy vibes. He's like shaking a little bit, almost. But you can see that when he starts talking about children's emotional needs, like he knows he knows what he's talking about, and like that, it just like resonates. You can just see like, oh wait, all these like senators are watching him, and they're like, wait, wait, this guy actually is. He knows something about what he's doing, and that amount of confidence on the key point that really matters, and he stays focused on that. That can be enough to just totally shift things.
PJ Wehry 19:28
And so, there's this interesting, especially mr. Rogers and what he's really good at.
Colin Marshall 19:35
Yeah,
PJ Wehry 19:35
we've you kind of mentioned it earlier with the marionette thing. What is the difference between manipulation and persuasion.
Colin Marshall 19:46
Yeah, this is one of the great philosophical questions because clearly a lot of persuasive stuff is manipulative. So I think we can say like lots of manipulation does try to persuade someone. And so, I the type of persuasion that I'm interested in, I call civil persuasion. That's just like a label for the the type of persuasion where you're not trying any tricks. You're taking the other person seriously, treating with respect and compassion. Manipulative persuasion, I think, part of it is you're not taking the other person fully seriously, you might be looking at them as like an obstacle. Like, okay, you're in my way. How can I maneuver you to get what I want? And the you know the term manipulation comes from the Latin manus, like hand. Like it's very like the the marionette metaphor works really well because it's like I'm going to move your psychology to get you where I want you to be, and it's not generally through offering you what I believe is good evidence or arguments. It's by I'm going to do whatever it takes to move you over here, and maybe it'll be good evidence and arguments, or maybe it's bullshit, and but whatever. Like my my aim is to like move you here. So I think of manipulation as it's really about coming at someone with a game plan to how to work them, as opposed to maybe I want to change your mind, but you're a whole old person, and I'll give you what I believe for good reasons, and I should be open to you telling me that they're not as good as I think they are.
PJ Wehry 21:26
I want to make sure I'm I'm tracking with you here. Would a would another way of saying that be that you the difference between persuasion in the good sense because it could kind of cover the manipulative sense. But let's let's for the sake of the argument, split those two. Yes, the in one you're trying to make the other person aware of the change, and you're very comfortable them being aware of what you're doing and why you're doing it. Versus the other one, you are trying to hide the purpose of the conversation, and you're trying to hide how you're doing it. Would that be?
Colin Marshall 22:04
That covers a lot of it. In a lot, yeah, a lot of cases of manipulation are sneaky, but there's some really good manipulators can tell you they're manipulating you and still pull it off. So, like the one example is like the anchoring effect. So if I'm trying to, you know, if I'm lowballing you on a price or something,
PJ Wehry 22:28
yeah, it still
Colin Marshall 22:29
work. You still just give someone a low, like really low price. You say, "I'm I'm going to work you on this one. Here's my starting offer, and I know it's working my psychology, but some of these things will still go through it.
PJ Wehry 22:44
I I think part of it is wanting to accept it as their own, and this goes back to the compassion piece that you want them yet they should be happy with the result, right? Like not exactly yeah yeah yeah I okay yeah yeah that's that's helpful, which it's it's interesting to me because one of the things that kind of shows up, and this goes back to Mister Rogers, is, and I'm having my kids watch. Are you familiar with Vin Zhang? He's he teaches people how to communicate.
Colin Marshall 23:15
No, I don't think so.
PJ Wehry 23:17
So he he's very much into the mechanics of it and talking about what do different types of speaking do to people, right? And so one of the things that shows up, and I think one of the reasons that mr. Rogers is a great example of persuasion is the way that he talks, which is very quiet and it's very slow, which goes very directly to, and this is why he works for kids. It goes very directly towards your attention creating, attention friendly context, right? Versus my kids, and we've had an ongoing thing about this. And for the most part, we just we save it for special occasions. They love to watch Minecraft videos, and my 13 year old daughter was sitting there, and she was doing something, and she's like, "It's literally giving me a headache because it's all up here, and they're talking this fast the whole time, and it's like this, and it's they're not bringing someone along; they're pushing the person. If that, and so it could show up even in it, it becomes an embodied thing. This sort of curiosity and compassion and respect versus oh, like if I talk fast enough, I can just go over you, and then I I'll have a takedown and I'll win because you just can't get a word in edgewise.
Colin Marshall 24:32
Exactly, yeah. And I've learned this is a problem in competitive debate where you know debate is often scored by how many unanswered arguments have you made, and so debaters will sometimes go just lightning fast, like pack them all in, and that's cool. That's part of the game for debate. You know, it's an admirable skill, but if you're actually trying to change someone's mind for good reasons, you don't just blast them with arguments. You try to make a good point and make it in a way where they can actually chew it over and assess it and accept it only if it really does make sense to them.
PJ Wehry 25:09
So, and I think this leads just kind of into the attention-friendly context. And I think this is-I mean, I really have enjoyed looking at the book, but this one was the probably the most helpful immediate kind of checklist thing was was creating an attention friendly context, and I think this partly is because I'm the kind of person who's always willing to have these conversations, and so I'm like, I most of the time I'll ask people just straight up like, do you want to talk about this anymore, or like, or I'm paying very careful attention, like, oh, I think I think they're done, right? But just having that as a a flag is really helpful. Can you talk about where you saw that and what how you developed that and how that plays out? Yeah, you've already given this a great example with, hey, can we go grab coffee? But are there other ways of using that attention friendly context kind of checklist point?
Colin Marshall 26:00
Yeah, I I got clued into this when I was looking at some of the social psychology literature around persuasion, and there one of the big things they talk about is whether a given. If you want to know will this persuasive technique work, one of the first questions to ask is well, how much attention are people paying to the message? Because the very same persuasive technique that will work if someone doesn't have much attention will totally fall apart if they've got a lot. So, for example, if someone's not really paying attention and you just get as many arguments in as you can, someone might be like, "I wasn't following, but man, that's a lot of arguments. I guess that's there's probably something to it. But if someone can actually check through each argument and they don't make sense, then the sheer number of arguments doesn't do anything. They might even get suspicious. If wait, there's another eight arguments, and I checked three already, and those weren't any good.
PJ Wehry 26:58
Yeah.
Colin Marshall 26:59
So there's a whole bunch of experiments where they've played with different ways that people's attention can be shaped, and and over and over this thing of attention just kept coming up. So I was like, okay, this seems really big. Ethicists don't talk about it a whole lot, but I think this is really huge, and it also helped me understand the Megan Phelps Roper case because. she was getting opposition to her views when she was out, like picketing funerals and stuff, but none of that changed her mind. People had signs, people were yelling at her. It didn't do anything, but somehow these Twitter messages she was getting did, and there were lots of people just telling her to, you know, that she was a horrible person, and you know, like that stuff didn't do it. But the people who were treating her decently, these were messages she could actually sit down and read and think about, because it wasn't coming at her when she was out protesting. And then she talks about how the messages got in her head, but it was only later she was helping her sister paint a basement, and that was when it actually clicked. So she needed, you know, getting the messages on Twitter when she could read them in her own time, not out when people are yelling at her, that was the first step, and then she just needed time and an opportunity to have a little bit of headspace to let stuff roll around in the back of her head, and then it clicked. And I realized that's true for me too. Every time I've changed my mind about something, there was a first stage of getting the idea in there, and then I needed time for it to roll around and click. And sometimes that took years. Sometimes it wasn't. Sometimes it was like the next day. But it just really rang true. And I also, and then once I started looking around at, you know, why are people like messing up when they get to persuasion? A lot of it's they're trying to rush. They're trying to like pack. Like I've got my big argument. I'm going to try to pack it in. You know, give it all to you right now. Like I'm guilty of this. I can be a fast talker, but it doesn't work if you try to rush and pack in more than a person actually has attention for. So yeah, inviting someone out to coffee-that's a big one. It's one I do a lot now. Like if I there's a real disagreement with someone, like okay, try to find a time to meet up. Maybe it's coffee. Maybe it's a beer. Maybe it's just like let's go for a walk. Writing can help. I mean, if someone is into like just like, let's actually, can you write down what you actually think about this? You know, sometimes old-fashioned like email or even you know handwritten letters. If anyone's still up for that kind of thing, that could be a chance to just slow things down, lay out your point, give the. Person a real chance to respond,
PJ Wehry 30:02
and I think. Are you talking about you writing to the other person or the other person writing to you?
Colin Marshall 30:07
Ideally, both.
PJ Wehry 30:09
Yeah,
Colin Marshall 30:10
yeah. Because I think if
PJ Wehry 30:11
forcing people to put stuff on paper is a great way to get them to change their minds, because it's a lot different to see. Anyways, sorry, continue. Yeah, yeah. I
Colin Marshall 30:21
just had, you know, I'm on this like faculty email list where people argue all the time. Often it's unproductive, but I've kind of gotten into it because I believe it. Like if I reach out to someone, someone made a smart, a snarky comment on like something I posted, and so this was yesterday. I followed up. I was like, "Hey, could you expand on this? Not sure I understand. And then he did, and he sent me like a whole thing. And he wasn't he wasn't obnoxious about it. And I actually thought he made a couple good points. And so I said, "Okay, I think you're right about a couple things. Here's the thing that I'm not, you know, I don't think it's right in what you said. What do you think about that? And then he wrote back this morning. Was like, actually, I think you're right too.
PJ Wehry 31:05
Yeah, which and yeah, and you're doing something very powerful in this book. But one of the things that's and there's so many books around this kind of topic. One, it is getting you also making sure that your vocabulary. You know what I mean? You're not talking about like actual argumentative argumentative techniques in here, right? Or debating techniques. So like, that's the attention. That's what you need because a lot of these there are substantive disagreements, and there's semantic disagreements, and it's like, oh, maybe we agreed. I don't know. In this case, you know, it's like maybe we actually agreed more than I thought, right? Or yeah. Anyways, I don't want to speak to to too much to what you just just said because I don't know what happened. But
Colin Marshall 31:53
I mean, in this case, it was a difference of it was a difference of emphasis. Like, yes, I was complaining about sort of a structural feature of the university, he thought I was complaining about the particular people in leadership, whereas I actually think the particular people in leadership are doing okay job. They're just part of a structure that's doing some things that I don't think are good. And once we had time to sort that out, we realized we actually agree on the same stuff. And maybe I persuaded him a little bit that like the structure was some problems, and maybe he persuaded me a little bit that some of the people in charge are not maybe even a little better than I had estimated. Yeah,
PJ Wehry 32:30
and there sometimes in life you can have like it can be very lopsided, like the relationship can be very one sided. But most of the time, that's not. I mean, examples are going to be like parenting. Like most of the time, you're going to be right. Not always, right? Every parents had that moment too. But so it's important, and you know, you talked about the curiosity and the openness to learning and changing yourself is that's an important part of the respect. Yeah,
Colin Marshall 33:00
yeah, and all this in a way, like we all know this. I think almost any grown up in any grown up who interacts with other people knows these things on some level, and so this is part of why the I think the intention part is so important is because there's all these things that sound good when we look at them directly, but being in a place where we can keep track of all the important pieces and not let you know let the self-respect fall off, or let the compassion fall off, or forget that the other person is busy and they don't actually have that much bandwidth now. Like that's where I think trying to be philosophical about it and trying to sort of look at the overall structure can help,
PJ Wehry 33:42
and that's where I think some of the interesting things you said about the alternatives. It's not that coercion is automatically wrong. There are moments for coercion, and a lot of it comes down to can you create how much time do you have? Because persuasion is a long game. So parenting is a good example. I think that most people immediately agree with. It's like if your kid's running out into the street, like it is a form of coercion to go out, pick them up, and pull them off the street, right? Like I'm not gonna, yeah. Or even from a a vocal yelling at that point, you know, get out of the street, especially if a car's coming. That's that's like, oh, your voice is coercive. It's like, well, that's that's the moment for it. Yes, but a big part of what you've done in the book is kind of this triage of like, okay, is this a is this a coercion point or is this a persuasion point? And people get those two confused, which is where you get the kind of raising your voice and and those sorts of things. Would you address with the respect and everything? Am I tracking with you there?
Colin Marshall 34:44
Totally, yeah. And like, I don't think we should always be trying to persuade each other.
PJ Wehry 34:49
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Colin Marshall 34:51
No, there's times when we should like some of the most inspiring stuff out there is about people who don't try to persuade each other, who just sit down, listen. To each other's perspective, and then shake hands or high five or whatever, and then leave it with a better understanding of each other, and that could be great. That's that's totally fine and admirable. Sometimes you need to manipulate and coerce people to keep them safe, to keep yourself safe. Like that could be totally fine. Sometimes it's just better not to engage at all. Like all these things can be morally, morally good, but there is a place for persuasion. And sometimes, going back to something you said before, sometimes we mess these things up because we're kind of trying to do two at once. Like maybe I'm kind of trying to persuade someone at Thanksgiving, but I'm also trying to sort of show off to the rest of my family that like I'm standing up for a good cause, and like those are different things. And so if I'm sort of grandstanding while I'm delivering these arguments to the person I disagree with, I'm probably going to do kind of a bad job of both.
PJ Wehry 35:59
Is there now under alternatives, you have like the takedowns. What, where, when is a takedown morally good? That's interesting to me.
Colin Marshall 36:09
Yeah, I, I think there's always there's always something a little morally off about a takedown. Like it's never morally clean to try to you know humiliate someone, take them down or notch, but there's times when it still might be the best option. So, like classic example, if you have a like a really dangerous people person running for public office, and you've got the dirt on them, and you happen to know that your dirt is actually going to tip the election. Sure, it's going to humiliate the person, but if they're dangerous, this is things that people would want to know. It's going to humiliate them. Yeah, like do it. That that might be the right. That might be what is needed. Yeah,
Colin Marshall 36:57
and you know, like I think congressional hearings are often a place for takedowns. You know, sometimes it's like tech billionaires get pulled in, and people try to humiliate them with what's you know what their their company has done. I think probably in at least some cases that is morally appropriate, spreads awareness of what they're doing. Even then, I feel it's a little iffy because people don't like being humiliated, and they'll often try to take revenge on you for doing it. So, like, I'm pretty wary with the takedown thing, even though in theory there's there's probably some cases where it's all right.
PJ Wehry 37:36
Would it follow kind of the same logic as the the differences? differences in like physical violence, like you'd use a whatever your ethical framework is for the use of violence. That's how you should think about it. It's like a form of verbal violence. Would that be?
Colin Marshall 37:52
Yeah, totally. I think there, like it's a feeling of compassion. You know, you don't want to like physical violence. Compassion should always restrain you from causing physical harm to another person. Compassion should also stop you from, or make you really resistant to humiliating another person. That's a form of distress, and like Schopenhauer points out, many times people will prefer physical pain over emotional pain. Like I'd rather you know, I'd rather have a you know, get some bruises on my bike than be humiliated in front of like a group of my students or something. Like gladly, I'll happily take the bruises over social embarrassment.
PJ Wehry 38:38
And well, you get some interesting things I'm thinking of, and he was a little bit of an inspiration for here. And I just want to make sure that I'm tracking with you. Here was Dick Cavett. I don't know if you know that name.
Colin Marshall 38:49
Remember, yeah.
PJ Wehry 38:50
And he he had on, and I can't. I think it was James Baldwin. I could be wrong. And a leader from the KKK on at the same time. And the and at first, you know, there was kind of like the expected ground rules, and then the KKK leader could kind of tell he's losing, and he started disrespecting Dick Cavett, and then Dick Cavett disrespected him back, which kind of has that similar that like self defense ethical mechanism at that point, which is kind of goes to the keeping self-respect at some point, where it's like, no, you can't talk to me like that. If that
Colin Marshall 39:30
would that would that be a good like, I'm trying to find that more example because I think I think it's useful, but it is seem like it's hard to think about it. It is, yeah, and that it's worse when there's an audience, like not being respected by one person talking to you. That's kind of upsetting. But when they're dressing you down in front of an audience, like of course people get defensive and try to regain their status because social humiliation can have all sorts of downstream consequences. Force you want to avoid.
PJ Wehry 40:02
So we talked about attention friendly context. I'll I think I got a little distracted by that. I was like, that's interesting. But so so we have attention friendly context, and then you talk about moral myopia. Can you talk a little bit about you know you're talking about? I really like that you gave this checklist at the back of the book for how to have a persuasive how how to persuade, and one of them was not to have moral myopia. Can you explain a little bit about that concept?
Colin Marshall 40:34
Yeah, the phrase moral myopia, like it, I don't know, a bunch of people have landed on it. It's been I found uses of it back in the 19th century, so it's alliterative, which is nice. But I also think there's there's something really attractive, like true about this idea, that it's really hard to pay attention to all the morally important stuff at the same time, especially when you're acting with another person who you disagree with, and you know, like I'm short-sighted, so I think a lot about you know, sort of how do I wrestle with you know, I have corrective lenses, so that can compensate a little bit, but I still miss stuff and getting close to needing reading glasses, so sometimes I have to do this to read to see stuff. It's like a process of dealing with the fact that I can't see it all, and in a way, this is a-it's sort of a charitable way of understanding why good people mess up sometimes, morally speaking, sometimes in really big ways. So, like for myself, one of my major persuasive failures-it was in a department meeting. I won't give you the gory details, but I felt like my self-respect, like my my respect, was being threatened, and so I stood up for myself. And I think I did kind of defend my self-respect, but I was being an asshole about it. Turns out, because I was so caught up in trying to defend my worth, that I was just kind of ignoring the feelings and other stuff of other people in the room. And you know, I see this in my friends too. Like their bad moments, often they are paying attention to something morally important. Like maybe they're really fired up about a political issue, and like they're right. That's really important, but now they're just kind of bullying everyone into you know trying to pay attention to that same issue when other people have got other stuff going on or like maybe they're focused on other issues that are also really important. So there's this human tendency where we we latch onto something that really matters, and it kind of fills our minds. But then we ignore, lose track of the other stuff, not on purpose, just because it's a complicated world and our minds aren't that big. So, so that's sort of where that's the idea behind moral myopias. We can't. It's really hard to see everything at once. So when you slow things down, one of the advantages is you can actually go through a checklist and think about: Okay, what am I missing? Am I showing respect? Am I showing compassion? Does the other person? How much attention do they have for this? Do they trust me? If they don't trust me, why don't they trust me? Actually, think about these different moral elements, and then maybe able to spot. Oh wait, I was forgetting about this part. I should. I'm probably stressing you out. That's not compassionate. Let me figure out how I can do the same thing without stressing you out. Or I'm maybe being condescending because I'm showing you lots of compassion, but I'm not like actually trying to learn something from your perspective,
PJ Wehry 43:43
so yeah, it's it's like an invitation to see our moral shortcomings as just falling out of the fact that it's a morally complicated world, and even one to one interactions are morally complicated, and it's really easy to overlook something. And you mentioned something there that I want to be respectful of your time, but so I don't want to miss this. I think we've kind of talked about respect and compassion. We've talked about alternatives, but you mentioned trust. What does how does trust play into this, and how is trust? I think the answer isn't too hard, but there's a little bit where trust and respect seem to, you know, the Venn diagram. I don't know why I can't think of anything besides Venn diagram, but where they cross over, I don't know. Yeah, that there's there's some overlap. That's the word I wanted. Holy smokes! What is the overlap between respect and trust, and what's the difference between those two?
Colin Marshall 44:44
I like that question. One difference is that respect is a moral value. There's always something good about respect, and trust can be morally valuable. But the concept of trust is. Neutral, even if we think often it's good to trust people. So
PJ Wehry 45:09
trust is context dependent, very
Colin Marshall 45:11
context dependent.
PJ Wehry 45:13
Sorry, sorry, yeah, yeah,
Colin Marshall 45:15
and so there might be like a basic level, maybe there's a basic level of trust, or sorry, a basic level of respect that we all owe each other, but that doesn't mean that we always have to trust each other. Especially, say we're in like an unfortunate circumstance where we we know the other person's trying to like get ahead of us. Maybe you and I are like negotiating over some real estate or something. You know, you're trying to sell high. I'm trying to buy low, right? And like we're just trying to work each other. I had a former student who worked in commercial real estate, and he took one of my class on persuasion. He mainly liked the manipulative tricks he learned about it, and he was like, "Commercial real estate's a blood sport. Like we all know, we're working each other. Like it's it's just what we're all we're all into, and like nobody resents you for like tricking them, or you know, as long as it's legal, you can do it. And so knowing that, if I was in commercial real estate interaction with him, like of course I wouldn't trust him. I know he's been very upfront
PJ Wehry 46:27
about it. Yeah, right. He was upfront about it, and
Colin Marshall 46:29
I can still sort of respect him in some sense. Like this is the game we're playing, but I'm not going to trust what he says. You know, unless I can tell, like, oh wait, there's some legal limitation. He can't legally have said that unless you meant it, or something like that.
PJ Wehry 46:43
Yeah,
Colin Marshall 46:43
but for respect to really blossom and to have a respectful relationship or respectful exchange, we've got to find some some point of trust. And one thing that I really love from Schopenhauer is this sort of compassionate picture of why we shouldn't take trust for granted because the world is hard. People often accidentally harm each other in all sorts of ways, sometimes with ill intent, often without ill intent, and so it's reasonable if you're interacting with someone to be a little careful before totally trusting them, and that's the thing that we have to earn. And if I'm trying to persuade someone, like, yeah, I've got to. Especially if it's a stranger, what reason do they have to trust me? I've got to, I've got to build up to that, and then maybe we can have a respectful exchange and maybe persuade each other.
PJ Wehry 47:35
Yeah. So, what are some ways to build trust? Because I think you're hinting at that a little bit earlier. But are there some preset things like if I wanted to get into commercial real estate and I wanted to build trust to yeah right that's a really funny example but how do you how do you build trust?
Colin Marshall 47:53
This is another place where the some of the social psychologists I think have done some really nice stuff. So there's there's some work by Susan Fiske, psychologist, and some of her collaborators that I've I found really useful, and it breaks this kind of thing down into how we perceive other people's competence and how we perceive their warmth. So competence is broadly like, do we think they know what they're talking about, and warmth is: are they ill-intentioned or are they a threat? And the first thing to know is we care more about warmth than competence. First thing we assess is: this person like out to get me? Are they a threat or not? And so, like, here's a real basic mistake I've made in terms of trust before, which is coming into a conversation angry. And maybe I'm not angry at the person I'm talking to, but if the first thing they see is like Colin's coming in hot, like immediate reaction, like whoa, and so they don't trust me. They don't listen to what I have to say because they're like not even sure what's going on here. And I might have had the most brilliant persuasive argument ever, but it doesn't even get a hearing. So the first thing is you gotta, I think, establish that warmth first. Like I'm on your side. I'm not opposed to you. Or like we're actually in this together. Like maybe I'm angry, but I'm angry on something that is also something for you to be angry about too. And just getting that, you've got to have good reasons for it. You can't just tell someone, "Trust me, because that doesn't-that's what you know a manipulative a manipulative jerk would say. So building up the warmth piece first, and then you. you can try to demonstrate that you're competent at what you're talking about. And one example that really drove this home for me is I was I was phone banking. This is the 2024 presidential election, and I got into an argument with someone. He was happy to talk, and he was like a nice. So we like hit it off, but first we were arguing about the war in Ukraine and getting nowhere. Like he had to take, I had to take. He said things, I tried rebutting, like nothing happened. We're getting nowhere. And in retrospect, it was because he seemed to think I was a nice guy, but he had no particular reason to trust me as like an expert on the Ukraine. Why think that I knew more than he did? But then the conversation shifted, and we were talking about university classes, and I was like, "Oh yeah, I'm actually a professor. I teach ethics. He's like, "Oh, that's kind of cool. And so we got into talking about. about like Marxism, I'm not a Marxist, but like I hang out with Marxists, and and he was like, "Oh man, oh yeah, all that Marxism on on college campuses, and I was like, "Yeah, but you know, lots of these Marxists, they just like Bernie Sanders, and he was like, "Really? He was this like instant like shifted his worldview,
Colin Marshall 51:02
yeah,
Colin Marshall 51:02
because he could believe that I knew Marxists as a college professor, and he could believe that I might actually know what they were about.
PJ Wehry 51:10
Yeah,
Colin Marshall 51:10
so that like I all of a sudden I was perceived as competent, and I could change his mind on that topic when I was getting nowhere on the Ukraine front because he didn't have any particular reason to think I knew what I was talking about.
PJ Wehry 51:23
Anyways, that that's a really fascinating example, but I want to be respectful of your time. So thank you. That's a great answer for someone who has listened for the last like 45 minutes of us talking. Oh, excuse me. Besides buying and reading your excellent book when it comes out, which everyone should. Just hear me out: How to change minds without lies, bullshit, or moral compromise. So, besides buying and reading your excellent book, what is something that you would recommend that someone meditate on or do over the next week in response to our conversation today?
Colin Marshall 52:02
My main thing would be to reach out to someone you know who you know you disagree with some about something, and it's like a topic you've been avoiding, and consider inviting them to actually talk about
PJ Wehry 52:22
it,
Colin Marshall 52:22
and say that you aren't trying to win. Like it's it's got to be sincere, but you don't want to shut them down. You actually want to understand where they're coming from and try to get somewhere with it. I. have my students do something like this, and the the key it works well. But the key part is telling them when you invite this other person, tell them that at the end of the conversation, you want them to score you on how respectful you are. Like give them a little bit of power. Say, I want the end of the conversation. I'm going to try to be respectful. You tell me if I pull it off, and that framing can do. It's like it's amazing. I've had students tell me, like I was never able to talk politics with my father before, but it worked. Like we were actually able to get into it. So I'd like to invite people to just like give it a try. Make sure you're avoiding trying to take down the other person. Don't make it a debate. You're not trying to win. You're actually trying to seriously engage about the issue, and don't try to do too much. It's okay to just you know like come to understand each other a little more. Maybe make a point for them to appreciate. Invite them to make a point you can appreciate. And I think if enough people did that, you know we'd be we'd be sort of on route to sort of overcoming some of the divides in this country.
PJ Wehry 53:44
Well, that's a fantastic answer and a very practical and great thing for all of our listeners to take. I'll now have to think about someone I'll have to to mull over and try and figure out who I I'll invite to coffee or for a beer or something like that. But Dr. Marshall, absolute joy having you on today. Thank you.
Colin Marshall 54:07
Thank you, PJ. This is really fun. I appreciate it.