This was a really interesting episode to listen to! I’ve listened to it twice and am thinking about incorporating this episode as a reflection assignment at the end of my persuasive unit since it touches on a lot of things we cover in class.
One additional thought on the political purity section of this episode (and I’m going to tangent into persuasive theory for a second): Within persuasive theory, beliefs and values are distinctly separate from one another. Beliefs are categorized as objective ideas that people have learned to accept as plausible based on interpretation and judgement (for example, water is wet) and values shape our own subjective ideology that informs how we view questions of morality with ourselves and others. I remind my students all the time that what commonly gets referred to as religious ‘beliefs’ are actually values. And over the last 5-ish years political ‘beliefs’ have made the same shift. Of the four persuasive goals (eliciting change in an attitude, behavior, belief, or value), eliciting change in a value is the most difficult because of the amount of cognitive dissonance someone experiences when how they perceive themself and the morality of their own internal compass starts to get rattled. This is why eliciting change in a value requires multiple conversations over an extended period of time. I completely agree that overlapping identities and a sense of community belonging contribute to the rigid, white knuckling we see with political dogma now - and every time we attempt to have a one-off conversation with someone about a political topic as though we’re discussing, or debating, an attitude or belief when we’re actually walking into a conversation about values, it backfires in a way that causes both sides to become more entrenched in their original value system and less receptive to other perspectives.
This is really helpful Katie!!!! I knew about how political beliefs have become more integrated into our identity but I didn’t fully understand how to describe what you’re talking about—- that these conversations are often about values!
Yeah, you’d be surprised how often values sneak into conversations without us realizing it. One of the things I also make a point to teach my students is how to use certain rudimentary persuasive theory elements to be able to clock in real time when a conversation, miscommunication, or disagreement is about facts or values. This way they’re better able to avoid or redirect certain conversations, de-escalate conversations that have become contentious, or know when providing solutions will actually be helpful. I’ve been doing this for years, but it seems especially necessary now.
This was a really interesting episode to listen to! I’ve listened to it twice and am thinking about incorporating this episode as a reflection assignment at the end of my persuasive unit since it touches on a lot of things we cover in class.
One additional thought on the political purity section of this episode (and I’m going to tangent into persuasive theory for a second): Within persuasive theory, beliefs and values are distinctly separate from one another. Beliefs are categorized as objective ideas that people have learned to accept as plausible based on interpretation and judgement (for example, water is wet) and values shape our own subjective ideology that informs how we view questions of morality with ourselves and others. I remind my students all the time that what commonly gets referred to as religious ‘beliefs’ are actually values. And over the last 5-ish years political ‘beliefs’ have made the same shift. Of the four persuasive goals (eliciting change in an attitude, behavior, belief, or value), eliciting change in a value is the most difficult because of the amount of cognitive dissonance someone experiences when how they perceive themself and the morality of their own internal compass starts to get rattled. This is why eliciting change in a value requires multiple conversations over an extended period of time. I completely agree that overlapping identities and a sense of community belonging contribute to the rigid, white knuckling we see with political dogma now - and every time we attempt to have a one-off conversation with someone about a political topic as though we’re discussing, or debating, an attitude or belief when we’re actually walking into a conversation about values, it backfires in a way that causes both sides to become more entrenched in their original value system and less receptive to other perspectives.
This is really helpful Katie!!!! I knew about how political beliefs have become more integrated into our identity but I didn’t fully understand how to describe what you’re talking about—- that these conversations are often about values!
Yeah, you’d be surprised how often values sneak into conversations without us realizing it. One of the things I also make a point to teach my students is how to use certain rudimentary persuasive theory elements to be able to clock in real time when a conversation, miscommunication, or disagreement is about facts or values. This way they’re better able to avoid or redirect certain conversations, de-escalate conversations that have become contentious, or know when providing solutions will actually be helpful. I’ve been doing this for years, but it seems especially necessary now.
So glad people like you are teaching students!!