Part of the combustible nature of online discourse is the emboldening characteristics of social media, with strong opinions proliferating everywhere you look.  One might reasonably assume that those of us who hold strong opinions online might be less open to persuasion.  Research from Yale set out to find out whether that was really the case or not.

As I’m sure many regular social media users can appreciate, most attempts to persuade others tend to fall on deaf ears, with opinions both entrenched to begin with and often even more entrenched after attempts are made to convince otherwise.  This has been born out by various studies into the emergence of online echo chambers and polarized discourse.

Online persuasion

The researchers started by trying to build trust over time in an approach they refer to as “pacing and leading”.  It’s an approach whereby one begins by professing similar opinions before gradually diverging.

The study suggests that this is an approach that can be effective in nudging Twitter users away from their position, even if it’s one that’s deeply held.  The persuasiveness was especially pronounced when pacing and leading was combined with the liking of the subject’s tweets.  It was also considerably more persuasive than simply sharing a volley of opposing tweets.

It’s an approach that the researchers believe could have been especially useful during the pandemic in helping to convince people to adopt social distancing measures or get vaccinated.

“I think public officials’ approach to persuasion about the vaccine has been totally misguided,” the researchers say. “There are people who don’t want to get the vaccine, and the response has been to tell them it’s good and jam that message down their throats. That’s just going to create more antagonism, more skepticism, more denialism. Persuasion takes time; it’s not instantaneous.”

So the “building trust” phase is crucial if we’re to be persuasive, which is perhaps especially difficult for governments, businesses, and even the media, for whom public trust levels are already low.  This is often compounded by the fact that communication from these groups is nearly always one way, with interaction with others very rare, whether through likes or comments.

For the rest of us, however, the message appears clear.  If we want to persuade others online, then we need to take some time to build trust with them first before we start to engage in more subtle persuasion tactics.