Use Stories Instead of Facts to Get a Better Argument
In the midst of a debate, listing facts and hard data is not the most reliable strategy, as we often expect. This is especially true in political debate, in large part due to the wide polarization of American society, as disinformation pushes more people than ever into their chosen realms of reality.
If you feel like you’re hitting a brick wall as you verbally wrestle with someone close to you, there is a better strategy to bridge the seemingly unforgiving divide: use a story to illustrate your point. A large body of research shows how a poignant or gripping anecdote can change hearts and minds, evoking empathy, not belligerence.
This is why you might consider starting a discussion with a story that illustrates your broader point of view.
Nobody likes to be lectured
I am not saying that the facts are bad (in fact, it is quite the opposite), but when a person is extremely stubborn or irreversibly opposed to your position, listing various numbers or data may seem like a hint or, even worse, – for example, you do not respect. There’s a reason people debate how much they hate being lectured on Reddit threads . This is because fostering mutual respect is much more conducive to getting your point of view heard and accepted.
In any controversial discussion, there is a compromise. This means that if you are presenting a detailed argument based on a verifiable fact, you should show your opponent the same courtesy by listening to him politely, even if his arguments are confusing. However, if shouting out the facts ostentatiously seems useless, you should probably take a different, less explicit approach.
Stories evoke sympathy
To illustrate a point of view with a personal story can touch someone’s heart, which raw facts cannot. It’s actually a matter of brain chemistry. A 2013 study by Paul Zach, professor of economics, psychology, and management at the Claremont California Alumni Center, explored the connections between compelling storytelling, empathy, and the formation of connections between people. As Zach wrote, telling a story that grabs attention can stimulate the production of oxytocin in the brain , a neuropeptide most often associated with increased production during childbirth, but also during moments of social acceptance and affection:
As social beings who regularly communicate with strangers, stories are an effective way to convey important information and values from one person or community to another. Stories that are personal and emotionally compelling use the brain more and are therefore better remembered than simply stating a set of facts.
Someone is more likely to respond to your point of view, such as disenfranchisement, if you present an anecdote about a woman sentenced to five years in prison for voting on probation , instead of a series of theses on the development of gerrimandering. As Zach wrote for the Harvard Business Review in 2014, oxytocin is released when people are shown examples of kindness:
Oxytocin is produced when we are trusted or shown kindness, and it motivates us to cooperate with others. It does this by enhancing our sense of empathy, our ability to experience the emotions of others.
It would often be better to appeal to someone’s ability to empathize than to list facts in an apparent attempt to win an argument.
Empathy is more convincing than facts.
It may irritate you a little that the raw facts are less convincing than they should be, but when it comes to convincing someone to understand your point of view, empathy prevails. The study, published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, takes this question even further. In 15 different studies, researchers at Yale University grappled with different perspectives on controversial issues such as gun control and abortion, with different perspectives on people from different political circles, and concluded that personal experience.
As the authors write in the abstract, when disagreement is about more moral issues, such as issues that directly affect people’s lives in concrete ways, personal experience wins out as an argumentation tool:
Research shows that people believe in the truth of both fact and personal experience in immoral controversy; however, in the case of moral disagreement, subjective experiences seem more true (that is, less doubtful) than objective facts.
It’s not that facts cannot win an argument. But demonstrating how these facts manifest themselves in real, life experience can only increase your chances of getting your good point across.