Just Hear Me Out: How to Change Minds Without Lies, Bullshit, or Moral Compromise

"People strongly disagree about life-and-death issues, including vaccines, immigration, religion, and climate change. When it comes to changing someone's mind, many of the time-tested methods are psychological tricks: exaggeration, lies, manipulation, or other forms of moral compromise. But cheap persuasive tricks are not only ethically murky-they rarely result in lasting change. Once someone realizes they've been tricked into changing their mind, there's a good chance they'll revert to their earlier beliefs. In this book, philosopher Colin Marshall offers a roadmap for moral persuasion that actually works. Marshall first analyzes the central moral values in "civil" persuasion: respect and compassion. As our primary philosophical guides through these two dimensions, he summons Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer. Together, Schopenhauer and Kant, augmented and brought up to date by social psychology, show us the pieces that are needed for respectful, compassionate persuasion. Achieving that persuasion is rarely easy, and often requires a team effort over the long run. Yet when it works, people don't just correct their mistakes. They come to fully see each other as valuable humans who share a world"-- Provided by publisher.