It’s unlikely that your woke brother-in-law will ever understand how you can be conservative. Don’t expect him to automatically have an open mind to anything you might say to try to win him over. While there are many reasons for this, the top three obstacles to persuasion are the most common.
You don't have a brother-in-law, you say? No problem. Just substitute the brother-in-law here with a woke friend or family member that you have in mind.
Media Filters
The first is the filter through which your brother-in-law gets his information and where you get yours. If he gets all of his information from the legacy media and his favorite woke websites and social accounts, the algorithms ensure that all he gets is positive reinforcement for what he’s already thinking. His mind and the pipeline for information are closed to anything that does not already agree with his point of view. His media does not give him exposure to other opinions and information.
The same could be said for you if you limit your sources of information to conservative media and conservative social accounts. But this is less likely since conservatives usually can’t avoid the legacy media. We’re bound to be exposed to a leftist worldview even if we try to avoid it.
Cognitive Dissonance
The second reason is cognitive dissonance. This is when you know one thing but do another and find a way to justify it. The abortion issue is a good example of this. When someone says he’s opposed to abortion because it involves the intentional taking of a human life, but he’s not going to prevent it in cases of rape and incest, he’s making an exception for murder, and he doesn’t see that. This is cognitive dissonance.
Confirmation Bias
The third reason is confirmation bias. This happens when we only see what we want to see. We only hear what we want to hear. We only allow in information that confirms our pre-existing bias. So, if your brother-in-law is already convinced that climate change is real, no amount of evidence to the contrary will change his mind. He will reject it for the sole reason it does not confirm his pre-existing bias.
These three reasons alone provide an informational moat that your best arguments can’t cross.
By that same token, we’ve seen many high-profile cases where former liberals have shifted more to the middle and the right. Podcaster Joe Rogan is one of them. When all the forces of society came after him for presenting an alternative to the COVID-19 vaccine during the pandemic, he started to see the merits of libertarian and conservative arguments. When former gymnast and Levi Strauss executive Jennifer Sey spoke out on school closure policies during the pandemic, there was a massive effort to cancel her, and the reaction contributed to her departure from the company.
Since then, she’s moved to the center-right and taken up the cause of protecting women's and girls' sports for actual women and girls.
These two cases reveal what it takes to cause someone to change. In both Rogan’s and Sey’s cases, they had to experience rejection and attacks from people they knew, some of whom they considered friends, colleagues, and allies, to rethink their own positions.
But you can’t count on your brother-in-law to have such a significant life experience, such as being canceled. What Rogan’s and Sey’s stories remind us is that experience is the greatest teacher.
Did your brother-in-law lose his job? Who does he blame? Does he pay more for things now? Who does he blame? Does he feel more or less safe now? Who does he credit or blame?
Once you start to help him analyze his situation at the ground level, you can see the narrative he’s been fed by the Left, and maybe he will, too.
The starting point for all persuasion is trust. If your brother-in-law doesn’t trust you, he won’t listen to you. If he trusts you, at some point, he will listen to you.
To build trust, one of the best things to start with is to find common ground. Do you both love your families? Your larger family? Do you both want a safer future for both your families? If so, maybe the crime issue is a starting point.
Predictably, he may say guns are the problem and confiscation is the solution. You realize that guns don’t shoot themselves, and the vast majority of guns used in crimes are illegally owned. More importantly, you realize that crime and guns are two separate issues. He does not. To get him to see your point of view and perhaps persuade him, you need to focus the conversation on the common ground you share – a safer world you share with your kids – and what the problems are that need to be solved long before anyone picks up a gun. And then what needs to happen when the wrong person has a gun for the wrong reasons?
Again, the key is to identify and start with the common ground you both have. You love your families. Remind him that you’d never advocate for anything to compromise your kids’ safety. Take all the time necessary to allow it to register for him that someone who cares just as much for his family can see the issue differently than he does.
This can’t happen in one conversation. It will never happen in a debate. He must sincerely want to know your point of view, not as something for him to take issue with, but rather, something he wants to better understand. Only then will your brother-in-law give you license to change his mind on one small aspect of the crime issue.
If you haven’t already noticed, the magic sauce for all media is emotion. People form their opinions on emotion, not based on facts and data. Republicans and conservatives make this mistake constantly. They try to win support simply through facts and data. The facts, or even the truth, will not win the day.
Only emotion wins. Fear, contempt, resentment, anger, love. These are the foundations for opinion. Once you understand all of this, you can do five things to change your brother-in-law’s mind.
- Become one of “them” – Your Brother-in-Law only trusts you if he sees you as like him. The more you have in common, from where you grew up, your neighborhood, your schools, your values, the better. He has to see you as one of his people. You have to know how to speak his language on his terms. In other words, meet him where he is.
- Don’t take on more than you should – Don’t try to do too much from the outset. Work your way up. If you’re trying to persuade your brother-in-law, try to find common ground and persuade him on little things that do not raise his defenses.
- Be an expert – Facts may not win his heart, but they will convince him you know what you’re talking about and that you’ve taken the time to learn the facts. This gives you credibility, and it shows you really care about this specific issue. Showing that you care is part of the emotional appeal. Just don’t lecture or “hit someone over the head” with your facts. That’s counter-productive. When you present your facts, always do them in the context of the emotions as play. Facts speak through emotions, not under, over, or around them.
- Appeal to your brother-in-law’s sense of fairness – Ask him how fair the current situation is to the people you want to advocate for. This can start to force him to open up to things he hasn’t been thinking about. It opens up dialogue on potentially better alternative solutions. Remember, this has to be a dialogue, not a one-way lecture from you to him.
- Provide affirmation – Once you notice that your brother-in-law may be coming closer to your position on even one small aspect of the issue, affirm that it’s fine for him to do so. Let him know you may have felt the same way at some point, but you changed your mind, too.
In all cases, you should approach such discussions openly and in good faith. Still, don’t shy away from letting your brother-in-law know that you would like him to see things differently. Be transparent and honest.
