Status and Changing your Mind

I understand discussions are much more likely to convince bystanders than participants.

I've always seen this as the main purpose of conducting a discussion in public. The real target is the audience.

Group social norms about the appropriate status changes applied to someone who changes their mind are important. Personally I respect someone more if I notice they change their mind publicly, but I'm sure I'm in the minority, and it was only through deliberate self modification that I acquired this trait.

Also, a classic overcoming bias blog post on these topics:

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/overcoming-disa.html

I take it as a rule to admit being wrong or confused frequently (when that happens), including on insignificant matters where correctness is of no consequence. This sets up a convention where it's seen as normal for me to admit being wrong, which makes admitting of errors on more important occasions feel more natural, and allows (in discussion) focusing more on the implications of updated beliefs, rather than on the fact of someone having been wrong.

Abandoning your previous position can also be a way of saving face, in at least two ways:

• Being wrong is embarrassing, yes; but being wrong for a short period of time is less embarrassing than being wrong for an extended period of time. Best to stop the bleeding as quickly as possible.

• You signal that you are a reasonable person who does not let emotional attachment to a position cloud his judgment. If you're dealing with someone of higher status, you show that your mistake doesn't matter that much because you corrected yourself quickly. If you are dealing with someone who is lower status than you, you come off appearing magnanimous.

After a discussion where someone didn't admit to any change of mind, I'll often see them later having changed their behavior.

This is an important observation.

This is a good point, but the post doesn't meet my standards of form and content for Main. I think it should have been expanded with examples (real or hypothetical) or evidence, or alternately posted to Discussion.

A sneaky move would be to do something like: "I don't know, umm yeah.. thinking about it from this viewpoint it would be interesting if .. " and suddenly listing previously not said(and usually more tangential) arguments going against your previous argument and supporting your pal's statement. The point is that you somewhat start to act like a judge of your own discussion, accumulating even more status retaining control and the image of a reasonable man.

Completely steal the show. Although it usually works only with one person dialogues, if others are present they would assure your puzzled pal that the credit indeed belongs to him ,)

Another good flip(or reframing) would be "ohh yeah let's continue just for the sake of the argument, to see how far this point could be derived" than defend it with your original intention. If works you have it, if not it's not attached to you anymore.

But sometimes you just feel the insignificance to the universe and let it go with a smile.

I've observed the same behavior, and I've also found that if you give someone an "out" they're more likely to agree:

"I support X!" "Why?" "Well, A, B, C." "Oh! You mean you support Y? Because A+B+C implies Y, so obviously you support Y" "Right, of course. What did you think I meant?"

I've done this a fair few times, and it often produces some absurd about-faces in people. Being confrontational doesn't produce the same changes, so I don't think this is just a matter of them having actually meant Y. I'll often spend some time clarifying they really mean X, not Y, and then do this, and then clarify that yes, they really mean Y, not X now. It's baffling at times.

I haven't followed-up a ton on it, but the changes seem to generally "stick" - they don't just agree with Y to get me to leave them alone.

Basically, the trick is to lead the conversation such that you're not implying that they were ever wrong. It's a weird bit of double-think at first, and can be tricky to adjust to, but I find it's fairly useful quite frequently. If nothing else, by avoiding being confrontational, I seem to leave myself more open to hearing that I'm wrong and really meant Y all along :)

Came across this in Bad Science; thought it gave a nice counterexample.

[addressing an academic] Where you have made errors, perhaps you could simply acknowledge that, and correct them. I will always happily do so myself, and indeed have done so many times, on many issues, and felt no great loss of face. Bad Science, p.180

I understand why people would see admitting that you are wrong as a loss of status, but it doesn't even begin to make sense to me.