Barriers to Persuading an Audience

Persuading an audience to change their beliefs or behaviors can be challenging because audiences are often resistant to change. This reluctance to change means that in order to persuade an audience, a speaker needs to overcome the barriers put up by that audience.  Main barriers to persuading an audience are humans’ innate resistance to change and resistance when our beliefs are contradicted by new information.

Resistance to Change

As Dr. Meggie Mapes says, one of the strongest barriers against changing our minds is a broader bias against change.^[1] Research indicates that we do not like change – it causes stress and requires effort, both of which we all have a tendency to avoid. Moreover, risk aversion research shows that when it comes to change, we are more concerned with what we lose than with what we gain. As the economic psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky have pointed out, in decision-making, “losses loom larger than gains.” ^[2]

Humans also selectively expose ourselves to messages we already agree with rather than seeking out messages that may challenge our beliefs. The term “filter bubble” refers to how online platforms like Google and other social media present us with information that reinforces our interests can feed into this selective exposure.

In the following TED talk, author and activist Eli Pariser talks about the causes and effects of online filter bubbles.

You can view the transcript for “Beware online “filter bubbles” | Eli Pariser” here (opens in new window).

Resistance to New Information

Social psychologist Leon Festinger developed a theory called cognitive dissonance that describes the mental conflict that occurs when our beliefs about the world are contradicted by new information. This cognitive dissonance produces a tension that we respond to by rejecting, ignoring, or explaining away the new information. That rejection allows us to reconcile contradictory information and get rid of the dissonance.

As you might recall, we mentioned that the root of word “persuasion” comes from the root word for “sweet” or “agreeable.” To overcome the barrier against change in your audience, you need to make the change more agreeable to them. Mape offers speakers some suggestions for how to persuade an audience:

• Instead of asking your audience to make major changes, ask them instead to make smaller, more incremental changes.

• Focus on the positive consequences or benefits of the change you are advocating. You are trying to help your audience see that the stress of changing a belief or behavior will be worth it. Explain what benefits or advantages the audience will receive if they adopt your message.

• Identify what negative consequences will occur if the audience doesn’t change their mind. If the audience does nothing and no change happens as result, what will be the negative effects of that choice?^[3]

The following video offers tips to help persuade an audience and reviews methods of persuasion.