⇗ Complicating the Narratives

A wonderful article from Amanda Ripley about how people process, accept, and reject information that doesn't fit their existing worldview. Amanda's ideas for how journalists (and the rest of us) can encourage more openness and understanding are insightful and worth adopting.

"When people feel heard and seen as they wish to be heard and seen, they relax their guard," says Melissa Weintraub, a rabbi and the co-founder of Resetting the Table. "It's both very simple and very hard to accomplish. We have to give them the most powerful and eloquent articulation of their own thinking." Then and only then will people even begin to consider information that does not fit their usual narratives. In fact, this is one of the only ways to get people to listen when they are emotional or entrenched in a particular worldview. Humans need to be heard before they will listen.

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