Who’s Persuasive? Understanding Citizen-to-Citizen Efforts to Change Minds

Abstract

Political behavior researchers tend to view persuasion as a top-down enterprise: Politicians, journalists, and other “elites” do the persuasion, and citizens listen. Consequently, much research focuses on what makes citizens persuadable. This study shifts our focus to what makes citizens persuasive. We developed an innovative survey design, incentivizing over 400 participants to write messages that would change the opinion of people they disagree with politically. We then presented these messages to survey participants with opposing views and measured their persuasive impact. Our findings reveal that persuading the other side is possible, with a success rate of almost 30% and only 11% backfire. The most reliable predictors of persuasion success, we find, involve the ability to bridge identity divides through perspective-taking and personal narratives. Finally, we show that citizens are largely unaware of their persuasive potential: Unsuccessful senders perceive themselves to be as persuasive as successful ones.