“We like to think we change people's behavior through information, through education, through persuasion. Now, these things often don't work, but we keep doing them because we have an unshakable faith in a core assumption about human nature. If you want to shape how people behave, you must first change the way they think.”
Hidden Brain podcast: https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=602872309
I love this because it’s super-important (#Holocaust, #Rwanda 🇷🇼) but also subverts our Galen-ish ideas about how things change.
Oh in case it was unclear, Vedantam is saying that changing how people think is NOT necessary nor sufficient to changing their behavior. Information, education, and persuasion are NOT great ways to change behavior.
“If you want to shape how people behave, you must first change the way they think” is a bad assumption.
