So, as you must have realised by now, the ability to change someone’s mind and in the long run their opinions can be quite handy in this competitive world. You can either win someone over simply by your charm and oratory skills or you could work a little on your arguments and set forth to conquer. 

As reported by The Washington Post, a research conducted by a few Cornell University students have shed some light on what enables a person to change anothers’ opinion. The researchers analysed the posts and comments on ChangeMyView, a forum on Reddit, where one posts a comment and invites others to reason against them. 

Their findings have shown that certain dynamics are at play when it comes to changing one’s mind: 

The more people try to change one’s mind, the more are the chances. 

Not only the quantity but the timing of the arguments also make quite a difference. The researchers have observed that people who were first to comment had more chances of changing the poster’s opinion. 

The longer a person engages in an argument, better are the chances of changing his/her mind.

This is an obvious one. The more arguments and angles one is subjected to, he/she has more access to different opinions and hence there are more chances of changing his/her mind. 

But there is a very interesting flipside to this as well. The researchers found out that after five rounds of back and forth arguments, the probability of changing the poster’s opinions diminishes. 

The kind of language used seems to have quite an impact on influencing someone’s opinion.

The researchers have pointed out that if one uses arguments with words different than the ones used in the poster’s comment then the success rate is relatively higher and are found to be more convincing. 

‘For example’, ‘for instance’, frequent use of articles like ‘a’ and ‘the’ help in strengthening an argument. Use of words like ‘help’ and ‘please’ signifies that the argument is relatively weak.

The use of first person pronoun indicates that the opinion is changeable more than the usage of first person plural pronouns.    

‘We’ before ‘I’, always. It is a classic case of united we stand, divided we fall. More than one voice in agreement helps in strengthening an argument.

Another very important thing to keep in mind before engaging in an exchange of opinions is that you can actually tell if it is possible to change one’s mind. Stubborn views are expressed more excitedly, with frequent use of words like ‘certain’, ‘anyone’, ‘worst’ and ‘best’. 

Now that you know, go tiger! Go, get them!

You can read the original article here.