Today’s politics seem more contentious than ever, and we seem to pour more and more time and energy into one-on-one arguments with others — a wrong-headed approach, says philosophy professor Christopher Tindale, and his students in the Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric have the data to prove it.

The team argues that the most effective way to shift people’s beliefs is to modify the environment in which they are thinking about the topics that matter to them. Each student conducted an in-depth case study of a particular political actor or movement, such as Canadian women’s rights campaigner Nellie McClung or American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., to try and understand what worked about their methods of arguing.

For example, McClung engaged in well-publicized mock parliaments, where her speeches imitated those of Manitoba premier Rodmond Roblin, reversing the very points he used to deny women the vote to argue that the same should hold for men. In short, she modified the intellectual environment in which people thought, influencing their beliefs and values.

“Increasingly, especially online, the public debate is filled with misinformation and deliberate lies,” says Dr. Tindale. “To keep up, we have to glean what lessons we can from the argumentation styles examined in this research.”

Learn more in the full article, “To change people’s views, change the information environment,” published in the Research and Innovation in Action report.