Not only Matteo Salvini , a veteran of the colossal fool that will remain in the annals of history, but also journalists, politicians, show business personalities find themselves today in an embarrassing position: having to “deny”, at least on the facade, the support given in a servile way and often strongly interested in Putin and his regime over the last few years.
But the condition is by no means simple: making a 180 degrees U-turn in the space of a few hours or days is a difficult task even for the best communicators, and a job for those who deal with Communication Crisis Scenarios on a daily basis. Unfortunately many of the characters who need the change of course are not equipped with the necessary knowledge to operate this fine communication strategy, and for them (and many others) I have decided to write this short paper that explains the science (and the Art) of “Change your mind without losing face”.
And like all self-respecting strategies, we must start from theory, especially the one that directly has to do with cognition and the alteration of public opinion.
“The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion” is a 1992 essay by political scientist John Zaller , which examines the processes by which individuals form and express political opinions and the implications this has for public opinion research. Defined by many as the most important pivotal text on public opinion since VO Key ‘s 1961 classic, “Public Opinion and American Democracy,” in the volume Zaller argues that public opinion is heavily influenced by exposure to elite discourse on political issues.
Not only that: Zaller attributes the variation in the political orientations of individuals to differences both at the level of individual receptivity to individual discourses – mainly in terms of political awareness – and secondly as a manifestation of concordance with previous beliefs, in which the new messages received are (or do not) conform to an individual’s basic political values.
Zaller’s RAS model is based on four key points about how people respond to questions on political and current issues (mainly represented in the text by behavior to the administration of public opinion polls):

  • People have various levels of awareness of the events;
  • People are able to react to issues critically only if they have high levels of awareness of the issues;
  • People do not have a “crystallized” thought with respect to events and happenings, but on the contrary, if questioned, they react to the stresses at the moment, creating temporary “statements of opinion”;
  • People answer questions based on the data most available to them.

In an attempt to summarize these and many other observations about public opinion, Zaller constructs what he calls the Receive-Accept-Sample (RAS) model to explain the formation of public opinion.
The mathematical model is built on four axioms:

  • Axiom of Reception: The higher a person’s level of cognitive engagement on an issue, the more likely they are to be exposed and understand – in a word, to receive – the political messages regarding that issue. Read: the more politically involved I am on a front, the more sensitive I am to the subject and I know enough to get a message;
  • Axiom of Resistance: People tend to resist changing opinion on topics that are not consistent with their political predispositions, but they do so only to the extent that they possess the contextual information necessary to perceive a relationship between the message and their predispositions. Read: if I want to have a message accepted, I have to anchor it to the cornerstones of my audience’s political faith and give enough information to trigger the spark to associate the affirmations with what is happening;
  • Axiom of accessibility: the more recently a consideration has been recalled, discussed or thought of, the less time it takes to retrieve that consideration or related considerations from memory and bring them for example as a spendable opinion. Read: it is necessary to rethink and solicit the opinion of the public with recent events to “remember” their opinion on the matter;
  • Axiom of Answer: Individuals answer survey questions by averaging considerations that are immediately salient or accessible in memory for them. Read: the external opinion is that of the facts that I have thought about (or have made me think about) more recently.

Returning to the politicians, journalists, women and men of the show we discussed above, the strategy to change opinion and not lose totally authority and following (as well as face) is at this point linear enough to be followed by all three (more one) steps.
The first step is to be convincing towards a small elite of people who are very knowledgeable about the facts: they can be my core of main followers, other influential colleagues, a couple of thinkers in the pay of my party or my broadcaster. I must pass on the strongest signal to them, which can be summarized in the following vision: I followed or followed the ideas of the dictator on duty because they were consistent with our vision of the facts, with our political line and could lead to the pursuit of our goals , but now that he has crossed the line and sided against other more important ideals in which we believe (the sacredness of life, children, mothers …) we must review our position not on issues but on him.
Convinced the elite, who will prove us right downstream, we can think about the strategy to be adopted with ordinary people and our following, anchoring this new point of view to ideas that the pious public understand and feel as their own, with concepts such as: they can attack civilians, there is a limit to everything and it is children, life is sacred and in Europe we have to protect it as we have always done, and so on …
At this point the obsessive repetition starts – dozens of occasions will be needed to reiterate them – only of these new concepts, not giving space to the past and answering even direct questions with ready-made sentences: I have already explained sufficiently why we had decided to follow that point of view, we need to focus on the present and in 2022 the problem and the war, we are not here to talk about the past but about the future etc …
Finally, the fourth step, bonus and final fatality: showing a critical interviewer or even a political opponent how to maintain the old positions would be inconsistent towards more important values. And this is where the final genius comes, showing how giving support to Putin now would be tantamount to being against life and against children and families, a position that we cannot hold because it is contrary to the highest values.
That’s all.
On the other hand, persuading people is an art or a profession like many others.

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