How words change minds: the science of storytelling | Nat Kendall-Taylor | TEDxMidAtlanticSalon

Sometimes a good idea isn't enough to change minds or garner support – more important is how you articulate that idea. This is where the science of "framing" comes in. In his talk, Nat Kendall-Taylor breaks down how people make decisions, and how understanding culture and behavioral science can be used to communicate complex issues and shape policy.

Nat Kendall-Taylor is Chief Executive Officer at the FrameWorks Institute. Nat oversees the organization’s pioneering, research-based approach to strategic communications, which uses methods from the social and behavioral sciences to measure how people understand complex socio-political issues and tests ways to reframe them to drive social change. As CEO, he leads a multi-disciplinary team of social scientists and communications practitioners who investigate ways to apply innovative framing research methods to social issues and train nonprofit organizations to put the findings into practice.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

I want to start with a warning today.

I realize that beginning with a warning
may not be the smartest thing to do,

but I'm just going to go for it.

My warning is that although I'm here
to talk to you about communications,

I actually have zero training
in communications,

and I've never worked in PR.

What I am

is a psychological anthropologist.

And what I study is the way
that culture influences how we think,

how we process information,
how we make meaning of messages,

and how we formulate
and come to decisions.

And so, as a psychological anthropologist,
one of my goals here today

is to convince you,
is to show you, that this ...

is not true.

(Laughter)

That we should not be actively
dissuading our friends and colleagues

from going into anthropology,

and that instead, studying culture
and how people use it to think

is an incredibly valuable tool
in the real world,

and for our purposes today,

can be an incredibly important
and effective thing

in being a better communicator.

And so, as an anthropologist
working in communications,

I study two different things.

First of all, I study public thinking,

not public opinion,

not the way that people answer a couple
of polling questions here or there,

or conduct themselves
in a few focus groups

in Cleveland or Kansas City -

I'm from Cleveland,
I can make that joke, that's okay -

but rather how people use culture
in a deep and highly predictable way

to think about complex social issues;
issues like education or mental health,

immigration or aging,
climate change or race inequity.

So I am really excited
to talk to you about ...

how culture helps us
be more effective communicators.

The other thing that I'm going
to talk to you about

is how through the way
that we present information

we can get people to open up
an access dramatically different ways

of thinking, of feeling, and of acting
about those social issues,

and in a nutshell,
that is what framing is:

how variations in the way
that we present information

can lead people to dramatically different
perceptual and behavioral outcomes.

And so I'm really, really - why not? -

really excited to get the chance
to geek out about framing today.

And I'll tell you
right from the beginning

that geeking out about framing
is pretty much my all-time,

absolute favorite thing to do,

which I realize is kind of pathetic,
and probably a little bit sad.

But it does mean that at least
one person in this room

is going to have fun during this talk.

(Laughter)

That will be me, I will have fun.

And so, what I want to do today
is to convince you, is to argue

that even though you do not
think of yourselves

all the time in this way

and are not explicitly aware of it,
you are all communicators.

And as communicators,
framing matters a great deal to you.

So what I want to do is give you
two reasons why framing matters to you.

And the first reason is,
unfortunately, I'm in the position

where I have to tell you
that you all have a problem.

And you should know there aren't
11 more steps after this,

it's not that kind of a meeting,
and it's not that kind of a problem.

What I mean is that you have
a communications problem.

You have a problem of perception.

And the problem looks something like this:

That you all have been in positions,
at one time or another,

where you think you have the most perfect,

awesome, slam-dunk -

whatever sports metaphor you want to use -

way of talking about
what you do and why it matters.

Heck, it works with two of your
closest colleagues,

what could go wrong
when it goes out to normal people,

people who don't eat and breathe
and sleep your issues all the time?

And you find that when this idea
that made so much sense to you

goes outside of your immediate circle,
it does one of two things.

First of all, it lacks resonance.

It doesn't have grip,
it goes in one ear and out the other.

Secondly, probably more unfortunately
because it happens more frequently,

that thing which worked
and was so brilliant in your own head

goes out,

and it has the exact opposite effect
on the people you're trying to persuade,

on the people you're trying
to communicate with.

And I'm not going to ask you to take
my word for anything today, right?

I'm going to show you evidence
from the research that I do with my team

that shows this.

And I have a lot of pieces of examples,

evidence of this you-say-they-think,
this lost-in-translation effect.

I'm going to show you one today
that comes from some work that we've done

to translate the science
of early childhood development.

People who are in this field,
people who are developmental scientists,

really want to talk
about adversity and stress,

and the effects that stress and adversity
can have on young kids.

And they say things like this:

that persistent stress
can derail development

and have negative long-term effects
on health and well-being.

And if you're a developmental scientist,
you replace negative with deleterious

because that's the way you talk.

And so for folks who are in this field,

this is true.

There is an incredibly
deep body of science

across a number of disciplines
which supports this point.

Unfortunately,
when you take this idea out,

to normal people,
to members of the general public,

you get things
that look and sound like this:

(Video) Man:
Life's hard. Supposed to be hard.

What doesn't kill you makes
you stronger, you know?

All the bad cliches you can think of.

There's been people that have come
from absolutely nothing to make it,

and in society's eyes gained success.

Nat Kendall-Taylor:
So just to make it really crystal-clear,

that which you just heard
was not the intended effect

when this expert opened
his or her mouth to deliver this message.

I'm not trying to say
that our friend Nietzsche here

with "what doesn't kill you
makes you stronger" -

smart audience, there you go -

is wrong or stupid in any way.

But there's clearly something
that's going on here,

there's clearly a difference

between the intention
and the delivery of the message,

and it's actual perception and effect.

And you all should have a good idea
as to what that is,

based on how I introduced myself
as an anthropologist.

So the thing that stands between
the you-say and the they-think here is ...

culture.

Not the external, Indiana Jones
artifact kind of culture,

but rather culture in mind,

culture as a set
of shared patterns of thinking,

as a set of shared assumptions
and propositions that we have

and carry around with us in our minds,

and use every time
that we are presented with information,

every time that we engage with an issue.

And so, what this does,

this realization that culture
is always mediating our meaning

and complicating our job
as communicators, is it gives us -

so this is both, kind of
one of these paradoxical things

that's both utterly common sense,
and completely game-changing -

is that this gives us
a really different way

of looking at what has been

the dominant way of thinking about
public understanding and communication.

So for a long time,
and still too this day,

people have thought
of public understanding in this way:

as an empty receptacle,
as a blank slate, as an empty fishbowl,

and have thought that we as communicators
can assume that we are our audiences,

and take the things
that make so much sense to us,

and literally drop them
into this unfettered space

where they get to do their thing.

And we know, based on
what I've just told you about culture,

that this is neither correct,

nor is it productive as a way
to think about communications.

Instead,

we have to understand that culture always
complicates our job as communicators,

and if we can go a step further

and understand how people use culture
to think about our issues,

we can be dramatically more effective

in our roles as messengers,
in our roles as communicators.

And so, the second reason why framing
matters to all of you in this room

is because understanding
is frame dependent.

Now, that's a mildly
academicese way of saying

that the choices that you make
as communicators matter.

Sometimes the little things:

the pronouns that you use,
the verbs that you choose;

sometimes the big things,

the values that you use
to explain why your issue matters;

those things matter.

Those things have
frequently dramatic impacts

on what people are willing to do,

and how people are willing to act
and engage on your issues.

And again, I don't want you
to take my word for it.

I'm going to give you a quick example

that shows you that understanding
is frame dependent.

And this example comes
not from the United States,

but from the Canadian province of Alberta.

And a quick geography lesson,

Alberta is one of the tall, skinny ones
in the middle of the country.

Kind of all you need to know -
it's very cold - for this example.

And so there's a group of experts
and advocates in Alberta

who are working to change
policy and practice around addiction.

They're working to take
what we know from science,

and use it to implement better policies
and practices around addiction

in this province.

And they've been having
a great deal of difficulty doing this.

A lot of their problem comes from the fact

that there is zero support
to do anything different

when it comes to addiction
in this province.

And so, they came to us,
and they asked us to conduct some work

to figure out how to engage
members of the public more productively,

to move understanding,

and specifically, to increase support
for a set of evidence-based policies.

And so, as good framing geeks and dweebs,

we do what good framing geeks
and dweebs do,

we ran an experiment.

And in this experiment
we tested three different values messages.

You see, the values messages
along the horizontal axis of this graph

right now.

So some people -
this is a large experiment,

6,000 people, which believe it or not
is not the entire population of Alberta,

it's a representative sample,
not an exhaustive sample.

Each of these 6,000 people is randomly
assigned to one of these messages.

So if some folks got the value
of interdependence,

which, in this case, is the sense

that we need to do a better job
of dealing with addiction in this province

because we're all connected:

what influences one of us
influences all of us.

Other folks got this value of ingenuity,

which is an innovation value, that we are
a province of problem-solvers -

you kind of swing your arm
when you do this one -

there's never been a problem
that we haven't been able to solve

with some good old Albertan grit

and roll-up-your-sleeves
problem-solvingness -

that was my Albertan accent,
if you caught that, very important.

And other folks, last but not least,
got this value of empathy,

which is the sense that we need
to do a better job

of dealing with addiction in this province

because people who deal with
addiction are people too.

They could be our mother, brother,
father, sister, neighbor, whomever,

and as individuals, we need to show
these folks compassion.

So what you're going to see
on this next click

is what I think are three beautiful,
blue bars appearing on this screen,

and what those blue bars
are going to show you

is the extent, the degree
to which hearing these different values

changes people's support
for these evidence-based policies.

So can anyone do a good drumroll?

Please, play along, thank you.

(Drumroll)

So you should see three blue bars
and notice two things.

So first of all, two of these values,
interdependence and ingenuity,

make people, to a statistically
significant degree,

more supportive of these
evidence-based policies.

That is good news
when we run these experiments,

and when we get results like that,

we stand up, we do
a little framing dance -

I won't do it right now, don't worry -

we sit back down and we look
towards the right-hand side of the screen.

The value of empathy

is actually depressing
people's support for these policies.

Now, the kicker is
that in a subsequent piece of analysis,

where we looked at all of the fields
external-facing materials,

guess which value we found
to be in place over 90% of the time?

Empathy.

Thank you. Not a rhetorical question.

And so, what this field has been doing
for a very long time is endorsing a value

which actually drives support down

for the very policies
that they are advocating.

So this example does two things:

it clearly shows you that understanding
is frame-dependent and frames matter.

It also shows you that these questions,
you know, which values to use,

how to communicate,
are empirical questions.

We don't have to guess or use our guts,
we can use social science.

I think it's pretty cool

that frames are able to move people's
understanding and their policy support,

but what about more intrinsic,
subconscious thinking?

What about implicit bias?

Can frames make people
less subconsciously biased

against particular groups of people?

So we set out to answer this question
through a project on re-framing aging

in which we were
specifically interested in:

can frames make people less
implicitly biased against older adults?

And we found two things.

First of all, Americans do not
like older people.

Older Americans don't like older people.

(Laughter)

High degree of implicit bias,

and it's a level of implicit bias

that parallels other biases
that people study,

whether that's gender,
religion, sexuality, race;

this is not cool news, not a good finding.

But it does get cool
when you look at what happens

when we gave people a message

that compared ageing to a process
of building and gaining momentum.

And when we did this,

we found that we could actually reduce
people's implicit bias by almost a third.

Through a frame,

we could make people less ageist
at an implicit level.

And you can tell
that I think this is pretty cool,

and it's definitely evidence
that frames matter,

and it's definitely evidence
that understanding is frame dependent.

So I want to leave you with a quote,
one of my new favorite quotes.

This is from Austrian
philosopher Ivan Illich,

and Illich says that neither
revolution nor reformation

can ultimately change a society,
rather you must tell a more powerful tale,

one so persuasive
that it sweeps away the old myths

and becomes the preferred story.

So if we're going to drive social change,
we need to develop, we need to test,

and we need to commit to
telling new stories.

And with that, I will thank you very much,
and encourage you all to frame on.

(Applause)