What stops people from changing their minds?

A persistent barrage of information is not the best method for getting through to someone with a different point of view.

  • When you want someone to see things differently and to abandon their previous stance, sometimes persistence is not key.
  • "Too often we think change is about pushing," says Jonah Berger, author of the book The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone's Mind, and a marketing professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. "We think if we just come up with one more way people will eventually come around."
  • Through speaking with people who have successfully changed minds of others, Berger identified five common barriers and created the REDUCE framework for finding the catalysts needed to break through: reactants, endowment, distance, uncertainty, and corroborating evidence.
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The Secret Service is buying social media location data

New documents confirm that the government agency—one of many—has been using a tracking company.

Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images
  • Documents reveal that the Secret Service used Locate X as part of a social media tracking package.
  • The service "allows investigators to draw a digital fence around an address or area, pinpoint mobile devices that were within that area, and see where else those devices have traveled, going back months."
  • Other agencies that have used this service include the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Customs and Border Protection, the Coast Guard, and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
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You want to stop child abuse? Here's how you can actually help.

Sharing QAnon disinformation is harming the children devotees purport to help.

Photo: Atjanan Charoensiri / Shutterstock
  • The conspiracy theory, QAnon, is doing more harm than good in the battle to end child trafficking.
  • Foster youth expert, Regan Williams, says there are 25-29k missing children every year, not 800k, as marketed by QAnon.
  • Real ways to help abused children include donating to nonprofits, taking educational workshops, and becoming a foster parent.
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Can consumer brands survive boycotting Facebook?

Bigger brands can afford to take their ad budgets elsewhere – less so with direct-to-consumer brands.

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  • Over 500 companies, well-known consumer brands among them, have announced that they will not advertise on Facebook-owned media properties until the company curbs hate speech on its platform.
  • Facebook is likely to sustain minimal damages at the hands of the #StopHateForProfit movement, because the lion's share of potential participants depend on the platform for business, and it isn't mutual.
  • Even if all 100 of Facebook's top ad buyers were to suddenly freeze their campaigns and participate in the boycott, that would still only represent 6% of the platform's income.
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Consumer advocacy groups are mostly funded by Big Pharma, according to new research

An article in Journal of Bioethical Inquiry raises questions about the goal of these advocacy groups.

Image by Jukka Niittymaa / Pixabay
  • Two-thirds of American consumer advocacy groups are funded by pharmaceutical companies.
  • The authors of an article in Journal of Bioethical Inquiry say this compromises their advocacy.
  • Groups like the National Alliance on Mental Illness act more like lobbyists than patient advocates.

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