Maybe minds can be changed

The polls show Americans are fed up with their do-nothing Congress. But politicians will tell you, ‘We have no choice. We’re stubborn because the voters are stubborn.’

However, new research, reported by Vox.com implies it doesn’t have to be that way.

Two researchers, David Brockman of UC Berkeley and Daniel Butler of Washington University, got several state legislators to cooperate in a risky experiment.

Typically, when politicians send out letters to voters, they mention only the issues they think the voters will agree with, and leave out the other stuff.

Brockman and Butler asked them to do just the opposite: to send out newsletters on their least popular policies, like school vouchers and the income tax.

They also sent random letters to a control group.

The researchers interviewed the voters before and after receiving the letters – to find out if their opinions had changed.

The result? Getting a letter from a politician on an issue they disagreed with made voters 6.5 percent more likely to change their position in favor of the politicians’ opinion.

It didn’t matter whether the legislator explained himself, or just made a simple statement, the effect was the same.

The researchers point to Conservative Ohio Senator Rob Portman who last year did a 180 on gay marriage.

Portman said, “My son came to my wife and I and told us that he was gay and it was not a choice.”

The research suggests a significant number of Ohio voters changed their own minds because he changed his. So maybe the key to making the voters a little less stubborn is for the politicians to be a little less stubborn.