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Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

This is one of those studies that I'm not sure are profound or silly. But of course people changed their minds after listening to a reasoned discussion, who wouldn't? The more interesting case would be "people impervious to written communication".

What I'd like to know is whether people changed their mind or changed their worldview, that is, do written pieces actually get people to think radically-different about major parts of their lives? Or do they just get people who are a bit apathetic more energized and sure of themselves about something they're already predisposed to generally agree with?

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I suspect this effect only holds on extremely broad issues where people don't consider their core identities material interests to be at stake. It's one thing to be amenable to arguments about very 'zoomed out' policy issues advanced by some bloodless columnist in a mass market publication. It's quite another to convince a NIMBY that the housing market needs to be glutted, or plutocrat that their money needs to be spent on poor people instead of private islands.

The magnitude of the change is quite large. And I think it is quite plausible that op-eds only 'preach to the converted' or only persuade those who are already persuaded. This article shows good evidence that people do change their minds -- especially as these articles covered topics on which the treatment group had views on.

I agree. I mentally translated this to "It pays to write op-eds to turn out the vote", that is, op-eds are a cost-effective way to energize the people who already support you.

It's a bit of a tweak on the headline, but I think it more accurately reflects the nature of the research (Assuming I didn't miss something.)

There's burnout, of course. I'm pretty left leaning, and I'm a subscriber, but I can't stand reading any more NYT op-eds.

Through all the years media effects research had consistently trouble identifying effects at all. Finding any evidence for opinion change through media consumption has always been especially hard, so that a lot of media effect theories are squarely focused on effects other than opinion change like agenda setting or framing (etc.).

Given the current state of media effects research it is not at all clear and obvious that any arguments can influence opinions. As such results to the contrary are surprising (and should be examined closely).

This implies that which positions respected publications run reasoned, convincing arguments for affects what people believe. That for all their complaints about Facebook mind control, they're just as much in the business of controlling people's minds if not more so.

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