**The Influence of Curiosity in Shaping Perspectives: Findings from Stanford Studies**
During a barbecue, a guy took eleven minutes to elaborate on why I was mistaken regarding inflation. He had figures. He displayed a chart on his phone toward me at intervals, much like a cop presenting a warrant. By the conclusion, I believed even more firmly in my original stance, and I also developed a fixed opinion about him.
Two experiments conducted at Stanford indicate that a single sentence and a dash of real curiosity could have made a difference.
**Details of the Experiments**
In 2010, Frances Chen, Julia Minson, and Zakary Tormala released a brief paper in the *Journal of Experimental Social Psychology* detailing two studies focusing on what they referred to as expressed interest. At the time, Chen and Minson were part of Stanford’s psychology department, while Tormala, who focuses on attitudes and persuasion, was at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
The initial study relied on a small deception. Fifty-six undergraduates who opposed a proposal to make comprehensive exams mandatory for graduation were informed they had been matched for an online discussion with a student who supported it. No such student actually existed; all responses were pre-written.
Half of the subjects received a set of arguments in favor of the exams. The other half received the same arguments with the addition of one line, where the fictional participant expressed interest and asked them to elaborate on their reasons for their viewpoint.
That was the full extent of the intervention.
Participants who received the inquiry rated their unseen opponent as significantly more open-minded, felt more receptive themselves, and had a more favorable view of exam proponents as a whole. Two judges who reviewed the participants’ written responses, unaware of who had received what, scored those responses as more open. The question influenced behavior as well as emotions.
Their stance on the exam policy remained unchanged.
**Who Actually Modifies Their View**
The second study flipped the experiment and directed it at the one who posed the questions. Forty-nine students opposed to the case for universal veganism viewed a two-minute video featuring a campus animal rights advocate making that argument. One group was instructed to write comments comparing the speaker’s perspective with their own, which is essentially what people typically do. The other group had to formulate three open-ended questions intended to comprehend why the speaker held his views.
The questioners never posed them. There were no responses to be had since no one was there to answer.
Despite this, they completed the video perceiving the speaker’s conclusions as more valid, viewing vegans in a more positive light, and being more open to the prospect of a genuine conversation. Simply crafting the question was enough. On the crucial measure—the issue itself—the questioners shifted while the questioned did not.
This result is odd and somewhat disheartening if you hoped to utilize curiosity as a means to pry into another’s perspective.
**Why a Question Can Achieve What an Argument Cannot**
An elaborative question prompts a person to expand on their previous statement. The authors were meticulous in distinguishing it from a rhetorical question or a trap designed to catch someone in a contradiction, which is generally the nature of most questions during an argument.
Regarding the mechanism, the paper suggests several possibilities but admits to testing none of them. Formulating a question may compel you to engage with what the other person said on its own terms rather than scanning for weaknesses. It may activate perspective-taking. Alternatively, it may simply be a matter of self-perception: you see yourself acting open-mindedly, conclude that you are an open-minded person, and then continue to behave as such.
I find this last idea somewhat unsettling yet convincing, as I can recognize the opposing scenario. Spend fifteen years in meetings crafting your rebuttal while another individual is still speaking, and you subtly become a person who does not listen. I only became aware of it after I stopped participating in those meetings.
The same research group has delivered additional findings that challenge conventional wisdom. A 2013 study in *Psychological Science* by Chen, Minson, and two colleagues in Germany discovered that maintaining direct eye contact with a speaker correlated with less attitude change, while individuals instructed to observe the speaker’s mouth were more persuaded. So much for that theory about eye contact.
Subsequent research by Michael Yeomans, Minson, and their colleagues, published in *Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes*, developed an algorithm that identifies what receptiveness sounds like in text. In their fieldwork, Wikipedia editors who approached disagreements with openness were less likely to face personal attacks. This team also launched a tool that assesses a draft for its perceived receptiveness, which I tested with an old email and prefer not to discuss further.
**The Potential Impact of This Research**
One study is just one study, and this one is relatively small. Two samples of undergraduates, each with fewer than fifty usable participants, deliberating over graduation requirements and veganism instead of more contentious issues like abortion or immigration. Chen and her co-authors acknowledged this, urging for these interventions to be implemented in genuinely divisive contexts.