Book Review: Change of Heart ~ Kyle Knies

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reposted from Our Hen House |

Posted on 07. Dec, 2010 by Kyle Knies in Reading the Animal, The Visiting Animal

As activists, we work tirelessly to create change. For us, the issues run deep. But is the amount we care and the number of hours we work really what makes us effective activists? In Change of Heart: What Psychology Can Teach Us About Creating Social... (Lantern Books, 2010), Nick Cooney, the director of animal protection group The Humane League, explores this fascinating and vital issue. Cooney makes a persuasive case that many of the ways activists measure success — anecdotal evidence, raw output and how much we care — do not adequately measure whether we are achieving our ambition. If we, as animal advocates, can establish our bottom line — to better the lives of as many animals as possible — then everything we do in our work should be in service of that goal.

Change of Heart by Nick Cooney

But figuring out exactly what we want to accomplish and how to measure results is merely the starting point of this expansive and high-minded new book. For the first three of ten chapters, Cooney diligently examines the many ways that human beings resist change. But unlike most books about activism, Change of Heart takes a deliberately practical approach: it focuses almost exclusively on published studies of human psychology.

Not surprisingly, the picture painted in these three chapters is very grim. People do not like change. Not only do many attempts to change people’s hearts often result in the opposite effect, a reinforcement of already-held beliefs, but activists also face a challenge from the inside. Many of our natural tendencies actually weaken our activism. Obviously we believe deeply that what we are doing is the right thing, but that’s just not enough. Studies have shown that people who believe strongly in something are more likely to stick with their methods, and, incredibly, that inefficacy and failure will only strengthen their resolve to keep doing what they believe in. Cooney cautions that we must strive to remember that we are not in this for ourselves, and we need to work hard to soar above the psychological barriers to be the best activists we can be. One particularly memorable and amusing passage is a fake letter from Pepsi to its shareholders: “This has been a very successful year for us indeed. We know Pepsi is the best cola out there and this year we spoke truth to power and really told the public that Pepsi was the superior cola. We passed out a lot of flyers that detailed the many reasons that Pepsi is better than Coke…”

Cooney is not recommending that animal activists follow Pepsi’s business model (“Vegan, the choice of a new generation”), he is trying to remind us that we can accomplish more if we focus resolutely on our bottom line. Just as everything Pepsi does is focused on the goal of selling more sodas (making more money), everything animal activists do also must have a definable and measurable end result. If we can clearly gauge our success, that may mean we will end up constantly transforming our methods, or even forsaking one kind of activism that makes us feel really good and productive for something that will help more animals. Maybe it will even be a compromise we would rather not make, like getting a large organization to switch all their eggs to cage-free instead of adding more vegan options. In spite of ourselves, Cooney emphasizes, we need to do what will help the most animals. We are up against a population that, as psychological research has proven again and again, will find ways to avoid change. If we are to challenge this, we need to know what obstacles we face, and we need specific tools to help us overcome them. This is why Change of Heart is essential reading for any serious activist: it’s an encyclopedia of how to change people’s behavior.

If this is beginning to sound too dense or academic — like a good book to keep by your bedside when you have trouble sleeping — do not fret. While Changing Hearts is loaded with a mind-boggling amount of information, Cooney writes in a casual and accessible way, explaining each psychological study in its simplest terms, and reaching conclusions specific to his target audience. And while this book is for activists from any social justice realm, providing information and tools to help change-makers be persuasive no matter what their goal, Cooney relates nearly every point back to animal advocacy. Some of the most engaging moments of the book are when he supports the psychological conclusions with anecdotes from his real-life experience advocating for animals.

Much of the advice Cooney provides in the second part of the book, Tools of Influence, is common sense, like providing people a clear plan for how to make changes instead of allowing them to set their own timeline. However, another possible subtitle for the section could have been How to Manipulate People Effectively. (Thankfully, as animal advocates, we will all use these tricks to do good!) In this section of the book, many of the psychological barriers to change are turned over and used to our advantage.  For example, people have a natural tendency to follow a social norm, so it is generally most effective to frame positive changes as mainstream. If you are advocating against factory farming, people are more likely to get on board if you say that most people support granting legal protection to animals than if you complain that most people support factory farms by consuming animal products. If people will follow the social norm, then present your case in a way to maximize this tendency.

Some tricky questions that the book poses cannot be resolved by psychology alone. One of the most tantalizing questions Cooney brings up in the introduction is whether it is more effective to show people graphic, disturbing images than it is to show them pleasant images when making the same argument. While some studies show that manipulating fear can be successful, the larger question about disturbing images is left unresolved, because specific studies about the subject have been inadequate. For the most part, however, the book does not suffer from a lack of information. In fact, at times, the amount of information from a wide range of psychological studies from decades of research is so vast, it can be disorienting, and I found myself wishing that he had been more selective in which studies he included. While most of the studies are interesting to read for the stories they tell about human nature, sometimes they seem a bit at odds with each other, almost vaguely contradictory. Furthermore, in a few instances, the bridge of logic from the studies to Cooney’s specific conclusions about activism is shaky: feel it out plank-by-plank as you cross.

In spite of those minor flaws, there is an extraordinary amount of valuable information that we can all learn from Change of Heart, and there is no mistaking the clarity of Cooney’s key points. It’s refreshing that the author has committed to such an exhaustive, empirical examination of how to better our work as activists. It would be impossible to read through this ambitious book without feeling impassioned to create change, and better equipped to do so effectively than ever before. Certainly we are serious about what we do,or else we wouldn’t be activists, so thankfully we have people like Cooney to change our hearts. If we take it all in, a better world awaits us.

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Order Change of Heart: What Psychology Can Teach Us About Creating Social Change