New Yale study proves this communication technique can change people’s minds

In the battle to cut through the noise and change how people think about things, there’s one time-tested communication strategy that still works: Op-ed articles.

According to a new study led by Alexander Coppock, an assistant professor at Yale University, op-ed essays have a noticeable and lasting effect on the views people hold toward a range of issues.

“We found that op-ed pieces have a lasting effect on people’s views regardless of their political affiliation or their initial stance on an issue. People read an argument and were persuaded by it. It’s that simple,” Coppock told a writer at Yale News recently.

Coppock and his research team surveyed 3,567 people through an online tool. Participants in “treatment groups” were shown one of five op-eds that had been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, or Newsweek. The articles advocated libertarian policy positions on issues such as climate change, federal spending on transportation and infrastructure, and instituting a federal flat tax on income, according to Yale News.

The researchers then tested participants’ immediate reactions to the op-ed pieces and surveyed them again 10 and 30 days later, comparing their responses to those of participants in the control group, which were not given an op-ed to read.

The researchers performed the same experiment on a group of 2,169 “elites,” including journalists, law professors, policy-focused academics, think tank scholars, bankers, and congressional staffers, writes Yale News.

In both experiments, people exposed to op-eds shifted their views to support the argument presented in the piece. While 50 percent of people in the control group agreed with the views expressed in a given op-ed, 65–70 percent of the people in the treatment groups expressed agreement with the op-eds’ authors immediately after reading the pieces, Coppock told Yale News.

So how do you write an op-ed that sways minds? Bret Stephens offers his advice for doing just that in an essay he wrote last year in The New York Times. A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who spent several years at The Wall Street Journal before joining the editorial team at The Times last year, Stephens shares fifteen tips for the aspiring op-ed writer. Here are seven of them:

1. Write for the ordinary subscriber.

“The ideal reader of an op-ed is the ordinary subscriber — a person of normal intelligence who will be happy to learn something from you, provided he can readily understand what you’re saying. It is for a broad community of people that you must write, not the handful of fellow experts you seek to impress with high-flown jargon, the intellectual rival you want to put down with a devastating aside or the V.I.P. you aim to flatter with an oleaginous adjective.”

2. Offer an opinion.

“The purpose of an op-ed is to offer an opinion. It is not a news analysis or a weighing up of alternative views. It requires a clear thesis, backed by rigorously marshaled evidence, in the service of a persuasive argument. Harry Truman once quipped that he wished he could hire only one-handed economists — just to get away from their ‘on the one hand, on the other’ advice. Op-ed pages are for one-handed writers.”

3. Authority matters. 

“Readers will look to authors who have standing, either because they have expertise in their field or unique experience of a subject. If you can offer neither on a given topic you should not write about it, however passionate your views may be. Opinion editors are often keen on writers who can provide standing-with-surprise: the well-known environmentalist who supports nuclear power; the right-wing politician who favors transgender rights; the African-American scholar who opposes affirmative action.”

4. Advance the discussion.

“A newspaper has a running conversation with its readers. Before pitching an op-ed you should know when the paper last covered that topic, and how your piece will advance the discussion.”

5. Avoid the passive voice. 

“Write declarative sentences. Delete useless or weasel words such as ‘apparently,’ ‘understandable’ or ‘indeed.’ Project a tone of confidence, which is the middle course between diffidence and bombast.”

6. Be proleptic, a word that comes from the Greek for “anticipation.” 

“That is, get the better of the major objection to your argument by raising and answering it in advance. Always offer the other side’s strongest case, not the straw man. Doing so will sharpen your own case and earn the respect of your reader.”

7. Be brief.

“You’re not Proust. Keep your sentences short and your paragraphs tight.”

What do you think about Stephens' advice for writing an op-ed? Is it applicable to other types of writing, like blog posts? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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A version of this article appeared on Inc.