When we try to change their heart or mind, we’re choosing an almost unsolvable problem. There is another approach.
When someone’s behavior bothers us, we tend to want them to change from the inside out. We want them to see things differently, to care more, to become more understanding, less biased, more open. We focus on their character, their heart, their beliefs, as if different behavior will naturally follow once they’ve had the right internal transformation.
I see this pattern all the time, both in my work and in my own life. It’s a tough one. What happens when we anchor ourselves to changing someone’s character?
In 2022, I came across Yale psychologist Phillip Atiba Goff in a Hidden Brain episode. Goff’s approach to addressing racial discrimination in law enforcement grapples with this question, though on a much larger scale. Said Goff,
“…if the problem is individual character, inside hearts and minds, a defect of the soul that we’ve got to fix…There are many problems with that, the first of which of course is that it doesn’t track particularly closely with the science. But probably more importantly, it’s just a hard problem to fix…It creates layers of difficulty at solving the problem from the difficulty detecting it to the ability to actually change hearts and minds and that is exhausting when you look at how often we have racism producing outcomes that are so tragic.”
Goff’s approach is not to work from the soul out, but from behavior in. Instead of pursuing internal transformation—which is hard to really know, hard to measure, hard to achieve, and exhausting to wait for—Goff is working to transform policing by focusing on changing behavior.
It’s a compelling mental shift. When we’re frustrated with someone, what would it mean to focus on behavior rather than character? I may wish my husband to be more thoughtful about the mess he makes in the kitchen I just cleaned, or I could request that he butter his toast over the counter instead of over the floor.
For all its power, I can see that the approach may feel unsatisfying. When it’s our partner, our colleague, our parent, we don’t just want different behavior—we want them to get it. We want them to care. We want them to be more emotionally available, more collegial, more interested in us, less intolerant, less extreme.
A behavior change without a corresponding heart change can feel hollow, more like compliance rather than transformation. What do we lose when we set aside the question of what someone believes or feels?
And yet: What do we gain? Waiting for someone to be who we want them to be or believe what we want them to believe is a very long game. Sometimes it’s an impossible game. Different behavior, even without a change of heart, can provide relief. And sometimes—not always, but sometimes—the revised behavior sparks a shift that exhortation never did.
Goff’s approach invites us to reckon with what we’re really after, how realistic it is, and how long we’re willing to wait for something to change. I don’t have a neat answer to this. But I keep coming back to the question:
From the soul out or from the behavior in?
Over to you
- What is your initial reaction to Goff’s approach? Does anything change when you rest with the idea for a while?
- Recall a time when someone asked you to change your behavior without demanding you change your beliefs. How did that feel compared to times when someone tried to change how you think or feel?
- Consider a recent conflict where you felt stuck. What were you trying to change about the other person’s heart or mind? What specific behavior change might you have asked for instead?
- Who in your life do you most want to “get it”? What is the “it” you want them to understand? Now, what’s one concrete action from them that would make a difference, even without full understanding?