Transcriber: Megan Claeys
Reviewer: Annet Johnson Today, I am going to talk to you
about the increasing divide between everyday
people’s political beliefs, what’s known as political polarization. I’m going to cover it in three ways: one, how my lifelong interest
in the topic developed; two, why we have it
or at least one key reason; and three, what you can but probably are
not doing to help resolve the situation. So, let me start with
where my interest started for me: in elementary school. Now, some people say that if you really
want to predict a presidential election, you should poll in elementary school. The idea goes, kids will help you tally
voters you might otherwise miss, and since they’ll just repeat
their parents’ preferences, you’ll get a more accurate prediction. In fact, one elementary school,
not my own, has been conducting this very poll for over four decades. And it’s got the president right
48 years in a row though even they biffed on 2016. Now, when I was a first grader, my own
elementary school in Portland, Oregon, was conducting a very similar
presidential poll. And me, I was a blazing
five-year-old crusader for the Republican nominee, Bob Dole,
over the Democrat, Bill Clinton. I even distinctly remember
going up to a kid and saying, “You can’t trust that Clinton. He’ll show you a grape
and call it a cherry. It’s pure logic, people.” But, as compelling as I thought I was, if you don’t know anything
about Portland’s political scene, I can indicate it with one photo. There were only two votes
for the Republican nominee in my classroom that year and I might
be misremembering one of them. Growing up in Portland,
my friends were liberal, or rather my friend’s parents were
liberal, my teachers were liberal, the squirrels were definitely liberal. But at home, my primary
political role model, my father, was an unabashed conservative. It was a straining political identity
for me to hold growing up, but especially after my father spoke
to my high school principal and, the next day, my history teacher was no longer
telling George Bush jokes in class. But because of this
political environment, my dad and I were
constantly having debates: voter ID laws, immigration,
capital punishment. And throughout it all, he never once
forced me to believe what he did. And later, when I went on to pursue
a Ph.D. in Social Psychology, it was in part because those debates made me so interested
in the science of persuasion, largely because I kept
losing debates to him. Now, when I got to graduate school and started to study
the psychology of opinion change, as it turned out, there were
a lot of other people doing it too, and for good reason. Although the United States has had
its fair share of political disagreements, the current divide is truly alarming
to people on both sides of the aisle. And yet, there is hope. The idea is not a particularly
new one or a flashy one, nor will it FedEx us
national peace by 9 p.m. tonight, but there is a promising study. In 2015, two young researchers
hired a team of people to go door to door in a California county to try to reduce negativity
toward an upcoming transgender bill. Such issues, today,
elicit quite polarized responses. And yet, even three months
after these visits occurred, the researchers continued
to observe a sizable reduction in negativity toward the bill. In other words, they were able
to depolarize a very polarized issue, and they did it simply
by having a conversation. Increasing amounts of research show that one of the simplest
and most straightforward paths to curbing political polarization
among everyday people is simply to have conversations
with people of different views. Of course, not every view
deserves a debate; giving a platform to truly harmful
or totally untrue beliefs simply legitimizes them
for susceptible minds. However, we can’t treat
all topics like this. We must figure out how to differentiate
our dislike from what is unacceptable and have real, but often
difficult dialogues. For when we do, we often come
to find the ways in which we have misrepresented
the other side’s opinion. For me, I was getting weekly conversations
of this with my dad, who, as I was progressing
through graduate school, was now becoming a little frustrated
he couldn’t win every debate so easily. But okay, even if you believe the research
that these kinds of conversations can reduce the polarization
between everyday people, you probably had two reactions. One, if the solution is so easy, why do
we still have political polarization, huh? Fair point. And two, I’ve talked to the other side. You’re telling me that conversation
is supposed to depolarize things? Also a fair point. Let me start with the first, it’s easier. The reason we still have
political polarization is ... drumroll, people don’t talk to people
they disagree with. That’s right. In fact, two separate studies showed that Thanksgiving dinners are
anywhere from 20 to 50 minutes shorter when the guest list includes people with
mixed versus the same political beliefs. But speaking to people
we disagree with is kind of like exercising
and eating healthy. We have clear solutions
to our collective well-being, yet we’re all just kind of like,
“Nah, not for me.” And that’s what my research
has really tried to understand. Why are people so reluctant toward
having these important conversations? Now, before continuing, let me
acknowledge that for many people, they avoid these conversations
for very good reason. Maybe they feel unsafe having them or this
“debate” is about their lived experience, so constantly having to defend it
is simply exhausting, if not insulting. But, at the same time,
there are a lot of other people who do possess the capacity
for these conversations. And my research has
really tried to understand why these people are so reluctant
toward having them. A question that was particularly
meaningful to me at the time, because I needed a dissertation. It was the summer before
my final year in graduate school, and although I knew
what I wanted to study, I didn’t have any good hypotheses. Well, until a family barbecue. Now although my dad’s conservative
he chooses to eat a vegetarian diet, so there was already a little political
debate about what should go on the grill. But I was in my own political debate
with a conservative leaning family friend on the topic of white privilege, where I was taking the apparently
controversial stance that it exists. Now, as I was trying
to defend this position, this family friend just kept talking
right past me or even right over me. When finally I decided I needed to fake
a bathroom break to get out of this, my dad suddenly jumped
into the conversation. He turned to the family friend
and he said, <i>“</i>Kyle” - it’s not his real name. “Kyle, will you shut up
and let Jake speak? You may not agree with
what he has to say, but I promise you’ll be better off
after you hear it.” And like that my dad just
gave me my dissertation idea. In research that I and a colleague
would later publish, we recruited a sample of participants
from all over the United States, young and old, Democrat and Republican,
and gave them a list of reasons for why they might avoid conversations
with people they disagree with; maybe they think they’re
too hard to change or too extreme or too prone to emotional agitation. Although people do care
about these things, do you know the number one reason people avoid speaking to
those they disagree with? Their expectation of feeling unheard. In follow-up studies, my colleague and I
found the same effect over and over again, even if the other person was extreme
or impossible to change, as long as you thought
they would genuinely listen to you, you were willing to speak to them. And as it turns out, we actually underestimate
just how likely this is to occur. Of course, there will always be
people on both sides of an issue who will ignore anything
they disagree with. But on average, people self-report
being open to hearing contrary views. We just have to actually
initiate the conversation. So whether it’s a friend,
a family member, or a family friend, consider going out and speaking to them on a topic that maybe
the two of you disagree on. Of course, once you do, you’ll have
the greater challenge ahead of you; how to actually have
a productive conversation. Not every debate with my dad
has gone so well. Once, he, my brother, and I
were taking a road trip through Ireland. While I was in the back
recovering from an illness I got from ... giving a passionate kiss
to a popular rock, the Blarney Stone. Well, somehow we got onto
the topic of military spending and for some reason,
I felt the need to prove him wrong. When he cited a statistic I didn’t like,
I told him I didn’t believe it. Then he told me, “Well, I don’t
believe any of the statistics you shared.” Naturally, I told him,<i> </i>“Well, that’s just
because you’re an out-of-touch old man”, to which he, naturally, responded,
“No, you’re just an unknowing, naive boy.” The car fell silent, our necklines hot. Meanwhile, my brother,
who’s actually in the military and might know something
about military spending, was never once consulted
for his opinion on the matter. So, let me give you a point-by-point
breakdown of my every blunder. First, don’t kiss a rock
lots of other people also kiss, even pre-COVID, that was pretty stupid. But the bigger point is, don’t have these conversations
when people are in a bad mood. Debates like these are best done
when people are happy and don’t feel like the conversation
is sprung upon them. Second, make sure you’re going into
these conversations with the right motive. With my dad, I wanted to prove him wrong
and rhetorically kick his butt, but these mindsets almost always backfire. Instead, I should have
explicitly established a learning or truth seeking motive. In fact, one of the easiest ways
to do this is to simply ask the other person about their opinion. Asking them to explain
why they believe what they do communicates that you’re genuinely
interested in what they have to say, which, in fact, makes the other person
more likely to be interested in hearing what you have to say. Third, I shouldn’t have
just dismissed this statistic. A better approach would have been
to have said that what he shared was different than what I had read, and, if this statistic was important
to our conversation, maybe we’ll compare sources. But, more broadly, I should have
been willing to acknowledge the aspects of his opinion
that I thought had merit. Acknowledging pros and cons on a topic
helps to foster a sense of openness, which makes the other person more
receptive to your counterpoints too. Finally, and one of the most
powerful tactics you can use in these kinds of conversations
is called “Analogic Perspective-Taking.” Perspective-taking is simply
imagining yourself from another person’s point of view. However, if you’ve lived
a very different experience, perspective-taking can be very hard, and that’s where Analogic
Perspective-Taking comes in. The idea is to get the other person
to recall a personal experience that generates the same
thoughts and emotions to the context you’re trying to describe, even if it occurs
in a totally different situation. For example, in that transgender bill
study I told you about earlier, the researchers asked participants
to recall from their lives a time where they had been judged negatively
simply for being different. They then encouraged the voters
to see how this personal experience offered a window into the daily experience
of transgender people’s daily lives. Of course, in the conversation
with my dad, I didn’t do anything that I’m advising you now. But even if I had, even if I had practiced perfectly
what I’m prescribing to you right now, there’s a very good chance I would
have had zero effect on his opinion. And I want to emphasize, that’s okay. Depolarizing society is not simply
about changing minds, but about showing people that there
are reasonable and open-minded people on this side of the issue too. If we don’t, people will just
keep going around thinking the other side is full of extremist,
closed-minded thinkers, at which point civil discourse
no longer seems like a feasible solution to our differences. And if we give up on dialogue,
I really begin to worry what the alternative solution
to our differences becomes. Over time, the conversations
with my dad, at least politically, have become less frequent: the distance, the time zones,
new series on Netflix. But their cumulative effect
on me has been profound. Yes, I’m sure they have ultimately
shifted my political beliefs, just as I’m sure, even minimally,
they’ve shifted his. But more importantly, communicating with at least one person
on the other side of the aisle has helped to remind me that
these debates and conversations are not simply about
who’s right and who’s wrong, but one of the best practices and policies for developing a society
that brings about the most good. Still, even if you can understand
the other side's opinion, no one likes to lose an election. And when the results of my own first grade
presidential poll were revealed to me, I remember going back to my dad
and just punched-fist frustration. “Did I say it wrong? Was it a cherry to a grape
or a grape to a cherry? I tried both, neither worked.” And to this day,
I still remember his response. “Well, son, did you take the time to ask
them for their opinion on the matter? And really listen?” Thank you all for listening to me today. I know I said a lot
of advice and research, so scanning this QR code
takes you to a one-page summary of all the key points to have
a productive conversation with someone you might disagree with. Because I truly encourage you
to go out and have a conversation with someone who sees
the world a little differently. Thank you. (Applause)
