These days, there’s no surefire way to start a fight than talking about politics with someone you disagree with, and as Election Day approaches, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to avoid political conversations.
We can weather the next two months and hope for the best, or we can follow Tania Israel’s advice and seize the opportunity to bridge America’s political divide.
Israel, a professor in the department of counseling, clinical and school psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has been bringing together people on both sides of the abortion debate to facilitate difficult conversations since the 1990s.
“For me, that was a turning point,” Israel recalled. “It didn’t change how I felt about reproductive rights, but it did change how I felt about people who disagree with me.”
After the 2016 presidential election, she stepped up her efforts to step out of her shell and connect with people, and wrote a book to guide others who wanted to do the same. “Confronting the Divide: How to Navigate the Challenges of Living in a Divided Nation” encourages readers to listen to Americans, rather than argue with them.
Israel spoke to The Times about how personal dialogue can help the nation heal. The conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Why does it seem like there is more political conflict than before?
People are struggling not only with arguments with their uncles, but also with cell phones, the news, and arguments in their own heads. All of this makes our emotions highly active. This is part of the reason why stress-related political conflict has increased and continues to increase.
That’s not healthy for us, that’s not healthy for our relationships, and that’s not healthy for our democracy.
Is it a good idea to try to bridge the gap, or would distance be better for your mental health?
I think what’s best for people is to have the ability to do both — to be able to have those conversations and to know when it’s best not to have them.
What motivates people to engage with someone on the other side?
“I want to maintain relationships in my life, but the political conflict makes it difficult,” some say.
Some people say they want to persuade or convince others.
Some say they want to find common ground and heal rifts.
And then there are those who say, “I just can’t understand how people can think and act and vote the way they do,” and are looking for some insight.
Are we so used to our phones that it’s becoming harder to interact with people in the real world?
It’s easy to develop stereotypes about people when we only interact with them through their social media accounts, which distorts our understanding of what other people are like.
Is stereotyping the only problem?
Humans have a cognitive bias that sees us as being very rational and well-informed, but see those on the other side as irrational, illogical, and brainwashed by misinformation. Both sides see things this way.
My favorite cognitive bias is something called motivation attribution asymmetry, where we see ourselves as being driven by motives of protection or compassion on the one hand and selfishness or hostility on the other.
How do we correct cognitive biases?
Recognizing them is probably the most important thing.
We can recognize the biases of others, and have the curiosity to correct them, simply by recognizing that we are subject to the same influences.
If you find yourself in the middle of a polarizing debate, how can you turn the situation around?
When trying to find common ground, persuade someone, or gain insight, the best thing we can do is to try to understand the other person better.
The way we do that is by listening, by encouraging people to elaborate, by taking control of our own emotions, and by sharing with people, by sharing stories, not statistics and slogans.
People don’t think that should be the case, they think that there should be a debate, with all the information, statistics and evidence.
Why are stories better than statistics?
When we use statistics or arguments, they come from sources that we trust, but very often those sources are not the same sources that the person we’re talking to trusts.
Confirmation bias causes us to accept information that supports what we already believe to be true and to ignore or dismiss information that contradicts our beliefs. So when we share information that contradicts someone’s beliefs, they’re more likely to dismiss what we have to say — and, frankly, to dismiss us as a credible source of information.
When you incorporate information into a story, people remember it better and are more receptive to it. It’s also how humans relate to each other. It’s not only more effective, it makes for more interesting conversations.
Scientists will say that anecdotes are not data, but you say that anecdotes are better than data.
Yes, we can have all the information, but when another human being is involved, we find that just telling them all the information is not helpful.
If you believe in science, you also need to believe in the science that this is not the way to change people’s behavior.
If people don’t believe your facts, why would they believe your story?
Stories are more authentic. You can’t argue with a story, right? “This is the story of my life.” You can’t argue with the story of my life. And if the story has emotion, people relate to it.
We often publish our thoughts to say, “Here’s what I think, and here’s why you should believe it,” or, “Here’s what I think, and here’s the justification for my thoughts or actions,” but we rarely publish our thoughts to say, “Here’s what I think, and here’s the limit of my understanding, what am I missing?”
This is a completely comforting approach because it brings with it intellectual humility: we can hold very strong beliefs and still maintain curiosity and respect for views that may differ from our own, which helps to broaden our understanding.
It seems like if you want to talk to people with whom you normally disagree, you need to be in the right frame of mind, right?
We have to develop our ability to do this. There are habits to develop and habits to break. All of this training will help us confront political divisions and other challenges in life.
What does that training include?
The first step is to reduce polarizing information — by consuming news more wisely, using social media more intentionally, and modifying our cognitive biases — and we can achieve equilibrium.
Next is personal empowerment through emotional resilience, which is not panicking completely when faced with a person or sign.
Intellectual humility helps us broaden our horizons, and it’s certainly true that we must be willing to do so — it’s about having the curiosity to recognize that we may not understand everything, and that there may be more we can learn.
And then there’s compassion. All of these steps have to be taken before you can develop empathy and compassion.
Once all this is done, you’re ready to strengthen your connection.
how?
If you want to engage across the divide, you have to listen to others, talk to others, and do all of those things effectively.
It’s also about engaging with our communities and country. Civic engagement is a really important activity. Do something meaningful to support the causes you care about. Volunteering not only benefits us as a society, it also benefits our mental health.
Posting something on social media is not a very effective form of advocacy. Looking away from the screen and engaging with other three-dimensional humans is probably the best thing we can do about these issues.
There is also something called the “bridging movement” that most people have never heard of.
what’s that?
There are over 500 organizations working to bridge the gap and strengthen our democracy. It’s great that people are joining this movement, but just knowing that it’s happening makes people more optimistic about the American people and about the future of our country.