These days, there's no surer way to start a fight than to talk politics with someone who disagrees with you. And as Election Day approaches, political conversations are becoming harder to avoid.
He could eke out a living for the next two months and hope for the best, or he could follow Tania Israel's advice and seize the opportunity to help bridge America's political divide.
Israel, a professor in the Department of Counseling, Clinical and School Psychology at UC Santa Barbara, has been facilitating difficult conversations since the 1990s, when she brought together people from opposite sides of the abortion debate.
“It was a transformative experience for me,” Israel recalls. “It didn’t change anything about how I felt about reproductive rights, but it did change a lot about how I felt about people who disagreed with me.”
Tania Israel, a professor of counseling psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says Americans should seize the opportunity presented by the 2024 election to help bridge the country's political divide.
(Laurie Bailey)
Following the 2016 presidential election, he stepped up his efforts to connect with people outside his bubble and wrote a book to guide others willing to do the same. “Confronting the Fracture: How to Meet the Challenges of Living in a Divided Nation,” inspires readers to listen to their fellow Americans rather than debate them.
Israel spoke to The Times about how one-on-one conversations can help the country heal. The conversation has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Why does it seem like there is more political conflict than before?
People not only have to deal with arguments with their uncle, but also with their phones, with the news, and in their own heads. All of that makes us very emotionally active, which partly explains why stress-related political conflicts are on the rise and continue to rise.
It's not healthy for us, it's not healthy for our relationships, and it's not healthy for our democracy.
Is it good to try to bridge the gap or is it better for mental health to stay away?
I think the best thing for people is to develop the ability to be able to do both: to be able to have those conversations and also to be able to know when it's best not to do them.
What motivates people to interact with someone on the other side?
Some people say, “I want to maintain a relationship with someone in my life and we are having a hard time doing so because of a political conflict.”
Some people say they want to persuade or convince another person.
Some people say they want to find common ground or overcome divisions.
And then some people say, “I just can't understand how people can think, act, or vote the way they do,” and they look for some explanation.
Are we so used to being on our phones that it makes it difficult to deal with people in real life?
It's much easier to form stereotypes about people when we interact with them only through social media. This distorts our understanding of who others are.
Are stereotypes the only problem?
As humans, we have these cognitive biases that lead us to view ourselves as very rational and base our ideas on solid information, but we view people on the other side as irrational, illogical, and brainwashed with misinformation. Both sides see things this way.
My favorite cognitive bias is called motive attribution asymmetry, where we see ourselves as motivated by protective and caring motives, and see the other side as driven by selfishness and hostility.
How can we correct our cognitive biases?
Recognizing them is probably the most important thing.
We can recognize the biases of the other party. If we simply acknowledge that we are susceptible to all of those same things, that can help us have the curiosity to correct them.
If you find yourself in the middle of a polarizing discussion, how can you turn the tables?
The best thing we can do if we are trying to find common ground, persuade someone, or gain knowledge is to try to understand them better.
What we do is listen, encourage people to give their opinions, manage our own emotions, and when we share with people, we share stories rather than statistics and slogans.
That's not what people think they should be doing. They think they should be debating, providing all the information, statistics and rationale.
Why are stories better than statistics?
When we use statistics and arguments, we draw them from trusted sources, which are often not the same as the trusted sources of the person we are talking to.
Confirmation bias causes us to accept information that supports what we already believe to be true and ignore or dismiss information that conflicts with our beliefs. So when we tell people things that conflict with what they believe, they are more likely to discount what we say and, frankly, to dismiss us as a reliable source.
When we incorporate information into stories, people remember it better and accept it better. It's also how humans relate to each other. Not only is it more effective, but it's also a more interesting conversation.
Scientists will say that an anecdote is not a fact, but you are saying that an anecdote is better than a fact.
True. We can have all the information, but when another human being is involved, it turns out that simply telling them all the information is of no use.
If we believe in science, we must also believe in the science that says that is not the way to get someone to change their behavior.
Why would someone who doesn't trust your facts trust your story?
Stories seem truer. And you can’t argue with stories, you know? “This is the story of my life.” You can’t argue with the story of my life. Plus, if there’s some emotion in the story, people connect with that.
We often put forward our ideas to say, “These are my ideas. That’s why you should believe them.” Or to say, “These are my ideas. That’s why this justifies what I think or do.” Very rarely do we put forward our ideas to say, “These are my ideas. These are the limits of my understanding of this. What am I missing?”
This is a completely disarming approach, because it brings intellectual humility. We can have very strong beliefs and at the same time be curious and respectful of points of view that may be different from our own. This will help us to broaden our understanding.
It seems like you have to be in the right mindset to want to talk to someone you're used to disagreeing with, doesn't it?
We have to develop the capacity to do this. There are habits we need to form and habits we need to reform. All of that training will help us be able to deal with political division, as well as other challenges in our lives.
What does this training consist of?
The first step is to reduce polarizing information. We can consume news more intelligently, use social media more intentionally, and correct our cognitive biases. That will help us be in a balanced space.
The next step is to develop our individual capacity through emotional resilience, that is, being able to face a person or a sign on the lawn and not completely break down.
Intellectual humility helps us expand our minds, and you're absolutely right that we have to want to do that. It's about having the curiosity to recognize that you may not know the whole story and that there is more you can learn.
And then there's compassion. You have to go through all these steps before you can even develop empathy and compassion.
Once you've done all that, you're now ready to strengthen the connections.
As?
If you want to interact with others, you have to do it effectively: listening to others, telling stories, all that.
It also involves getting involved in our communities and our country. Civic engagement is a very important activity. Do something meaningful to support the causes you care about. Volunteering not only benefits us as a society, but also our mental health.
Posting something on social media is not a very effective way to advocate for a cause. Getting away from screens and engaging with other three-dimensional human beings is probably the best thing we can do to address any of these issues.
There is also something that most people have never heard of, which is the bridge movement.
What's that?
There are more than 500 organizations working to bridge the gaps and strengthen our democracy. If people join that movement, that's great. But just knowing that it's happening can make people more optimistic about their fellow Americans and about the future of our country.
