Why Political Conversations Go Wrong—and How to Fix Them |
Every holiday season brings with it the same warning: Unless everyone is on the same political side, leave your politics at the door. And every few years, I write another article explaining that rather than trying to convince your wrong-headed relatives to change their minds, listening with genuine curiosity is the answer.
Now, new research by psychologist Todd Kashdan and his colleagues indicates that the real obstacle to cross-partisan understanding and depolarization may not be disagreement itself but what we believe about how open- or closed-minded the people on our own side are.
Why Political Conversations Feel So Hopeless
Political life in the United States is increasingly marked by interparty animus, including tendencies toward dehumanization. Partisans can seem to prefer distance to dialogue and moral judgment to intellectual engagement. Such unproductive habits steadily erode both the willingness to engage politically and the capacity to consider ideas that conflict with one's own.
It's easy to assume that political conversations are hopeless because nothing you say is likely to change anyone’s mind. The usual advice—avoid the topic, escape to the kitchen, or shut down the conversation—is built on a bleak premise: Disagreement is a recipe for disaster.
When political differences emerge at family gatherings, our tribal psychology kicks in. We instinctively sort others into moral categories: ignorant, stupid, crazy, or malicious. And as cognitive distortions such as