If you talked to friends or family about politics over Thanksgiving, you might not have changed each other’s minds. But don’t be discouraged — and consider talking with them again as the holiday season continues.
As a scholar of political dialogue, for the past decade I have been studying conversations between people who disagree about politics. What I have found is that people rarely change their minds about political issues as a direct result of these discussions. But they frequently feel much better about the people with whom they disagree.
It’s important how those conversations go. Confrontations and arguments are not as productive as inquiry and honest curiosity.
When people sense that others are sincerely curious about what they think, asking calmly posed, respectful questions, they tend to drop their defenses. Instead of being argumentative in response to an aggressive question, they try to mirror the sincerity they perceive.
In addition to asking why someone voted as they did, you might ask about what they fear and what they hope for, what they believe creates a good society, and importantly, about the personal experiences that have given rise to these fears, hopes and beliefs.
This curiosity-based approach has important effects on both the listener and the speaker. I have found the listener may come to understand how the speaker could make a choice the listener considers to be a bad one yet still think of the speaker as a decent person.
The speaker becomes more relatable, and often his or her intentions are revealed to be well-meaning — or even ethically sound. A listener can begin to see how, given different circumstances or different ethical convictions, that person’s vote could make sense.
The speaker, too, stands to have a positive experience.
When I followed up with college students years after they participated in a dialogue session modeling curiosity-based listening, what they remembered best was their conversation partner. Students remembered that a peer they expected to attack them instead asked sincere, respectful questions and listened intently to the answers. They remembered feeling good in the person’s presence and liking them for it.
Benefits to democracy
This type of exchange between Americans of different political stripes can provide several important benefits to democracy.
First, these conversations can help ward off the worst dangers springing from hatred and fear. I expect that gaining some understanding of others’ reasons for their vote, as well as seeing their decency, may reduce people’s support for those conspiracy theories about election results based on the assumption that nobody could actually endorse the opposing candidate.
Such understanding could also reduce support for policies that dehumanize and disenfranchise the other side and politicians who incite violence. In short, I believe these conversations can reduce the sense that the other side is so evil or stupid that it must be stopped at any cost.
Second, these conversations can help promote the best of what democracy promises. In an ideal democracy, people do not only fight for their own freedoms but also seek to understand their fellow citizens’ concerns. People cannot create a society that supports everyone flourishing without knowing what others’ lives are like and without understanding the experiences, interests and convictions that drive them.
Finally, in the rare cases that people do change their minds about politics, I have found it is not because they were argued into a different point of view. Instead, when someone is asked sincere, reflective questions, they sometimes begin to ask themselves those questions. And sometimes, over the years, they find their way into different answers.
For example, one college student told me in a follow-up interview years after she attended a dialogue session that she had been asked, “If you say you believe this, then why did you vote like that?“
“It wasn’t an attacking question,” she recalled. “They really wanted to know.”
As a result, she confided, “I have been asking myself that question ever since.”
Dialogue alone does not sustain a healthy democracy. Citizen actions, not words, protect democratic institutions, our own rights and the rights of others.
But open, curious conversations among people who disagree keep alive the ideas and practices that remind us we are all humans together, sharing a world — and in the U.S., sharing a nation that’s worth protecting.
This holiday season, let’s all commit to continuing to engage with the people with whom we most sharply disagree, with respect and dignity.
Rachel Wahl is an associate professor in the Social Foundations program, Department of Educational Leadership, Foundations, and Policy at the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia. She also serves as faculty lead for Education and Democracy at the UVa Karsh Institute of Democracy.
A version of this article appeared on The Conversation, a nonprofit news organization dedicated to sharing the insights of academic researchers.
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