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I've told you once. No, you haven't? Yes, I have. When? Just now.
No, you didn't. Yes, I did. Didn't? I didn't. I'm telling you, I didn't.
You did not! I'm sorry, is this a five-minute argument or the full half-hour? Oh! Oh, just the five-minute one. Fine.
Thank you. Anyway, I did. You most certainly did not.
Now, let's get one thing quite clear. I most definitely told you. You did not? Yes, I did. You did not.
Yes, I did. Didn't. Yes, I did. Didn't! Yes, I did.
Look, this is an argument. Yes it is? No it isn't, it's just contradiction.
So, that is a little bit of the fun that people are having. That's a fun way of looking at what's happening on a regular basis. People disagreeing on things from politics on down, from foreign policy to domestic policy. People want to be around people that agree with them, I think, more than ever. And that is why I imagine one of the reasons that Julia Minson wrote her book as a Harvard professor.
She found the time. I don't know how. It's called How to Disagree Better, and there's a method to it. In fact, you just told me you teach a course on it, right? Yeah, thanks for having me here.
I teach a course on conflict management at the Harvard Kennedy School, and it's an entire course on just how we have conversations when we dramatically disagree with each other. And one of the things that you do, I saw in the introduction, you said that you have a conservative grandfather. Father-in-law. Father-in-law. Yes, my father-in-law was in the Army for 20 years, you know, voted Republican his entire life.
And, you know, we get along great.
So it can be done. Would you worried about it originally? Should I bring up anything that You might disagree on, and you didn't have to worry about it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, every once in a while something comes up and I want to talk about it.
And like, no long, you know, no matter how long I do this work, it gives me a little pause and then I say, you know what? No, I know how to do this and this is the right thing to do.
So, when do you think that people started arguing so much, mostly about politics, for example?
So, you know, there's a thing political scientists study called affective polarization, which is not how we are actually different, right?
So, polarization is how we're actually different. Affective polarization is how much we dislike and distrust people simply because we know they're in the other party. And that's been studied for a long time and has just been gradually getting worse and worse, you know, over the last maybe 20, 30 years, just continual erosion of our trust in the other side. And do you think it's because we used to know how to disagree better, or does it take additional skill in these polarizing days to get through a conversation like that? I think it's the latter.
I think people have never been great at disagreement. I think what we've always done is just avoid certain topics, right? It used to be like you don't talk about, you know, money, politics, and religion. And now, People know a lot more about what side a person is on, right? From their social media, you know from sort of like their Zoom background.
We all live in very ideologically segregated areas, so you can tell what somebody's politics are just by where they live a lot of the time. And so we have to talk about it because you can't avoid it nearly as much as you used to be able to. And why do you think things got so polarized? I mean, I gave you my theory. I think it started during the impeachment.
Of Clinton. I think Republicans in retrospect overdid it. I think they would even agree with you. And they end up winning reelection with 60% of the vote. And then when George Bush wins a close election and his brother is governor of Florida, and some would say, oh, he delivered that election.
Then people get dug in. Like, my team just lost. My team got cheated. You guys overdid it. Your guy misbehaved.
I feel like that's when things kicked in. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a continuous process. I don't think there's been sort of one thing, right? Because the trend is continuing kind of in a worse and worse direction. I think the thing you're saying about teams makes a huge difference, right?
There's a lot of research that says, you know, you can show people a policy. And they have no idea if it's a Democratic policy or Republican policy. Right.
So like they don't understand the policies well enough to know which side it is. They just know they hate the other side. Right.
And it's weird because Trump has taken so many issues that used to be Democratic issues And kind of flipped it. And even like when it comes to foreign policy, traditionally, Republicans have been a little bit more aggressive. And Trump's been reluctant, for example, on Ukraine. That kind of flipped everything on its head. Um In the big picture, you talk about there's methods to getting through this.
So don't just keep avoiding the argument. There's things you can do. Number one, you could ask people, how do you feel about this first? What does that do for people when they're asked how they feel about it? Yeah, so it's interesting.
There is a ton of research that shows that people love it when you are curious about them, when you want to understand their perspective, right? Like people just want to be understood. They want to know that you are engaged with how they feel. And the trick is we can't let ourselves off the hook by sort of like nodding and smiling and, you know, saying, oh, I'm a big, you know, I'm a good listener because I'm not interrupting. You have to use your words to show with behavior that you really are interested.
So it's, you know, tell me more what you think about this, or I'm curious how you came to hold your beliefs. And you don't have to agree with the other person, right? You can say, look, I see this very differently, but I would love to understand where you're coming from. You can say that first. Yeah, you don't have to agree.
And I think this is a big misconception. Misconception. People think that to have a good conversation, you need to compromise, right? And a lot of people sort of don't want to compromise on something that's very important to them, that is shaped by their values, right? And that stops them from having the conversation.
So, and by the way, we're talking to Julia Minson. She has a book out now called How to Disagree Better.
So, Julia, I have a theory. One of the reasons why people don't want to engage with people that disagree with them is that they feel as though their argument won't hold up. They feel as though they'll lose the debate. They don't feel they can't go deep enough or that person might sc so called score on them and maybe lose that argument. Do you think that, that could be?
A fear of not being able to fully back your argument?
So, that's a really popular theory, and I don't agree with it. And the reason I don't agree with it is that if you, you know, if you do that thought experiment, right, where you say, you know, imagine yourself in that conversation, imagine yourself with another person who dramatically disagrees with you. What we often imagine is that it's the other person who feels sort of insecure and threatened, and like they don't know enough. And I am the one in my sort of mental plate that's winning the argument, right? And that can't be true for all of us.
That feels like an easy out. Most people are pretty confident in their views. And the reason they don't want to have the conversation is because they think the other person is going to be sort of bullheaded and annoying. And they don't want to listen to something that they essentially consider to be nonsense. Right.
So, how do you handle it? How do you recommend people handle it? Certain words, certain strategies.
So, I think the number one thing is going into it. It forgetting the goal of persuading the other person, right? Like the number one mistake that gets everybody off on the wrong track is saying, I'm going to go into this in order to change the other person's mind because you're not going to change anybody's mind. It's like a losing bet. And so, if you're going in with a different goal, that goal could be: can I show them that I'm listening to them, that I'm receptive to their perspective, that I'm curious about where they're coming from?
In the book, I teach a strategy we call the HEAR framework, H-E-A-R, as an I hear you. And so, H stands for hedging your claims.
So, it's words like sometimes, possibly, maybe, right? I think I might want to say COVID vaccines are safe and effective, right? But let's say I'm talking to somebody who doesn't agree with me on that, I could say most physicians tend to think that COVID vaccines are largely safe and effective, right?
So, I just shoved like, shoved three hedges. into one sentence, and it's actually a truer statement. Right.
The statement with a bunch of hedges in it is actually more accurate. Right, exactly. And it shows that I get the fact that the world is complicated. The E stands for emphasizing agreement. Um, you know, and what's interesting about that is that again, people don't want to agree with you know the Evil people on the other side, right?
But there's something we all agree on at a high level, right? We both want to live in a country where people feel safe and fairly treated, right? That is hard to disagree with. And so, if we take a few seconds to emphasize the things that we do agree on, it kind of puts us on the same side of the table. Yeah, or America 250.
Can we agree to celebrate the country? What we think the highs and lows are might be different, and how we do it might be different. That's exactly right.
So you can sort of debate the how, right? But we can all agree on some values that we share, just sort of as humans or as Americans. And it kind of reminds us that we are on the same side, right? The A stands for acknowledgement.
So it's basically, you know, I don't know if you have this tendency yourself, but when I hear something I disagree with, I'm in a huge hurry to sort of contradict it, right? Acknowledgement means you slow down long enough to restate what the other person said.
So you show with your behavior that you were listening, right? Understood. And it's a funny thing because a lot of people say things like, I hear you, but here's why you're wrong. Right.
And that's that's not helpful. Right.
That's not helpful.
So you're better off repeating verbatim what they just said. Verbatim or, you know, restating it to show that you heard, not that, like, give me, you know, give me credit for being a good listener, but I haven't shown you that I'm a good listener. Right.
Right.
Right.
And then the R is reframing to the positive.
So it's avoiding negative words and avoiding contradictory words.
So you want to avoid things like no, can't, won't, terrible, hate, and replace it with things like appreciate, you know, thank you, terrific, right?
So I might want to say, I hated when people try to push me into stressful decisions. Please don't. Yes. I could instead say, I really appreciate it when people give me more time to consider important decisions. Right.
And yeah, it's a soft landing. It's a soft landing.
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So when you teach this course, do you find people are amenable to it? Do you have people. To have a debate, effective debate, back up their arguments, but not make an enemy of the other person. Yeah, it's hugely popular. We had, you know, people sitting on the ground the first day, you know, a couple months ago when I taught, and I said, you know, you have to leave the room because the fire marshal is going to get upset with us.
And they start out with this idea of like, oh, we want to have a hot argument, you know, like when are we going to get to the really hard stuff? And by the time we get to the hard topics, it's not hot anymore because they figured out how to discuss it with kind of thoughtfulness and like some amount of grace that it doesn't feel like a lot of drama, even though we're talking about some really, really difficult topics. Do you find that in life, if someone's absolutely sure about everything, they're not thinking it through because there's so much nuance in life. It's very hard, black and white. Don't run into traffic.
Obviously, that's black and white. But everything, you know, there's so many other things that. Two-thirds I agree with, one-third I don't. Do you find that? Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, hell, even run into traffic, you know, like if there's a baby laying there in the middle of the road, run into the traffic. Right, right. There's a reason. Right, right. I think, you know, we talk a lot in our culture about the importance of confidence.
And confidence is really like overstated in psychology. A lot of what we study is overconfidence, which is like being more confident than you have any right to be. And most people are overconfident in their beliefs.
So you have this, the book is called How to Disagree Better, but when you're in college in particular, you're supposed to be learning.
So if you walk into a class, this is what I think, this is what I don't think political science or whether it's. history, their view of history, then in one rude sense, that's not why you're there, isn't it? Isn't it to collect more facts, get smarter in order to make better conclusions and decisions? Don't you feel as though we have to step back and take in more information? Yeah, you know, and I think it's really interesting, sort of different styles around that.
When I actually started doing this work, what started me on and I was a PhD student at Stanford, and I met this woman named Frances Chen, who is now a professor at the University of British Columbia. She is Asian American, and she, you know, we were like in our 20s and we're sitting in one of our first lab meetings, and she says, you know, I noticed this thing where like, you know, when like little Asian kids are in school, they learn to take in people's opinions and really think about them before they start sort of offering an opinion back. Whereas American kids are taught from a very young age to argue and debate and be critical. Like, what is that difference?
So interesting. And I thought it was fascinating, and I didn't think it was about culture necessarily. I didn't think it was about kids. I thought, hey, this is a fascinating difference in how people approach new ideas, right? Am I going to take it in and think about it, or am I going to push back on it?
And so Frances and I started doing this work together based on that one comment she made, you know, whatever, 20 years ago, do some people?
Sort of practice receptive information processing versus other people who just push back right away. And I'll give you an example.
So, for example, if you're 22 years old, just coming out of college. And you want to write for the a traditional newspaper, like the New York Times, Washington Post. the opinion column. I probably want somebody If you're going to be writing an opinion on the Iran war, that's out there, that's been there, that's maybe grew up in Iran, came back here, fought in the first person Gulf War. Do you want a 22-year-old as bright as they are with very little of the practical experience to write that opinion piece?
One to cover it as opposed to give my opinion.
So do you find that that people should think about Before they come up with opinions, they think they say, let me research before I come up to my conclusions in order to engage you. Yeah, you know, and I think what's gotten really hard, right, is That there's so much information out there, and certainly, you know, the internet was supposed to be this like great equalizer where everybody can get good information, but you know, it's a mix of really good information. We don't know how good. We don't know how good, right? And so, the problem is, people, by our very nature, prefer information that supports our beliefs, right?
So, there's a thing we call selective exposure where you just like keep collecting information that you agree with, and you only talk to people who agree with you, and you only read things that you agree with. And the problem is that the internet has allowed all of us to completely surround ourselves only with things that we believe and agree with. And the algorithm makes sure of it, and the algorithm makes sure of it because they're not in the business of making us informed, they're in the business of making money, right? Right.
And so, if I say, Oh, I'm gonna research this. It's very easy for me to like convince myself that I'm researching it, but really just be like, you know, feeding myself stuff that I like. Yeah. The algorithm to get us, to trap us into continue to watch also helps without polarization. How to disagree better, Julia Minson.
Congratulations. You condensed your course in order to do your book tour.
So congratulations on this. I think it's really going to help people. Thank you. Thank you. Mm-hmm.
