Take 5: How to Talk Politics (Constructively)

But Kellogg research suggests it can be worth doing—and it’s possible to approach political conversations in a healthy and constructive way. Here are a few tactics that may help.

1. Use science-based strategies to put aside your preconceived notions of “the other side”

It’s not just your imagination. Something really has changed in American politics, says Eli J. Finkel, a professor of management and organizations. Over the past five years in particular, “the two sides have grown to hate each other so much.”

In a study, Finkel and coauthors examined 200 academic publications in hopes of understanding what’s at the heart of this newfound antagonism and what we can do about it.

One important discovery: the problem is less political polarization and more partisan animosity. It turns out the average liberal and conservative haven’t gotten farther apart in how they think about key political issues, but they have grown to dislike one another much more than they once did. In the 1970s, when pollsters asked voters to rate from zero to 100 their feelings about the average supporter of the opposing party, “you’d get something in the middle of the scale, about 50. Today, it’s closer to about 20,” Finkel says. In other words, we’re not having an issues problem—we’re having a feelings problem that masquerades as a fight over policy.

This may explain why some of the most promising interventions to reduce partisan animosity the researchers identified focused on correcting misperceptions. For example, one study found that Republicans and Democrats overestimated the extent to which the other side dehumanized them—by as much as 300 percent. Correcting such misperceptions, other research has found, can reduce rates of animosity.

Similarly, several studies found that exposure to political opponents’ personal experiences, as well as thoughtful arguments for their positions, softened people’s views of them.

“We don’t hate the other side because we understand what they stand for,” Finkel says. “We hate the other side because we have fabricated villains, misperceiving the average political opponent as a caricatured zealot.”

2. Recognize that social media distorts political conversation

Why do political discussions online feel so vicious?

One explanation, according to additional research by Finkel, lies with the people who choose to opt into them. In a study of Reddit commenters, Finkel and Kellogg coauthor Michalis Mamakos found that people who comment in partisan forums are simply the most uncivil, regardless of discussion topic. That is, trolls are going to troll, no matter what they are discussing.

“The toxicity we observe in online political contexts is an overrepresentation of the people who choose to opt into them,” Mamakos says. “And these people push out the more agreeable people who don’t want to engage with this kind of conflict. This overrepresentation provides a misleading image of the severity of the divide.”

3. Recognize that social media distorts how we perceive others, too

It’s also true that digital communication can make us see others as angrier than they really are, according to William Brady, an assistant professor of management and organizations. Brady and several colleagues identified a consistent mismatch in how people interpreted political posts on Twitter (now X).

Specifically, users perceived greater moral outrage in political posts than the authors felt when writing them. This is particularly true for people who regularly use social media to learn about politics. As a result, the study finds, people begin to perceive outrage as the norm on digital platforms.

Both this study and the prevous one suggest that platforms should do more to curb uncivil discussion—and users, for their part, should recognize that what they see online may not be representative of how people really feel or will behave offline.

4. Get curious about other people’s perspective

As an assistant professor of marketing, Jacob Teeny has lots of expertise on the psychology of persuasion. But as he explained in an episode of The Insightful Leader podcast, there’s one important person he has not been able to sway when it comes to politics: his dad.

Yet through both research and personal experience, Teeny has learned how to have more successful conversations with a political opponent.

For instance: choose your moments carefully. “Make sure that the person doesn’t feel like that conversation is sprung on them, or it’s the end of the day after a long day of work,” he says.

He has also conducted research into why we tend to avoid talking to people who disagree with us. The biggest single deterrent, he discovered, was a fear that the other person wouldn’t really listen.

But Teeny says that, if you go into the conversation making it clear that you’re interested in hearing someone out, they’ll be more likely to show an interest in what you have to say, too.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to simply ask about the other person’s opinion and why they hold it. The goal here is not to persuade, but rather to build trust.

“If you try to jump right into the persuasion part, you’re skipping the most important step of just kind of getting them open to the idea that there are reasonable and valid perspectives on the other side,” he says. Persuasion may happen with time, “but if you don’t have them bought in to at least being open to hearing another perspective, you’re not going to get anywhere.”

So, start by listening—you might be surprised how far it takes you.

5. Have hope: former enemies can develop trust

There’s no doubt that the current political moment can feel dispiriting, and hope can be hard to find. But take heart: even after more-extreme kinds of conflict, we can learn to trust each other again.

That’s the finding of a study by Nour Kteily, a professor of management and organizations, focused on the peace process in Colombia. The country was torn apart by armed conflict between the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) and the government that began in the 1960s. Despite a peace deal approved in 2016, ex-FARC members have struggled to reintegrate into society. This is likely because many Colombians have never met a current or former FARC member, and that lack of contact has allowed animosity to flourish.

Kteily and his coauthors found that a simple intervention can help people overcome some misgivings about their former foes. Watching a five-minute video featuring interviews with FARC ex-combatants increased support for peace and reintegration among non-FARC Colombians—a shift in attitude that persisted for three months after seeing the video.

The effect extended to real-world behavior, too: compared with a control group, participants who saw the video expressed more willingness to hire ex-FARC members and were more likely to donate to a nonprofit organization that helps ex-FARC members.

“This research is proof of principle,” Kteily explains. “It’s not to say that all we need to do is show Colombians a five-minute video and we’re going to solve the problem. But what it does show is there is a potential for media interventions to change minds.”