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Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to Talk Nerdy. Today's Monday, March

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twenty third, twenty twenty six, and I'm the host of

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the show, Doctor Kara Santa Maria, And as always, before

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we dive into this week's episode, I do want to

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thank those of you who make Talk Nerdy possible. Remember,

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Speaker 2: In the way that we.

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Speaker 1: Keep it going week after week all the way up

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to episode five hundred and ninety four, which is where

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we are at today, is by relying on the support

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of individuals just like you. This week's top patrons include

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Chuck Blell, David J. E. Smith, Daniel Lang, Mary Neva,

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This week, I had the opportunity to speak with doctor

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Julia Minson, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School. She

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is a behavioral scientist who researches the psychology of disagreement,

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including you know, conflict, communication, negotiations, and decision making. Really

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to understand better how people engage with opinions, judgments, and

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those decisions that differ from their own. You're going to

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learn a lot today. You're going to learn, as the

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title of the book implies, how to disagree better. So,

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without any further ado, here she is doctor Julia Minson. Well, Julia,

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thank you so much for joining me today.

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Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.

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Speaker 1: I'm excited to talk about your new book, How to

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Disagree Better, But I'm also excited to talk about what

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go you to the place in your career where you know,

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this book is the book that you are writing. So

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you're a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, and I'm

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always really interested in like behavioral scientists who are multi disciplinary.

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So I studied clinical psychology, which is a very kind

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of classic psychology route. It's quite prescribed at this point.

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There are very specific things everybody who wants to go

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clinical has to do and has to study in order

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to be able to get licensed. But I know a

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lot of people who are researchers in human behavior who

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came from cognitive neuroscience or even economic social economics or

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you know, kind of classic psychology departments. So I'm curious

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how your academic story was woven to get you to

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where you are today.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. You know, so I actually wanted to be a

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clinical psychologist. And my mom was also a psychologist, and

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she said, no, no, no, you don't want to be

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a clinical psychologist because it's it's just it's just too hard.

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You know. You listen to people who have sort of

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really you know, profound challenges every day and like it's

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it's hard and it's sad, and don't do that.

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Speaker 2: But you have to write grants, right, that's hard.

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Speaker 3: To Well, I'm at a public policy school, so that's

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a little easier. We're a professional school. But so I

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became a social psychologist, and you know, I don't know,

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maybe three or four years into graduate school, I discovered

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the field of judgment decision making, which is an inter

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disciplinary field, right, So it's psychologists and economists, and you know,

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occasionally we get like, you know, confused sociologist wandering in

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that sort of thing. And so there's you know a

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few JDM people in lots of behavioral science departments. So

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we're kind of all over the place, And I really

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I got drawn to the fact that they were like

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right answers. So I really enjoyed like studying something that

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had like correct answers that people mostly get wrong, and

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and I just found that terribly interesting.

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Speaker 2: I love it.

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Speaker 1: So a lot of myth busting, a lot of pseudoscience

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that you have to kind of sniff out, and really

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just I think it's about cognitive biases. It's about that

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intuitive way that a lot of people go, well, this

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feels right, so it must be right. You know a

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lot of times we think things intuitively that turn out

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to not you know, kind of be the way that

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the brain works, or to not be effective in a

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social setting. So before we get into you know, all

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of the really interesting insights that you write about in

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your book, tell me a little bit more about You

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use the acronym JDM judgment and decision making. Like on

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its face, you know, we know what those words mean.

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We think judgment and decision making. What is that field?

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Speaker 3: So you know, the best the best way I've heard

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and described is is behavioral science that looks at how

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people make decisions sort of descriptively, right, like what do

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actual people actually do, uh, And how does that compare

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to prescriptive rules of decision making that usually come from

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you know, economics or sort of formal logic. Right, So

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there's certain things that we can sort of all agree on,

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you know, this is the right thing to be doing, uh,

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And then you run a study and you show that

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you know, a large proportion of humans doesn't do that

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thing we've all agreed on as rational, and then you're like, oh, okay,

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this is a decision biased. So what we study those

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types of things.

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Speaker 1: So when we say we can all agree on certain

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things as being kind of the rational way to go,

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are we saying because like, statistically and experimentally, if you

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made this decision, it would have some sort of optimized result,

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Like this is the way you should do it, because

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that's how you get what you want.

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Speaker 3: So either statistically or logically. So, for example, in my

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in my own kind of area of you know, studying disagreement, right,

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a lot of the work I did in graduate school

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doesn't sound at all like what I ended up doing.

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So in my own area of disagreement, when I you know,

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when I was in graduate school, I started from like

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a very very different place than where I ended up.

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I used to study how people may quantitative judgments in

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certain uncertain situations. And so you can imagine like a

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simple example where I give you, you know, a jar

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of eminems and you have to estimate how many eminems

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are in the jar. Or you can imagine a much

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more practical example where let's say you're a military commander

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and you're like looking over some ridge and you're estimating

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the number of tanks you know on the other side

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of the ridge. Right, it's an estimate under uncertainty. You're

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counting things. There's a correct but you have no idea

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what the correct number is. And when you have two

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people make estimates in those types of situations and they disagree,

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the kind of normative, prescriptive thing to do is to

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average your two estimates. Right, So like statistics will tell

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you that you know, if you are averaging uncertain estimates,

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the bigger the sample, the closer you get to the

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right answer. And like it's not even sort of like

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very hard math, it's pretty basic arithmetic. You can show

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that you know, some people underestimate, some people overestimate. If

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you average it, you get closer to the truth. What

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people do in reality is they make their estimate, you

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tell them, here's this other person who made this other estimate.

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They often don't adjust their own estimate at all. Right,

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So probably, you know, thirty to forty percent of people

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just stick to their guns. And if they do adjust,

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they adjust a relatively small amount. So if you, you know,

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average across a sample of people, you end up with

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folks adjusting on average a third of the way, which

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is not optimal if you're going for accuracy, and it's

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not optimal if you're going for logic, right, because everybody

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can't be twice as right as like the other person, right.

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And so that's a very typical judgment and decision making

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sort of line of research, right where you say, okay,

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there is like a logical thing, and now let's see

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what people really do, and then let's see what we understand,

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what we come to understand about psychology based on that distinction,

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based on the divergence.

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Speaker 1: M It kind of reminds me of I remember these

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classic studies, and who knows how much they've stood up

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over time, but where a bunch of Americans were surveyed

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about their I think they were college students were surveying

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about their sort of academic prowess and how well they

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do on exams and how basically how smart they are

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compared to their peers, And like the vast majority of

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people thought that they were significantly smarter than everybody else,

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which is statistically impossible, you know, like.

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Speaker 2: No, the math isn't mathing there. We can't all be

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smarter than everybody else.

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Speaker 3: Right, right, right, So that's a classic that's a classic

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example of overconfidence. And I'm happy to tell you that

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that stuff stands up really well. People are in fact,

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like wildly overconfident in some domains, like not in every domain.

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And that's a perfect example of we could all agree

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that we can't all be above average, right, yet people

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seem to believe that they are. What does that tell us?

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Speaker 1: So I'm curious, you know, obviously, we're going to be

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getting into a lot of different domains, a lot of

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cognitive biases, a lot of kind of conventional wisdom that

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maybe it's time to throw out the window, and uh

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experimental knowledge that we should start utilizing when engaging in

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conflict or engaging in debate.

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Speaker 2: But I'm sort of curious.

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Speaker 1: From from you personally, what domains of this work really

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got you interested, Like are you interested in the political sphere?

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Are you interested in interpersonal conflict? Like where did you

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start kind of developing a keen hunger to learn more

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about this?

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Speaker 3: You know, I think I came at it initially from

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the interpersonal side, and uh, you know this is part

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of me, like, you know, being an unrealized clinical psychologist, right,

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Like I love I love relationships. I love trying to

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understand relationships when I you know, I talk in my

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book about how I was actually a competitive ballroom dancer

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when I was young and my now husband was my

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dance part and you know, we danced together for years.

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We were very serious. We were you know, nationally ranked,

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and you know, this was like our whole life outside

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of you know, outside of trying to make a living

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and pay the rent, Like this was when we lived

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and breathed. And the thing that's really unique about dancing

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is that you are in such close physical proximity that

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you're like almost literally occupying the same space. Right you know,

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your bodies are touching, you're dancing to the same music,

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you're listening to the same instructions from your coach, you're reviewing,

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you know, like you're watching yourself sort of in the

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mirrors as you're going around dance studio, and so you

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would think that you would have perfect information and therefore

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perfect alignment on what is happening, right, and that just

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was not the case. Like, we fought constantly. And the

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thing that was weird is that we didn't fight about

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anything else, right. So it's not like we were like,

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it's not like we were one of those couples that

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just fights a lot. We never fought except for when

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we were on the dance floor, right.

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Speaker 1: So the thing you're supposed to be most in sync about,

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you were.

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Speaker 2: Most desparate on right, right, right.

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Speaker 3: And it's not like we didn't know how to get along,

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because like we got along in every other domain, right.

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And what I sort of came to realize eventually is

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that there's this very curious arrangement, specifically about ballroom dancing,

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where the entire time you're facing each other, which means

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that you are never looking in the same direction at

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the same time. And so you're like going around a

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dance studio, you see a mirror and you see your

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partners back and you say, like, oh, you are like

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lilting to the left, and of course he's got no

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idea that he's lilting to the left because his back

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is to the mirror. And then as you rotate, he

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sees something that I don't see. And so you are

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you have this illusion that you're having a shared experience,

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but you're not really having a shared experience. And you

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know that observation of you know, and all ballroom dancing

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couples fight like you know, you stand in a dance

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studio and everybody is, you know, going at it. And

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what's really you know, funny is people who are very

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very good who argue just the same way that complete

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beginners argue. And I thought, you know, if people who

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share the same information on are in the same space

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and our long term successful competitive partners, many of them

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are romantic couples, and like they can't have a sensible

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conversation about this. You know, this is interesting to understand,

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like what is happening here? And so that's what actually

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drew me into my PhD is studying ballroom dancers.

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Speaker 1: I love that because it's such a perfect you know,

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metaphor or example of so many instances of course as

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a psychologist, but also as a human being who lives

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in the world. I see the kind of what happens

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when two people who are occupying a similar space have

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wildly different perspectives and are struggling to kind of empathize

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with each other's viewpoints. We see this in politics all

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the time, we see this in the social arena that

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you know it, and it can be of really frustrating

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experience that you're like, we're both looking.

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Speaker 2: At the same thing, how do you see it so differently?

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Speaker 1: But it is true that, for example, if I'm talking

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to a man about, you know, an interpersonal experience, we

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may see the same thing in the moment, but the

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context is wildly different. Right, I'm seeing it through the

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eyes of a woman, And you know, my experience in

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a let's say, patriarchy is wildly different than his, and

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there's certain privileges that I might have or that he

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might have. I mean, there's just so many reasons that

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perspectives are different when we come together with other people.

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Speaker 3: Right right, right right, And that's you know, and I

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think that's to me probably is one of the most

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kind of like underappreciated dynamics of any kind of relationship

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or any kind of interaction, is just how incredibly blind

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we are to the contents of other people's minds, right, like,

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you know, like if you you know put you know,

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if you put, if you hold like an ice drink

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in your hands, right and it feels cold, and you

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have somebody else hold the same ice drink next to you,

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They're going to have a different subjective experience of how

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that exact same thing feels. And we never think about that.

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We never think about the fact that the same level

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of pain, the same level of pleasure, the same level

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of interest you know, from the same stimulus, is actually

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experienced differently by other people. And furthermore, we don't even

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have a scale of like we can't even put it

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on the same scale because my one to ten is

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different than they're one to ten.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, like we can't even have a conversation about it. Really.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, the ways that we test these kinds of things

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in psychological experiments are loose at best, because, yeah, we

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have to think about where people are anchoring and you know,

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all of those different issues. I would say that it's

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probably the number one, if not in the top five things.

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You know, I work in a cancer center, so I

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kind of have a specialized practice. But even given that

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I would say probably working on empathizing with other people,

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utilizing the principle of charity when thinking about other people's perspectives,

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and then also softening our anger towards other people who

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can't or won't or aren't empathizing with us. I mean,

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those are probably some of the top things that we

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work on in therapy because they really are a huge

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cause of most innerpersonal conflict.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and.

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Speaker 1: So of course if we could do that, the world

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would probably I mean think about all the way right

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diplomacy and war and politics and marriage and and yeah,

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just like the functional kind of civic engagement and society.

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I mean, there are so many downstream problems that I

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believe they're getting worse in a way, right, not because

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human nature has changed fundamentally, but because the context in

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which we live has changed. We live online now, and

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that'll affords us, you know, whole new ways to not

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have to empathize with other.

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Speaker 3: People, right right right, Well, And that was the thing,

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is I you know, I had my like ballroom dancing ideas,

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and then I showed up at Stanford and my PhD

301
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advisor was Lee Ross, who is you know, passed away

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a few years ago. But he was sort of an

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incredibly influential social psychologist. He's the guy that came He's

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probably the most famous for the fundamental attribution error. So

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people always say, who's Lee Ross. I'm like the fundamental

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attribution era guy, you know. And he was doing a

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lot of work in the Middle East, you know, Israel, Palestine,

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he did some stuff in Northern Ireland, and so, you know,

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I like Waltson with my ideas about ballroom dancers, and

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he immediately saw the connection in terms of misunderstanding and

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sort of like failure to appreciate the opposing perspective. And

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one of the things that he really drew my attention

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to is all the situations in the world where people

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have to find a way to coexist and work together

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but will never ever ever agree, right, So, you know,

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I mean, like that's that's the Middle East, right, Like,

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people have to find a way to work together. Nobody's

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ever going to go away, right.

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Speaker 1: And they're not going to radically change their you know,

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their worldview.

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Speaker 3: They're just not right right right, right, So so those

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types of situations where persuasion and sort of added to

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change are just not on the menu. How can we

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have better conversations and you know, and so we we

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started working together from like these two like wildly different,

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you know, perspectives of you know, I've got the ballroom

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dancing and he's got like the Middle East conflict. Uh.

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And then we ended up running all these studies, you know,

329
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where people had to estimate, you know, the length of

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the Amazon River and how many eminems are in this

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jar and things like that.

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Speaker 1: Wow, and so okay, before we get to oh gosh,

333
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there's so much I want to talk about, I do

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think it's probably important to at least define the fundamental

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attribution error for those who maybe don't know it by

336
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that name, because a it's such a kind of basic

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cognitive I guess bias or way of thinking that we

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all are subject to all the time.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a very important bias, and I think it

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plays hugely into conflict. And Lee had a habit of

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sort of naming things in ways that nobody will ever

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understand in the future. So I often find myself defining

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his charts for people. So the fundamental attribution err is

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our tendency to attribute somebody's behavior to their stable internal characteristics,

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usually their personality, and overlook the influence of the situation

346
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on their behavior. Right. So you you know, you see,

347
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you know, you see some guy like you know, screaming

348
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at his car, uh, and you think like, oh, you know,

349
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he has a temper, and you know men have tempers, right,

350
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And so you're kind of like attributing a set of

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personality traits and you know, you're saying, like it has

352
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something to do with his gender, right, And it could

353
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be the case that like, you know, this is the

354
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third time he you know, his car broke down this week,

355
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and he's missed an important job interview and you know whatever,

356
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his dog just died, right, and maybe in that situation,

357
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all of us would be screaming at the car. And

358
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so you you made an attribution based you know, about

359
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his personality for behavior that's actually fully explained by the

360
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situation he's in.

361
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Speaker 2: And we do the opposite for ourselves, right.

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Speaker 1: We tend to think that everything we do is because

363
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of the situation, and everything other people do is because

364
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that's just who they are, right.

365
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Speaker 3: And that you know a little bit is related to

366
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the whole ballroom dancing thing. Is it has to do

367
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with the attention that the way our attention is deployed right,

368
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Because when I'm looking at another person and the situation

369
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they're in, kind of they're my focus. The focus of

370
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my attention is the person, right, And so I explain

371
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behavior in terms of what is most salient to me,

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which is like the human performing the behavior. Whereas when

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I'm explaining my own behavior to myself, I'm looking out

374
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into the world right through my eyes, and what I

375
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see around me is the situation. Right. I don't see myself.

376
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I see all the things around me that made me

377
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do a particular thing.

378
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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's an interesting way to frame it to because

379
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I'll often say with patients, you know, we're all the

380
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main character in our own play, right, So like we've

381
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got to remember that when we're when we're dealing with

382
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other people, because they're the main character.

383
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Speaker 2: In their own play.

384
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Speaker 1: But in a way that almost implies that we're outside

385
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looking in and we're not. We're the main character in

386
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our own like autobiography, where we're.

387
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Speaker 2: Actually watching it through the camera.

388
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Speaker 1: Which is which is kind of a fascinating experience. But

389
00:23:15,839 --> 00:23:20,480
you're right, that explains so much. And I think one

390
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of the things that I would love to kind of

391
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dig into a little bit deeper is that context, that

392
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social context that we were talking about. And I had

393
00:23:31,720 --> 00:23:35,119
a supervisor when I was on clinical internship, and I

394
00:23:35,200 --> 00:23:37,519
used to love the way that she would phrase this,

395
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and so I use it all the time, and people

396
00:23:39,000 --> 00:23:40,799
listening to the show have probably heard me say it

397
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all the time. I'll often use, you know, patriarchy as

398
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an example, but it could be literally anything. It could

399
00:23:47,160 --> 00:23:50,240
be white supremacy, right, like racism, or it could just

400
00:23:50,279 --> 00:23:53,240
be like capitalism, anything like that. But she would always say,

401
00:23:53,240 --> 00:23:56,039
it's the water we swim in, so we don't always

402
00:23:56,279 --> 00:24:00,319
notice it because it's around us all the time, and

403
00:24:00,519 --> 00:24:03,920
our my yes, we are all at certain macro levels

404
00:24:03,960 --> 00:24:06,559
swimming in the same water, but at you know, kind

405
00:24:06,599 --> 00:24:10,359
of lower levels. My water is different than your water,

406
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and we are not even accounting for those sort of

407
00:24:14,119 --> 00:24:21,079
cultural biographical developmental all the differences that make up why

408
00:24:21,119 --> 00:24:22,519
I see the world the way I see it and

409
00:24:22,559 --> 00:24:24,079
why you see it differently.

410
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Speaker 3: M Yeah, no, that's that's exactly right. I fully agree

411
00:24:31,079 --> 00:24:33,119
with you. I say something very similar. I say that

412
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the fish doesn't know it's in water.

413
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Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, there you go, love it because we don't.

414
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Speaker 1: We don't until it's made, you know, acutely evident to us.

415
00:24:44,079 --> 00:24:47,759
And even then sometimes there's sort of a refusal. And

416
00:24:47,839 --> 00:24:50,720
I think that this is a political tactic. Sometimes sometimes

417
00:24:50,759 --> 00:24:55,960
it's a self preservation tactic. It can be an ideological difficulty,

418
00:24:56,279 --> 00:25:01,359
but like a refusal to accept the very fact that

419
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we are products of so many different forces, and the

420
00:25:06,359 --> 00:25:09,640
way that we think is not in a vacuum. It's

421
00:25:09,680 --> 00:25:12,680
not independent of how we were raised, or independent of

422
00:25:12,720 --> 00:25:15,240
all of the marketing messages we've been fed, or independent

423
00:25:15,279 --> 00:25:17,799
of our you know, race, or our religion or our

424
00:25:18,000 --> 00:25:21,400
you know, whatever cultural values or ideals. It's just not

425
00:25:21,680 --> 00:25:25,039
we are products of so many influences.

426
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Speaker 3: Yeah, No, I think that's I mean, that's sort of

427
00:25:27,960 --> 00:25:35,599
factually true, and I think it's it's hard to always

428
00:25:35,680 --> 00:25:39,559
be aware of for just sort of like cognitive attentional reasons.

429
00:25:40,000 --> 00:25:42,559
I think the other piece of it is very cultural. Right,

430
00:25:42,640 --> 00:25:49,720
So in an individualistic culture that pride prizes agency, people

431
00:25:49,759 --> 00:25:53,799
are taught from, you know, the cradle that you are

432
00:25:53,960 --> 00:25:58,640
a unique, you know, one and only person who is like,

433
00:25:59,240 --> 00:26:02,440
you know, the archae of their own destiny. If you go,

434
00:26:02,880 --> 00:26:06,160
you know, if you spend time in any East Asian culture,

435
00:26:06,680 --> 00:26:12,400
that's not how people think right. So there, the cultural

436
00:26:12,440 --> 00:26:16,039
emphasis is much more on you being a product of

437
00:26:16,079 --> 00:26:19,880
your situation and a member of you know, a family,

438
00:26:19,920 --> 00:26:22,880
a group of society, like you are a part of

439
00:26:22,920 --> 00:26:25,920
a greater whole, whereas in the US, like everybody is

440
00:26:25,960 --> 00:26:28,480
the kind of lone cowboy, you know, writing off into

441
00:26:28,559 --> 00:26:29,079
the sunset.

442
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it makes me wonder. And we're going to talk

443
00:26:32,559 --> 00:26:37,920
about tactics next, or you know, biases, tactics, cognitions, ways

444
00:26:37,960 --> 00:26:43,160
of thinking, ways of changing our thinking that can positively

445
00:26:43,279 --> 00:26:46,799
influence our ability to communicate, especially in sort of like

446
00:26:46,880 --> 00:26:50,079
high conflict situations, and also some of the things that

447
00:26:50,079 --> 00:26:53,480
we do that are absolutely detrimental to our ability to communicate.

448
00:26:53,519 --> 00:26:56,920
But I'm curious if one of the most fundamental ways

449
00:26:57,240 --> 00:26:59,680
that we as human beings can sort of increase this

450
00:27:00,559 --> 00:27:04,640
empathic capacity is just to travel. It's just to meet

451
00:27:04,720 --> 00:27:09,640
people and go places where it's it's different and it's uncomfortable,

452
00:27:09,839 --> 00:27:12,839
and start talking to people about how they live their

453
00:27:12,880 --> 00:27:17,000
lives and recognizing that all of those different ways of

454
00:27:17,039 --> 00:27:20,640
being exist and they're valid and ours is not the

455
00:27:20,640 --> 00:27:21,200
only way.

456
00:27:22,279 --> 00:27:24,359
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think that's I think that's a

457
00:27:24,400 --> 00:27:30,319
great idea. It's you know, obviously one not available to everybody.

458
00:27:30,480 --> 00:27:32,599
And two, I think a lot of people maybe who

459
00:27:33,200 --> 00:27:35,920
would benefit the most would be the least willing to

460
00:27:35,960 --> 00:27:36,799
try right.

461
00:27:37,160 --> 00:27:39,359
Speaker 1: Right, or even if they do travel, there's like ways

462
00:27:39,400 --> 00:27:42,119
now where you can just insulate yourself completely and you

463
00:27:42,200 --> 00:27:44,759
basically hole up in a resort and it's just like

464
00:27:44,880 --> 00:27:46,839
Baby America in another count.

465
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Speaker 3: So there's actually there's a great there's a great nonprofit

466
00:27:52,799 --> 00:27:55,200
organization that I've done some work with called the American

467
00:27:55,240 --> 00:27:59,720
Exchange Project, and they have fully embraced your idea. And

468
00:27:59,759 --> 00:28:03,640
what they do is they recruit high school seniors and

469
00:28:03,720 --> 00:28:07,279
send them on an exchange trip to like some random

470
00:28:07,319 --> 00:28:13,039
town in the US, so, you know, and they are

471
00:28:13,160 --> 00:28:16,319
now in you know, hundreds of schools and they send

472
00:28:16,359 --> 00:28:19,720
thousands of kids every year on these trips. And it's

473
00:28:19,759 --> 00:28:24,880
basically they you know, you like, tell them where you're from,

474
00:28:25,519 --> 00:28:28,039
and they will send you to a town that's on

475
00:28:28,119 --> 00:28:31,240
their roster that is as different from the place you're

476
00:28:31,279 --> 00:28:32,400
coming from as possible.

477
00:28:33,000 --> 00:28:34,200
Speaker 2: I love that.

478
00:28:34,640 --> 00:28:36,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's it's really it's really neat. And so

479
00:28:36,920 --> 00:28:39,200
you spend a week there with all these other kids

480
00:28:39,240 --> 00:28:41,799
from like all over the place, and then the local

481
00:28:42,839 --> 00:28:45,039
like it's usually a high school teacher from the local

482
00:28:45,119 --> 00:28:49,720
high school. Will you know, the local kids host you,

483
00:28:49,960 --> 00:28:52,799
and the teacher organizes sort of a week's worth of

484
00:28:52,839 --> 00:28:56,160
like here's what we do around here kind of programming,

485
00:28:57,640 --> 00:29:01,920
and it's just it's just incredible variances to you know,

486
00:29:02,119 --> 00:29:05,119
just really help kids kind of broad that broad the aperture.

487
00:29:05,839 --> 00:29:09,119
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, I can't help but like comment that right now,

488
00:29:09,160 --> 00:29:12,319
because I apparently have watched all of TV and have

489
00:29:12,480 --> 00:29:14,799
run out of things to watch with my partner. We

490
00:29:14,920 --> 00:29:17,599
are I'm rewatching now and he's watching for the first

491
00:29:17,599 --> 00:29:21,799
time Friday Night Lights. And I grew up in Plano, Texas,

492
00:29:21,880 --> 00:29:24,279
like in a suburb of Dallas, and this was home

493
00:29:24,319 --> 00:29:26,519
to me, and I was a high school cheerleader, and

494
00:29:27,039 --> 00:29:28,839
it's you know, it's like, on the one hand, a

495
00:29:28,839 --> 00:29:31,359
little bit like traumatic to watch. On the other hand,

496
00:29:31,400 --> 00:29:34,759
it's it's very nostalgic and familiar. But he grew up

497
00:29:35,000 --> 00:29:37,200
in Michigan and he is.

498
00:29:37,160 --> 00:29:40,960
Speaker 2: Like, what is happening? But this is not what it

499
00:29:41,039 --> 00:29:41,920
was like.

500
00:29:42,440 --> 00:29:46,920
Speaker 1: And it's so interesting to watch these like formative experiences

501
00:29:46,920 --> 00:29:49,759
that we all had that were so different that shaped

502
00:29:50,079 --> 00:29:53,480
either our and I see this a lot, right, Sometimes

503
00:29:53,519 --> 00:29:56,799
they don't affect us deeply. Other times they really codify

504
00:29:56,920 --> 00:30:00,680
things in us and kind of re enforce them, and

505
00:30:00,759 --> 00:30:03,559
other times they make us run as far as possible

506
00:30:03,720 --> 00:30:09,240
from those influences and triggers. But regardless, you can't get

507
00:30:09,279 --> 00:30:14,440
away from your childhood, you can't get away from your

508
00:30:15,559 --> 00:30:20,599
from your community, from your religion if that's something that's

509
00:30:20,680 --> 00:30:24,039
you know, a part of your life, from your work,

510
00:30:24,240 --> 00:30:28,559
culture and environment. It's just these things. They shape us,

511
00:30:28,880 --> 00:30:31,720
They influence us, and we cannot We are not impervious

512
00:30:31,720 --> 00:30:32,920
to influence.

513
00:30:33,000 --> 00:30:35,440
Speaker 3: Right right, right, No, I think that's I think that's

514
00:30:35,480 --> 00:30:38,960
absolutely true. And then you know, we kind of I

515
00:30:39,000 --> 00:30:41,799
think in your own like if you then have kids, right,

516
00:30:42,000 --> 00:30:47,359
it's you are either amplifying the things that you liked

517
00:30:47,400 --> 00:30:50,119
about your upbringing or you're fighting the things that you

518
00:30:50,240 --> 00:30:52,200
like that you didn't like about your upbringing. But one

519
00:30:52,240 --> 00:30:55,119
way or another, they're influencing you absolutely.

520
00:30:55,200 --> 00:30:59,039
Speaker 1: And so those influences are strongest when we're young. They

521
00:30:59,079 --> 00:31:01,119
do continue through the life span, but of course we

522
00:31:01,160 --> 00:31:03,279
can point to more I would call them like sensitive

523
00:31:03,319 --> 00:31:06,160
periods of development where they heavily influence us. And there's

524
00:31:06,160 --> 00:31:08,119
a lot of research that shows like that is why

525
00:31:08,160 --> 00:31:10,000
we listen to the same music we listened to in

526
00:31:10,039 --> 00:31:13,240
high school and college. Right, that is why we have

527
00:31:13,319 --> 00:31:16,599
these anchor points where we compare everything to these years

528
00:31:16,599 --> 00:31:20,119
of our lives that were so influential. But of course,

529
00:31:20,480 --> 00:31:23,920
now we are who we are. We are still always changing,

530
00:31:23,960 --> 00:31:27,200
we are still always growing. Those of us who want

531
00:31:27,359 --> 00:31:30,799
that are probably doing it at a higher rate. But

532
00:31:31,480 --> 00:31:34,960
now we're engaging with people that came from all over

533
00:31:35,000 --> 00:31:37,839
the place. And there are times in our lives, whether

534
00:31:37,880 --> 00:31:40,960
it's at work, whether it's in a personal relationship, whether

535
00:31:41,160 --> 00:31:46,359
it's in play where whether it's on a political stage

536
00:31:46,519 --> 00:31:49,079
where we just disagree, and I think I can't think

537
00:31:49,119 --> 00:31:51,640
of a better time to be having this conversation, because

538
00:31:51,680 --> 00:31:59,440
we are in a political landscape that is very polarized

539
00:31:59,640 --> 00:32:01,240
and very sort of.

540
00:32:02,960 --> 00:32:08,799
Speaker 2: Uh, I guess we could say siloed, right, where people.

541
00:32:08,519 --> 00:32:13,279
Speaker 1: Are actively avoiding alternate perspectives, or when they hear them,

542
00:32:13,640 --> 00:32:18,400
they're prejudging them so deeply and acting as if they

543
00:32:18,519 --> 00:32:21,599
know all of the motivations, all of the reasonings, and right,

544
00:32:21,680 --> 00:32:26,160
you know, So, so tell me about some of the tools. Well, first,

545
00:32:26,200 --> 00:32:29,079
maybe let's let's bust some myths. What are the ways

546
00:32:29,079 --> 00:32:32,799
that people have been attempting to engage for so long

547
00:32:32,839 --> 00:32:35,079
that just doesn't work, and we just, for some reason

548
00:32:35,559 --> 00:32:37,440
keep beating our heads up against the wall.

549
00:32:38,200 --> 00:32:42,640
Speaker 3: Hmmm hmm. Okay, well, so let's start with maybe not

550
00:32:43,440 --> 00:32:47,440
maybe not necessarily the myths about how people engage wrong.

551
00:32:47,519 --> 00:32:49,680
But let's pick up on the piece that you just

552
00:32:49,680 --> 00:32:53,400
said about people assuming that they know about the other side.

553
00:32:53,880 --> 00:32:56,240
So I think that's a huge myth we need to bust.

554
00:32:57,839 --> 00:33:02,079
So you know that you us because of our two

555
00:33:02,119 --> 00:33:06,200
party system, right there's this very clear continuum from left

556
00:33:06,200 --> 00:33:10,799
to right, blue to red that creates this US versus them,

557
00:33:12,079 --> 00:33:17,640
And indeed, we have a tremendous amount of polarization right now.

558
00:33:18,519 --> 00:33:23,359
But one important myth is that people tend to overestimate

559
00:33:23,880 --> 00:33:28,519
how much we disagree, and they overestimated by quite a lot,

560
00:33:29,880 --> 00:33:31,720
and so there's a lot of there's a lot of

561
00:33:31,759 --> 00:33:36,000
really good research on this. The thing that's interesting is

562
00:33:36,039 --> 00:33:40,519
that that research has started a very long time ago,

563
00:33:40,599 --> 00:33:43,680
so we can't blame it on social media. People have

564
00:33:43,920 --> 00:33:50,359
overestimated the divergence in opinions between themselves and somebody they

565
00:33:50,400 --> 00:33:53,680
disagree with, like this has been documented since early eighties.

566
00:33:54,599 --> 00:33:58,200
So it's not the Internet It's just that when we

567
00:33:58,319 --> 00:34:01,440
disagree and we put people and to serve a category,

568
00:34:02,400 --> 00:34:06,039
we tend to assume that everybody in that category is

569
00:34:06,079 --> 00:34:09,119
pretty extreme and pretty homogenous in their views.

570
00:34:09,679 --> 00:34:12,199
Speaker 1: Right, So we're sort of looking at you know. I

571
00:34:12,239 --> 00:34:17,480
remember watching this phenomenal documentary called The Mask You Live In,

572
00:34:17,760 --> 00:34:22,400
which is about gender differences and how we raise boys

573
00:34:22,440 --> 00:34:25,960
in our culture, and a lot of experts weigh in,

574
00:34:26,079 --> 00:34:30,320
and there's a section and I feel like this. Bear

575
00:34:30,360 --> 00:34:31,719
with me for a second, but I feel like this

576
00:34:31,800 --> 00:34:33,280
speaks to what you're talking about.

577
00:34:33,519 --> 00:34:34,559
Speaker 2: There's a section where.

578
00:34:34,400 --> 00:34:38,519
Speaker 1: They draw two normal curves and they're overlapping, and there's

579
00:34:38,559 --> 00:34:40,800
only a little bit of sort of like if you

580
00:34:40,840 --> 00:34:43,559
imagine them as a Venn diagram, there's only a little

581
00:34:43,760 --> 00:34:47,079
bit like shoulders on either side where they don't overlap.

582
00:34:47,239 --> 00:34:49,320
And they go, Okay, if this is the boy curve

583
00:34:49,400 --> 00:34:52,679
and this is the girl curve, these shoulders are how

584
00:34:52,719 --> 00:34:56,639
we tend to caricature what it means to be masculine

585
00:34:56,719 --> 00:34:58,280
or feminine, what it means to be a boy.

586
00:34:58,159 --> 00:34:58,599
Speaker 2: Or a girl.

587
00:34:58,760 --> 00:35:03,599
Speaker 1: Whereas ninety percent of the variance is overlapping, and all

588
00:35:03,679 --> 00:35:06,800
of those people are still boys or girls or nonvite whatever,

589
00:35:07,000 --> 00:35:11,400
but on these extreme ends, that becomes our definition of

590
00:35:11,920 --> 00:35:15,559
gender as opposed to the extreme version.

591
00:35:16,920 --> 00:35:19,480
Speaker 3: And we do that. So we do that same thing

592
00:35:19,599 --> 00:35:24,840
with liberals and conservatives, right absolutely. And there's a great

593
00:35:25,000 --> 00:35:28,159
way to sort of experience this. There's a think tank

594
00:35:28,199 --> 00:35:32,119
called More in Common and they did a research project

595
00:35:32,159 --> 00:35:35,320
a few years ago that you know, like they sort

596
00:35:35,360 --> 00:35:37,679
of did the research, publish the paper, but also they

597
00:35:37,719 --> 00:35:40,360
build a website that people can sort of tinker around with.

598
00:35:41,840 --> 00:35:46,880
The website is perception gap dot org. And the idea

599
00:35:46,920 --> 00:35:49,679
is that you go in, you say, if you're a

600
00:35:49,719 --> 00:35:53,360
Democrat or a Republican, and then you answer a bunch

601
00:35:53,360 --> 00:35:57,840
of opinion questions, and then you answer a bunch of

602
00:35:58,679 --> 00:36:01,960
the say, you answer the same questions estimating how the

603
00:36:02,000 --> 00:36:05,639
other side would answer them, right, and then you know,

604
00:36:05,719 --> 00:36:08,639
the the database crunches the numbers, and what you see

605
00:36:08,840 --> 00:36:13,559
is that actual answers from the other side versus your

606
00:36:13,639 --> 00:36:17,079
own estimates versus the estimates of other people on your

607
00:36:17,199 --> 00:36:21,440
side and so right, So the perception gap is sort

608
00:36:21,440 --> 00:36:27,119
of like how extreme do I think the out group

609
00:36:27,280 --> 00:36:32,039
is relative to how extreme their actual reported views are? Right,

610
00:36:32,079 --> 00:36:33,840
So it's like those shoulders.

611
00:36:34,480 --> 00:36:37,920
Speaker 1: Probably also compared to myself, right, because I can imagine

612
00:36:37,920 --> 00:36:40,960
that most people are pretty moderate, and so they're like, well,

613
00:36:41,199 --> 00:36:42,840
look at where I am on the curve, and I

614
00:36:42,880 --> 00:36:45,280
assume all of the people who think who are in

615
00:36:45,320 --> 00:36:48,639
the other party are way off to you know, I'm left.

616
00:36:48,719 --> 00:36:51,400
So let's say, I don't know how much this would

617
00:36:51,400 --> 00:36:52,960
apply to me. This So I'm very curious in this

618
00:36:53,000 --> 00:36:56,159
because I have a feeling I'm very far left. But

619
00:36:57,280 --> 00:36:59,599
let's say that I met out much more moderate than

620
00:36:59,639 --> 00:37:01,880
I think. But I'm assuming that most people on the

621
00:37:02,000 --> 00:37:03,960
right are far right, and they turn out to be

622
00:37:04,239 --> 00:37:06,480
kind of closer to me than to the extreme in

623
00:37:06,519 --> 00:37:07,639
their own party.

624
00:37:07,800 --> 00:37:10,400
Speaker 3: Right, right, right, And what that you know, the kind

625
00:37:10,400 --> 00:37:13,880
of the reason that that matters, right is because if

626
00:37:13,880 --> 00:37:17,639
you think of somebody as pretty extreme, you think of

627
00:37:17,679 --> 00:37:22,000
them as quite unreasonable. You might think of them as

628
00:37:22,239 --> 00:37:28,920
quite uninformed, you know, potentially immoral or unethical. And then

629
00:37:29,400 --> 00:37:32,719
the like obvious implication of that is you shouldn't have

630
00:37:32,840 --> 00:37:35,159
to talk to them, because why would you talk to

631
00:37:35,199 --> 00:37:39,280
this jerk who you know is like a crazy extremist.

632
00:37:39,239 --> 00:37:42,639
Speaker 1: Exactly like maybe even dangerous or violent, And you know

633
00:37:42,719 --> 00:37:44,400
that would be threatening to me. So I don't want

634
00:37:44,440 --> 00:37:47,440
to engage with them at all. Like, yeah, we build

635
00:37:47,440 --> 00:37:53,519
these narratives where it's it's it's unhealthy to engage, right,

636
00:37:54,000 --> 00:37:55,679
and that helps us stay insulated.

637
00:37:56,079 --> 00:37:58,639
Speaker 3: Right, it could be unhealthy to engage. It could be

638
00:37:58,719 --> 00:38:02,320
sort of like they don't deserve my attention because nothing

639
00:38:02,360 --> 00:38:05,800
they say has any merit to it. And so the

640
00:38:05,840 --> 00:38:09,280
consequence of that is that we don't engage, and then

641
00:38:09,360 --> 00:38:12,119
the only thing we know about the people on the

642
00:38:12,159 --> 00:38:14,719
other side is what we get from social media, which

643
00:38:14,719 --> 00:38:18,639
of course then gives us the most extreme caricatured version, right.

644
00:38:18,679 --> 00:38:22,280
And so there's this like cycle where you know, we

645
00:38:22,400 --> 00:38:26,880
have bias beliefs, we act on those beliefs by insulating ourselves,

646
00:38:27,159 --> 00:38:30,280
which only sort of further entrenches us in our bias beliefs.

647
00:38:31,239 --> 00:38:34,079
So that's a huge that that's a huge thing. I

648
00:38:34,119 --> 00:38:36,679
wish we could sort of get over as get start

649
00:38:36,760 --> 00:38:40,920
having slightly more realistic ideas about what folks on the

650
00:38:40,920 --> 00:38:41,679
other side believe.

651
00:38:42,519 --> 00:38:46,079
Speaker 1: And of course I think we're all sort of both

652
00:38:46,159 --> 00:38:50,519
victims and perpetrators of this. I think about my own father,

653
00:38:50,599 --> 00:38:54,199
who is you know, still in Plano, Texas. He's Mormon,

654
00:38:54,440 --> 00:38:59,079
he's voted for Trump, both times, and when we do

655
00:38:59,800 --> 00:39:05,079
in gauge honestly, kindly and patiently with each other, it

656
00:39:05,239 --> 00:39:07,880
almost always ends up the same way. We sort of

657
00:39:07,920 --> 00:39:10,280
come to this place where we're like, we mostly agree

658
00:39:10,280 --> 00:39:13,880
about everything, we just are wildly divergent in how we

659
00:39:13,920 --> 00:39:18,400
think those things should be accomplished. It's like our core

660
00:39:18,559 --> 00:39:22,559
values are not that different, but there are, you know,

661
00:39:22,800 --> 00:39:26,239
just a hand full of sticking points where he might

662
00:39:26,280 --> 00:39:28,760
be kind of entrenched or I might be kind of entrenched.

663
00:39:29,639 --> 00:39:31,840
Speaker 2: Obviously my view is that he's entrenched and I'm not

664
00:39:32,880 --> 00:39:34,000
because I'm a human being.

665
00:39:34,960 --> 00:39:38,000
Speaker 1: And then we disagree about how to get that thing

666
00:39:38,119 --> 00:39:40,320
that we want, you know, how do we get to

667
00:39:40,400 --> 00:39:42,800
a more egalitarian society, How do we get to a

668
00:39:42,840 --> 00:39:46,119
place where there's less income inequality, or where the poorest

669
00:39:46,239 --> 00:39:49,039
and the sickest and the most vulnerable among us get

670
00:39:49,039 --> 00:39:49,960
the help that they need.

671
00:39:50,239 --> 00:39:50,400
Speaker 3: You know.

672
00:39:50,480 --> 00:39:54,400
Speaker 1: It's like, ultimately he is not the boogeyman that it

673
00:39:54,599 --> 00:39:59,159
feels sometimes like the far right is or is creating.

674
00:40:00,079 --> 00:40:03,920
But he still votes along lines that I have moral

675
00:40:04,079 --> 00:40:08,320
problems with because you know, of these kind of smaller,

676
00:40:08,480 --> 00:40:14,199
more logistical allegiances. But when we really talk about, yeah,

677
00:40:14,239 --> 00:40:17,559
our ideologies, our core values. There's so much more alignment

678
00:40:17,840 --> 00:40:19,599
than we give each other credit for. At the beginning

679
00:40:19,639 --> 00:40:20,960
of the conversation.

680
00:40:20,960 --> 00:40:24,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, and what's you know to me, like, what's really fun?

681
00:40:24,320 --> 00:40:28,880
You're like a funny experience of that is, you know,

682
00:40:28,920 --> 00:40:31,159
I teach at a school of public policy, right and

683
00:40:31,239 --> 00:40:38,480
our students are often very eager to have disagreement, and

684
00:40:39,000 --> 00:40:41,280
you know, like like they want to practice, they want

685
00:40:41,320 --> 00:40:44,880
to practice you know, dialogue and debate, and you know,

686
00:40:45,000 --> 00:40:46,920
they come to me and they say, Professor, you study this.

687
00:40:47,000 --> 00:40:49,159
Can we, you know, put together a discussion group. I'm

688
00:40:49,199 --> 00:40:52,480
like sure, And you know what you need to do,

689
00:40:52,599 --> 00:40:56,159
right is you need to find topics on which they disagree.

690
00:40:57,119 --> 00:41:00,960
So I give out a survey and I'll say, okay,

691
00:41:00,960 --> 00:41:04,079
here's twenty different topics. You know, fill out your opinion

692
00:41:04,119 --> 00:41:06,559
on each of these topics, and then we'll you know,

693
00:41:06,639 --> 00:41:10,360
partner everybody up and assign them a topic on which

694
00:41:10,360 --> 00:41:13,719
they said they disagree, and then they sit down and

695
00:41:13,760 --> 00:41:16,079
then they have the conversation, and then half of them

696
00:41:16,119 --> 00:41:19,599
come to me complaining that I mismatched them because it

697
00:41:19,639 --> 00:41:25,679
turns out they didn't disagree very much. It's amazing, And

698
00:41:25,800 --> 00:41:28,599
I'm like, no, no, no, see, it's psychology. It's not

699
00:41:28,679 --> 00:41:32,360
that like I can't do math. This is how things work.

700
00:41:34,239 --> 00:41:36,599
Speaker 1: Lesson number one check mark.

701
00:41:37,039 --> 00:41:38,719
Speaker 2: I love that. That's so funny.

702
00:41:38,719 --> 00:41:43,719
Speaker 1: So we already know then that we are overestimating the

703
00:41:44,239 --> 00:41:48,199
kind of differences in viewpoints, and we tend to think

704
00:41:48,239 --> 00:41:51,880
that if somebody identifies with a certain label or a

705
00:41:51,920 --> 00:41:56,239
certain you know, political party, whatever category, that they become

706
00:41:56,360 --> 00:41:59,159
the caricature of that category, the most extreme version of

707
00:41:59,199 --> 00:42:03,800
that category. Right there, just knowing that the misinformation does

708
00:42:03,880 --> 00:42:08,360
bring us closer together, but there are obviously ways that

709
00:42:08,400 --> 00:42:12,000
we can work to become closer together, or at least

710
00:42:12,079 --> 00:42:15,039
to be comfortable with our differences.

711
00:42:14,559 --> 00:42:18,480
Speaker 3: Right yeah, And I really you know, here's another you know,

712
00:42:18,599 --> 00:42:22,519
since we're in sort of this mythbusting land, one of

713
00:42:22,559 --> 00:42:26,719
the things that I sort of really struggle with, as

714
00:42:26,800 --> 00:42:28,599
you know, as a researcher and sort of now as

715
00:42:28,639 --> 00:42:31,360
an author and a speaker, is that a lot of

716
00:42:31,400 --> 00:42:33,480
the things that you know, we talk about in this

717
00:42:35,360 --> 00:42:38,559
in those domains seem like very familiar and very simplistic,

718
00:42:38,639 --> 00:42:41,400
and oh, you know, everybody knows it. So one of

719
00:42:41,440 --> 00:42:43,679
the things that everybody knows is that you're supposed to

720
00:42:43,760 --> 00:42:46,760
be more empathetic and try to take the other person's

721
00:42:46,800 --> 00:42:51,159
perspective and you know, be more humble and then that

722
00:42:51,199 --> 00:42:58,440
will help. And that's one of the things that doesn't

723
00:42:58,480 --> 00:43:02,519
help as much as we wanted to help, unfortunately. And

724
00:43:02,559 --> 00:43:05,719
the thing that gets in the way, it turns out

725
00:43:06,199 --> 00:43:11,039
is that even when people try really hard to do

726
00:43:11,119 --> 00:43:14,639
all of that mental and emotional work, I mean one,

727
00:43:15,039 --> 00:43:17,760
you know, following through those intentions is difficult, right Like

728
00:43:17,800 --> 00:43:20,039
when you actually sit down with another human and they

729
00:43:20,119 --> 00:43:23,639
start saying the things they want to say, sometimes your

730
00:43:23,679 --> 00:43:27,199
head explodes and it's really hard to live up to

731
00:43:27,320 --> 00:43:32,360
the level of empathy that you initially aspired to. And

732
00:43:32,400 --> 00:43:34,840
then the other piece of it is that even if

733
00:43:34,880 --> 00:43:38,800
you do achieve, you know, some amount of empathy and

734
00:43:38,880 --> 00:43:43,960
some amount of humility and some amount of curiosity, that's

735
00:43:44,000 --> 00:43:47,960
an internal psychological experience, right Like in your head you

736
00:43:48,000 --> 00:43:50,960
are thinking, ooh, this is really interesting, and this person

737
00:43:51,119 --> 00:43:54,639
is like whatever, and I am trying to put myself

738
00:43:54,639 --> 00:43:57,519
in their shoes. They have no idea that you're doing

739
00:43:57,559 --> 00:44:02,079
anything right. They are having the experience of I'm talking,

740
00:44:02,320 --> 00:44:05,639
I'm pouring my heart out. Julia here is staring up

741
00:44:05,639 --> 00:44:10,119
at the ceiling. Why isn't she listening to me? Right?

742
00:44:10,639 --> 00:44:15,039
And so there's just this huge gap between our internal

743
00:44:15,599 --> 00:44:21,800
mental efforts and what is transparently and clearly coming out

744
00:44:23,719 --> 00:44:27,599
that our counterparts can actually you know, observe experience and

745
00:44:27,639 --> 00:44:31,320
give us credit for. And so a huge amount of

746
00:44:31,320 --> 00:44:38,000
my work has pivoted towards using spoken language to clearly

747
00:44:38,079 --> 00:44:43,920
communicate our intentions and mental states so that our counterpart

748
00:44:43,960 --> 00:44:45,840
can actually tell that we're doing all this stuff right.

749
00:44:45,880 --> 00:44:49,559
So I have a former student who's now professor at UCLA,

750
00:44:49,960 --> 00:44:53,239
and she calls it listening with your mouth, meaning like,

751
00:44:53,639 --> 00:44:55,760
you know, like if you're listening with your brain, nobody

752
00:44:55,760 --> 00:44:57,719
can tell you're listening with your brain. But if you're

753
00:44:57,719 --> 00:45:00,480
listening with your mouth, that becomes a lot more a parent.

754
00:45:01,599 --> 00:45:03,920
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, if I could tell you how often this

755
00:45:04,079 --> 00:45:07,239
is not happening in couple's therapy. I mean, if more

756
00:45:07,280 --> 00:45:11,519
people could verbalize, you know, where they're coming from, speak empathically,

757
00:45:12,119 --> 00:45:14,960
even like when they're talking to each other, steal man

758
00:45:15,119 --> 00:45:18,719
the other's argument instead of straw manning their argument, you know,

759
00:45:18,920 --> 00:45:23,679
just disagree better. As your book implies, tell me a

760
00:45:23,719 --> 00:45:25,880
little bit more about what it means to be like

761
00:45:25,960 --> 00:45:30,920
a receptive person in conversation and how that actually impacts

762
00:45:31,559 --> 00:45:32,599
us in the long run.

763
00:45:33,679 --> 00:45:37,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, So we think of receptiveness and conversation as really

764
00:45:37,920 --> 00:45:41,760
the language you use to show your counterpart that you

765
00:45:41,960 --> 00:45:45,880
are engaged with their perspective, and so thinking about it

766
00:45:45,880 --> 00:45:48,280
in that way really makes it like in the eye

767
00:45:48,280 --> 00:45:51,280
of the beholder, Right, it doesn't matter how receptive you feel.

768
00:45:52,079 --> 00:45:56,280
What matters is how receptive your counterpart sees you as being,

769
00:45:57,320 --> 00:45:59,559
Which is kind of a funny definition, right, because it's

770
00:45:59,599 --> 00:46:03,280
really very much about behavior, and it's very much about

771
00:46:03,639 --> 00:46:04,880
linguistic behavior.

772
00:46:06,280 --> 00:46:08,719
Speaker 1: So how like, what do you to say to somebody

773
00:46:08,719 --> 00:46:10,880
who says, why can't control how my partner sees me?

774
00:46:11,000 --> 00:46:12,719
How do I make this that they see me the

775
00:46:12,840 --> 00:46:13,360
right way?

776
00:46:14,559 --> 00:46:17,239
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that's that's a great question. So the way

777
00:46:17,280 --> 00:46:20,639
we kind of went about the research is we put

778
00:46:20,679 --> 00:46:23,719
a bunch of people into conversation with each other who

779
00:46:23,800 --> 00:46:28,599
disagreed on hot button political topics, and we had them

780
00:46:28,960 --> 00:46:31,760
self report their own receptiveness. Right, So they filled out

781
00:46:31,840 --> 00:46:34,199
a self report scale and they said how receptive they

782
00:46:34,199 --> 00:46:39,519
were in this conversation, and then we had them evaluate

783
00:46:39,599 --> 00:46:43,360
their partner's receptiveness and tell us how receptive they thought

784
00:46:43,360 --> 00:46:47,880
their partner was. And what was incredibly surprising to me

785
00:46:47,960 --> 00:46:53,679
about the study was that people's self reported receptiveness was

786
00:46:53,800 --> 00:46:57,800
virtually uncorrelated with the way they were perceived by their partners,

787
00:46:58,440 --> 00:47:01,880
which I thought was crazy, Like, I thought, we didn't

788
00:47:01,880 --> 00:47:04,760
analyze the data, right, we turned it this way and that,

789
00:47:04,960 --> 00:47:08,480
Like we tried every single thing, and there was just

790
00:47:08,559 --> 00:47:12,360
like no relationship. And I think what's happening is that

791
00:47:12,519 --> 00:47:17,800
people are self reporting based on what's happening in their heads, right,

792
00:47:17,880 --> 00:47:20,840
Like they're self reporting how hard they're trying in their minds,

793
00:47:22,079 --> 00:47:26,000
whereas their partner can't read their mind, and so the

794
00:47:26,039 --> 00:47:29,480
only thing they're partners attuned to is essentially the words

795
00:47:29,559 --> 00:47:33,159
they use. And so what we did kind of as

796
00:47:33,199 --> 00:47:36,880
a follow up is we said, okay, well, some people

797
00:47:36,920 --> 00:47:39,719
were rated as more receptive, right, some people were rated

798
00:47:39,760 --> 00:47:43,119
as less receptive, and it wasn't connected to how well

799
00:47:43,119 --> 00:47:46,440
they rated themselves. But there's definitely variation. So let's see

800
00:47:46,480 --> 00:47:51,119
what drives that variation. And so we wrote a natural

801
00:47:51,199 --> 00:47:56,519
language processing algorithm that essentially went through the transcripts and

802
00:47:56,800 --> 00:48:01,559
picked out the words and phrases that were addictive of

803
00:48:02,039 --> 00:48:05,639
partner receptiveness ratings, right, So, like, what are the actual

804
00:48:05,719 --> 00:48:09,440
things that you can say that make other people see

805
00:48:09,480 --> 00:48:14,320
you as more receptive? And so we're what you were.

806
00:48:14,800 --> 00:48:17,159
So you know, when you do this kind of like

807
00:48:17,719 --> 00:48:20,559
sort of bottom up work, right, you have like thousands

808
00:48:20,599 --> 00:48:24,440
of transcripts and you sort of throw like and you know,

809
00:48:24,519 --> 00:48:28,519
a computer model at it. It pulls out just long

810
00:48:28,559 --> 00:48:32,719
lists of things. And so where being an actual human

811
00:48:32,760 --> 00:48:35,400
psychologist comes in right as you go through all that

812
00:48:35,639 --> 00:48:37,800
mess and you try to find meaning in it and

813
00:48:37,840 --> 00:48:41,440
you try to categorize it. And so we ended up

814
00:48:41,480 --> 00:48:44,280
coming up with these things we call features of receptiveness,

815
00:48:44,280 --> 00:48:49,039
which are kind of categories of words and phrases that

816
00:48:49,159 --> 00:48:53,639
help you sound more receptive and the ones that seem

817
00:48:53,719 --> 00:48:57,119
to make the most difference. Uh, we turned into a

818
00:48:57,159 --> 00:49:00,360
cute little acronym, and the acronym is here as an

819
00:49:00,400 --> 00:49:05,639
I hear you. So the here's the four letters of

820
00:49:05,719 --> 00:49:11,480
here H stands for hedging. So its phrases like perhaps

821
00:49:11,800 --> 00:49:16,840
sometimes maybe right. So, like one of my favorite examples

822
00:49:16,920 --> 00:49:20,280
is I could say, you know, COVID vaccines are safe

823
00:49:20,280 --> 00:49:24,760
and effective, or I could say most physicians tend to

824
00:49:24,880 --> 00:49:29,679
believe that COVID vaccines are largely safe and effective. Right,

825
00:49:29,920 --> 00:49:32,440
So I said the same thing, but I shoved three

826
00:49:32,440 --> 00:49:36,880
different hedges into the sentence. And really what it does

827
00:49:37,039 --> 00:49:40,639
is it it shows that I get the complexity of

828
00:49:40,679 --> 00:49:44,039
the issue. Right. It's not sort of like, you know,

829
00:49:44,440 --> 00:49:48,760
asking my partner to point out all the counter arguments

830
00:49:48,760 --> 00:49:51,280
and exceptions, because I've demonstrated with my language that I

831
00:49:51,360 --> 00:49:57,559
understand that there are exceptions. The E stands for emphasizing agreement.

832
00:49:58,480 --> 00:50:00,800
So I like to be really clear with people that

833
00:50:01,320 --> 00:50:04,800
receptiveist is not about sort of compromise or reaching agreement.

834
00:50:05,519 --> 00:50:07,960
But you know, any two humans that disagree about a

835
00:50:08,000 --> 00:50:14,199
thing agree on some other things, right, And so emphasizing

836
00:50:14,239 --> 00:50:18,719
where we do agree is a really good way to

837
00:50:18,760 --> 00:50:21,800
sort of put us on the same side of the table. Right.

838
00:50:21,920 --> 00:50:25,079
So it could be something like we both want to

839
00:50:25,360 --> 00:50:28,679
work in an organization where everybody feels safe and respected,

840
00:50:29,320 --> 00:50:33,559
or we're both really concerned about how Sally is doing

841
00:50:33,599 --> 00:50:37,920
in math right now, right, Like, there's some commonality that

842
00:50:38,000 --> 00:50:41,840
we share and emphasizing that before you jump into arguing

843
00:50:41,880 --> 00:50:44,760
about whatever it is you're arguing about, I think is

844
00:50:44,800 --> 00:50:50,679
really helpful that a is acknowledgment, and that's probably the

845
00:50:50,679 --> 00:50:53,639
one that people are most familiar with. Right, And I'm

846
00:50:53,679 --> 00:50:56,599
sure you've seen this in your practice. But what I've

847
00:50:56,599 --> 00:50:59,519
always you know, what I always sort of caution folks

848
00:50:59,559 --> 00:51:03,559
against is like what I call lazy acknowledgment. And so

849
00:51:03,800 --> 00:51:06,800
lazy acknowledgment is like, I hear you, but here's where

850
00:51:06,840 --> 00:51:07,480
I'm coming from.

851
00:51:08,119 --> 00:51:10,039
Speaker 1: Right, I hear you, but I'm not actually listening to.

852
00:51:10,000 --> 00:51:12,719
Speaker 3: You, right, Like I haven't given you any evidence that

853
00:51:12,760 --> 00:51:15,360
I'm listening to you. Right, Like I said, I hear you,

854
00:51:15,440 --> 00:51:18,639
but like, what did it actually here? So, you know,

855
00:51:18,880 --> 00:51:23,119
good acknowledgment is you know, I understand that, and then

856
00:51:23,199 --> 00:51:27,119
you say what you understand, right, or you seem to

857
00:51:27,559 --> 00:51:30,559
be saying that blah blah blah, or this is really

858
00:51:30,559 --> 00:51:33,960
important to you, and then you restate the other person's point, right,

859
00:51:34,039 --> 00:51:38,800
So you know, it's showing like I think of it

860
00:51:38,840 --> 00:51:41,840
as showing the receipts. You know, you're showing verbally that

861
00:51:41,960 --> 00:51:46,880
you really did hear. And then the R is reframing

862
00:51:46,920 --> 00:51:52,800
to the positive. So it's dropping some negative and contradictory

863
00:51:52,840 --> 00:51:58,639
words like no, can't, won't, terrible hate, and it is

864
00:51:58,719 --> 00:52:03,039
replacing those words with more positively balanced words. Right. So

865
00:52:03,760 --> 00:52:08,960
it would be so wonderful if or I really appreciate

866
00:52:09,039 --> 00:52:12,679
it when right and so, you know, like you might

867
00:52:12,719 --> 00:52:16,920
want to say, I can't stand it when people push

868
00:52:17,039 --> 00:52:21,280
me into really stressful decisions, right, or you could say

869
00:52:21,400 --> 00:52:24,760
I really appreciate it when people give me time to

870
00:52:24,880 --> 00:52:28,480
make important decisions. Right. So like you're saying the same thing,

871
00:52:28,519 --> 00:52:31,360
you're saying, I need more time to make this decision.

872
00:52:32,039 --> 00:52:35,559
But there's one way that's sort of very negative and judgmental.

873
00:52:35,639 --> 00:52:38,079
In another way that's sort of like more, you know,

874
00:52:38,519 --> 00:52:41,639
asking for what you need in positive terms. So h

875
00:52:41,760 --> 00:52:42,400
E A R.

876
00:52:43,840 --> 00:52:46,920
Speaker 1: So I'm curious, you know, it's so funny. That's such

877
00:52:46,920 --> 00:52:50,079
a psychologist thing to do. I always I guess that's hedging.

878
00:52:50,400 --> 00:52:54,239
And also I'm not really sure here, but I often

879
00:52:54,280 --> 00:52:57,639
will start I'm curious instead of right. Let's say you're

880
00:52:58,159 --> 00:53:00,519
arguing about something with your partner. You say, you know,

881
00:53:00,559 --> 00:53:03,440
I'm curious, and I'm you know, I'm noticing that sometimes

882
00:53:03,480 --> 00:53:05,760
maybe when we talk about these things, it tends to

883
00:53:05,760 --> 00:53:08,559
go in this direction, as opposed to you always right

884
00:53:08,679 --> 00:53:12,840
right right, the kids you alright did? So we hedge

885
00:53:13,079 --> 00:53:15,960
and then we emphasize that agreement, and then we acknowledge

886
00:53:16,000 --> 00:53:18,920
the other perspective. You know, I'm hearing that you're saying this,

887
00:53:20,079 --> 00:53:22,280
and then we reframed to the positive, you know, and

888
00:53:22,920 --> 00:53:26,400
I notice that these are some areas where we have agreement,

889
00:53:26,480 --> 00:53:28,239
and I you know, it makes me feel really good

890
00:53:28,239 --> 00:53:29,920
when X, Y, and Z happens.

891
00:53:30,719 --> 00:53:32,360
Speaker 2: All that is done.

892
00:53:32,519 --> 00:53:35,599
Speaker 1: Let's say somebody is adhering to this framework. What is

893
00:53:35,639 --> 00:53:40,639
the ultimate outcome. Is it that there's just less contention

894
00:53:41,239 --> 00:53:44,920
and there's kind of a softening of any defensiveness and

895
00:53:45,079 --> 00:53:48,840
anger in the person who's engaging, or is it that

896
00:53:48,880 --> 00:53:55,400
there actually is improved conciliation? You know, do people start

897
00:53:55,480 --> 00:53:59,440
to uh, maybe not persuade more effectively, but do they

898
00:53:59,480 --> 00:54:02,360
start to find common ground better?

899
00:54:03,320 --> 00:54:05,800
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's you know, it's interesting that, like you're

900
00:54:06,199 --> 00:54:08,679
exactly putting your finger on it, because of course, anytime

901
00:54:08,840 --> 00:54:13,039
I persuade you more effectively, you have become persuaded us.

902
00:54:13,360 --> 00:54:15,239
One of us is won and one of us is lost.

903
00:54:16,480 --> 00:54:19,199
And you know, and of course that's part of the problem, right,

904
00:54:19,280 --> 00:54:22,639
is that people go into these conversations with persuasion as

905
00:54:22,679 --> 00:54:27,400
being their kind of north star goal. And if everybody

906
00:54:27,400 --> 00:54:32,199
has that goal, then nobody's going to get anywhere. So

907
00:54:32,480 --> 00:54:35,920
in the research, what we find is that when people

908
00:54:36,000 --> 00:54:41,239
stick to the here framework, their counterpart sees them in

909
00:54:41,280 --> 00:54:44,960
a much more positive light. So they see them as

910
00:54:44,960 --> 00:54:48,280
more reasonable, as more trustworthy. They want to talk to

911
00:54:48,320 --> 00:54:51,599
them again, which I think is hugely important. They want

912
00:54:51,639 --> 00:54:57,079
to seek their advice on other topics. And what's interesting

913
00:54:57,199 --> 00:55:01,599
is that the counterparts themselves become more receptive. So it's

914
00:55:01,639 --> 00:55:04,400
you know, kind of this really fun like you know

915
00:55:04,519 --> 00:55:08,840
Jedi trick, right, because instead of saying to the other person, like,

916
00:55:08,880 --> 00:55:12,639
why won't you listen to me? Right, you can model

917
00:55:12,760 --> 00:55:15,760
what you're hoping to get and get more of that

918
00:55:15,840 --> 00:55:19,280
thing back in return. So to me, that's really like

919
00:55:19,320 --> 00:55:22,800
the ultimate the ultimate goal here is, you know, have

920
00:55:22,840 --> 00:55:25,199
a conversation that makes you want to keep talking to

921
00:55:25,239 --> 00:55:25,920
each other again.

922
00:55:26,920 --> 00:55:30,280
Speaker 1: And I could see this really playing nicely with a

923
00:55:30,320 --> 00:55:33,880
lot of the research that shows, you know, because there's

924
00:55:34,000 --> 00:55:36,800
obviously all different applications, like we talked about at the

925
00:55:36,880 --> 00:55:41,960
beginning of this conversation about when people disagree and why

926
00:55:42,159 --> 00:55:47,400
we would you know, have an interest in lessening disagreements,

927
00:55:47,440 --> 00:55:53,599
improving communication styles everything from diplomacy to you know, politics,

928
00:55:53,599 --> 00:55:57,480
but all the way down to interpersonal relationships. And when

929
00:55:57,480 --> 00:56:00,480
we look at the research in sort.

930
00:56:00,280 --> 00:56:00,599
Speaker 3: Of like.

931
00:56:02,079 --> 00:56:07,199
Speaker 1: Romantic relationships, especially committed romantic relationships, it does appear that

932
00:56:07,280 --> 00:56:09,320
the kiss of death, the thing that is the most

933
00:56:09,320 --> 00:56:14,920
predictive of a relationship going awry is contempt. And I

934
00:56:14,960 --> 00:56:20,320
think contempt really builds when there's a lot of defensiveness

935
00:56:20,400 --> 00:56:23,559
and resentment in poor communication. I mean, there are obviously

936
00:56:23,599 --> 00:56:27,480
other reasons people become contemptuous, but you can hear contempt

937
00:56:27,639 --> 00:56:29,800
in poor communication styles.

938
00:56:31,559 --> 00:56:33,239
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, I agree with you, And I think it

939
00:56:33,280 --> 00:56:35,800
goes back to that winning or losing thing, you know,

940
00:56:36,039 --> 00:56:42,320
because the way we often make arguments, especially you know,

941
00:56:42,440 --> 00:56:48,119
interpersonal arguments, as we make them kind of dripping with condescension, right.

942
00:56:48,159 --> 00:56:50,519
I mean that's kind of the soul of sarcasm, right,

943
00:56:50,679 --> 00:56:56,039
is like what kind of idiot could possibly believe? Right?

944
00:56:56,639 --> 00:57:01,400
And like, technically it's a question, but it's not. It's

945
00:57:01,440 --> 00:57:03,320
not the kind of question that will help you have

946
00:57:03,400 --> 00:57:11,880
the conversation. So I think that figuring out how to

947
00:57:12,199 --> 00:57:16,000
approach the conversation with some other goal besides you know,

948
00:57:16,119 --> 00:57:21,039
showing your own intellectual superiority is like a really important

949
00:57:21,840 --> 00:57:22,440
goal to have.

950
00:57:23,280 --> 00:57:27,079
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you said that because working in this

951
00:57:27,440 --> 00:57:31,320
world of sort of scientific skepticism, which was, you know,

952
00:57:31,599 --> 00:57:34,360
has been my career for the past ten to fifteen years.

953
00:57:34,920 --> 00:57:37,679
Long before I went back to school and finished my

954
00:57:37,679 --> 00:57:41,719
PhD and started working as a clinical psychologist, I was

955
00:57:42,320 --> 00:57:46,000
doing a lot of work in public science communication, but

956
00:57:46,119 --> 00:57:50,400
especially in like scientific skeptic circles. And one of the

957
00:57:50,440 --> 00:57:54,159
things that I found that was the most frustrating about

958
00:57:54,440 --> 00:57:59,199
some of the communities is a tendency to be so

959
00:57:59,400 --> 00:58:04,440
concerned learned with having a like logically sound argument, that

960
00:58:04,840 --> 00:58:08,639
there's no empathy in the room. It's like, if you're

961
00:58:08,679 --> 00:58:12,440
more concerned about being right than you are about somebody's

962
00:58:12,480 --> 00:58:17,840
lived experience, then I don't think you're an effective communicator,

963
00:58:18,400 --> 00:58:21,599
and I don't think that you're showing a lot of

964
00:58:21,719 --> 00:58:24,400
humanity in the room. You know. And I'm not saying

965
00:58:24,400 --> 00:58:27,559
that this has to be soft science, it has to

966
00:58:27,599 --> 00:58:29,639
be fuzzy. It has to be you know, you're you're

967
00:58:30,119 --> 00:58:36,719
doing legitimate empirical research to show better outcomes when we,

968
00:58:37,599 --> 00:58:41,440
you know, use these tools to disagree better. But so

969
00:58:41,760 --> 00:58:45,639
often I'll see an individual who's so much more concerned

970
00:58:45,639 --> 00:58:49,840
about being right than they are about being kind that

971
00:58:49,960 --> 00:58:53,440
the person they're engaging with just stops listening altogether.

972
00:58:54,480 --> 00:58:57,400
Speaker 3: Well, you know what, let me be slightly contrarian here.

973
00:58:57,480 --> 00:59:00,280
You know, though I actually largely agree with you. It's

974
00:59:00,320 --> 00:59:02,760
not that they're concerned with being right. It's that they're

975
00:59:02,800 --> 00:59:06,159
concerned with appeering right. Because if they were concerned with

976
00:59:06,360 --> 00:59:09,400
being right, then they would be having the kind of

977
00:59:09,480 --> 00:59:14,320
conversation that actually, you know, elevates all different perspectives so

978
00:59:14,320 --> 00:59:17,519
we can actually figure out which one is right. I

979
00:59:17,559 --> 00:59:20,719
definitely think that, like I know exactly what you know,

980
00:59:20,800 --> 00:59:28,280
the style of academic argument you're referring to, and you know,

981
00:59:28,360 --> 00:59:31,519
it becomes sort of a game of like who's got

982
00:59:31,559 --> 00:59:35,559
the best you know, mic drop moment, And it's got

983
00:59:35,599 --> 00:59:38,159
nothing to do with actually figuring things out together, which

984
00:59:38,199 --> 00:59:40,239
is what science is, right, Like, we're supposed to be

985
00:59:40,239 --> 00:59:43,960
figuring things out together. And to the extent that you

986
00:59:44,039 --> 00:59:47,280
can communicate in a way that brings people into the

987
00:59:47,360 --> 00:59:51,480
conversations that shuts them down, you're going to do better science.

988
00:59:53,039 --> 00:59:57,440
Speaker 1: Absolutely, you're going to do better science. You're going to

989
00:59:57,719 --> 01:00:00,880
be more effective in communicating than better. So you know,

990
01:00:00,960 --> 01:00:03,840
like because if a science falls in the forest and

991
01:00:03,920 --> 01:00:07,239
nobody's there to hear it, did it science. You know,

992
01:00:07,320 --> 01:00:09,960
it doesn't really mean anything if nobody's reading your literature,

993
01:00:10,039 --> 01:00:14,400
if nobody is engaging with your arguments as well. So

994
01:00:15,239 --> 01:00:19,280
I just think that there's so many important points made here,

995
01:00:19,320 --> 01:00:21,840
and I want to come back here at sort of

996
01:00:21,920 --> 01:00:24,559
the end of our conversation to the title of the

997
01:00:24,559 --> 01:00:28,159
book itself, how to disagree Better? I mean that is

998
01:00:28,280 --> 01:00:32,760
deceptively simple because it doesn't say how to agree better.

999
01:00:33,159 --> 01:00:36,000
We are going to disagree with people. That is a

1000
01:00:36,119 --> 01:00:39,320
fundamental part of life. We're going to disagree with our partners,

1001
01:00:39,559 --> 01:00:42,079
with our friends. We're definitely going to disagree with our

1002
01:00:42,079 --> 01:00:45,440
family members, and with people who we work with, you know,

1003
01:00:45,519 --> 01:00:48,440
relationships where we didn't choose all the parameters, but we

1004
01:00:48,440 --> 01:00:52,679
were thrown together because of some external reason. And so

1005
01:00:52,840 --> 01:00:54,920
the goal here is not to just always agree with

1006
01:00:54,960 --> 01:00:57,880
each other. It's to disagree in a way that we

1007
01:00:57,920 --> 01:00:59,679
can be harmonious.

1008
01:00:59,719 --> 01:01:04,320
Speaker 3: Still, right, Yeah, so I always you know, I in

1009
01:01:04,360 --> 01:01:06,239
the book, I sort of give a definition of what

1010
01:01:06,280 --> 01:01:09,960
a constructive disagreement is, uh, And my definition is that

1011
01:01:10,039 --> 01:01:14,559
a constructive disagreement is any disagreement that increases our desire

1012
01:01:14,599 --> 01:01:15,679
to talk to each other again.

1013
01:01:16,480 --> 01:01:20,440
Speaker 1: Oh, I love that It's so simple and it just

1014
01:01:20,519 --> 01:01:23,440
captures it all. Obviously, I enjoyed that in some way

1015
01:01:23,519 --> 01:01:25,119
or another. I got something out of that, and I

1016
01:01:25,119 --> 01:01:26,840
want to do it again, and I hope that you

1017
01:01:26,880 --> 01:01:29,159
did too. That's what this conversation has been for me,

1018
01:01:29,239 --> 01:01:32,280
I admit. So I've got to ask you, Julia, is

1019
01:01:32,280 --> 01:01:35,719
there anything here as we as we close out that

1020
01:01:35,800 --> 01:01:37,840
we didn't I mean, obviously there's a million things we

1021
01:01:37,880 --> 01:01:40,000
didn't touch on, but is there anything that sticks out

1022
01:01:40,039 --> 01:01:42,840
to you that's kind of really important to be said

1023
01:01:43,480 --> 01:01:45,920
before before we close out the episode.

1024
01:01:47,360 --> 01:01:49,360
Speaker 3: I think the last thing that I always like to

1025
01:01:49,400 --> 01:01:52,440
remind people of is that this is you know, constructive disagreement,

1026
01:01:52,480 --> 01:01:55,239
and really any kind of communication is a skill, right,

1027
01:01:55,320 --> 01:01:58,800
and so we have to give ourselves, you know, some

1028
01:01:58,960 --> 01:02:02,639
grace because in the beginning, no matter how well you

1029
01:02:02,760 --> 01:02:05,039
do it, that's going to feel awkward and weird and

1030
01:02:05,119 --> 01:02:09,719
you might not feel super authentic or fluid. But like

1031
01:02:09,800 --> 01:02:13,519
any skill you practice, you put in the time, you

1032
01:02:13,559 --> 01:02:16,320
get better at it, and then you start reaping the rewards.

1033
01:02:16,719 --> 01:02:20,239
So I just I like people to approach this, you know,

1034
01:02:20,360 --> 01:02:23,159
like you would approach you know, learning to like serve

1035
01:02:23,199 --> 01:02:25,880
a volleyball er learning to play the pianos like it's

1036
01:02:25,920 --> 01:02:28,400
not magical, it's just you've got to put the time in.

1037
01:02:29,800 --> 01:02:35,519
Speaker 1: Absolutely very very astute and important advice because as you mentioned,

1038
01:02:35,519 --> 01:02:37,239
not only will it be awkward at the beginning, you

1039
01:02:37,239 --> 01:02:39,920
may not be good at it right away, and so

1040
01:02:40,079 --> 01:02:42,840
you know, keep on trying. And I'll often say that

1041
01:02:42,880 --> 01:02:45,719
even about things like empathy, which empathy is such a

1042
01:02:46,039 --> 01:02:49,880
nebulous concept, and obviously it's baked into so much of

1043
01:02:50,760 --> 01:02:53,239
your advice in this book. But these are not things

1044
01:02:53,239 --> 01:02:56,239
that some people are born with and others aren't. They aren't,

1045
01:02:56,400 --> 01:02:59,039
you know, innate. They're things we have to practice. They

1046
01:02:59,039 --> 01:03:02,440
are skills, and the more we practice them, the more

1047
01:03:02,559 --> 01:03:07,079
they become kind of second nature and we don't have

1048
01:03:07,199 --> 01:03:10,800
to think about it as much and it'll just flow

1049
01:03:10,840 --> 01:03:13,679
out of us. So I guess the place to start

1050
01:03:13,840 --> 01:03:16,039
is to pick up a copy of your book and

1051
01:03:16,119 --> 01:03:19,119
read all about these skills and how we can continue

1052
01:03:19,159 --> 01:03:23,079
to hone them. The book is How to Disagree Better

1053
01:03:23,480 --> 01:03:26,800
by doctor Julia Minson. Julia, thank you so much for

1054
01:03:26,840 --> 01:03:27,920
being here with us.

1055
01:03:28,400 --> 01:03:30,400
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. This was so wonderful.

1056
01:03:31,000 --> 01:03:34,199
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and everybody listening, thank you for coming back week

1057
01:03:34,280 --> 01:03:36,639
after week. I'm really looking forward to the next time

1058
01:03:36,639 --> 01:03:38,559
we all get together to talk and the ready