By Rachel Wahl
University of Virginia

If you talked to your friends or family about politics during Thanksgiving, you may not have changed your mind. But don’t be discouraged and consider speaking with them again during the holiday season.

As a scholar of political dialogue, I have been studying conversations between people who disagree about politics for a decade. What I have found is that people rarely change their minds on political issues as a direct result of these discussions. But they often feel much better around people they disagree with.

But how these conversations happen is important. Confrontations and arguments are not as productive as investigation and honest curiosity.

Conversations that make a difference

When people feel that others are genuinely curious about what they think and ask calm, respectful questions, they tend to drop their defenses. Instead of being argumentative in response to an aggressive question, they try to reflect the sincerity they perceive.

In addition to asking why someone voted the way they did, you can ask them what they fear and hope for, what they believe creates a good society, and most importantly, what are the personal experiences that gave rise to these fears, hopes and hopes. beliefs.

This curiosity-based approach has significant effects on both the listener and the speaker. I have found that the listener can understand how the speaker can make a choice that they view as a bad choice and still view the speaker as an honest person. The speaker becomes more approachable and his or her intentions often turn out to be well-meaning – or even ethically sound. A listener can begin to understand how, under different circumstances or different ethical beliefs, that person’s vote might make sense.

The speaker is also likely to have a positive experience.

When I followed up with students years after participating in a dialogue session modeling curiosity-based listening, what they remembered best was who they spoke to. Students remembered how a peer they expected to attack them instead asked sincere, respectful questions and listened attentively to the answers. They remembered feeling good in the person’s presence and appreciating them for that.

Benefits for democracy

This type of exchange between Americans of different political stripes can provide several important benefits to democracy.

First, these conversations can help ward off the worst dangers that come from hatred and fear. I expect that better understanding why others voted, as well as seeing their decency, may reduce people’s support for these conspiracy theories about election results that rely on the assumption that no one could actually support the opposing candidate. Such an understanding could also reduce support for policies that dehumanize and disenfranchise the other party as well as politicians who incite violence. In short, I believe these conversations can reduce the feeling that the other party is so mean or stupid that they must be stopped at all costs.

Second, these conversations can help promote the best that democracy promises. In an ideal democracy, citizens not only fight for their own freedoms, but also seek to understand the concerns of their fellow citizens. People cannot create a society that allows everyone to thrive without knowing what other people’s lives are like and understanding the experiences, interests, and beliefs that drive them.

Finally, in the rare cases where people change their minds about politics, I have found that it is not because they were argued to a different point of view. Instead, when someone is asked sincere, thoughtful questions, they sometimes begin to ask themselves those questions. And sometimes, over the years, they come up with different answers.

For example, one student told me in a follow-up interview, years after attending a dialogue session, that she had been asked, “If you say you believe that, then why did you vote like that ?

“It wasn’t an offensive question,” she recalls. “They really wanted to know.”

So, she confides, “since then, I’ve been asking myself that question.”

A shared connection

Dialogue alone does not guarantee a healthy democracy. Citizens’ actions, not words, protect democratic institutions, our own rights and those of others.

But open, curious conversations between people who disagree keep alive the ideas and practices that remind us that we are all humans together, sharing a world — and in the United States, sharing a nation worth protecting.

This holiday season, let us all commit to continuing to engage with those with whom we most disagree, with respect and dignity.

Rachel Wahl is an associate professor of education at the University of Virginia. This story first appeared in The Conversation, a nonprofit organization funded by readers, colleges and universities, and foundations. It is reproduced here under a Creative Commons license.

See The Conversation here.