US 2.0: Living With Our Differences

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Over the past several years, I've explored hundreds of ideas on Hidden Brain on how we can live better lives and have healthier relationships. Many of these ideas have felt provocative and insightful to me. And as I interview guests and edit stories, I tell myself, I'm going to remember to apply these ideas to my own life. I'll follow the advice of researchers who've discovered how we can have better relationships. I'll become a better colleague, parent, and citizen. But in my daily life, I forget to apply these lessons all the time. I'm impatient when I should be patient. I'm distracted when I should be focused. And I'm harsh with myself when I should be kind. Psychologists sometimes call this the insight-action gap. Knowing the right thing to do doesn't automatically mean we do the right thing. It isn't about hypocrisy per se. It's that learning something and doing something involve different sets of brain muscles, so to speak. This is a very ancient idea and something that many religious and spiritual traditions have explored over the centuries. It's an old idea in art and literature too. In the 16th century, William Shakespeare wrote, I can easier teach 20 what were good to be done than be one of the 20 to follow mine own teaching. Today on the show, we explore the insight-action gap when it comes to our debates with our political opponents. It's the 3rd episode in our series, US 2.0, where we explore how we can become more effective talking across our differences. If you've missed any of the other episodes in this series, please be sure to check them out in this podcast feed. Why reason and empathy desert us when we need them most, and how to close the insight-action gap. This week on Hidden Brain. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Planet Visionaries. Professional climber and environmental advocate Alex Honnold hosts Planet Visionaries, a podcast spotlighting the people tackling climate challenges with real hopeful solutions. Throughout season 6, Alex brings together extraordinary changemakers for powerful conversations about grit, determination, and the power of hope to fuel our fight for a better future. In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.

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Support for Hidden Brain comes from Progressive. Whoever says saving money is hard doesn't know that new customers who bundle and save with Progressive save hundreds. Because switching your home and auto insurance is better than cutting down on those iced lattes you love. Switch to Progressive and see if you could save. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company, affiliates, and other insurers. Not available in all states. As we look at the news, it's hard not to feel like the world is constantly in flames. New conflicts pile on top of old conflicts, and antagonisms and disagreements seem to erupt everywhere. Conflicts also abound in our personal and professional lives. How should we handle them? How can we learn to defuse them? At Columbia University, psychologist Peter Coleman studies how minor disagreements turn into endless conflicts and how our own thought patterns can deepen divides or help us to mend fences. Peter Coleman, welcome to Hidden Brain.

Thank you so much for having me.

Peter, in 2019, you were invited to attend a conference in Germany. It looked at the emerging challenges in the Middle East and ideas to bring about peace. Now, I understand the whole conference itself was focused on the idea of bringing together these very seasoned negotiators and diplomats. And the idea was that by putting all these experienced heads together, you would come up with initiatives that could be applied in the real world.

Yeah, it was a very impressive group of contributors. It was chaired by a senior person in the field who'd spent most of his life studying international conflict, international peace processes. And he had assembled quite an impressive group of mostly, you know, former envoys or former ambassadors and then academics like myself or people from think tanks. And the idea was, yes, to offer current insights into what to do about the Middle East conflict. In particular, it was really about what can we do to make a difference in these— this sort of new era of more complex conflicts.

So the conference took a turn in one of the final sessions. Paint me a picture of what happened.

So, right. So this was a presentation by one of the co-chairs. He was an Israeli, and he presented a paper, a kind of conceptual model of complex systems and conflict. And his respondent happened to be a former ambassador, a former Dutch ambassador. who also was a contributor to this. And he said something like, given the fact that you're an Israeli and the book is focused on Israel and Palestine, my guess is we'll get more scrutiny than usual. And that's about as far as he got in his comments. And at that point, my Israeli colleague stopped and said, Something like, "What are you saying?" And the Dutch ambassador, you know, paused for a second and looked at me and said, "Well, what I was trying to say is, you know, given that this is about Israel and you're an Israeli," and and and the Israeli colleague then came back and said, "Yes, but what exactly are you saying?" And he clearly was upset and triggered. And it got tense from there. And of course, we're a room full of peacemakers, peacebuilders, or scientists that study that. And at some point, the other chair, the senior member of the group, tried to put a stop to it and said something like, all right, enough of this foolishness. Let's stop this right now. And he, the Israeli, said, I refuse to stop until I receive an apology. I want a public apology. And the Dutch ambassador said, what are you talking about? I didn't do anything that requires an apology. I refuse to apologize. And so they went back and forth sort of like that for a little bit until the Israeli demanded an apology and said if he didn't get it, he would leave. And at that point, he started to kind of pack up his belongings and put his things in his briefcase and backpack and was preparing to leave.

If I understand correctly, what the Israeli negotiator was sort of upset about was the implication that because he was Israeli, there would be special scrutiny that was attached to his work or to the work of the journal, that it would be seen with skepticism that he was biased in some way. He saw himself as being an objective scholar and whose work should be treated objectively. The fact that he was Israeli was beside the point. The Dutch ambassador was saying, let's pay attention to the reality on the ground. this is a heated conflict. You're Israeli. We're talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is going to get more scrutiny. And I can see from both people's points of view how they came to their positions, but I can also see how both people felt personally attacked in the situation.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly what happened. And then other people tried to sort of say, hey, you know, we're here to, you know, do good things for the world, and we're really here to try to understand and help the world, you know, with the peace process. And let's remember And let's try to put this conversation in that context. And so there were multiple attempts. It was, it was very interesting to kind of watch this because, again, it's a room full of very skilled people, but who were thrown into this by surprise and unprepared. And so at some point, the Israeli packed up and left and the Dutch ambassador packed up and left and The irony was that an hour or so before, there was this paper on the role of identity in conflict. And here both of these individuals, I think, felt their identities, either their national identities and/or their professional identities, attacked publicly. And it really disabled them, their capacities to do what they would usually do, which is sort of manage the situation if other people were in that. But they were facing it personally.

Something similar happened to Peter in his own apartment building in Manhattan. It involved a neighbor whom he calls David.

I've known him probably for 10, 12 years, something like that. So, you know, at times I'm on the elevator when he gets on. And what I noticed is that, you know, on occasion he started to make comments about, you know, MeToo marches or Black Lives Matter marches or things that were happening in the streets of the city, kind of sarcastic remarks about those things or climate change. And then at some point, it became clear to me that he was a strong supporter of Donald Trump. This had come just in a conversation in front of the building. And then some of the things he started to say to me seemed rather extreme. At some point, he mentioned something about having a lot of respect for Vladimir Putin, thinking he was a You know, a good leader. And, you know, so at some point, I just started to think, okay, this, you know, I can't get into a back and forth conversation with him that's going to be constructive. I'm just out. And so I basically just sort of pulled away, stopped engaging. If I'd see him, I'd smile, but I'd sort of just move on. I really, I really just tried to unplug from the relationship.

And was this because you were neighbors and you just didn't feel like this was the kind of conversation you wanted to have with a neighbor, or was this also that your own politics and preferences were not aligned with his?

I think it's a combination of both. I think I didn't feel like he was someone that I could try to reason with because he would just sort of hold court, hold forth, and his opinions to me were Just informed very differently from mine. So I didn't see where we could go with this, which is why I felt like, yeah, I think I just need to disengage.

So there is some element of irony here, Peter, which is that you are someone who studies conflict, and you are someone who studies disagreement. But your response to this person who disagreed with you was, I anticipate there's going to be conflict, and my solution to this is to disengage with this person and try not to bump into him again.

Fair. That's fair. And again, I think what most of us in this field of conflict resolution, peacebuilding, it's an eclectic field, but most of us will say that when it happens to us, when we're in the middle of it and our passions get triggered or our politics get triggered, it's a different kind of problem. It's somewhat what happened in Hamburg at this meeting of my colleagues on the Middle East. So yeah, I think it's not something I'm proud of, but I think my cost-benefit assessment at the time was, look, this isn't going anywhere. I don't see him being open to listening or talking to me, and I don't have the energy for this, so I'm out.

From international forums to neighbors in an apartment building, stray comments often lead to bigger problems. Once conflicts erupt, it can be difficult to put the genie back into the bottle. When we come back, understanding the roots of the invisible forces that drive us apart. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Progressive. Whoever says saving money is hard doesn't know that new customers who bundle and save with Progressive save hundreds. Because switching your home and auto insurance is better than cutting down on those iced lattes you love. Switch to Progressive and see if you could save. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company, affiliates, and other insurers. Not available in all states. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Quince. We all have those pieces in our closet that we can count on. The versatile jacket, the perfect t-shirt. These are the pieces that make getting dressed easy, and that's what Quince does best. Quince makes elevated everyday essentials using premium materials in designs that are timeless, thoughtfully crafted, and made to be worn again and again. And when the temperatures start to drop, Quince makes it easy to build on these everyday staples with versatile layers designed to keep you warm and comfortable All season long. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Hidden Brain. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. We all have moments in our lives when we have to take something we've learned and put it into practice in the real world. Doing so, of course, is often a lot harder than we think it'll be. At Columbia University, social psychologist Peter Coleman got to witness the gap between theory and practice firsthand. On October 7th, 2023, the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a surprise attack on southern Israel. It killed and wounded thousands of Israelis. The incident launched a bloody reprisal with tens of thousands of Palestinians killed by Israeli bombs and a ground invasion of Gaza. Peter, not long after the war in Gaza got underway, you were preparing to teach a class at Columbia University. Paint a picture for me of what happened that Wednesday evening.

Sure. Yeah, so conditions at Columbia escalated fairly rapidly after the October 7th incursion. And we, we sort of felt it right away. There were almost immediate protests. And several of my students come from different parts of the university. A big group of them were coming from the School of International Public Affairs, and they're often international students that are studying diplomacy and international affairs. And this group were coming into my class just before 5 PM in the evening and were looking shaken, and they were looking at me with a concern. And so they came right up to me and started to describe their experience of the day, which is that they were in classes in the School of International Public Affairs, and some of their peers in a classroom had stood up And pointed to other students and called them out and said, they're supporters of Hamas, or they're refusing to allow, you know, our point of view to be expressed. And so they would name names and point at each other in a classroom, which was, again, not typical protocol in classrooms at Columbia. And so they were verbally attacking or accusing one another. And they left that class. to come walk, you know, 2 blocks to my building. And in front of my building, there was parked a truck. And it was a large truck that had 4 screens on the side of the back of the truck that were television screens. And this truck had been driving around the outskirts of campus and was showing either hostages that had been taken, Israeli hostages that had been taken by Hamas, Images of these individuals and images of students with their information, their names and contact information that they say were not supporting Israel or were supporting Hamas.

Other incidents like this were popping up all over the campus. Eventually, police showed up.

And I was teaching on the first floor. The sirens were going by. I could, you know, see different clusters of squad cars driving past us. So the atmosphere was very tense in our room, on campus. And they had just spent the day navigating this and came into my classroom, and they were triggered and traumatized by this. And one of them said to me, I don't know if I should stay here. I didn't expect this to happen in New York. And I— I don't know if I should even stay here. So that was my experience of the first encounter with how this was playing out on campus in my class.

So over the years, Peter, you have studied conflicts that you call intractable conflicts. Can you tell me what you mean by the term? There's obviously the colloquial understanding of an intractable conflict, of a conflict that seems to drag on endlessly. But you're using it, I think, in a more specific way. Tell me what you mean by intractable conflicts.

Well, scholars that study these things, these long-term, difficult, demanding conflicts, really see there are 3 qualities that distinguish them from other kinds of more manageable conflicts. One is that they tend to be highly destructive. So the intensity or the level of destructiveness can escalate and de-escalate, but the pattern is very destructive. They tend to endure for long periods of time. We call them also protracted conflicts that can go on for some 4 decades, if not more. And most importantly, in terms of diagnosing them or understanding them as intractable, is they have a history often where there have been many good faith attempts to address them and to work them out. And they may be mediations, they may be formal, they may be informal or negotiation processes. But they have a history of attempts to end them that either seem to have no effect or actually backfire. And so, yes, they have that kind of quality where they bring things in. I have to say, it's, you know, they sometimes feel like, like a storm, like a, like a hurricane that gathers and, and has that kind of force that's bigger than us.

To step away from what's happening in the Middle East for a second, to look at another conflict that I think many Americans are seeing. Many people feel like the partisan divide in our country is getting deeper, and it feels like an intractable conflict. Now, thankfully, for the most part, I don't think it devolves into violence, at least at the level of violence that you see in geopolitical conflicts and war. But there have been times in the United States, in the history of the United States, where conflict between Americans has resulted in war. Can you talk about whether partisanship qualifies as the kind of intractable conflict that you're talking about? And in fact, has it gotten worse? Is it an example of intractable conflict?

I do think it is an example, and it is how I think about political polarization in the US right now. And again, it's not always been this way, but it is this way today. It's by some measures, this is something like a 60-year trajectory of increasing enmity and distance between red and blue Americans, you know, more Republican or conservative, more Democrat or progressive groups of individuals. For example, in Congress, we've seen a lack of bipartisanship and an increase in obstructionism in Congress. And that's continued really since the late 1970s. So by that measure, politically, we see that this kind of division and inability to work together to cross the aisle. But it's also true in attitudes. You know, Pew Research Trust measures attitudes of voters and Americans, you know, sort of Main Street, bottom up. And they've been tracking similar kinds of affective trends, you know, a lack of warmth or even a sort of cold feeling towards the other side. That has been growing also since the late 1970s. So it's something that we see emotionally and then politically, ideological differences on issues. And we have seen an increase in some political violence that's taken place over the last certainly 20 years. There's a book called How Civil War Starts, and it's written by a woman named Barbara Walter. She, by the way, works as an analyst for the CIA and looks at political stability around the world. And so they have metrics where they sort of track the data. And her position is that when we think about our first civil war, what we think about is armies in a field with muskets and uniforms. And her position is that that's not how political violence will take place here, that One of the things we're seeing here in the US is an increase in small militant groups who mobilize and do whatever they can to destabilize the status quo. And so we're not seeing the violence, obviously, that we see in Gaza today, but we are seeing our own versions of escalation of political violence, which are highly concerning.

Peter and his colleagues have studied how conflicts escalate. Some of it has to do with individual psychology— our inclination to lose our tempers during a conflict or to seek out sources of news that match our preexisting beliefs. These forces are amplified by group psychology— our tendency to herd together and defend the pack. At a societal level, the organization and structure of political systems can exacerbate division by creating zero-sum, winner-take-all dynamics. While we often focus on these causes one by one— misinformation, a populist leader, gerrymandering— Peter says the real challenge is that all the issues are intertwined.

My whole point is that there is no one thing that drives this. It's not Trump. It's not gerrymandering. It's not the internet. It's not media. It's not you or your tribal tendencies or your group. It's how these things align and start to feed each other in ways that start to take on a life of their own. And then it does feel bigger than us. And so even if you and I decide, all right, I've had it with political enmity, I'm not going to listen to the outrage on television anymore, I'm going to really just live my life. It's so hard to not be sucked into these patterns and triggered by events or things that our friends say or don't say. You know, because so much of our life and our society and our culture is contributing to these simple divides.

The complexity of the forces that drive us apart explains why simple interventions to bring people together often don't work. Peter tells a story about a group called My Country Talks, where journalists bring political opponents together to chat or break bread. One such effort brought together a military veteran from Pennsylvania who was a diehard supporter of Donald Trump with a voter who opposed Trump, a yoga teacher from Brooklyn.

So they met in New York City. They agreed to both come to New York City, and they met for breakfast, and they went for a walk in Central Park, and it went pretty well. You know, they had a good connection between them, and, you know, they had things in common that they found. And, you know, mostly talking about their family and their work and what they did. And so that went fairly well. And then they agreed to meet the next night, I guess, and go to a— they went to a Brooklyn Nets basketball game. So they agreed to meet there and they went to the game. And then after the game, they went out for drinks. And that's when things went south.

The journalist who'd brought the opponents together was feeling hopeful about the conversation. He decided to bring up a controversial topic to see what would happen. He asked the two about their attitudes towards Colin Kaepernick, the former NFL quarterback who kneeled during the national anthem to protest racial inequality in the United States. At the time, President Donald Trump suggested Colin Kaepernick should be kicked out of his team.

The journalist asked them what did they think about That whole event. And immediately that erupted into a diatribe, and the yoga teacher started to get very angry and enraged, and the vets responded. And, you know, as he said, the F-bombs started to fly, and they really, really became aggressive and terrifying. And then one of them stormed out. And And the other stormed out. When I pushed this organization, My Country Talks, on this story, they said, yeah, this is happening probably more than we want, that under the current conditions, just bringing people together to chat, as well-intentioned as it is, oftentimes is insufficient or can backfire and can really go south. And there is peer research, it's now probably out of 2018 or 2019, about how red and blue Americans feel when they speak across the divide. And the majority of us leave those conversations feeling more frustrated and more alienated from the other side than before, because it's not as simple as just get together and talk.

For its part, My Country Talks reports that hundreds of thousands of people have taken part in these conversations. The organization says that of those who were surveyed afterward, 80% on average say they're happy with how the interaction went. The psychological principle behind My Country Talks and other programs like it was articulated by the social psychologist Gordon Allport many decades ago. He believed that direct contact between different social groups could promote mutual understanding, foster empathy, and reduce prejudice.

But what Gordon Allport was very clear to identify in his research was, you know, there are certain conditions where that goes well. And one of the conditions that's important is that, you know, that people are willing to do this and there's enough time that they spend together So that they actually can start to develop some kind of rapport or relationship before they get to the conflict. And what a lot of organizations do, unfortunately, is start with a conflict. They say, you're on this side, you're on that side, let's go. And if they don't take the time to build up some sense of respect, rapport, trust, even in the facilitators, let alone Let alone, you know, each other, the other side, it can easily blow up under conditions like we have today.

We all have people with whom we disagree. These might be public figures, neighbors, even loved ones. When disagreements snowball into conflicts, they can seem insurmountable. When we come back, Peter's research into how we can find a way out of intractable conflicts. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Instagram. Instagram Teen Accounts' automatic protections limit who can contact teens, the content they can see, and the time they spend on the app. Teens are automatically placed into Teen Accounts. Teens under 16 will need a parent's permission to change any of those settings to be less strict. Learn more about Teen Accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts. Working as a dedicated Fidelity advisor, I always ask, what's important to you? I'll look at those priorities and goals alongside your full financial picture to build a comprehensive plan designed to help grow and protect your wealth. With proactive portfolio insights and an eye on taxes, I'm here to help you make the most of your money. I'm Laura Maxwell, and I'm a dedicated Fidelity advisor. Learn more at fidelity.com/wealth. Investment minimums apply. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC, member NYSE SIPC. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Air France. Air France Business Cabin offers comfort throughout the journey with priority check-in, boarding, and lounge access. Onboard, enjoy menus from renowned French chefs, wines and champagne selected by a sommelier, and free high-speed Wi-Fi. When it's time to rest, settle into a fully adjustable lie-flat bed with added mattress comfort. The art of travel elevated, because Air France Business Cabin goes further in every detail to make your journey exceptional. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. We all have values and beliefs that we consider non-negotiable. Our convictions can run so deep that hearing someone argue against them can feel immoral. At Columbia University, social psychologist Peter Coleman studies the anatomy of conflict, why it happens, when it can lead to violence and war, and how we can build peace in our own lives and in the world at large. Peter, before you became a peace researcher, you worked at an inpatient hospital In New York City. What did you do there?

I was what they call a mental health associate, which is basically somebody that, you know, I was young and somebody that'll do anything you ask them to do. So we were counselors to some degree, but mostly we were just helping the nurses run the unit.

At one point, a young man at the facility whom Peter had befriended locked himself in a room. He was breaking things, And threatening violence. Staff members called the police for help.

I knocked on the door and just said, look, you know, any chance that you can talk to me? You know, and immediately he said, go away, you know, fuck you, no way. And I said, you know, look, there's a SWAT team coming, and you know how that's going to play out. And we could possibly avoid that. Is there any chance be willing to just talk to me. And so after a pause, he unlocked the door. And so I walked in. And again, I want to be honest, I wasn't really trained well to do this. I didn't really have kind of violence intervention techniques. I just was going on the basis that I knew this young man, he knew me. I felt like he trusted me and that there was some chance that this could de-escalate. And I walked in the room and I closed the door behind me and I sat down immediately, which is one thing I knew to do is to try to not be imposing. I'm tall. I didn't want to— so I just sat down and he was again still enraged, very angry. He was pissed off that I had come in. because he really wanted to punch somebody. He really wanted to hurt somebody. And he said to me, you know, damn it, Peter, why do you— why does it have to be you? I can't punch you. You know? And, and, you know, and eventually he was able to kind of talk his way down and de-escalate enough that, you know, he agreed to come out. And, and so we were able to send the SWAT team away in this particular incident. That didn't always work, but When there was some kind of relationship that we could try to leverage, it sometimes would allow us to bring the temperature down.

So your experiences at the hospital made you realize that you had an interest in conflict resolution. And you were curious about what worked in de-escalating incidents. You came across a story that changed the way you thought about conflict. Tell me what happened in Boston. in December 1994.

Yeah, that's, uh, that's an extraordinary story. Boston was an epicenter of a lot of, uh, hostile rhetoric and protest around pro-life, pro-choice. It's highly Catholic. It's something like 36% Catholic at the time. Um, and in 1994, uh, a man drove, uh, to 2 clinics in Brookline, Massachusetts with arms And he pointed his rifle at one woman. She was pleading for her life, and he said, you should pray the rosary, and then shot her dead. And so it was this horrible event that took place. Even today, if you mention this, people remember this story. It was a destabilizing time. The archdiocese weighed in and they just said, this is unacceptable. The governor, the mayor, It really was, you know, in the entire community and across the country probably, was this very upsetting, extraordinary thing.

These leaders in the community called for peace. They asked people to come together to find common ground. But their pleas for peace and unity seemed hopeless. Despite the tragedy, people were more divided than ever in their beliefs. The incident had all the makings of an intractable conflict.

But there was a group in town named the Public Conversations Project, and there was a woman that was the director of that who had been doing work with pro-life and pro-choice activists in the community and had relationships across those differences. Her name was Laura Chasen. And Laura reached out to some of her contacts and said, you know, would you be willing to have a conversation with somebody on the other side? And it wasn't an easy sell. People were afraid of violence. They were enraged by what happened, and they were enraged and blaming the other side. And so it was a very difficult thing to do. But there was a handful of women. There were 3 pro-life leaders and 3 pro-choice leaders, all women, who agreed to temporarily meet and talk. And they agreed to just do this for one month. One of the groups, the pro-life group, had met before the first meeting. They met at a Friendly's and they had coffee and they together prayed to God because they believed that they were about to sit down with murderers. and that God would see that as a sin. And they prayed to God to pardon them for doing this. So they were really, you know, they really were fearful of one another and held each other in deep contempt. And so to go into a room and have a conversation, even if it's well facilitated, ain't easy. They did it in secret. They didn't tell anybody in their families, in their lives, in their professions that they were doing this because of the potential consequences of it. They met in a church basement in Massachusetts. But it went well enough that after a month, they agreed to continue it for a bit. And then they agreed to continue the conversation until the anniversary of the shooting. And what happened ultimately is that it took them 5 and a half years of facilitated conversations in this safe space And not telling members of their community what they were doing, where they changed in terms of their feelings towards one another. They really came to— one of them described it as, after a period of time, we fell in love with each other. Because they came to really respect and appreciate the intelligence and the integrity and the conscientiousness of each other and how they take up their work, really the importance of that. And so they became very close as a group.

Importantly, this bridge-building was less about the women changing their minds about abortion and more about finding areas adjacent to the central conflict where they agreed with one another, as well as reasons to like one another.

And this is a really interesting and kind of paradoxical aspect of this, is that they, you know, in dropping all the rhetoric and all the hate speech and all the go-to automatic, you know, phrases that they would usually use, they really needed to speak honestly, carefully about why this issue was important to them. And as they came to really care for the other women across the divide, they really wanted them you know, really became important that they understood, that they joined them in their cause. And so it was in some ways a fraught dynamic. But because their relationships became, I would say, thicker, they became kinder and friendlier and more respectful, that they ultimately came out publicly in 2001 in the Boston Globe. They authored an article called Talking with the Enemy. where they detailed this experience. And then they held a press conference and they were amazed that at the press conference there were all kinds of media who were very, you know, major networks were there who were very interested in what they were doing. And they believed that their decision to talk to each other, to get to know each other, and then ultimately find where they did have common ground, like, you know, the need to prevent pregnancy, you know, unwanted pregnancies, the need to protect young women, and the need to really avoid violence. Right. Whatever they could do to keep violence from coming back to the community. They really felt that their activism had created the conditions where that was more likely to happen, and they never wanted to see that again. So they, they came together in that way, and they shared that message through media and through talks they gave at colleges and places around the country. And in some ways, they had a broad effect on the ethos around that particular division at that time. They really brought the temperature down. They modeled how to meet with the other side, to get to know the other side. And they all changed their activism.

You know, there are a couple of things that jump out at me. One is that I think we often imagine that if we could sit down with people who disagree with us, in a couple of minutes, we could quickly disabuse them of their wrong views and they will come around and see that we were right all along. Perhaps the women in this group believed that as well. They believed that if they could sit down with people on the other side, that in a matter of hours and certainly weeks or months, that the other side would come to see that they were right and they would change their minds. But really what happened was a process that was much more affective than cognitive, if you will. It wasn't so much, I changed my views based on the arguments you placed before me, but that I come to see you not just as a fuller person in your humanity, but also come to like you. In some ways, it has a parallel with what happened in that inpatient facility that you were working at, which is the reason the guy didn't hit you was not because you convinced him that hitting you would be a bad idea. He actually liked you, and his own conflict, his inner conflict of saying, I like Peter, but I want to hit Peter, kept him from actually hitting you.

Yeah. No, I think that's absolutely right. I mean, and I think you're right that initially many of us, agree to sit down and talk to the other people because we think, if I can just get them to sit down and explain to them how crazy their logic is, we can find a way out of this. But oftentimes that has very little positive effect. It is taking the time. And again, and we talk about things long enough until we realize what we don't understand. And once you get there, then you start to think, Oh, OK, well, then maybe there's something to learn here, right? And then it's not about persuading. It's really about listening and understanding.

The other thing that strikes me about the example you gave about these women in Boston is that they really approached their conversations almost like a bomb disposal squad, which is they didn't sort of wander in blithely and say, OK, there's a bunch of wires here. Let's figure out maybe we should cut this one. Let's see how it turns out. They actually sat down and very carefully took apart what they were doing. They took their time. They weren't in the public eye. They were doing this in private. And I think when it comes to conflict resolution, a lot of us imagine that we can just simply show up with a pair of clippers and sort of clip a wire to disarm a bomb, and that's going to be it. We are underestimating how complex and how difficult the challenge actually is.

I think that's true. Sometimes. And I guess what I want to say is conflict is in our life constantly, right? We have internal conflicts in our decision processes. We have conflicts with our roommates and our spouses and our kids and our family. We're always negotiating and bumping into differences and disputes and preferences, and we learn to manage them most of the time pretty constructively, either ignore them or to talk through them, right? Some conflicts don't allow that. Some conflicts become too aligned with passion, with identity, with ideology, with history. And we just make the mistake of not understanding the distinction between, you know, maybe what we should call disputes and what we call deep conflicts. These political conflicts that we're talking about, you know, over abortion, over Trump, these are deep identity conflicts. They're based on a lot of assumptions and deep affect, and those are not easily discarded or worked through or fixed.

I want to talk about another idea you have about conflict resolution, and that's to take advantage Tell me about the bombshell effect, Peter.

Right. So the bombshell effect is, again, sort of exemplified by what happened in Brookline with the women. When this violence took place, it was so destabilizing, it was so shocking that these activists who had spent decades competing and obstructing each other were willing to sort of stop And think, okay, this can't happen again. We need to try something else. And so when sometimes there are extraordinary things that happen—COVID, health crises—you lose your job, you lose a loved one. When there are these destabilizing times, sometimes they provide a sense of instability that can make people more open. to certain kinds of processes. So when we talk about the bombshell effect, we talk about a new start, a reset, and how sometimes under those conditions, choosing to reset, that can happen in the wake of extraordinarily difficult events.

Peter also recommends that opponents talk to each other, While going for a walk. Physical movement, especially in beautiful surroundings, can sometimes spring people out of their habitual perspectives. Peter recently had a chance to put his ideas into practice. He reached out to his neighbor David and asked to go on a walk with him.

I did it because I felt ashamed, because in 2021, I, you know, I had spent the 2 years prior to that writing a book called The Way Out, which was about overcoming toxic polarization, and I wrote about ways to help with it. And one of them was a chapter on movement. And about a year after I wrote the book, I was sitting and thinking about what I was proposing to other people and thought, I can't just sit here with this estranged relationship with this kind enough man, I have to try to walk my own talk. So I emailed him out of the blue and I said, would you be willing to take a walk with me in the park? And he wrote back right away and he said, I'd be happy to sit down and talk with you, but why walk? Are you CIA? Are you worried about surveillance? He was very concerned about that whole notion. And I said, no, just Just try to trust me on this. There's a reason, I have a rationale here. I'll explain it to you. So he agreed, and we agreed to meet and go for a walk in the park. We live on the west side of Manhattan. We went into Riverside Park. I have to say, before I met with him, I was sick to my stomach. He too was clearly very anxious. Right away he said to me, Yeah, happy to take a little walk with you. My wife isn't feeling well, so I may have to come back early. He was— I said, that's fine. No worries. No worries. And we walked. What I tried to do was follow my own recommendations, which means that I had to, first of all, ask myself, like, what do I want to do here? What am I— what's the objective of this? Because we could have easily gotten triggered and gotten into political nonsense and gone nowhere. And so I really said to myself, you know, I reset and said, this is an opportunity to talk to somebody who's all in on Donald Trump and MAGA and So take an opportunity to listen and try to get a sense of what that is. So I was very intentional about that. And then I was very intentional about how I approached the conversation. We didn't jump right into Trump and politics.

At first, Peter asked David about his life. They discovered they had some things in common. David was Jewish. Peter's wife was Jewish. But after they established some points of connection, the conversation got heavier.

He started to talk about Trump and his ideas. So he was hitting a lot of conspiracy theories. But what I didn't do was what he expected me to do, which is to joust with him, to, you know, to parry and challenge. And I just listened. I asked some clarifying questions when he would say, oh, you know, we do this, we don't do that. I'd say, so your community is okay with this, but not that, not with that? And he'd say, yes. And I'd say, okay. And so he was very passionate and driven and walked faster as we spoke and got very worked up. But at some point, what sort of happened is that we rode a wave of that passion. And at some point as we were walking, because I wasn't challenging him, which is what he'd expected, he came to his own doubts. He started to say, all right, should I vote for this person again? Probably not. Or he made these mistakes and these mistakes. And so he started to come to his own contradictions or doubts about his position, which, of course, was much more powerful than anything I could have done. But we continued to walk, and then at some point, we were heading back towards the apartment, and I said, well, I know that your wife is feeling well. And he said, it's okay, we can walk a few more blocks. So we continued and eventually ended back at the apartment. And when we got to the apartment, I had left a copy of my book in the front and handed it to him and said, look, you don't have to read this. I just wanted to give you some sense of why I asked you to meet with me. And he picked it up and he looked at the back and he said, yeah, political Polarization. He said, that's a huge problem. I don't know what to do about it. He said, I feel like I spend all of my time just lost in the woods and angry, but I don't really know what to do about this thing. And I just said, well, I think what we just did is a start. About a week later, my son, who's 27, who has lived here for a long time, but this man had never communicated with, never had any contact with, or never looked at, He gets in the elevator with David, and David looks at him and said, oh, you're, you're, you're Peter's son. And my son Adlai said, yes, uh, yes. He was, he was sort of taken aback and surprised. And he said, all right, well, tell your father, um, that I'm reading his book and it's not bad. And I thought, that is the best That's the highest endorsement that I can imagine having for a book is, you know, to have someone who you think would be opposed to it say it's not bad. And I do want to say that this happened, you know, a year and a half ago, and, um, and we continue conversations. So we've been connected. He sends me things to read, I send him things to read, um, and occasionally we get together and talk and ideally walk, because that's when I feel like Peter Coleman is a psychologist at Columbia University.

He's the author of The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization. Peter, thank you for joining me today on Hidden Brain.

Oh, it's been a real pleasure. Thank you for having me on.

Next week, we continue our Us 2.0 series With a look at how the loudest voices shape and distort our understanding of political conflict. Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Bridget McCarthy, Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Correll, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. We end today's show with a story from our sister podcast, My Unsung Hero. It's brought to you by T-Mobile for Business. In 2003, Jennifer Rinehart suffered a traumatic fall that left her with life-threatening injuries. After 3 major surgeries and a medically induced coma, she was in tremendous pain. One night in the hospital still stands out in her memory. She was on a large amount of morphine to help her sleep through the pain. When she woke up, she was dripping with sweat and shivering.

I was so cold, but shivering made my whole body hurt. And so I was also crying because it hurt so bad, and, and I was shivering and I couldn't stop. And I managed to reach the call button and called for the nurse. And when the nurse came in and saw what was happening, she's like, oh, honey, we'll, we'll get you out of this bed and we'll get you into a clean sheets. And I just was panic-struck because every single piece of me hurt so badly. I didn't know that I would— I felt like I didn't know if I could even survive being moved out of the bed. And she called in an attendant, and he was 2 or 3 times the size of me, and he walked over And scooped me up out of the bed like a little baby, so tenderly and so gently. He held me like I was made out of tissue paper, and he just held me very still and quiet and hummed a song very quietly while the nurses came in and quickly got the sheets changed. There was something about the power of the sound of his voice and the vibration in his chest and how gently he was holding me that just put a balm and a soothingness over that pain that I was feeling. When he set me back down in the bed, And they changed my hospital gown and I was back in dry, warm— they brought warm blankets. It was really the first time since I had fallen that I felt sure that I was going to live through this, and then I'd get back home to my children. Oh, I wish he could have known just how much he helped me.

Jennifer Reinhardt lives in Homer, Alaska. Today's My Unsung Hero story was brought to you by T-Mobile for Business. You can find more of these stories on the My Unsung Hero podcast or at myunsunghero.org. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon. Having lots of choices sounds like it would be great. Who doesn't want more flavors of ice cream? It turns out the answer is us. Too many choices can make us anxious, overwhelmed, I'm Shankar Vedantam, host of the Hidden Brain podcast and YouTube channel. Each week, Hidden Brain brings you fascinating, science-backed insights about human behavior. So the next time you have to choose, choose Hidden Brain on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or hiddenbrain.org.

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