Often when we gear up to have a challenging conversation with someone whose beliefs are so opposite to ours, we get ourselves riled up. With memories or expectations of these conversations going poorly, we prepare for their resistance, their insolence, and their vitriolic rhetoric. We come in, argumentative guns blazing, ready to burn down their beliefs.
While our passion and preparation of arguments is necessary to be ready to explain our own position, our desire to comprehend folks who seem incomprehensible is even more important to genuine conversation that results in growth. Without our curiosity to understand them, they will not let their guard down to listen to us, and a further polarizing blow-up is likely. As Kate Murphy points out in You're Not Listening, "Thinking you already know how a conversation will go down kills curiosity and subverts listening, as does anxiety about the interaction." This is why it is important to do a little mental and emotional preparation to consider not just what they believe and how they respond to challenges to their views, but why.
People are extremely sensitive and protective of their political beliefs. This is because most people's politics are deeply rooted in their morality. Think about your own political beliefs. Do you believe we should have universal healthcare and wealthy people should be taxed to provide services for folks in poverty? This is likely because you believe that as humans, we are responsible for each other. It's the right thing to do, right?
The challenge is: most people think their morality represents the right way of doing things. People mostly do not want to harm others. People mostly want to believe they are good. So, even when someone's political and moral beliefs lead them to do harm, they cling to the idea that they are doing the right thing. They cling to an image of themself as a good person.
Therefore, when people get defensive about their beliefs, it is because they perceive it as an attack on their identity as a good person. Kate Murphy writes that "when our deeply held beliefs or positions are challenged, if there's even a whiff that we might be wrong, it feels like an existential threat. "
So why do people get so heated about their beliefs? It's biological! Neuroscientists at the Brain and Creativity Institute at USC found that our brain activity when our beliefs are challenged sets off the fight, flight, or freeze mode our brains use to respond to actual predators, like a lion or bear. (Murphy, 2019) When this happens, it fires up our amygdala (the survival part of our primitive brain), which in turn, shuts down activity in the centers of our brain that control higher order thinking. This means that when our core beliefs are challenged, it’s really hard for us to listen and process the information being presented to us. So when people (including yourself) react strongly, know it’s a biological reaction to what our brains perceive as an existential threat: a difference in opinion.
So, as we mentally prepare for these conversations, we can do two things. First, we can understand where the heat is coming from and create an environment for a more successful exchange. Additionally, we can work on controlling our side of that fire and instead of stoking it, tamp it out. Both of these things are about listening:
Most importantly, remember that listening to differing opinions is not the same as endorsing them. “To listen does not mean, or even imply, that you agree with someone.” (Murphy, 2019) Listening is a means of progressing the conversation and has to be the starting point of any conversation you're going to have with a resistant partner with opposing views. This is why, from this point forward, I will refer to the person you plan to talk with not as your opponent, but your conversational partner. It must be a partnership and you may have to be the one to establish it as such.