WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT HAVING A CONVERSATION with someone on the opposite end of the political spectrum, does it make your blood boil? Does the anticipation of how angry and frustrated you will feel lead you to avoid such a conversation? Do you suspect that if you got into it, you would thoroughly destroy your opponent’s arguments?
In my work as a decision scientist, I have focused on the psychology of disagreement and how people engage with opinions, judgments, and decisions that are different from their own. In dozens of experiments with thousands of people, I have found that many expectations people hold about disagreements are wrong.
Democracies are made healthier, and function better, when citizens listen to and understand a wide range of views—both those they agree with and those they don’t. However, American political discourse has become increasingly polarized. Deliberately or not, people often place themselves in a partisan echo chamber where they consume only those views that support their pre-existing beliefs. This means not only reading and listening to partisan media, but also maintaining relationships and having political conversations only with friends, relatives, and colleagues who are likely to agree with them.
“If you think you are right, you assume that your political opponents will be embarrassed and anxious when the flaws in their arguments are exposed. What people misjudge, however, is that their opponents are likely to feel the same way.”
All these choices may be based on people’s expectations of how a potential experience will make them and their counterparts feel. After all, who wants to be miserable and ruin relationships? Avoiding certain people or certain news networks seems like a small price to pay for protection from negativity.
However, research I have done with Harvard colleagues has led to important insights about people’s expectations regarding the emotional consequences of conflict. It turns out that people are bad at forecasting both their own and their counterparts’ feelings. These incorrect predictions lead to two kinds of mistakes: First,