Don’t Avoid That Political Disagreement. It Might Be Fun

“It’s complicated,” writes New York Times columnist Frank Bruni. That is the phrase he uses most often to get his students at Duke University to avoid black-and-white thinking and engage with nuance, which he sees as “a bulwark against arrogance, absolutism, purity, zeal.” Bruni suggests there is humility in admitting to ourselves that we don’t know everything, which is central to opposing a culture of grievance that “reduces the people with whom we disagree to caricature.” He argues the opposite: that “humility acknowledges that they’re every bit as complex as we are.”

Of course, the polarization that permeates many cultures often prevents us from seeing the complexity of our fellow citizens. When we encounter a headline, a social media post, or a podcast episode that clashes with our beliefs, we tend to move on in favor of one that supports what we believe—one that we think will be more pleasant to read or hear. Similarly, we often choose not to listen to people with opposing viewpoints and not to meet people with whom we think we’ll disagree, preferring what we think will be more pleasant conversations with like-minded people. Making those choices are examples of confirmation bias, our very human tendency to ignore evidence that does not fit with our preexisting beliefs, instead paying attention to and remembering evidence that does fit with those beliefs. (We previously wrote about confirmation bias in the context of the popular game Wordle.)

If these people held different political beliefs, you might guess that they are not enjoying their conversation.

Source: Stock project/Pexels

Conversations With Strangers: The Research

Kristina Wald and colleagues (2024) recruited participants in the U.S. to have conversations about politics or religion with a stranger. In one experiment, the conversations lasted for 10 minutes in the same room; in another experiment, the conversations lasted as long as the participants wanted on Zoom. The participant pairs varied in terms of whether they agreed or disagreed on the topic they would discuss. Wald’s team found that participants expected to have more positive experiences talking with someone with whom they already agreed than when talking with someone with whom they disagreed. In reality, however, participants had similarly positive experiences, regardless of the level of disagreement. The researchers concluded: “Mistakenly fearing a negative interaction may create misplaced partisan divides, not only keeping people from connecting with each other but also keeping people from learning about each other and from each other.”

Researchers have found similar findings using a mobile chat app both in the U.S. (Combs et al., 2023; Rossiter & Carlson, 2024) and in the U.K. (de Jong, 2024). For example, in one of the U.S. studies, Combs and colleagues paired Republicans and Democrats who had completed surveys verifying that they held divergent political views. Strangers who engaged in such a chat showed decreased levels of polarization, particularly when the chat was more civil in nature, compared to a control group of people who wrote an essay about the same topics. The researchers highlighted the importance of this work: Civil exchanges that reduce division can occur online. The U.K. study found that the decreased level of polarization didn’t last, but participants did continue to have a higher willingness to engage in such conversations, suggesting that such a conversation might begin a “positive feedback loop,” leading to continued engagement and, perhaps, more sustained change.

Conversations With Strangers: Real-World Initiatives

Keep in mind: Our emotions play into our decisions to avoid these conversations, whether a revulsion or dislike of an unknown person, a fear that we will be attacked, or a concern that our good mood will be wrecked. A take-away from this research is that we should create more opportunities for everyone to engage in similar conversations—whether in chats, in virtual conversations, or in the real world. As the research suggests, the more we have these conversations, the more we will enjoy them and the less we will engage in the “us-versus-them” thinking that fuels polarization.

The Europe Talks initiative provides one model that could be replicated. In the program, participants answer seven questions on current events. Then, an algorithm matches them with someone from a different country who disagrees with their views. Next, the participant pair has a live one-on-one video conversation. Since 2019, about 60,000 people from 37 countries have taken part in this project. (There was also a one-day World Talks initiative in 2023.) In post-conversation surveys, 90% of participants reported that they enjoyed their conversation; 60% said they wanted to stay in touch with their conversation partner; and 55% thought that their partner made at least one good argument. Furthermore, preliminary research on German participants in this project showed reduced polarization, especially among those who were most polarized at the start (Blattner & Koenen, 2023).

Classroom Conversations

Conversations about divisive topics can be useful not just between strangers but also in the classroom. Researchers explored projects that created structured activities for U.S. students in middle school and high school (McAvoy et al., 2024). One structured activity, group deliberation, asks small groups of participants to compare and contrast various policy positions and then work to develop a consensus. They found that the structured activities increased participation in difficult conversations, bolstered civility during discussions, generated interest in others’ opinions, and, in some cases, led students to change their views. The students started to see the nuances in the policies.

As Frank Bruni tells his university students, “It’s complicated.” And that is why we must engage in nuance. He’s careful to note, though, that these conversations don’t “mean a surrender or even a compromise of principles; a person can hold on to those while practicing tolerance [which] recognizes that other people have rights to their opinions and inherent value even when we disagree vehemently with them.” A conversation might help us see that value. We might even have fun.