Step Four: Creating Safety in Conflict with Dr. Peter T. Coleman

This episode is step four in the 10-Step Toolkit to Having Critical Conversations and features Dr. Peter T Coleman, a professor of psychology and education at Columbia University and a renowned expert on constructive conflict resolution, intractable conflict, and sustaining peace. Dr. Coleman has authored or edited a dozen books, well over 100 scientific articles and chapters, is the recipient of various awards, and his work has been featured in media outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Nature, Scientific American, PBS Newshour, and Harvard Business Review. His most recent book, The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization (2021) focuses on breaking through the intractable polarization plaguing the U.S. and other societies.

 In this episode, we:

•  discuss the benefit of conflict
• explain how to navigate political discussions with family, friends, and strangers
• identify the importance of tolerance
• provide tools for conflict resolution

If you have any questions or comments you would like addressed in the  Q&A with Dr. Coleman, please email whatsjustpod@gmail.com. Don't forget to follow Whatsjust on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn and subscribe to the weekly newsletter to get details on where and when the Live Q&A is happening! 

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Timestamps:
00:00 Intro

01:32 Insights from Dr. Peter T. Coleman on Conflict and Polarization

03:41 Understanding Polarization: Definitions and Implications

04:43 The Constructive Side of Political Differences

09:11 Personal Stories and the Power of Intention in Conversations

13:40 Dialogue vs. Debate: Strategies for Meaningful Conversations

20:23 The Role of Self-Awareness in Navigating Conflict

27:59 Practical Tips for Reducing Conflict and Enhancing Understanding

33:52 Exploring the Mind-Body Connection in Conflict Resolution

35:13 The Evolution of Human Conflict and Settlement

35:53 Navigating Political Discussions at Family Gatherings

36:48 Setting the Tone for Constructive Conversations

37:40 Conflict Resolution in the Classroom: A Case Study

39:41 The Challenge of Changing Minds and the Power of Listening

44:50 Complicating the Narrative: Beyond Two Sides

58:27 The Importance of Tolerance and Understanding in Conflict

01:01:14 Personal Interests Beyond Conflict Resolution

Transcript

Please listen carefully. 

Welcome to Critical Conversations, a podcast for lifelong learners who like to get deep. I'm Abbie Henson, a qualitative criminologist searching for ideas on how to become a more cohesive, healthy, and compassionate society. If you found yourself wanting to have thought provoking, deep, and sometimes difficult conversations but just didn't feel well equipped, This podcast is for you.

This season provides a 10 step toolkit for having critical conversations guided by my interviews with neuroscientists, psychologists, sociologists, and more. Let's learn together.  Welcome to step four of the 10 step toolkit to having a critical conversation. So far, we've learned how to become self aware, address our biases and become curious.

Now we get to learn how to create a safe space for holding critical conversations. Our guest today is Dr. Peter T. Coleman, a professor of psychology and education at Columbia university and a renowned expert on constructive conflict resolution, intractable conflict, and sustaining peace. Dr. Coleman is an award winning author with over a dozen books and over a hundred scientific articles and chapters.

His work has been featured in The Guardian, The New York Times, Nature, Scientific American, PBS NewsHour, and Harvard Business Review. His most recent book, The Way Out, How to Overcome Toxic Polarization was released by Columbia University Press. I listened to this book while I was on a long hike and I just kept having to pull my phone out so that I could take notes.

I've literally been non stop talking about this episode with my friends since recording it. So I really hope that you guys enjoy this critical conversation as much as I did. Let's get into it.  So I'm Peter Coleman and I  am a professor of psychology and education at Columbia University and I run a couple of research centers here.

Where we study conflict, one's focused more on conflict, the other studies peaceful societies. I got into this work, I think part of it is personal, grew up in a tumultuous family in Chicago in the late 60s when there was a lot of stuff happening. My siblings, who were about 10 and 13 years older, were involved in some of the anti war stuff and some of the other tumult in Chicago, so I think I grew up with a sense of what we call macro worry, an awareness even as a kid that, like, things are like  Tough out there.

And so, you know, I had a couple of careers, but eventually went back and  got a PhD to study. Constructive conflict resolution as a social psychologist at Columbia. And then I went on faculty here and I've been doing this now for almost 30 years. Amazing. So for our listeners,  one of your.  expertise is not only in conflict, but specifically polarization.

And so I'm wondering if for our listeners, you could first just define what is polarization. Polarization is really just a phenomenon that you see in science where you have, you know, sort of two poles that attract or repel different groups of either individuals or even, you know, filaments in magnetic structures, you know, like force fields.

So it's really just a phenomenon where you see things pulled  apart from each other. In politics, Political polarization measured in different ways. It's discussed in many different ways. Usually  people are talking about what we call affective polarization, how warm and loving you feel towards your in group and how much contempt, disdain you feel for members of an out group.

That's usually what people are talking about. But political polarization, like in terms of policies, you know, and having differences of opinion in particular policies is not a bad thing. It's a good thing in a two party system. It's a necessary thing. You want to have smart, passionate, true believers on different sides of the kind of progression, progressive, conservative, you know, continuum that challenge each other and push each other and try to come up with innovative ways that move us forward, but not too fast and all of that.

And in the 1950s in the US,  there was a lack of political polarization. There was a call because the parties were overlapping a fair amount on their policy platforms. And so there were, you know, critics saying, come on, you know, what's the difference between you? We need to have some difference. And so we have now difference, but the differences become You know, toxic and pernicious and extreme.

And this is part of really since the late 1970s, both in Washington and state capitals, kind of political divisions of our leaders, but also just in terms of how Americans feel towards the other group and toward their own group. And that rising sense of enmity, And kind of simplistic thinking about us in them has been growing for decades and is out of control.

And it culminates in things like political violence and spikes in that and hate crimes that we see. We are at historic highs of some of those things. Yeah. So one of the things that I thought was really interesting from your book was the mention of how there's perceptual polarization where those in outgroups  Or those in in groups perceive the differences and perspectives of those in the out groups to be almost double the extremity of what it actually is.

And I think that's really interesting. One thing that I wanted to stop you on when you said it, because I had really never thought about this, is I always I've always kind of demonized the two party system and see it as problematic and really divisive, but I've never thought of it as being constructive in the ways that you just mentioned, and how having differences of opinion push us to think more critically, and to come up with more interesting and innovative ways of thinking.

ways of approaching policy because we're being challenged by the other side to either prove something or to, yeah, be different. I, I'm wondering, yeah, can you, can you speak more to that? Cause I've never, I've never thought about it like that. Yeah. I mean, again, so two party systems. Have their downsides, you know, every two to four years, Americans are forced to make a dichotomous choice.

Oftentimes they're voting against something, not for something. And so there are some problems up in parliamentary systems have more kind of diversity and checks and balances on that, or ranked choice voting where you don't just vote for one candidate, you can kind of rank your candidates. So there are processes that allow for, I don't know, more nuance and don't corner us to be forced us to make a dichotomous decision.

So there are definitely problems with that. But yeah, you, again, I think that the ideological differences that exist in the country in terms of more progressive and more conservative, um, I think are really important and useful and can be constructive and really, you know, In government between, I would say the early 1920s through the 1970s, we did pretty well in sort of challenging, challenging each other and having, you know, either Democrats elected or Republicans elected and then sort of pushing each other forward to put forward policies that try to create a more fair union and system, you know, the, you know, Aristotle said unity out of diversity, and that happens when you have these kind of checks and balances of very different ideological points of view coming together.

But at some point, those things become cartoons, and extreme, and toxic, and caustic, and we really are in a, in a very difficult, precarious time where, you know, it's not really about How do we come together to create the best union? It's really just about winning and holding on to power and promoting your career.

And so a lot of the incentives for political actors these days are off and highly problematic. Right. So  one of the things that you spoke about in the book that I think is because I think when we talk policies and in groups and out groups, the individual can get lost. And especially if someone's listening to this and they're like, I want to learn how to, I feel polarized from my family or I feel polarized from other groups.

And so I'm engaging in discussions around what I believe in and what they believe in. And it's conflictual.  And it's, there's a lot of animosity. And so drilling down to the individual, I think one of the things that you spoke about that I thought was, is  important and often not discussed is the idea of intention.

And so when you're going into these conversations, really asking yourself, what is the intention of this conversation? What do I want the outcome to be? And the other thing that I thought was so great about something you said was Really being mindful. Cause I was getting caught up in when you were saying like, it could be all the data was showing that kind of the, the butterfly effect, right?

Looking at how  a 0. 0001 incremental difference over time compounds into a massive outcome shift and thinking about the tone and setting. of the conflict, and how just even a smile or something right at the start of a kind of what you know to be a conflictual, contentious conversation can totally shift the later outcome.

So can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, sure. Absolutely. I mean, so this is, you know, again, this comes out of cognitive science and it comes out of complexity science or different kinds of things we're talking about here. But basically if you're interested in having a conversation with somebody you care about, you know, in your, at your workplace or your friend, someone in your family that you believe you're politically opposed to in some issues or in terms of the candidates, you know, the first question that you want to ask yourself is like, what is, what do I want to have happen here?

What's the point? Because oftentimes, you know, the, the polarization of our, of our country, of our culture is such that it's really easy to get triggered, to fall into a conversation, have it get out of control, feel very frustrated. Pew has done research about the fact that something like almost 70 percent of us On both sides, either, you know, more Republican or Democrat, walk away from conversations with people on the other side of the aisle, feeling more frustrated, more alienated, just, you know, just fed up.

So we're, these conversations that we're having today across political differences are hard and they are off putting. And so if you, you know, if you want to get into a conversation. And trigger them and challenge them and call them an idiot and you know,  you know, then have at it. If that's your plan, if that's your intention, that's fine.

But I, you know, what I recommend is that you do be intentional. You know, what do you really want to do here? And if you want to. better understand or maybe change the dynamic between you and someone in your family that you feel more estranged from, then you want to be much more intentional about how you enter it, how you frame the conversation, what kind of questions that you ask.

And, and the second point you made about kind of small differences is what's really important is how you start it.  And this is, this comes from all kinds of research, but, but basically, you know, when you have a new conversation with somebody, it can be someone, a sibling who you've known all your life, and you have very strong patterns that you go into, but you may decide intentionally, I want this to go in a little bit of a different direction.

I want to try to understand what, why this person supports these candidates and what's really going on for them.  And the only way I'm going to understand that is if I can listen and if I can ask questions to open them up where they're honest. And we don't get into just a game of, you know, debate where I'm trying to score points and you're trying to score points, but we're really trying to understand each other.

It is a difference  in the kind of conversation that you want to have. The, one of the differences that I like to offer is the difference between dialogue and debate. In this country, we think debate is. The only way to talk about politics, right? And we see that in our court system, and we see that in political campaigns and, you know, political debates, you know, and it is about you say something, I'm listening to what your logic, I'm looking for flaws in your logic that I can immediately weaponize and say, ha, you know, you're wrong.

I'm right. Right. And it is about it's a game to score points. And it's a very specific kind of cognitive process. And Americans assume that That all politics should culminate in debate. And debate is a useful thing under some certain conditions, but oftentimes we're not really listening. We're not trying to hear, we're not trying to understand other people.

And dialogue, um, is the opposite of debate. Dialogue is a process in my world, you know, I'm a mediator and a peacemaker. And in our world, when we hold dialogue sessions, we actually will have a room full of people. They may have very different political opinions. But the process isn't of you say something and somebody challenges you and attacks you and comes back with different facts.

The process is you tell your story. Why is this political issue, be it abortion, immigration, whatever, why is it important to you? How are your feelings about it? How are they informed? Like, who are you and what are your, what's your story around this issue? And so you tell your story. And then I tell my story, and somebody else tells their story, and there isn't a lot of interrogation that goes on, right?

It's not like, what do you, what do you mean by that? Or, you know, where did you get that information? No, you tell your story, and you may go through a few cycles of that, but it's more about trying to understand the human behind the argument. And trying to connect with them because when people tell their stories, oftentimes they're moving and they're interesting and they're compelling.

And even if you disagree on a candidate or an issue, hearing that story is important. It doesn't mean that eventually debate isn't useful or necessary, but it's not the only way we can talk to each other. But we are hardwired to move into that automatically. And if you want to do that, that's fine. If you want to change things up and have a different kind of experience with somebody you love, but feel estranged from, then I would recommend you start by saying, tell me how you're doing.

And I know that we've been kind of separated over political things, Can you tell me your experience? What's going on with you? Why is this important to you? And would you be okay if I tell you mine? And not get into the facts, because again, facts are tricky, right?  But really get into people's human stories.

Yeah, I think that's such a good point. In terms of debate, I often do this exercise with my students where there will be a hot topic in class, be it death row or life without parole, or whether we should have criminal records, all of these things, ask them to raise their hands on which side of the spectrum they fall.

And usually it's pretty evenly split.  And so I'll divide them by those perspectives that they hold. But then I'll have them debate the opposing idea.  So I have them take it on, they have to come up with  the arguments for the side that they didn't actually align with, and I think that that exercise is so helpful because not only does it intentionally bolster their perspective by kind of identifying what the arguments against their original perspective might be so that they know how to then You know, argue against, but it also then allows them to think a bit more critically in thinking, Oh, okay.

I can see why maybe someone would argue this. And then it shifts their original perspective and kind of adds a bit more nuance. And so I really like the idea of doing that kind of exercise, especially with someone that you trust to be like, let's just do this playful thing  where I step in your shoes and you step in mine and we authentically try.

To feel the arguments that or the positions the facts that the other person may have. Yeah I think that's a great exercise It's it's similar to there's a colleagues of mine created something they call constructive controversy, which is similar in that You have you know, you'll take an issue you'll sort of present two sides You'll ask people to identify what side's important.

You'll ask them to switch and Advocate for the other side, but then what you do to move it further is say to them. All right. So now that you've kind of made the case for the other side, now switch back and continue the conversation from your point of view and ultimately see, are there ways that you can actually come up with sort of solutions or ideas that somehow combined both try to reach some synthesis.

So it is flipping back and forth. and then reach, trying to reach synthesis, which is again more challenging, but it definitely moves people into a very different headset, and they're able to listen to the other side and see the value of different arguments. Yeah. Yeah. I think also  the human element, like in the book, you give and the book is The Way Out.

You give this example of this journalist who finds a Trump supporter and a non Trump supporter and they have these two meetings and in the second one, the first one goes pretty well and then the second one is really problematic. But what I found really interesting, and I can kind of connect it to your later point about theories of self, was the re one of the reasons it went really poorly was because the non Trump supporter had  a ex military father who kicked him out of the house because of his sexuality and his interests, and the person that he was engaging with was ex military.

And so it wasn't necessarily The position that the individual that he was engaging with had, but rather he was being so deeply triggered by his past experiences and personal experiences and then projecting it on. And I think we often see that in debate and polarization is that one of the first episodes, the first tool in this 10 episode toolkit is becoming self aware and understanding what you're bringing to an argument.

And.  When you can be like, oh, this is my stuff coming up. This isn't actually anything to do with what you're saying. This is my historical trauma that is being triggered right now. And so let me ground back in because I think so much of our debate and our need to win in conversation and dialogue is often the seeds. 

It's born from the seeds of insecurity, right? This defensiveness that we hold is because we're insecure, or we don't often actually know a lot of the nuance of the facts that we're arguing, and so we don't want to be questioned, and so we have to be really dogmatic, so that people aren't able to kind of say, 

It's so hard to do because so many of those processes you're describing are automatic and unconscious and we just know, and in the, in the case that you're referring to of the pro Trump and anti Trump conversations, the issue was Colin Kaepernick, right? The issue that actually the journalists on the second, the first day they met, they talked, it went well.

The second time they went out for a beer. Right. And the journalist actually raises the issue of Colin Kaepernick and how you feel about this and ultimately, yes, the more progressive yoga teacher from Brooklyn blows up because they start to fundamentally different differ about Colin Kaepernick's right to do that and what it means.

And again, remember the context is the U. S. at that time, and Trump had really gone after Kaepernick and the Black Lives Matter movement, you know, so there was a lot of energy in the ethos about that issue, and yes, that definitely connected in very different ways to these two individuals. One is a vet, one's father was a kind of abusive father, right, and who was a vet, and so there definitely are those psychological underpinnings.

And it's in this cauldron of, you know, divisiveness in our country around that issue. So sometimes these like, you know, macro level issues about what's happening in the world do trigger us deeply. And we don't even know that. We don't even think about that. We just know that that's your position on that is wrong.

It's morally wrong. How dare you?  So we stay up in that area and we don't really reflect on our own connections to these issues. Yeah.  Yeah. So  why do you think that it's important to understand polarization and conflict in having a critical conversation? Why do you think that this is one of the steps in the toolkit?

Well, I think understanding the kind of conflict you're facing is important because in my world, you know, so I run centers in conflict resolution, a lot of different kind of conflict in the world. Let me just say, you know, our basic take on conflict is that it's good, it's necessary, it's useful. I mean, it's just a fundamental part of life.

You know, my mentor, Mort Deutsch, always said, conflict is just like sex. It's fundamental to life. We don't learn without it. We don't grow without it. Our relationships grow, you know, it's a pervasive thing. The question is when does it go well and when does it go poorly? Right. And so it is this kind of natural phenomenon.

The other question I would ask is, is this a conflict that we can talk through, work out, learn from, or is this something that is bigger than us? Right. And I think in the Colin Kaepernick case, you're, you know, this issue, which was, was framed as a kind of policy issue. It's like, you know,  around Black Lives Matter and Donald Trump was both a personal and a policy issue.

And those can be really hard to just talk through. Right. And so that's the, When I talk in the book about toxic polarization, it's the difference between healthy polarization and toxic polarization. Healthy polarization is a good thing. It is conflict. It is differences of opinion coming together to generate new ideas and new policies.

Toxic polarization is when it becomes a circus, and it really doesn't, isn't about the greater good, useful policies, new ideas. It's really about our side winning, hoarding power, taking control, and doing everything we can to defeat you. That's a whole different game. And so, what I think is important for people, when they feel a conflict coming on, they find themselves facing a conflict with somebody they care about or somebody new,  that they ask themselves, is this something that we can work through, you know?

And you may not know that,  Because you may not have met them, and so you do your best to, you know, bring down the heat and talk it through. But if you have a relationship with someone who every time you talk about Trump, it goes nuts. You know, they go nuts, you go nuts, you're both triggered, and you start screaming at each other.

If you know that's the case, then you have to approach those kinds of conflicts differently, because they're not something that we can just readily talk out. One of the reasons why I wrote that way out is because there's a group called My Country Talks, started in Germany, it's all around the world now, and it's a website you can go to, and you, when you go to the website, you answer some questions, some policy questions, and then the website matches you with somebody in your area.

Who is opposed to you on an issue, and then it says, go off and have a cup of coffee with them or a beer and talk about this issue, right? Most of the time, that's fine. That's helpful. It's good to have somebody who has different opinions than you that you can have a conversation with. But in the current political ethos, where these divisions are so passionate and we have very different news outlets with different, you know, contrasting narratives about how the world works, then just going off and having a conversation with somebody is unethical, right?

To encourage that is unethical because they often blow up and are very difficult to have. So you have to understand conflict in that. Some of it is low level is, you know, it may be, may feel tricky or important, but it's manageable, you know, it's something that you feel like you can manage, but if you know, you're in a zone, either around political polarization today, or with someone who you have a difficult relationship where you always get triggered, trigger one another. 

Then you really want to think differently about how to approach, that's why I wrote the book, is because I felt like we were confusing the two, and just telling people who were red and blue Americans to go off and have a cup of coffee  is unethical right now. There are too many things that are pulling us apart and pitting us against each other,  and so knowing that.

Then you want to be a little bit more mindful about who you have those conversations with, how you do it, how you approach it, you know, how you start. And so in that regard then, if you know it's one of the ones you need to turn the heat down because it gets so heightened, how does one do that?  Right. So again, what I talk about in the book are sort of five things and they're all basic principles that come from science and they help me as an individual, but they can also help my family and they can help my workplace.

And so they're sort of scientific principles. And the first one is, you know, that you be intentional. You start with what we call a reset. You ask yourself, what do you want to do and how do you want to do it? What's the best way to approach  The second one is to ask yourself, when do I usually do this?

Well, You know, when does this go, when do these conversations go well for me, or do I know somebody in my life who's actually really good at this, and can I emulate them, right? So you want to look for examples of times that you've been particularly effective at this, or people, you know, I have two or three people in my life who are kind of my go to angels, you know, and I think if I want to be my best self, show up like Andrea Bartoli, because I, You'll get engaged this conversation, right?

So you know, that those are two things you can do. A third I would strongly recommend, which is somewhat unusual, you know, so I'm a mediator and a peace builder. And usually what we do when people are in disputes is have them come into a room, sit down at a table and talk at each other across the table.

Most of the time, that's fine.  But sometimes when conflicts are really kind of in our wiring, it's in with the information we can process and the stuff we just don't process, it's in our feelings, it's, it's in our, it's in our, we embody the conflict, then sitting across the table with the other person on the other side, doesn't work.

It doesn't help. So one of the things we found and we're finding and doing more and more research on this is the power of movement, physical movement. So if you get stuck  in, in, in a way of thinking or feeling, it's sometimes it's helpful to just to close the door, put on some great music, dance like an idiot by yourself and start to move yourself a bit, but more importantly.

It is the idea of reaching out to somebody and saying, would you go for a walk with me? Would you go with me outside and take a walk, and walking outside side by side with someone who you differ from on something important  helps. There are reasons for it, there are neurological reasons for it, because, and this is from research on like dance troops and combat troops that march together, or you know, just teams that move together. 

They find that when people physically move together, they start to connect at a physiological level that we don't really understand, frankly, but they think there are neurological connections that take place, and it generates more of a sense of, I don't know, compassion or connection or, you know, willingness to engage. 

Um, and, and so moving physically can help, and I have to say I do this now. I, I, in fact, I have a couple of colleagues that whenever we meet, we're walking in the park. We do that. I know that's helpful to us. But I've also reached out to people who I became estranged from over politics. Because I wrote this book and I felt like I had to. 

Show up and walk my talk and I, you know, I reached out to people and said, would you take a walk with me? And they eventually were willing to do it. And it helps. It helps even when you have profound differences to again, enter it intentionally, but then do it in a way where you're physically moving together.

So, if you're gonna go to a holiday meal or a family meal and you know somebody's there, Reach out to him the week before and say, Hey, any chance you'd take a walk with me  an hour outside and use that as a way to listen to each other and, uh, open up some kind of conversations. Don't get into political debate yet, just start with opening up, uh, and moving together that can sort of establish the conditions where if you move into more difficult conversations, you're better able to navigate them.

I love that.  And it's, you know, it's an interesting phenomenon, this physical phenomenon. It's not something that's well known. I think diplomats have, you know, they discovered it decades ago. And so there are accounts of diplomats who get stuck in a negotiation and somebody just goes off and take walks together.

And then there's an insight. And come back. And so it is helpful to reset to have a different, you know, what we think is that if you're sitting, if I'm sitting across from you and we're opposed on something, I see you as the problem.  If you and I are outside walking, what we see is the same world kind of flowing by us and we see nature and trees and birds and.

And there's something about that, the reconnection with nature and having the same point of view as we move that helps us reframe our understanding of the problem and not just see the other person as the problem. I feel like Every congressional meeting should now start with a dance party.  You know, it's interesting.

I had a, I went to the bipartisan working group last summer. Derek Kilmer is a colleague of mine and he chairs it and he invited me to come and talk to their committee. And they said, you know, what do we do? Cause Congress is a mess. And, and so, you know, I said, here are a couple of things. And this was the one thing they said, you know, we could do that.

You know, we could have a morning walk together. We could, you know,  as opposed to just running from meeting to meeting, we could intentionally set that up. So it was definitely something that they don't do, but that they thought was an interesting idea to, you know, start to play with. Yeah. That's, that's really interesting.

I, I always love the connection of movement. That's something that I actively practice. And, um, you practice it in your dispute resolution stuff or in your negotiations or more in my community building. So not necessarily centered around conflict or division, but.  centered on the unification aspect of it and seeing people because it's so  animalistic in a way, right?

It's like we are out of our heads into our bodies. And I think that's problematic in some ways that we  Have this kind of false division of mind and body where they're very much the same and connected and cyclical in that way of how  and the stagnation of toxicity, right? If we're talking about polarization, the stagnicity or the stagnation of the toxicity sitting in our bodies as we're speaking Sitting across from someone, if we can not only move to take in other information, just as we're seeing it, but also to literally move the toxicity through our bodies to be lighter.

And yeah, it is a form of energy and that kind of negative energy can be very powerful and disabling and anything you can do to kind of help you move through that and beyond that. I think it's helpful. I mean, my premise is that humans have been on this planet for, you know, two million years, as far as we know, and moved around in small groups and solved problems for most of that time.

And it wasn't until about 10, 000 years ago that we sort of stopped and said, Hey, Let's settle here and, you know, well, there's good fishing here. There's good agriculture here. We'll stay here. And then they started to, you know, gather stuff  and compete and wars broke out, you know, but before that we just moved to solve problems, you know, and so there's something innate in our, in our inclination to take advantage of that.

And we do that very little. So  this is ideal world, right? I mean, ideally you have the capacity, you live in the same place as the person you know, you're going to have a holiday dinner with to ask them for a walk.  You don't, you can't do that. You're stuck. The only time you're going to see them is for this hour and a half.

They start bringing up some of the political  concepts  and you're stuck sitting across from them. There's no other option to turn down the heat.  Well, you know, again, so it depends on the circumstances to some degree, part of what I say, like around Thanksgiving, for example, which is a time when a lot, you know, people are spending less and less time at their Thanksgiving meals because there's so much tension.

One of the things I say is, whose meal is it? Who sets it up, right? Is it your aunt? Is it your grandmother? Is it you? Do it, you know, who does it? Because whoever is the host has some kind of responsibility for setting up a certain climate, right? And that might just be that you sit down and say, the first thing you say is, I love you all.

I appreciate you being here. I know there's a lot of differences and tensions that have been happening over the past year or two that we're struggling with. Can we just like listen to each other today? You know, can we respect each other and listen to each other? So you're not helpless in those situations.

You, particularly as the host or convener or whatever, you're  It can sort of, you know, you don't want to set up formal guidelines and say, you know, do these things,  but you can sort of set a tone, right, as you said earlier, for the kind of communication that you'd like to see happen, ideally, you know, and you can say, look, If it's difficult, you may want to step out.

This is something I'm doing now intentionally in my class. I teach a course in conflict resolution science, and you know, given the politics of the day, I'm at Columbia where there's been all of these protests and counter protests on Israel, Hamas, and Palestinians. It's been very tense.  And so before my class, on my syllabus now, I say, this is a course about conflict.

And guess what? Conflict's going to come up and it's going to trigger people and there's going to be hard conversations. I said, that's likely to happen in this class, given what we're talking about, given that, and given the political, Ethos that we're living through. I, as instructor will be happy to engage with that as long as it's constructive.

And from my point of view, constructive and aligned with what we're trying to learn. If  it derails us and gets abusive or attacking or irrelevant,  I, as the instructor have the right to say, timeout,  we're going to put this on hold. This conversation is not useful in this context right now, but. What I will offer is an alternative, which is that, you know, tomorrow night at six o'clock, I'll be available and anybody that wants to continue this conversation, let's get together and we'll have more time to do this and we'll have some kind of guidelines about how to proceed.

And so I'm very intentional about telling my students and getting them to agree to that first day of class. Because I know stuff is going to happen, I know it can derail, it can really be hurtful and harmful to some of the students, and so I set up a mechanism where A, I have some authority about what we do, which is what I'm suggesting that you do if it's your Thanksgiving, you have, take some responsibility for setting the tone, but then B, You know, you recognize it, you know, these conversations maybe need to happen, but there is time and place, and this is the place to have this conversation.

Let's set up another one. Yeah. I think that's what a lot of people struggle with is, well, I should be, I should be so good at this. And even I struggle with this, right? Like I should be so good at this that I can talk to anyone at any time about this in a constructive way. And the reality is that that's not true.

And it also is.  Not likely, like one conversation is very unlikely to have that big of an impact. And maybe it will be that butterfly effect where far down the line, someone reflects back to that original conversation and thinks, Oh, that was an interesting point. And maybe at that point down the line, something has happened to them to see things a bit differently.

But I think often we're like one conversation. If we're good at this, we can change someone's mind. And I think to humble yourself and I'm speaking to myself too,  that yeah, there is a time and a place and  there's a person, right? Like they're that person because, because of things that you might not be able to control because of your race, your gender, just, right?

Where you live, all these different things, you might not be the best vessel for this information. And if you can build a community of people who do think similarly to you and can have the skills to try to educate others on these ideas, then maybe there's a better representative. Yeah. Right. I think that's true.

I mean, I think again, the part of the question is  Is, is you use, use one phrase, which is very common, which most of us do, which is I'm trying to change your mind, right? And again, that idea is more about, you know, me controlling you or affecting you or waiting you  less about me understanding you. And so an alternative is, you know, you want to be able to listen again, I think in a classroom or in my home, I have the right to sort of say, I don't want you attacking each other, right?

I don't want this to end up in a fistfight or in a, you know, screaming match. It's not That's not what this day is about, you know, and I think as a teacher you have that right as well. Because even if you do have the, you know, equanimity and the peacefulness to be able to listen and hear people and work with them, they may not, right?

They may just get carried away and become vitriolic and, and so you, and you can't control that, right? So you have to  be mindful of that possibility allow for enough of it to start to get a sense of it, but if it goes too far in your view, um, set up the expectations that you may have to stop it and move it somewhere else.

Yeah, I think another important point is just not taking things that personally,  right? Like, especially, especially when it's around policy or something that's more meta, right? It's, A lot of the anger or the frustration has very little to do with you as the person. And I think what I've really tried to hone in myself  is approaching things with curiosity rather than fear.

I think we often, because we have At this point, I think in our political climate so deeply tied our identities to our  political alignments and positions that when someone is threatening or challenging policy, it I'll in turn feels like a challenge to our identity and the idea of being open to other challenging ideas then kind of opens us up to them be like well then who am I and well wait what do I align with Who then is my community?

And it can become confusing. Like, I think one of the things that you were speaking about is  in times of crisis, it can be really disorienting and difficult to, like, we want to latch on to what we perceive as truths. Like, As a Democrat or a progressive, it's really scary to think that the New York Times is biased.

Or as someone who's more conservative, to think that Fox News is fake news because then it's like, well then, but this is, this is where I get my information and now what do I do? Like, what is true? And, and then where do I fall in this? And so, So I think, again, trying to parse, as you were saying, like, there's a difference between, well, how are you as the human, as just who you are and your identity outside of what you believe.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's all, that's all true. I guess the one other dimension of this that I just want to talk about for a second is, you know, what we tend to do as humans is take very complicated problems. Like immigration, health care, you know, abortion, and these things may be very personal to people, but we basically take two sides, right?

In abortion, there's two sides. There's pro life and there's pro choice, right?  And the reality is that it's an extremely complicated set of issues. Right, because there, Martians have physical health, you know, issues, it has legal, there are legal issues, there are religious issues, there are, you know, experiences of shame, and, you know,  there's a constellation of things that happen around that issue.

And when we try to boil it into pro and con, even I mean the news, the news does this. They're in their attempt to be balanced and show both sides. They'll bring on pundits. They'll be strong on this side and strong on this side. And again, they have that conversation. What we find in our lab, we have this difficult conversations lab. 

That When we do that, when we bring people in who are opposed on an issue like abor abortion, and then we give them the information, the kind of talking points of pro-life and pro-choice like that, then when they come in, they've really only paid attention to half of the story. The, the, the stuff, the stuff that they're comfortable with.

The rest of it, they discard and so they come in for, for battle, right? If we take the same information,  the same talking points, but frame it and say.  This is a complex set of issues that are overlapping, right? And there are these dimensions and these dimensions and these dimensions. And here are some of the different takes on those.

If you frame the same content as nuanced or complex, then the conversations are fundamentally different. People are more open. They're more able to listen because they've been able to hear all of it, not just their side, right? Information bias. It's a psychological mechanism that we, you know, we listen to carefully the things that we want to listen to, you know, and that's the news.

We tend to be comfortable processing. But if you can frame information.  In a way that's more accurate, which is this complicated, you know, and there are a lot of different sides of this and takes on this, then the conversations go much more constructively, they're able to find some kind of common ground, they're able to, they want to continue the conversation with the other side.

It's radically different. And, you know, in the news's attempt to offer both sides, what I'm always saying is, you gotta offer both sides. Multiple sites because it's not there aren't two sides and I will say a shout out to my colleague Amanda Ripley who's a journalist who  wrote a great piece called complicating the narrative and basically she was trying to say to reporters and to news, you know, companies that our business model is problematic because we get them, you know, we take a story we get the most provocative voices to challenge each other because it draws attention, but then it oversimplifies the world.

And consumers end up thinking that there's only two sides on an issue when there's 20, right?  So, figuring out how journalists can do journalism in ways that's still compelling, still has a decent business model, but doesn't oversimplify the world and lead to polarization, I think is a really worthy, you know, noble cause, and she's been fighting that fight for a couple of years now.

Yeah, that is, It's so important to recognize that there aren't two sides. I think, yeah, I just want to like sit with that for a minute because it's so simplistic and obvious and yet so  undiscussed and underdeveloped in terms of, yeah, just identifying that there And, and some of those, it's not like a pretty geometric shape either.

A lot of the sides overlap as well.  Yeah. They're very, there's always nuance and regret and people's, people have an ambivalence,  you know, if you talk to anybody, I mean, the truth is, you know, like the science of when does life start, we don't know,  it's arbitrary. You know, whatever, five weeks, two weeks, one week, one day.

We make this up. You know, scientists say, well, we don't know.  So, so it's a pretty much an arbitrary thing. And then we find certainty in it. And we, and we cling to that. And, and, you know, so coming to terms with the fact that most of us don't know. And, and yet if you're an activist. If you're an advocate and an activist for a side of an issue, then you're not interested in that kind of messy gray area.

You just want to say to your people, they're coming for your rights, stand up, give us money, march, you know. You want to activate them and simplify them, and so activists don't take a lot of time reflecting, you know, sort of, it's a, you know, it's a problem with the profession, and reflecting in nuanced ways about, should we be doing our activism this way?

You know, it's, it's, it's always about winning and being effective. It's not about, is this good? Will this serve the greater good? It's a. Good for us, you know, those are questions that activists oftentimes just don't make time for. Yeah. And I also, a  good question, I guess, would be what feels better and is more sustainable, winning or connecting?

And I feel like the idea of winning That might feel good for a day, an hour, but it's likely fleeting. The idea of connecting, and the warmth of that, and the potential longevity of that, I think is far outweighs. the concept of winning. I couldn't agree with you more. I think it's counter cultural here though.

I think in our culture we are about competition and winning and, you know, it's like the algorithms on Facebook and Instagram are all about, look at how great my life is, it's so much better than yours, you know.  We are, we are really into this kind of competitive winning dynamic, and some people are like a hundred percent in, but even generally we skew towards that.

And if we see, you know, connecting, listening, hearing people, sitting with people in silence as valuable, the ratio is way off. Right? Because we're, we're so ambitious in so many ways, and there are good things about that, but they're definitely, we are, we are out of balance. Yeah,  so for the listeners, thinking about how to address and overcome conflict, you've given some tangible concepts.

You've said to think about the intention, set the intention, look to idols or those times that, yeah, those times that you've done well and take the lesson there. Movement. Is there anything else you would want to add in terms of tangible ways to address and overcome? Yeah. So one of the ones that we just were referring to is sort of complicate things that we have a tendency, particularly when they're kind of high stakes issues to oversimplify them and us and the issues and, you know, right and wrong, we get into this very dualistic kind of thinking.

So whatever we can do to complicate our understanding, our feeling, our ability to hold contradictions, you know. F. Scott Pittsgerald said that a first rate intelligence Is the capacity to hold two contradictory thoughts at the same time and still function, you know, and, you know, we don't do that easily.

We, we choose, right, there's right and wrong. And so holding that nuance and that complexity, I mean, one exercise I recommend to people, which I've been doing carefully, intentionally for the last few years now is, you know, news. What news do you watch, right? So we all have our comfort news, right? The things that we trust, we go to so we hear something is breaking, we go and turn on our people and we listen to them or we follow on Twitter or whatever. 

What I've been trying to do intentionally is when the news breaks, And I usually go first to my source. I intentionally forced myself to go and track a couple of other people. I've identified four or five people who are politically opposed to me on many things, but who I feel are well informed, decent, and well intentioned.

Right.  They're not the crazy ones, right, that are just spouting nonsense, but they're, you know, fundamentally different for me in terms of their priorities. Nevertheless, I think are well informed, you know, decent and trying to do do good things. And so I follow them. So news breaks and Biden's done this or Trump's done this or Israel, something's happened. 

I want to know not just what my side is saying, but I want to know, are there other things I should be mindful of or concerned from? And again, you know, because the news is so crazy right now, you have to be careful. You don't want to listen to anybody. So find two or three people that you can follow and who will have a point of view that you think is worth hearing, right?

Even if it pisses you off or upsets you. You trust that it's worth hearing because they're, they're telling it to you for the right reasons. Right. And going back then, understanding how that, how exposure to that can then be constructive for you. Yeah. And expansive for you. Yeah. It complicates your understanding of what are complicated issues.

It doesn't allow you to be, you know, played. Media plays us, tries to provoke us and oversimplify the world. And it doesn't allow for that because you're, You know, sort of have a check yourself to challenge yourself. Um, so the more that you can do that, that's just one example of getting information that may be more contradictory.

And trying to come to your own sense of it from those sources. But, you know, part of what  I write about in this chapter on complicate, you know, complicate your life, is what I say, is the value of doing that in different ways, because you may go into a conversation certain about something, you know. I have to say, one of the things I love, About there's a, there's a reverend in upstate New York and a place called Waterton, New York, which is one of the most politically tolerant counties in the world, or sorry, in the country went for Trump by 20 points, I think in the last election.

So center of Trump country, nevertheless, highly politically tolerant, right? So there's a contradiction to hold onto.  And one of the things that they have is a, is a reverend that does Monday breakfasts. brings red and blue people together every Monday, they have breakfast and they talk politics. And he said, you know, the reason why this is a helpful process is because a, the food's awesome.

He makes sense.  B is that we, they come back every week. And we talk about things long enough where we all start to realize what we don't understand, right? Because all of these issues are so complicated and so, so few of us really know the nuance that once you start to tolerate what you don't understand, then you're more open to listening to others. 

That's a process of complicating your understanding. I guess I'm, I'm, I'm working through this idea then, like, if we're all coming together to complicate things, to then see the nuance and kind of bridge a divide in that way, but then we started the conversation by saying, but it is important to have two different perspectives. 

Well, or multiple perspectives, right? It's important to be open to different perspectives. It doesn't just mean that there are two. There are presented to us sometimes as two, but it's, it's necessary to have  You know, a willingness to say, yeah, this is complicated. There is no, you know, if you think about a Trump supporter today living in West Virginia, lost relatives to the opioid crisis out of work, you know, the, their legacy of industry is threatened.

Like what is that life like? And if you understand the sort of complexity of that, then their support for the candidate, their support for MAGA. Makes more sense, right? When I went for a walk with one of my neighbors who's an Orthodox Jewish man, very fervent religious man Orthodox and again, very strong Trump supporter, you know, I said tell me who are you and why?

Why do you support this candidate? And and part of what became very clear to me is that the values of And moral priorities of his community are very aligned with much more conservative, you know, principles. And so, it's not like, it's just about this candidate, it's about his life, right? And that this particular candidate, or at least this side of the equation resonates with that.

That was helpful for me, right? Because then I don't think he's just crazy or misinformed. It's like, no, there's a logic here that I need to understand and tolerate. Yeah, I think That's the other important piece too is the tolerance, right? Like you might not be able to get everyone on your quote unquote side or to understand your perspective.

But if, if other people can, I think that it's the mutual tolerance, right? Like if you can see people tolerating you, then you might be able to then tolerate others. And so then it becomes. The onus becomes on you, like, okay, if I can tolerate others, then hopefully they then internalize that and see that we have differences, we can tolerate each other, then maybe they'll give the grace to tolerate. 

Yeah, I like the idea that tolerance is contagious.  I have a student from Brazil, a PhD student who's here studying polarization with me because of what's happening in Brazil. And he always talks about not just the kind of left, right, progressive, liberal, you know, a progressive conservative continuum, but another axis, which is about liberal and illiberalism,  right?

Are you intolerant or are you tolerant? Because the truth is we've got very intolerant progressives  and very intolerant conservatives. And, and as JFK  once said, Extremism isn't a problem. It's intolerance. That's the problem. It's okay to be Passionate and fervent and really believe in something, but if you're intolerant of the other side, their ideas or perspectives, that's a dangerous place to be, right?

And so, yes, and most of us, frankly, again, if you look at the research on  how the country lays, most of us are more in the willing to lean this way, lean that way perspective. There are a few of us.  There are vocal few, but there's fewer of us on the extreme true believer side. Right, right. Well, I was just going to say if, if you are an extremist and you are fervent and you are passionate in that way, then again, it's the same about, you have to then respect. 

If you're standing on that pedestal, then you have to respect the people that are standing on that same pedestal, uh, far away from you. Right. Like, uh, we, we come from the same passion, it's just on centered on a different topic. Yeah. And that's, that's not an uncommon quality to, to be an extremist on one side and then to flip and become an extremist on the other side, you know, they're both intolerant.

So they use a lot of the same tactics and tools, right. And have the same assumptions. It's just whether, you know, what side you're on. That's so interesting. Well, I like to close out my. Conversations with just a question on what are, outside of conflict, outside of polarization, what are the three things keeping your attention right now? 

Outside conflict, that's so hard because  I'm very involved in the Israel Palestine  how that's playing out here on campus and how, so that has taken a lot of my attention. What else?  That's a damn good question. Uh, you know, my family, my, I love my family. My son just started Columbia journalism school. My daughter is fantastic and lives here.

She's had some health struggles. So my family is definitely very important to me. I also say that I also am a avid consumer of films and television series. I watch a lot of these different things and I love a good story. So, uh, I definitely pay a lot of time, spend a lot of time in that and those stories.

What's the latest one that you're into? Uh, well, that's a good question. So I've seen several recently that Anatomy of a Fall is fantastic. Oh yeah.  We saw Maestro, which also is. Ordinary film performance, you know,  um, so some of those are fantastic. I just saw a Danish film called The Promised Land, which also it's, it's their entry into the Oscars and also fantastic film.

Um, last night I watched a film called Saltburn.  Oh yeah, that's on my list.  I'm not going to tell you anything. It's an extreme film. Let me just put it that way. Well, thank you so much for speaking with me. This was, I think, really helpful and insightful. And I really enjoyed it. Great. Very good. My pleasure. 

Thank you so much for joining me in my critical conversation with Dr. Peter Coleman. This was step four in this season's 10 episode toolkit for having a critical conversation. And I hope you loved this episode as much as I did. I've actually started using the walk and talk technique and have found it really useful.

There's going to be a live Q and a with Peter following the release of this episode. So be sure to follow what's just on all social platforms. To stay up to date on when that'll be taking place so that you can get your questions and comments in the mix links to all socials can be found in the show notes.

And don't forget, subscribe, share, tell everyone, you know, leave a review and we'll be back to step five, how to ask questions. So stay critical, stay connected and I'll see you next time.