Why Political Conversations Go Wrong—and How to Fix Them

Source: ©Pamela Paresky 2024

Every holiday season brings with it the same warning: Unless everyone is on the same political side, leave your politics at the door. And every few years, I write another article explaining that rather than trying to convince your wrong-headed relatives to change their minds, listening with genuine curiosity is the answer.

Now, new research by psychologist Todd Kashdan and his colleagues indicates that the real obstacle to cross-partisan understanding and depolarization may not be disagreement itself but what we believe about how open- or closed-minded the people on our own side are.

Why Political Conversations Feel So Hopeless

Political life in the United States is increasingly marked by interparty animus, including tendencies toward dehumanization. Partisans can seem to prefer distance to dialogue and moral judgment to intellectual engagement. Such unproductive habits steadily erode both the willingness to engage politically and the capacity to consider ideas that conflict with one's own.

It's easy to assume that political conversations are hopeless because nothing you say is likely to change anyone’s mind. The usual advice—avoid the topic, escape to the kitchen, or shut down the conversation—is built on a bleak premise: Disagreement is a recipe for disaster.

When political differences emerge at family gatherings, our tribal psychology kicks in. We instinctively sort others into moral categories: ignorant, stupid, crazy, or malicious. And as cognitive distortions such as confirmation bias (favoring information that confirms existing beliefs), the bandwagon effect (aligning with perceived majority views), and in-group bias (favoring one’s own group over outsiders) take hold, we stop seeing unique, real people and start seeing caricatures.

A Radical Strategy

So how do you change the emotional climate of a political conversation? Not by arguing, persuading, or posturing.

By being curious.

We can begin by being curious about ourselves. Nicholas Epley, author of Mindwise: Why We Misunderstand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want, says it's surprising “how easily introspection makes us feel like we know what’s going on in our own heads, even when we don’t.” Replacing certainty with curiosity provides the epistemic humility necessary for relationships to thrive.

Existential psychiatrist Irvin Yalom found that people’s behavior often reflects deeper human concerns than we might think—for example, death, isolation, freedom, and meaninglessness. Political convictions can mask such profound existential priorities. And curiosity helps reveal what lies beneath.

Now there’s empirical evidence that curiosity doesn’t simply help political conversations be less hostile—it changes our understanding of them.

What the Research Shows

As Kashdan and his colleagues report, “Curious people demonstrate greater information- and perspective-gathering, cognitive flexibility, creative problem-solving, and perseverance.” Curiosity, they explain, "is positively associated with several beneficial political outcomes.”

Across three studies, the researchers found that Americans vastly underestimate how open-minded and intellectually humble their political in-group actually is. Participants believed that people in their own party were less willing to consider diverse views than they truly were. This misperception can fuel defensiveness, avoidance, and hostility before a political conversation begins.

Curiosity is strongly associated with positive political interactions. People who score higher on curiosity show more openness to learning from political conversations, are less defensive, exhibit more intellectual humility, and desire less social distance from political out-group members.

These are all positive indicators that curiosity is a necessary element in civic discourse. But the breakthrough finding is that curiosity can be increased through a brief psychological intervention.

How To Boost Curiosity

Kashdan and his colleagues designed an intervention to change perceptions about political in-group norms. Participants were shown evidence that others in their own political party were more open-minded and more willing to update their views than participants originally believed.

Bias Essential Reads

Is It Actually Possible to Overcome Our Prejudices?

The Hidden Costs of Anti-Bias Education

When participants saw this, their political and social curiosity increased, their motivation to learn in political conversations increased, and they became more open to hearing diverse perspectives.

This shift doesn’t require persuasion, agreement, or changing anyone’s political views. It simply requires recalibrating expectations about one’s own side.

Belonging is a fundamental human need, and we can tend to operate using tribal norms rather than civic norms regarding how to think about an out-group. As Kashdan and colleagues note, “people’s in-groups function as a potent source of information about what to value and how to behave.” If we believe that our in-group sees no value on the other side, we tend to close our ears to what the other side says.

The study demonstrates something both humbling and hopeful: Once we believe that being open-minded is acceptable to our own group, we become more open-minded ourselves.

The Real Gift of Curiosity

So, what is the strategy for dealing with wrongheaded relatives over the holidays? Check your own opinions at the door, and instead of arguing, fuming, or retreating, be curious and listen. It turns out you won't be violating your in-group norms.

“Listening is a rare happening among human beings," William Stringfellow wrote. "You cannot listen to the word another is speaking if you are preoccupied with your appearance or impressing the other, or if you are trying to decide what you are going to say when the other stops talking, or if you are debating about whether the word being spoken is true or relevant or agreeable. Such matters may have their place, but only after listening to the word as the word is being uttered. Listening, in other words, is a primitive act of love.”

If you listen with genuine curiosity, you may not leave the table with more agreement. But you are likely to leave with more understanding—and more love.