Conversations that Open Doors: Reflecting on This American Life
Through dialogue, Essential Partners fosters greater understanding between opposing sides of divisive issues, shifting attitudes and building relationships. This Sunday’s “This American Life” focused on a question that resonates deeply across the schisms of our polarized society: what’s the real likelihood that, on the issues you care most deeply about—be it abortion or same-sex marriage—you’re open to shifting your attitude, or even changing your mind?
The Incredible Rarity of Changing Your Mind
While we typically consider ourselves open to reason, the program reiterated a key lesson of EP's training: we organize much of the information we consume information mainly that reaffirms our own beliefs. Those beliefs may be inherited from our parents, our education, or our community leaders, but they emanate from our gut, an emotional core to which arguments or debates rarely appeal. “Even when we receive information that conflicts with our worldview,” said host Ira Glass, “we tend to dig in.”
The Power of Telling Your Story
One thing with the power to counter “digging in” and maybe even change our minds? Personal narrative. The program detailed the experiences of canvassers who went to voters’ homes to discuss the contentious issues of same-sex marriage and abortion, specifically. Rather than rattle off facts or make ideological arguments, these canvassers tried something a little different: they listened, they asked questions, and they told their own story.
The conversations were characterized were honest, curious, and surprisingly intimate; one opponent of same-sex marriage asked his openly gay canvasser about when he discovered his sexual orientation. In another community, a Catholic voter spoke about her beliefs on abortion, her faith and her unconditional love for her daughters. After the canvasser revealed that she had had an abortion in the past, and spoke about the hardship of disclosing it to her family, the voter’s position on the issue shifted significantly. Her reported likelihood to vote for unrestricted abortion access started at a zero. By the end of the conversation, her level of support rose to a ten.
The transformative nature of these conversations is rooted in many of the same practices we use in dialogue: compassionate listening, asking questions to learn rather than judge, and telling your own story with sincerity. Of course, whereas the canvassers were unequivocally trying to change minds, the dialogue that Essential Partners works to achieve is one that creates space for conflict to be candidly explored, without aiming for compromise or seeking to convince. “This American Life” also opted not to inquire as to whether any canvassers’ perspectives had altered. Regardless, the story on the whole affirmed our operating principle: conversations have the power to allow for nuance, foster understanding, and shift views.
Difference: The Defining Factor
What makes meaningful shifts possible isn’t just how we talk. To be sure, specific techniques can create new pathways out of the schism of rhetoric and argument.
But it’s also who we talk to; namely, the people who are different from us. The conversation between the voter and the gay canvasser was respectful, nuanced, and open. But just as important, it happened across people with opposing views, deeply felt and clearly acknowledged differences. Among similar voters, conversations with heterosexual canvassers about same-sex marriage or about abortion with canvassers who hadn’t experienced the procedure yielded significantly less substantial changes in attitude, illuminating the revelatory combination of difference and dialogue.
Often, public calls for dialogue do create a space for very respectful, open conversation. But those conversations will inevitably less enriching and potentially transformative, if we don’t actively seek out, invite, and honor the real differences in the room.
Not only can relationships bear the sometimes thorny nature of our differences, our minds can be changed and our humanity deepened, by deeply engaging them – even if avoidance might be our natural tendency. And it's our tendency for a reason: it involves reaching into the primal kind of scary that is vulnerability: that canvasser had to walk up to the door of someone who might slam the door in his face, and that voter opened the door to a stranger. Even without a vote at stake, even when fundamental disagreements remain after the conversation ends, as they often do, let’s not forget the transformations that can happen when two people see difference – and choose to dive in.