Constructive Conflict Guide - Part 4B: Promoting Understanding by Improving Fact-Finding and Communication

Introduction

As we discussed in Part 4A: De-Escalating Destructive Us-vs-Them Confrontations, the overly simple us-versus-them framing of problems drives the escalation spiral, causing people to make conflicts worse, instead of better.  One of the drivers of such framing is destructive and faulty communication, both at the interpersonal and at the societal levels. We don't tend to talk to, listen to, or reach out to "the enemy," and this lack of communication increases our misunderstandings of the other, reinforcing our negative views about them. So it's a vicious circle, or as system theorists would say, a positive (reinforcing) feedback loop.

A second, intertwined driver of escalation and polarization is failed fact-finding and an inability to distinguish what is true from what is false. Since most of us get almost all of our information about the world from the media, not through direct experience, the media holds enormous power to influence what we believe and how we act.  And most media organizations—both traditional news outlets and social media platforms—are driven by economic motives to get and keep the most readers, listeners, or viewers. This, it is commonly believed, is best done by focusing on the bad, even the outrageous, in order to get people angry and to keep them coming back for more. The result is that the media is a major driver of the escalation spiral, and a main reason why we are all increasingly angry and fearful. That is even true in places that have public or state-sponsored media (which, of course, has other "truth problems").  But since Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms have a global reach, the entire globe has been victimized by the algorithms those platforms use to determine which stories we see, and which we don't.   

What can be done about the problem of the media driving us apart?  A lot, it turns out! We discuss that below, along with ideas for improving interpersonal communication and fact-finding across differences.

Media Reform

Considerable attention is beginning to be paid to the destructive role social media has played in driving polarization in the U.S. political context and elsewhere.  There have been demands that Twitter and Facebook stop running false and hate-mongering stories, and they have, on occasion, taken minor steps to do so by, for example, banning Trump from posting to either platform, at least for awhile.  There have been hearings before the U.S. Congress and in Europe, and beginnings of discussion about how social media should be regulated, by whom, and how. Nothing has yet been decided—we are a long way away from that. And the problem is particularly thorny, because it isn't at all evident who (if anyone) should be trusted to censor content.  In the U.S. we have the First Amendment to the Constitution which guarantees "free speech." Is there a way to control false speech without denying free speech? Who gets to decide what is acceptable speech and what isn't? What is true and what is not?  Do we want Big Tech to do so?  The Government?  One political side or the other?  Do we want to eliminate that part of the Constitution?  Probably not.  As I said, "it's tricky." But it is an essential conversation to have, and the discussions have, at least, begun.

More immediately, and more hopefully, perhaps, some journalists and media organizations have begun to call for and design approaches to reform.  A prime example is the Danish "Constructive Institute" which is, in their words, a "global hub for people who believe that journalism might be part of the problem in the trust meltdown in our democracies—but also that journalism needs to be part of the solution." The Constructive Institute's founder, Ulrik Haagerup, gave a talk in October, 2021, in which he explained that traditional journalism follows the dictum "if it bleeds, it leads," and "a good story is a bad story," meaning that good journalism shines light on bad things.  He went on to explain that when he was first learning the journalism trade, he was taught that good journalism makes people angry.  If it doesn't make people angry, he was told, it "was advertising, not journalism."  Is it any surprise that we are getting increasingly angry as we read, listen to, and watch the news?

Haagerup has developed an alternative approach to the news, which he calls "constructive journalism." "Constructive journalism is a response to increasing tabloidization, sensationalism and negativity bias of the news media today. It is an approach that aims to provide audiences with a fair, accurate and contextualized picture of the world, without overemphasizing the negative and what is going wrong." The "three pillars" of constructive journalism are: 1) Focus on solutions — Don't just expose the problems, but also look for possible solutions at the same time; 2) Cover nuances — "Strive for the best obtainable version of the truth. See the world with both eyes;" and 3) Promote democratic conversations — Engage and facilitate constructive debate and include people in the community, not just "experts" or politicians. 

Impressively, he reported in October of 2021, that while his Institute was all but ignored when it started five years ago, now 70-80% of Danish journalism organizations have signed on to their approach.  The United States has a similar organization called the Solutions Journalism Network. It doesn't yet have the impact on American journalism that Haagerup says his institute has in Denmark, but the United States is a much bigger place. And its starting point is probably much more divided than is Denmark, although Denmark, he points out, is by no means free of divisiveness.  Similar organizations are springing up in France, for instance Reporters D'Espoir, Reporters Sans Frontiers, and Spark News; in the U.K: The Constructive Journalism Project, and in Belgium: New6s.  

We, as individuals, can also consume and process news and information we get through the media differently.  We can seek out more diverse sources of information. We can question what we see and hear, rather than taking it as certainly "true," or certainly "false." And we can learn how to communicate with others, particularly those with different beliefs, more effectively and respectfully.  These suggestions are discussed more below.

Diversifying our News Stream 

Most people get their news—hence what they generally believe as "fact," from one or just a few similarly-oriented sources.  Progressives go to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and MSNBC.  Conservatives go to Fox News, and the Wall Street Journal.  Although most of our progressive friends think that Fox News is biased and the Times, Post, and MSNBC are balanced, that really isn't true.  Both sides cover some stories relatively accurately, but all these news sources spin other stories to correspond to the narratives that they think their audience wants to hear. Allsides.com, for example, ran a story on January 8, 2021 that illustrated how differently the Right and the Left described what happened at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. The Left described the scene as a violet mob engaged in "terrorism," while the Right saw it as a justified "protest action."  The article also compared similar discrepancies (though reversed) in the reporting of the protest at the Senate against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's appointment to the Court.

Similarly, according to NBC News, in February, 2021, almost two-thirds of Republicans believed that President Joe Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 election, while almost all Democrats believed that his win was legitimate. An astonishing 23% — almost a quarter of Republicans — told pollsters that they agreed in May, 2021 with the QAnon charge that "the government, media and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who run a global sex trafficking operation." Needless to say, few if any Democrats believe that. (When Republicans were in power, of course, Democrats believed a lot of inflammatory and often untrue things as well. For example, Noam Chomsky, a well known progressive Democrat said in an interview that the Republicans were a "group of radical sadists.")

One result of such reporting is that neither side trusts the news put forth by the other side, claiming it is "fake." As we discussed in Part 3, Bad-Faith Actors do much to drive this distrust, both by putting out what the RAND Corporation termed "a firehose of falsehoods," and by asserting that legitimate journalism and journalists (who publish stories they don't like) are disseminating "fake news" or are "enemies of the state" or "enemies of the people."  As a result, people on all sides tend to rely on a few trusted sources of information for their "facts" and they don't question what they learn from those trusted sources, even if it contradicts information they get from elsewhere.  The result is that people have extremely different (and often very inaccurate and self-serving) views of "objective facts," which exacerbates the "us-versus-them" narratives.  Even if their preferred sources are good, this over-reliance on one, or just a few sources of information, usually results in, at best, a partial understanding of any complex situation.  

A surprising number of people don't get their information from traditional news outlets at all, but rather get their news from their trusted friends and organizations on social media: Facebook or Twitter, for example. Social media has an entirely different approach to vetting stories. With only a few exceptions, they do almost nothing to prevent the spreading of inaccurate news, but rather feed readers more and more of it, reinforcing whatever they have read or watched before, in an effort to keep them coming back, and staying once they are there. Both social media and traditional media often paint particularly exaggerated pictures of what's going on—focusing on the most disturbing stories, and the most outlandish views, because these stories get readers and watchers; they get "clicks."   

This kind of journalism deepens misunderstandings, and creates and reinforces enemy images, until everyone hates and fears everyone else. This has gotten so bad that that, in the U.S., both sides think that an electoral victory of the other side is an existential threat. According to a Washington Post/University of Maryland poll taken in early 2022, a full one third of Americans think that violence against the government might be justified.

There is yet another approach to fact-finding that is increasingly popular these days: that's the notion that nothing at all is valid unless it is seen or done or experienced personally. This is the view of what is called "standpoint epistemology" which suggests, for instance, that men cannot possibly understand how women experience the world because they aren't women; whites cannot possibly understand how Blacks experience the world, because they are white, etc. But, if the only "truth" is that which we have experienced personally, nothing that we learn through the media can be trusted, ever. The only thing we can believe is that which we see with our own eyes. That makes notions of "truth" and "fact" almost infinitesimally small, as very few of us have been able to experience more than a tiny sliver of what's going on in the world.  So it atomizes "fact" and "truth" to such small increments, that there is pretty much no way we can, as a society, agree on any "fact" or "truth." This is a direct assault on whole notion of scientific and scholarly knowledge upon which modern society is based. You cannot deal with any problem if you are not willing to go beyond your own personal experience. Our life, our world is simply too complicated for that to work. 

Rather than diminishing escalation, these self-centered views tend to increase it, pulling us farther and father apart. If we want to reverse that trend, rather than atomizing knowledge, we need to improve interpersonal and intergroup communication and understanding. We need to develop collective images of objective facts and observable truths.

How do we do this?

First, we all need to read, listen, and watch, more broadly. While you may not want to go all the way over to extremes of "the other side" on a routine basis, checking out stories you read on your chosen news source with similar stories on some other sources that are more widely viewed as "unbiased" or at least less biased, can help sort out the "fake news" from "real news."  This is particularly important if you are reading a story that paints the other side as particularly "evil" or "stupid" or otherwise bad.  By reading related stories written by neutral or even opposite points of view, you may find out that the other side has legitimate reasons to make the arguments they do.  You may also realize that there are things you or your side is doing to make the other side respond in the way it is. (Remember the idea of "contribution" from Section 4a?)

Finding "Impartial" News

How do you find "impartial" news sources?  It's not terribly hard. Adfontesmedia maintains a useful "Media Bias Chart" that ranks many media sources as to the degree to which they lean Left or Right, and also the value and reliability of their news.  Relying on sources that are far off center and/or lower down on this chart is likely to yield distorted information.  Even if one is relying on a source or a few sources (shown on the top, center of that chart), it is very useful to read, listen to, or watch stories about your issues of concern from several different sources—and be intentionally open to being surprised.  We also need to be aware of what is being said on the popular, but less reliable, and more extreme, sources. This content does much to explain why the "other side" thinks as they do and what makes our conflicts so difficult and dangerous.

Another chart is produced by allsides.com, which asserts that "unbiased news does not exist." They claim that they provide "balanced news and civil discourse,"  and asserting that "comparing headlines from across the spectrum can help you to sort through bias and find truth."  I would argue that you need to do more than look at the headlines.  Often headlines are more provocative than the article content, trying to draw readers in with attention-catching statements that might even be contradicted in the body of the story.  So I say read across the spectrum, but go deeper than the headlines.  Allsides can help you do that, as can another website called The Flipside which looks at one issue a day and presents representative views on that issue coming from both the Left and the Right. 

This kind of balanced and multi-perspective way of looking at the news is, unfortunately, time consuming and often expensive (many of the best sources are behind paywalls). Many of people simply don't have time to do this.  There is a continuing need for cheaper and more convenient ways of getting more balanced information to mass audiences.

More Information:

Talking with and Listening To People on the Other Side

Part of the reason that biased news has such a strong impact is that many people have little contact with real, live people on the other side of the political spectrum. We increasingly live in politically homogeneous communities with few opportunities to meaningfully interact with people who are different from ourselves (a phenomenon Bill Bishop called the Big Sort).   So all the information they get about the other side comes through the news, and as we pointed out above, people tend to select news sources that confirm what they already believe.  They don't want to be presented with contradictory ideas, which leads to the uncomfortable mental state called cognitive dissonance. 

To avoid such dissonance, people tend to rely on a number of cognitive biases (or errors in thinking).  One particularly prevalent and problematic bias is known as the confirmation bias, which is the tendency to seek, favor, interpret and remember information that  seems to confirm what we already believe.  This causes people to surround themselves with people and information sources who think as they do, and who reinforce their views. If they accidentally come across people or information that contradict their beliefs, the confirmation bias causes them to either dismiss it as "fake news," or reframe it, such at it seems to reinforce one's existing beliefs--even when it actually doesn't.  

While there is considerable disagreement among psychologists about whether cognitive biases are avoidable, and whether one can learn to watch out for them and counteract them (see for example, the debate between Daniel Kahneman and Richard Nisbett, as described in Ben Yagoda's Atlantic article on cognitive biases), I think it is most certainly possible to intentionally seek out information from a diversity of sources, including ones from the opposite political party than our own. Similarly, we can intentionally question and challenge our own assumptions, both about ourselves and about the other side. For instance, we can ask whether we have, actually, contributed to the problem we are concerned about.  We can also ask whether there an understandable or legitimate reason why the other side believes X and Y are true or they are advocating Z? But in order to see unbiased answers to these questions, we must break out of our partisan bubbles and actually talk to, listen to, read about people who think differently than we do.

So, whenever possible (and not dangerous to important relationships), we suggest people try to find real, live people who think differently from themselves to talk with.  Ask them—with true curiosity, not disdain—what they think about a particular issue and what brought them to that point of view. Very often, it becomes evident that, from where that person is standing, based on the information they have, the conclusions they came to were understandable (even if we do not agree with them).  Rather than getting into an argument about who is right and who is wrong, share how your ideas are different, based on your own background and news sources.  Don't try to suggest that your view is better, just that it is different.  That way you will both learn more about what the other side thinks and why, and you both are one step closer to being able to work together to find the "unbiased truth," and a path toward problem solving.  

We should always be looking for opportunities to do this.  For example, several times a year, particularly around Thanksgiving and Christmas in the U.S., extended families get together. That often means sharing meals and conversations with people on "the other side."  There are two ways to handle such situations.  A common one is to make a rule before coming together — "Don't talk about politics!" or "Don't talk about religion."  That might be "safer," but it often doesn't even work—politics is so much on people's minds these days, that it almost always comes up.

The alternative is using empathic or active listening to really try to understand where your uncle or cousin or in-law is coming from, much as we were suggesting above (though we didn't use the same words). Essential Partners (formerly the Public Conversations Project), a U.S-based NGO that conducts and trains people in dialogue, published a guide "Facing the Holidays, and Each Other" in November, 2016. Feelings have perhaps gotten more heated since then, but their guidelines are still sound. Similar guides can be found from the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation. Sometimes, we should note, such conversations still might be too dangerous, if there are relationships that are very important to us, and we think the other person will not respond in a positive way.  In those cases, we still stand by the advice to steer clear of such conversations if possible, but still treat the other person with respect and kindness, in order to strengthen the relationship, and actively listen if "hot topics" do come up. Perhaps in the future, when the relationship is on more solid ground, you can have a meaningful political conversation—if you think it would be constructive at that point. 

Another model for these kinds of conversations is Beyond Intractability's Finding Common Ground Discussion Guide which which helps people or groups systematically work through a divisive issue by asking participants to identify points of common ground on which they agree and then analyzing areas of difference to determine which differences are based on factual disagreements (which the parties could work together to resolve) and which are attributable to differing values. It ends by asking how value differences could be addressed most constructively.

You don't need to wait until the holidays to do this.  Are there people with different backgrounds and ideas at work?  In your church, synagogue, or mosque? On your sports team or book club?  Don't avoid them—seek them out!  But don't challenge them to a debate or try to change their minds.  Rather, approach them respectfully with curiosity, saying you'd like to learn more about them, about their background, and their views on x, y, or z.  Invite them for coffee, or to go on a walk with you, or some other situation when you really will have time to listen to what they have to say. And once you do this, listen openly with real curiosity.  Don't listen to rebut them or to change their mind.  Listen to learn their background, what makes them think as they do.  Most often, you will gain more respect for and understanding of them and their views.  That doesn't mean it will change your mind about yourself, but when people really do understand where the other is coming from, they usually gain a better understanding of the complexity of the issue being discussed and they may come to realize that some of what the other side believes is based, not on their stupidity or maliciousness, but rather on their life story and situation.

While correcting misunderstandings and inflammatory enemy images will certainly help limit the extreme intensity of our political conflicts, it will, of course, not be enough to resolve the important substantive differences that separate political parties and factions within those parties. Efforts of each side to impose their policies on controversial topics like abortion, race, gender, family structure, climate, inequality, and other issues will continue to drive intense political confrontations.  The difference is that these conflicts focus on issues that society really needs to successfully address, and not some imaginary threat of "the evil other side."

More Information: 

Empathic Listening

De-escalatory or constructive conflict communication has two interlinked parts: listening and speaking.  While both are necessary, listening is perhaps the more important of the two.  Dick Salem, a mediator and trainer, wrote an article for Beyond Intractability on "empathic listening." In it, he pointed out that while we are taught how to read, write, and sometimes talk at home and in school (as in speech class), we are almost never taught to listen.  But good listening, he argued, is a teachable skill, and it is key to good conflict communication.

Dick was a mediator with the Community Relations Service, a branch of the U.S. Department of Justice, formed as part of the 1964 Civil Rights Act with the purpose of preventing and defusing major civil rights conflicts within the U.S.  In 1999, Guy Burgess and I worked with Dick to do in-depth interviews with about twenty of the long-time CRS mediators.  One of the themes that came up in their discussions frequently was the importance and power of good listening.  Several of them explained that often disputants calmed down, sometimes were even completely satisfied, when someone simply listened to them and made it clear that they understood what they were saying and feeling.  

In his article on listening, Dick reported the following:

Even when the conflict is not resolved during mediation, the listening process can have a profound impact on the parties. Jonathon Chace, associate director of the U.S. Community Relations Service, recalls a highly charged community race-related conflict he responded to more than 30 years ago when he was a mediator in the agency's Mid-Atlantic office. It involved the construction of a highway that would physically divide a community centered around a public housing project. After weeks of protest activity, the parties agreed to mediation. In the end, the public officials prevailed and the aggrieved community got little relief. When the final session ended, the leader of the community organization bolted across the floor, clasped the mediator's hand and thanked him for being "different from the others."

"How was I different?" Chace asked. "You listened," was the reply. "You were the only one who cared about what we were saying."[1]

I remember another CRS mediator, Silke Hansen, saying the same thing, but with more detail:

 I have found that just spending time listening and understanding what some of their problems are goes a long way towards developing some credibility with the institutional representative. Eventually, they begin to think, "You know, maybe this woman really can help me." So then they are willing to give it [mediation] that chance.
I am thinking of one case that involved a small, rural community. I spent a long time there talking with and mostly listening to the sheriff. I think that he was really surprised that a government official wasn't there to clobber him. He was really surprised that I understood him. I said, "You know, one of the things that I have learned in this work is that law enforcement personnel in some of these small. rural communities face challenges that New York and Los Angeles and Denver never even think about. It's hard doing law enforcement here." He was astounded that I understood that. "Hey, here is somebody who understands what I'm up against!" One of their biggest frustrations is that they are not New York or Denver or Los Angeles, so what works in the big cities might not work for him, but most people don't understand that. I don't need to agree with him or what he is doing, but if I just have a sympathetic ear and recognize that I need to understand his perspective, as well as the minority community's perspective, then that's a big step in the right direction.
The importance of really listening is sometimes underrated.  In one really major conflict I was involved in, I really wasn't sure how much of a difference I had made in the overall scheme of things. But one of the things I was told near the end of that case was, " Silke, you at least listened." Generally, people don't do that. I have heard that many times since. Even in cases where there really wasn't a whole lot I could do, and it was hard to say where mediation might be useful, if a community actually felt listened-to and not just ignored, swept aside or totally disregarded, that has made a huge difference!
That is part of what I try to get across to each of the parties. If, in fact, [we engage in] mediation or some similar method of resolving some of those local tensions, I ask both sides to just listen to what the other is saying. "I am not asking you to agree, or cave in, but just hear what they are saying and what their concerns are. You might even have some solution for them that they didn't even think of.  But first, just listen."
It's amazing how important that is to people in conflict. Part of what intensifies the conflict and violence potential in many cases is that people think that they are not being heard. The reason they are shouting is because they think if they shout, someone will finally hear them. Of course, it doesn't work that way. But I think part of the reason for the volume is that they haven't felt listened-to, so they think, "Maybe if I get louder, they will actually hear me."

Most conflict resolution trainers teach what they call "active listening" or "reflective listening."  Salem's article on BI is entitled "empathic listening" because I originally approached Dick and asked him to write two articles for BI on topics he talked a lot about in his CRS interview.  One was listening, the other was empathy.  He looked at me with surprise and said "they are the same thing!" So "empathic listening" became the title of his single article. 

Empathic listening, according to Salem, has at least five benefits:  

  1. It builds trust and respect
  2. It enables disputants to address and release their emotions,
  3. It reduces tensions,
  4. It encourages the surfacing of information (hence, I would note, helping to dispel misunderstandings, and clarify facts)
  5. It creates a safe environment that is conducive to collaborative problem solving.

WOW!  Can you imagine if many more of us engaged in this kind of listening with "the other," how much benefit that could bring?

So how is empathic listening different from "normal" listening?

For a start, it is really "tuned in."  When you engage in active (or empathic) listening, you give the speaker your full attention. If culturally acceptable (it isn't everywhere), you look the speaker in the eyes; you nod, uh-huh, and make other verbal and nonverbal gestures to show that you are paying attention.  You don't interrupt, but rather, wait for a pause in the speaker's monologue, at which point you feed back what you heard, to show that you were, indeed, paying careful attention and second, that you understood what was being said correctly. In his article on listening, with empathic listening, Salem emphasized that you let the speaker take the lead—you don't change the subject or interrogate, though you can ask the speaker to "tell me more" to try to encourage them to tell more of the story, more of their feelings.  And, though sometimes it feels particularly hard, don't teach, and don't give advice.  The role of the listener is to act like a mirror—letting people talk and bounce ideas off of the listener.  Let them assess whether those ideas are good or not.  Don't do the assessment for them.

That, I and my students have found, is the hardest part of empathic listening.  When people tell you a story and say "what do you think I should do?" it is very hard not to answer that question with your own advice.  And, at times, you should do that.  But, most often, it is more helpful to turn the conversation back to them by saying, for instance, "well, what options have you thought about?" Dick's article on BI has much more information on how to listen empathically, and why it is so helpful in intractable conflicts.

I-messages

The second commonly-taught method of de-escalating communication is I-messages.  These are statements that people can use when they are upset or concerned about something, but they want to express that feeling without further escalating the conflict with the person they think did wrong.  So, instead of blaming the other person with an accusatory "you statement," such as "you didn't get that report done on time!", show how the failure to get the report done affected you. "I was hoping I'd have the report on the project in my hands by yesterday, as I was supposed to show it to the boss. It was embarrassing not to have it."  When you use a you-message, the respondent is likely to get defensive, saying "I had too much to do," or "the deadline was unrealistic" or another excuse that could easily turn into an escalated argument.  When you state the problem without blame, it makes it easier for the other person to help solve the problem, without having to admit they were wrong (hence allowing them to save face).   It, of course, also helps if you are willing to "own" your part of the problem by, for example, suggesting that your expectations may not have adequately considered the amount of work involved.

In addition, when we are in a conflict—especially an escalated conflict—there is a very strong tendency to blame others for one's problems. So, stating the problem in terms of a you-statement is much more natural, and is more consistent with the typical, self-centered, way in which we view problems.  But by making the effort to change one's language, one can also reframe the way both sides think about the conflict, making it a joint problem, not just the fault of the other side.  As we explained in Section 4a, that makes de-escalation and successful problem solving much easier.

Dialogue

An expansion of active listening is dialogue.  While normal English language defines "dialogue" as simple conversation, in conflict resolution circles, "dialogue" is a special kind of conversation that is respectful, focused, attentive, and often transformative. "It is a small-scale communication process in which participants may say or hear something that they never said or heard before, and from which they may emerge irrevocably changed. The approach emphasizes listening, learning, and the development of shared understandings." (Maiese, 2003).

While dialogue, in the conflict resolution context, typically takes place across identity or ideological divides, the goal is not persuasion of one or the other side, nor is the goal resolution, as it is in other conflict resolution processes such as mediation or arbitration.  Rather the goal of dialogue is informing and learning. 

Dialogue has no fixed goal or predetermined agenda. The emphasis is not on resolving disputes, but rather on improving the way in which people with significant differences relate to each other.  The broad aim is to promote respectful inquiry, and to stimulate a new sort of conversation that allows important issues to surface freely. While opponents in deep-rooted conflict are unlikely to agree with each other's views, they can come to understand each other's perspectives.  (Maiese, 2003, quoting Laura Chasin, then Director of the Public Conversations Project, now called Essential Partners).

The Public Conversations Project first became well known when they convened a multi-year dialogue between pro-choice and pro-life leaders in Boston, shortly after the killing of an abortion doctor.  After meeting secretly for six years, the participants in this secret dialogue  "went public," in a Boston Globe article entitled "Talking with the Enemy." There they explained how reluctant they were, initially, to talk to people "on the other side," but how concerned they were that the abortion conflict in Boston, and elsewhere, was getting really out of hand.  After six years of meeting, none of the participants had changed their mind, but they did understand each other and the reasons behind each others' views much better than they had initially.  Unfortunately, the Boston Globe article appears to have disappeared off the web.  But a 2001 article about the dialogue published by the Harvard Program on Negotiation said that "The six members of this extraordinary interchange have demonstrated that civil dialogue and passionate advocacy need not be mutually exclusive. They have formed relationships of reciprocal respect and affection, while continuing to hold widely differing positions on an issue of great emotional significance."

PCP/Essential Partners has continued to do dialogues about abortion and many other "hot topics" all these years. Founder, Laura Chasin, came to one of our initial Beyond Intractability conferences, and I vividly remember a conversation with her about one of their early dialogues.  She reported that a year or two after the dialogue was over, she got a call from one of the participants, asking for contact information for the other participants.  The caller, it turned out, had gotten pregnant when she wasn't expecting (or wanting) to, and she was trying to decide what to do.  The first people she wanted to talk to, she said, were the people "on the other side" of the abortion conflict from her point of view. She had developed such strong admiration and respect for them, that she thought they could give her valuable advice as she pondered this very difficult decision.  Laura's point was that while people don't usually change their views on the topic from dialogues, they do profoundly change their views of "the other."

That makes dialogues extremely powerful tools in conflict transformation.  The problem is, they can only done with 10-20 people at a time usually with a trained facilitator.  That is very difficult to scale up to have society-wide influence.

Some organizations have begun to run dialogues online.  For instance Soliya has been doing online dialogues since 2003.  They report on their website that they

"bring together 15,000 young adults each year in small, diverse groups and over the period of several weeks for dialogues on identity and in the context of current events. Everyone’s story deserves to be told — and heard. That is why we connect people in conversation, enabling them to share their personal journeys and engage with and across difference. We are here to eliminate the idea of ‘the other’ so that we can thrive in this 21st Century society — together."
“We must foster real and lasting connections that in turn ignite curiosity and grow empathy, empowering young people with comfort around the identities of others. It is only then that we can breed compassion, acknowledgment, and respect. It can be done. It is being done. Daily.” (Waidehi Gokhale, CEO, Soliya; https://soliya.net/impact)

15,000 participants a year is great, but it still isn't enough to really reach the number of people we need to reach to transform society-wide conflicts.  But it is a good start and together with many others doing similar programs, and programs on other aspects of massively-parallel peacebuilding, they begin to make a substantial difference.

Essential Partners, The National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD),  (and probably several other organizations) have also produced free guides for "regular people" to engage in constructive dialogues across difference.  For example, Essential Partners has put out "Post-Election: A Conversation for Trust and Understanding, which is designed to be used in one-on-one or small group conversations and a Dialogue Guide about "Race in America," along with many other guides to help people who are inexperienced with dialogue conduct one (or many) successfully. NCDD has put out "Home for the Holidays: Dialogue Across Divides Among Family and Friends". And Living Room Conversations has a host of resources including a "Friends and Family Tip Sheet" and a "Host Toolkit".

Sorting out Facts

As important as better communication is better fact-finding and communication of fact. In today's political environment, it is increasingly hard to distinguish a "true facts" from "fake facts" (and here I am referring to information that is really fake, not information that is actually true, but someone has labeled it "fake" because they don't like it or don't believe it because of their confirmation bias. Given that most people get their news from sources that tell them just want they want to hear, and take care to not challenge their beliefs (even when they are wrong), it is very hard to know what is really true and really not.  But it matters.  COVID can really kill you, even if you don't believe it exists. So can measles, particularly if you don't vaccinate your kids because of a debunked claim that the vaccine causes autism.  Climate change can increase the risk of damaging floods and fires, even if you don't believe it exists. So it matters what we believe and what we do about it.

But not all science is fact, nor is all non-scientific knowledge wrong.  Look at the science around nutrition, for example.  For a long time, we were told high carb, low fat diets were good for us. Then they weren't.  We were told butter was bad for us.  Then it wasn't.  Now it maybe is again (I haven't followed this recently.)  As I searched Google for examples of "bad science," I cam up with a story published in the venerable journal Science that stated that gay political canvassers could change the minds of long-time anti-gay voters with just a short conversation at the door.  It turns out, though, that isn't true—the data were faked.  According to a later article in CBSnews.com on "bad science,"

It's worth noting up front that most results from psychology-based studies either can't be reproduced or are flat-out wrong. That's not an opinion, but actually the result of a study published in August 2015 in Science -- by psychologists! -- that found the majority of published psychology studies are plagued by poor methodology and statistics. If the results sound too good to be true, they probably aren't [true].

That was another study, of course—was it wrong?  Hard to say! So the upshot of all this is that you should be careful about what you believe and what you don't. Consider the source. Is it reputable?  Do they have a vested interest in a particular answer?  (Sometimes organizations with vested interests will still do good science, but one should be somewhat more wary.)  Get second and third opinions on things that matter.  And don't spread information further unless you know the source and have good reason to believe it is true.  

It is also important to remember, however, that all science involves irreducible uncertainties and, as additional information accumulates, it is both normal and desirable for past conclusions to be disproven and for new facts to take on the role of "best available information" at that time. That's the way science advances (especially in situations where we are confronting a new, quickly changing, and poorly understood phenomenon like the COVID-19 pandemic). 

Differentiating between Facts and Values

Just as it has become difficult to differentiate between "real facts" and "fake facts," it has also become very difficult to differentiate between facts and values.  But this distinction, too, is essential.  Facts are accurate descriptions of some aspect of objective reality  For example, the number of people who voted for each candidate in any election is a knowable fact. The average summer temperature in the arctic and the amount of glacial melt (while perhaps hard to measure) is a knowable fact.  The number of people who have died of COVID is another hard to measure a fact.

Values, on the other hand, are people's opinions about what is right and wrong, good or bad.  People might prefer the agenda of Republicans or Democrats—their preference is a value. Who legally won the election, though, is a fact, even though you may disagree with the judicial judgments that ratified that election. People may believe that climate change is the most important problem facing the world today—that's a value.  Or they may believe that climate is not nearly as important as another issue, for instance, the economy.  That, too, is a value.  It is the judgment regarding what is and is not important that places this in the realm of values. But whether the arctic is getting warmer and glaciers are melting faster than ever before—that's a fact. That's even a fact that is fairly easy to measure. 

Now, whether that warming and melting is caused by human behavior, and whether it is a long-term trend or a short term "blip," is also a fact.  But it is a fact that is harder to measure and prove, since the climate system is so extremely complex.  The vast majority of scientists believe it is true, which means (it seems to me) that it probably is, and it is my opinion that we should behave assuming that it is correct because further delay, waiting for proof, is simply too dangerous.  But that's my opinion, reflecting my values.  It is not a fact. The decisions we make about what to believe and how to act in the face of scientific uncertainty are value judgments. Similarly, people may think that forcing people to get vaccinated is unfair.  That's an opinion, a value.  But the idea that vaccines help reduce hospitalizations and deaths from COVID—that's a fact—at least according to my understanding of the reporting of the current science available.  While science (and rigorous legal and policy analysis) can predict, with much more accuracy than other methods, the outcomes that are likely to result from particular courses of action, a democracy, it is up to the citizens, through their elected officials, to decide which outcomes are worth pursuing.

People, particularly politicians, but many other people as well, treat facts and values as if they were the same. They say what they want to believe, and pretend it is "fact," even when it isn't. They base policy on opinions—things they want, things they wish were true, even when the data, the facts, pretty clearly show they are not. An example is responses to COVID.  Many jurisdictions are prohibiting businesses and schools from implementing vaccine mandates, even though the data show that vaccines significantly reduce the risk of severe disease.  On the other side, however, some jurisdictions refused to open schools even after it was shown that schools were at relatively low risk of transmission (at least before Omicron).  Now COVID, it must be acknowledged, is a difficult case because our knowledge is growing and changing rapidly. The best our decision makers and we, as individuals, can do is keep up with the science and base our behavior on what is currently known.  When that changes, we may need to change our behavior.

Translating Science into Widely Understandable Language

The above discussion raises another critical issue:  How do you find out what the science says? And how do you know what science to believe? One big problem with science is that it is generally published in journals that are written for other scientists in the same field to read.  So the articles are written using terminology that is only understandable to people with similar, usually advanced, training in that particular field. Other people, often, cannot understand it. 

Some journalists make an effort to learn scientific language enough to become science writers, and they then try to translate the technical writing into something that the general public can understand.  Some of these folks are better than others, and all are better in some fields than others.  So while some errors occur this way, reading their stories is usually more helpful than trying to wade through the scientific documents yourself.  Even better, however, are those times when scientists themselves make the effort to write generally-accessible and understandable articles that explain what they have learned that it is important for the larger society to understand. 

Despite such efforts though, there is still a large segment of the public which does not understand or trust anything labeled as "scientific."  They have seen too many reversals, and don't understand that reversal is the nature of science (as scientists learn more, they disprove scientific knowledge from before). That is part of what is so confounding and confusing about the science around COVID.  When the pandemic first started in January 2020, we knew very little about the virus.  Scientists and doctors made their best guesses about how it would behave based on knowledge about how other coronaviruses behaved. Over time, and after many more studies, scientists began to learn more. So advice about what people should or shouldn't do to stay safe (or safer) changed over time.

Some of the advice also may have been tainted by political (or practical) concerns.  When Americans were first told that we didn't need masks, only health care workers needed masks, that didn't make sense to me.  I agree, they probably needed them more than others, since they were likely coming into close contact with infected people much more than others. But that wasn't what was said.  What was said was that ordinary people didn't need masks to keep themselves safe. 

Then, when scientists learned more about the aerosol transmission of the virus and, coincidentally, we began to be able to produce more masks, then government "experts," scientists, doctors, and science writers began telling people we all needed to wear masks.  It is not hard to see why some people would not trust these "experts," who first said one thing, but then another. But that's the nature of science.  With it, we learn. We become smarter and more able to interact with complex systems such as pandemics, more effectively.

But added to that, of course, is the fact that getting vaccinated became political—if you got the vaccine that was a signal, in many contexts, you were a Democrat.  Many on the right were told that vaccines weren't needed, and were being needlessly imposed by "big government" and lying scientists. This distrust of science and the politicalization of the pandemic has made the U.S. one of the worst countries for COVID deaths in the world.

Another idea that might be tried is to not only have peer reviews, which we acknowledge is essential for keeping science trustworthy, but non-peer reviews as well.   Here articles would be reviewed by people outside a person's area of expertise to help assure that they address topics of broader social concern in an understandable way. Such explanation wouldn't need to be throughout the paper--the methods section, for instance, could be highly technical.  But if the discussion and conclusion sections could be written in a way lay people could understand, that could go a long way to making science both trustworthy and trusted.

At the same time, experts and science writers need to take care not to "talk down" to non-experts.  There is a ballot initiative being discussed in my hometown of Boulder, Colorado right now, that argues that a large annexation of property into the city should be put up for a vote of the citizens before it goes forward.  The argument being made against that initiative is that the issue is "too technical" for ordinary people to understand, and the decision should be left to "the experts."  I can't think of anything that would make me more suspicious!  How does someone know what I can and cannot understand?  I certainly understand that this annexation would lead to significant growth of our community, straining community services significantly. It would also urbanize a large piece of open space that is vital to many non-human species, and is enjoyed by a great many humans who regularly recreate there.  I think I am capable of weighing the costs of annexation with the supposed benefits—and so are most of our neighbors.

Understanding the Nature of Risk and Uncertainty

We all have a difficult time balancing risk and accepting uncertainty.  Former Senator Ed Muskie is famously quoted as saying "Will somebody find me a one-handed scientist?!!" when the scientists testifying before his Senate committee kept hedging their testimony by saying that "on the other hand..." something else might be true.  As Hank Campbell says, "The one-handed side [of a debate] often wins because they have an [definitive] answer, and scientists too often say, 'it depends.'"

But science studies complex phenomena, that we can only measure inexactly.  When we are talking about social science, things get even more difficult, because people aren't nearly as predictable as atoms and molecules. So scientists can do their best to measure what is going on, and to predict what will happen in the future based on those measurements and their knowledge of causal relationships and trends, but they often cannot be certain enough to put their reputations on the line—or people's lives at risk—because they don't fully understand how the system works.

In May of 2020, (eons ago in pandemic time), we wrote a blog post entitled "Living with Uncertainty in the Covid-19 Era." Scientists have learned a lot about COVID since that was written, but the guidelines we offered then are still valid, with respect to COVID, and to many other issues in which uncertainty is significant. In that article, we said, successfully living with "uncertainty will require us to develop the skills needed to: 1) distinguish trustworthy from untrustworthy information; 2) understand the practical implications of that information; and 3) encourage and support those who produce trustworthy, understandable, and useful information. While we can't expect to be completely successful, we can do much to protect ourselves by taking steps to avoid a few simple cognitive traps that relate to the ways we think about risk and uncertainty. Those include:

  • The Narrowcasting Trap - This is the trap we talked about earlier: getting all our information from one source.  In the COVID blog post we argued "We would all be a lot better off if we would look outside of these narrowcast information bubbles and seek out and honestly consider credible views offered from other perspectives."
     
  • The Contradictory Expert Trap - There are now so many experts saying so many different and contradictory things that it's easy to conclude that experts don't really know anything, so you might as well go with your gut-level, (and generally self-serving) assessment of the situation. Unfortunately, once you do this, you pretty much lose all of the potential benefits of genuine expertise. Much better to listen to experts from different, credible sources and compare what they say.  What makes sense to you? What doesn't? (This is why it is so very important that experts write and talk in language ordinary people can understand.) What evidence do the scientists use in forming their opinions? Who do others find most trustworthy?  Be open to the possibility that your previous understandings might be wrong, and that even things "experts told you" in the past might be wrong now.  As we said before, science develops. Knowledge gets better.  People learn.  So don't immediately dismiss scientists—or politicians, for that matter—who "flip-flop."  Rather trust them more for being willing to learn.
     
  • The Disinformation Warfare Trap - As we discussed in Section 3, many "bad-faith actors" are using the strategy Steve Bannon described as "flooding the zone with sh*t." The Rand Corporation has used the term "firehose of falsehood." The goal of this approach is to totally discredit both experts and the media, leaving political leaders free to spin whatever fiction they think their constituents will find most attractive. Combating this sort of thing is proving to be extremely difficult at the society-wide level. But at the individual level, things are easier. All one has to do is to understand the game that is being played, discount information coming from those sources, and seek out more reliable sources of information.
     
  • The Risk-Balancing Traps - This, actually is a whole set of traps. One is the "zero risk bias" which arises from  our preference for absolute safety. We tend to opt for situations that promise to completely eliminate risk, even when that promise is not credible. We also tend to underestimate the risk of activities over which we think we have control (such as driving a car) in comparison to activities in which we are dependent on others (such as riding in a plane). This is why many people, like me, get nervous flying, but not driving, even when accident statistics show driving is far riskier.  

Another risk-balancing trap is the "cautious shift," in which, when faced uncertainty, decision makers make the most cautious decision possible. Sometimes this makes sense.  But other times, elected officials try to prove their superiority by demonstrating that they will do more than their rivals to protect their constituents. Trouble arises when this escalates into a biding war that ratchets up protective measures to the point where they cost enormous amounts of money,  while producing insignificant levels of risk reduction. (Conservatives would probably argue that keeping schools closed for the entirety of the 2020-21 school year was an example of such overdone caution.) However, it is also possible to fall into the trap of the "risky shift," when people compete by trying to show that they are braver than their opponent (who is painted as a coward).  This, for example, may be part of what is going on with the lockdown/no lockdown debate, although there is more to that conflict too, of course.  of what is going on with the vaccine/no vaccine debate.

A third risk-balancing trap is what we call "tunnel vision." This involves focusing entirely on one risk, while ignoring others. There are stories, for example, about people who were so worried about catching COVID, that they didn't go to the hospital when they had a heart attack, or they didn't get their children well-child checkups and immunizations for other deadly diseases such as measles, which has been surging as a result.  This also applies to interactions between different types of risks—COVID-19 health risks versus shutdown-related economic risks, for example.  Not surprisingly, different individuals and institutions emphasize the types of risks for which they are most directly responsible.  Obviously, we need to think carefully about how best to balance these risks in particular situations.

  • The Delay/Default Trap - Another common and frequently problematic response to uncertainty is to delay decisions about how best to respond until we learn enough to reduce uncertainties to the point where the wisest course of action is clearer. The problem here is that is that decisions aren't really being deferred. Instead, people are making an unconscious decision to pursue the default alternative—the continuation of business-as-usual practices, which can often be worse than any of the response options under consideration.  For example, some people who are delaying getting the vaccine until it is firmly proven to be safe and effective. While the desire for a truly safe and 100% effective vaccine is understandable, it needs to be balanced against the serious risk of illness and death posed by COVID—a risk which is clearly higher than the risks of the vaccine. 

Flexibility

Beyond avoiding these traps, the most important strategy for dealing with uncertainty is staying flexible.  Decisions that permanently lock you into a particular course of action can be particularly dangerous.  Make short-term decisions with the understanding that you will monitor the results and the scientific knowledge about whatever it is you are responding to, and adjust your response accordingly.  I am thinking back to the early days of the pandemic when my son, who lived in Montana, was told in the fall of 2020 that he had to decide whether to enroll his children in school for the spring 2021 semester by mid-fall of 2020.  After that, he was locked into his decision.  If the COVID situation in his town changed, it wouldn't matter—he and his children were locked into their decision.  That's a really BAD way to deal with uncertainty, (although it did help the school deal with it's uncertainty of knowing how may children would be enrolled, and hence how many teachers they needed to hire.) But, if COVID had gotten really bad, then the school system likely would have had to close down, so they would have been in a bind anyway.  As it happened, everyone lucked out because COVID doesn't seem to be transmitted in school as easily as was originally feared.  But allowing people to stay flexible would have, still, been a much safer and appropriate policy.

A last point of advice we made in that May 2020 blog post on COVID and uncertainty: "We must also resist the temptation to evaluate decision-makers (and ourselves) based on outcomes. Instead, you should judge decision-makers on the basis of the information that they had when they made their decision. To do otherwise risks placing too much confidence in reckless decision-makers who "luck out" and not enough confidence in prudent decision-makers who just weren't so lucky. 

Conclusion

This section has covered a lot of ground.  But it can be summed up pretty simply:  get your information from a wide variety of sources and be open to new information that contradicts when you thought you "knew" before. Before you share information with others, make sure you really think it is "true" and be able to explain why.  And lastly, be respectful and open when talking to others, both on "your side" and on "the other side," and when doing such "talking," actually emphasize listening more.  That means, of course, good, attentive, empathic listening that will help defuse tensions, break down stereotypes, and begin building relations and trust between people who are distrustful and estranged.