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In his inaugural address last week, President Joe Biden called for unity. But how can Americans come together, given what appears to be growing political controversy and deep divisions?
New research suggests the answer can be found in stories, not statistics. People respect those with whom they disagree more when their position comes from a place of personal experience, not facts and figures, finds a new series of experiences published Monday, January 25 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This is especially true when personal stories are rooted in experiences of harm or vulnerability.
“In moral disagreements, experiences seem truer than facts,” said Kurt Gray, psychologist and director of the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding at the University of North Carolina.
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Respectful debate
Partisan gaps on issues ranging from race relations to the role of government in helping low-income people have widened in recent decades. the Pew Research Center found that out of 10 questions tracked since 1994, the average difference in opinion between Democrats and Republicans has dropped from 15 percentage points to 36 percentage points.
Many studies of political differences focus on persuasion and how opinions change, but opinion change is rare, Gray told Live Science.
“In the current political climate, we have to think of a more fundamental, fundamental goal, which is simply to be willing to engage in a respectful dialogue with a political opponent,” Gray said.
For the new research, Gray and his colleagues focused on how facts versus experiences affected people’s perceptions of their opponent’s rationality and their respect for that opponent. In 15 separate experiments, they found that while people think they respect opponents who present facts, they actually respect opponents who share personal stories more.
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The researchers tested this idea in several ways. First, they told 251 participants to imagine talking to someone they disagreed with about a moral issue, such as abortion, and asked participants to write about what would make them respect the opinions of their opponents. Just over 55% said opinions based on facts and statistics would increase respect, while a lower percentage – 21% – said personal experiences would do the trick. In a second nationally representative study, researchers asked 859 participants to imagine interacting with an opponent who based their opinions on facts and an opponent who based their opinions on experience. Participants characterized the factual opponent as more rational and said they would respect this opponent more than one who argues from experience.
But follow-up studies found that most of the participants were late. In real face-to-face interactions, online debates, and talk-head debates on television, arguments based on experience have in fact earned more respect among opponents than arguments based on fact.
In one study, researchers asked someone to pose as a passer-by who engaged people in political discussions about gun rights and gun control. In the 153 face-to-face gun conversations that resulted, independent coders rated responses to the topic as more respectful when the bogus activist based his opinions on experience rather than facts. The same was true in the YouTube comments. In 300,978 YouTube comments of 194 abortion videos, the conversation was more respectful when the videos focused on personal experiences rather than facts and statistics; commentators used a more positive tone, more positive emotional words, and more words associated with affiliation and solidarity.
Likewise, people were more respectful of New York Times opinion pieces based on their personal experiences rather than statistics, and opponents of CNN and Fox News interviews between 2002 and 2017 were more respectful and treated their opponents as more rational, when conversations were based. on experience.
The power of experience
Other experiments showed that stories were most associated with heightened respect when the experiences were relevant, prejudicial, and personal. People respected their opponents the most when they had experienced something themselves, followed by when they shared the experience of a friend or family member, and they were less impressed when someone melted away. an argument about an anecdote or a story of a stranger they had read.
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Next, the researchers explored the idea that some people’s experiences might seem more reliable than others. First, they asked 508 participants to read arguments based on facts or experiences of people who agreed and disagreed with them about guns. The results showed that people doubted the political facts presented by their opponents much more than the facts presented by someone with whom they agreed. There was, however, not such a large gap in doubt between the experiences presented by opponents and the experiences presented by someone on the participant’s side.
Ultimately, people can still find a way to doubt or ignore the facts, Gray said, but personal experiences are harder to dispute.
“It’s so hard to doubt when someone says to you, ‘Look, this terrible thing has happened to me,” “he said.
The researchers also tested whether people would rule out certain life experiences more than others. Since the experiences of people of color and women are often downplayed, they asked whether participants would reject the experiences of a black woman who disagreed with them over gun control. Again, personal experiences beat the facts to increase the opponent’s respect. In another study, researchers compared how people reacted to a scientist’s views on immigration. In this study, personal experiences again garnered the most respect, followed by scientific research. The facts cited by a layman were considered the least worthy of respect.
Personal experiences have fueled recent movements, such as Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movement, Gray said. Even if personal experience does not ultimately lead to persuasion, respectful discussion is an important foundation of democracy, he said.
“I don’t want it to sound like you shouldn’t be able to condemn people’s opinions,” Gray said. “[But] you can still have respect for someone as a human being and appreciate the roots of their opinions, and you at least need to know what those views are. “
Originally posted on Live Science.
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