UPenn Researcher Explains The Transformative Power Of Disagreeing With Others

Researchers Kristina Wald, Michael Kardas and Nicholas Epley explain how we can find more common ground with strangers than we may initially expect.

By Mark Travers, Ph.D. | July 17, 2024

A new study published in Psychological Science suggests that while people often avoid discussing divisive topics due to low expectations of positive outcomes, their concerns are largely unfounded.

Experiments showed that individuals underestimate how positive these conversations can be—particularly in cases of disagreement. This miscalibration stems from underestimating common ground and social connection, leading to missed opportunities for learning, social bonding, and free expression.

I recently spoke to the lead author of the study, Kristina A. Wald of The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania—as well as her co-authors Mike Kardas of Oklahoma State University and Nick Epley of the University of Chicago—to discuss political disagreements among strangers and its unexpected positive outcomes. Here's a summary of our conversation.

How can discussing political disagreements with strangers lead to unexpectedly positive outcomes?

We found that people's expectations of discussing political and religious disagreement with strangers seem to be systematically more negative than their actual experiences of doing so for at least two reasons.

First, people seem to underestimate the degree of common ground they have with those who disagree with them. That is, people seem to fail to take into account the fact that they may still agree on some aspects of an issue even if they have different positions on the issue as a whole. Conversation, in turn, tends to reveal those areas of common ground.

Second, people seem to fail to appreciate the social forces in conversations that create social connections. People, therefore, expect to disagree with others to be more hostile toward them than they actually are.

What are some potential consequences of avoiding conversations about disagreements?

While we didn't directly test the consequences of avoiding these conversations, our findings suggest that people may be avoiding these conversations more often than they would if they had well-calibrated expectations of what the conversations would be like—suggesting that people may be missing out on opportunities to have informative and socially connective interactions.

Further, avoiding these conversations could serve to maintain (or exacerbate) people's miscalibrated expectations since people avoid having the very discussions that could calibrate their expectations.

How do approach/avoidance tendencies and conversation expectations affect the quality of interactions on sensitive topics?

We didn't test how these things affect the quality of these interactions per se, but rather, how they affect people's willingness to engage in these conversations in the first place.

Not surprisingly, we found that the more negative people's expectations were about discussing areas of political and religious disagreement, the less likely they were to want to discuss those topics with someone who disagreed.

As previously mentioned, people's tendencies to avoid (rather than approach) these conversations (due to their negative expectations) can serve to maintain (or exacerbate) their mis-calibrated expectations by preventing them from having the very conversations that could calibrate their expectations.

How can individuals navigate conversations about divisive topics more effectively in today's polarized society?

It may be worth engaging in conversations on political/religious topics with disagreeing others even when one expects it to be a negative experience—it may end up being better than expected!

What are some potential caveats to these findings?

We only conducted our experiments among strangers, so we do not know how our findings would translate to conversations among known others, such as friends or family members.

We also did not examine other types of interactions besides face-to-face conversations, such as typed conversations or engaging via social media posts. In fact, one of our experiments suggests that the dynamic nature of natural, back-and-forth conversations is a crucial driver of our effects, so we would not necessarily expect to see the same results in other types of interactions.