If you actually want to change and communicate with the world, you need to talk with people who disagree with you on a regular basis.
Whenever you get a group of people together who share certain basic assumptions, there’s a (seemingly) natural tendency for the group to gravitate toward the most uncompromising, extreme, strident, fundamentalist, hard-core positions. Social psychologists call this tendency group polarization. It happens on juries with some regularity. It explains why the Tea Party became so insane, so deeply out of touch with the needs and views of the average American voter. And it explains why the Bush Administration invaded Iraq without an exit strategy (they stopped inviting people who disagreed with their assumptions—people like Colin Powell—to the planning meetings).
Look, don’t get me wrong, there’s no harm in group polarization if you’re just having fun, or brainstorming. But if you actually want to change the world, if you actually want to communicate (and be relevant), it’s a tendency that must be actively resisted. In The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (2013), psychologist Jonathan Haidt maintains that the best way to resist group polarization is to actively cultivate ideological diversity—viz., talk (and listen) to people who you disagree with on a regular basis. This doesn’t mean that you have to agree with them. But you should listen, bite your lip if you have to, and try to be as respectful as possible. Silencing people, shouting them down, resorting to name-calling prematurely (e.g. “you’re a racist!” or “you’re a misogynist!”)—these things just alienate people.
Here’s what happens if you succumb to group polarization: Before you know it, you wake up, look around, and find that everyone around you pretty much agrees with you. And that feels good. After all—I’ll be the first to admit it—preaching to the choir is fun. But it’s a dangerous kind of fun. Why? Because you start to get intellectually lazy. Because you invariably start to speak in a specialized jargon that no one outside of your sacred circle can understand. Because you develop a contempt for everyone outside of your elite group of cool kids that frequently leads you to dehumanize “the unwashed masses.” Eventually, if you live in your little bubble long enough, you become delusional, like the ill-clad emperor in the Hans Christian Andersen tale. Surrounding yourself with people who tell you what you want to hear is toxic. Sweet as it sometimes sounds, the siren song of the doctrinaire must be resisted, lest ye be shipwrecked on the rocky coast of the Isle of Impotentia.
—John Faithful Hamer, From Here (2015)
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Originally published at Committing Sociology. Reprinted with permission.
Photo credit: Getty Images
Tom, I think he’s talking to progressive folks here. Everyone outside that group is clearly insane.
Hi John, “… you need to talk with people who disagree on a regular basis.” I TOTALLY agree with this. I’m going to be blunt here but this is not what I see here at GMP. I can’t count the number of times my responses have been removed. If you look at my history here, you’d know that the wide variety of my responses are spot on and adhere to the guidelines. But it appears that when my responses are in sharp contrast with the article written, they don’t get published. Besides the fact that getting others perspective on issues,… Read more »