Conversational receptiveness: Improving engagement with opposing views

A post-Brexit intergroup contact intervention reduces affective polarization between Leavers and Remainers short-term

With mounting evidence of the harmful societal consequences of affective polarization, it is crucial to find ways of addressing it. Employing a randomized controlled trial, this study tested the effectiveness of an intervention based on theories of intergroup contact and interpersonal communication in reducing affective polarization in the context of Brexit. Participants were 120 UK self-identified Leavers and Remainers. Sixty Leaver-Remainer dyads were randomized to engage in either a facilitated intergroup interaction or a control interaction, which was equivalent in structure and tone but was unrelated to Brexit identities. Different aspects of affective polarization were assessed one month prior, immediately after, and one month after the intervention. Results indicate that the intervention increased warmth toward the outgroup, reduced unfavourable attributions of the sources of outgroup positions, and increased willingness to compromise, but only short-term. There were no statistically significant longer-term effects of the intervention. Evidence of selective attrition further suggests that those with more extreme baseline opinions were more likely to drop out. Our findings highlight the challenges of designing effective interventions that engender enduring attitude change in polarized contexts and of engaging those with extreme political views. This study can provide a useful framework for future research.

Intellectual humility is reliably associated with constructive responses to conflict

Conflict is a ubiquitous, but potentially destructive, feature of social life. In the current research, we argue that intellectual humility-the awareness of one's intellectual fallibility-plays an important role in promoting constructive responses and decreasing destructive responses to conflict in different contexts. In Study 1, we examine the role of intellectual humility in interpersonal conflicts with friends and family members. In Study 2, we extend this finding to workplace conflicts. In both studies we find that intellectual humility predicts more constructive and less destructive responses to conflict. This work extends the burgeoning literature on the benefits of intellectual humility by demonstrating its association with responses that help defuse conflictual encounters.

Why Twitter Sometimes Rewards What Most People Disapprove of: The Case of Cross-Party Political Relations

Recent evidence has shown that social-media platforms like Twitter (now X) reward politically divisive content, even though most people disapprove of interparty conflict and negativity. We document this discrepancy and provide the first evidence explaining it, using tweets by U.S. Senators and American adults' responses to them. Studies 1a and 1b examined 6,135 such tweets, finding that dismissing tweets received more Likes and Retweets than tweets that engaged constructively with opponents. In contrast, Studies 2a and 2b (N = 856; 1,968 observations) revealed that the broader public, if anything, prefers politicians' engaging tweets. Studies 3 (N = 323; 4,571 observations) and 4 (N = 261; 2,610 observations) supported two distinct explanations for this disconnect. First, users who frequently react to politicians' tweets are an influential yet unrepresentative minority, rewarding dismissing posts because, unlike most people, they prefer them. Second, the silent majority admit that they too would reward dismissing posts more, despite disapproving of them. These findings help explain why popular online content sometimes distorts true public opinion.

Zero-sum beliefs and the avoidance of political conversations

Although researchers have argued that exposure to diverse views may help reduce political divisions in society, people often avoid discussing politics with ideologically opposed others. We investigate the avoidance of political conversations surrounding highly contested elections in Israel and the U.S. Specifically, we examine the relationship between people's belief that politics is a zero-sum game and their tendency to avoid talking about politics with ideologically opposed others. In two studies conducted in the days leading up to their countries' elections, we found that Israeli and American voters who view politics as zero-sum avoided political discussions with ideologically opposed others. Furthermore, zero-sum beliefs about politics statistically predicted the avoidance of political conversations through two distinct mechanisms: perceived conflict and a lack of receptiveness to opposing views. Finally, in a longitudinal design, we found that zero-sum beliefs about politics statistically and robustly predicted the avoidance of political conversation one week later.

Disagreement Gets Mistaken for Bad Listening

It is important for people to feel listened to in professional and personal communications, and yet they can feel unheard even when others have listened well. We propose that this feeling may arise because speakers conflate agreement with listening quality. In 11 studies (N = 3,396 adults), we held constant or manipulated a listener's objective listening behaviors, manipulating only after the conversation whether the listener agreed with the speaker. Across various topics, mediums (e.g., video, chat), and cues of objective listening quality, speakers consistently perceived disagreeing listeners as worse listeners. This effect persisted after controlling for other positive impressions of the listener (e.g., likability). This effect seemed to emerge because speakers believe their views are correct, leading them to infer that a disagreeing listener must not have been listening very well. Indeed, it may be prohibitively difficult for someone to simultaneously convey that they disagree and that they were listening.

Listening to bridge societal divides

The U.S. is plagued by a variety of societal divides across political orientation, race, and gender, among others. Listening has the potential to be a key element in spanning these divides. Moreover, the benefits of listening for mitigating social division has become a culturally popular idea and practice. Recent evidence suggests that listening can bridge divides in at least two ways: by improving outgroup sentiment and by granting outgroup members greater status and respect. When reviewing this literature, we pay particular attention to mechanisms and to boundary conditions, as well as to the possibility that listening can backfire. We also review a variety of current interventions designed to encourage and improve listening at all levels of the culture cycle. The combination of recent evidence and the growing popular belief in the significance of listening heralds a bright future for research on the many ways that listening can diffuse stereotypes and improve attitudes underlying intergroup division.

Leveraging AI for democratic discourse: Chat interventions can improve online political conversations at scale

Political discourse is the soul of democracy, but misunderstanding and conflict can fester in divisive conversations. The widespread shift to online discourse exacerbates many of these problems and corrodes the capacity of diverse societies to cooperate in solving social problems. Scholars and civil society groups promote interventions that make conversations less divisive or more productive, but scaling these efforts to online discourse is challenging. We conduct a large-scale experiment that demonstrates how online conversations about divisive topics can be improved with AI tools. Specifically, we employ a large language model to make real-time, evidence-based recommendations intended to improve participants' perception of feeling understood. These interventions improve reported conversation quality, promote democratic reciprocity, and improve the tone, without systematically changing the content of the conversation or moving people's policy attitudes.

Reducing political polarization in the United States with a mobile chat platform

Do anonymous online conversations between people with different political views exacerbate or mitigate partisan polarization? We created a mobile chat platform to study the impact of such discussions. Our study recruited Republicans and Democrats in the United States to complete a survey about their political views. We later randomized them into treatment conditions where they were offered financial incentives to use our platform to discuss a contentious policy issue with an opposing partisan. We found that people who engage in anonymous cross-party conversations about political topics exhibit substantial decreases in polarization compared with a placebo group that wrote an essay using the same conversation prompts. Moreover, these depolarizing effects were correlated with the civility of dialogue between study participants. Our findings demonstrate the potential for well-designed social media platforms to mitigate political polarization and underscore the need for a flexible platform for scientific research on social media.

The role of emergency physicians in the fight against health misinformation: Implications for resident training

Emergency physicians on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic are first-hand witnesses to the direct impact of health misinformation and disinformation on individual patients, communities, and public health at large. Therefore, emergency physicians naturally have a crucial role to play to steward factual information and combat health misinformation. Unfortunately, most physicians lack the communications and social media training needed to address health misinformation with patients and online, highlighting an obvious gap in emergency medicine training. We convened an expert panel of academic emergency physicians who have taught and conducted research about health misinformation at the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA, on May 13, 2022. The panelists represented geographically diverse institutions including Baystate Medical Center/Tufts University, Boston Medical Center, Northwestern University, Rush Medical College, and Stanford University. In this article, we describe the scope and impact of health misinformation, introduce methods for addressing misinformation in the clinical environment and online, acknowledge the challenges of tackling misinformation from our physician colleagues, demonstrate strategies for debunking and prebunking, and highlight implications for education and training in emergency medicine. Finally, we discuss several actionable interventions that define the role of the emergency physician in the management of health misinformation.

Talking to strangers: Intention, competence, and opportunity

Despite having more opportunities than ever to connect with strangers, and much to gain from doing so, people often refrain from talking with, and listening to, strangers. We propose a framework that classifies obstacles to connecting with strangers into three categories concerning intention (underestimating the benefits of conversations), competence (misunderstanding how to appear likeable and competent in conversation), and opportunity (being constrained in access to a diverse set of strangers). To promote conversations among strangers, interventions have attempted to calibrate people's expectations, improve their communication, and create more opportunities for strangers to connect. We identify the need to better understand how miscalibrated beliefs emerge and are sustained, what contextual factors impact conversation likelihood, and how conversations evolve as relationships develop.

The Good Talk! A Serious Game to Boost People's Competence to Have Open Conversations About COVID-19: Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial

BACKGROUND

Vaccine hesitancy is one of the many factors impeding efforts to control the COVID-19 pandemic. Exacerbated by the COVID-19 infodemic, misinformation has undermined public trust in vaccination, led to greater polarization, and resulted in a high social cost where close social relationships have experienced conflict or disagreements about the public health response.

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this paper is to describe the theory behind the development of a digital behavioral science intervention-The Good Talk!-designed to target vaccine-hesitant individuals through their close contacts (eg, family, friends, and colleagues) and to describe the methodology of a research study to evaluate its efficacy.

METHODS

The Good Talk! uses an educational serious game approach to boost the skills and competences of vaccine advocates to have open conversations about COVID-19 with their close contacts who are vaccine hesitant. The game teaches vaccine advocates evidence-based open conversation skills to help them speak with individuals who have opposing points of view or who may ascribe to nonscientifically supported beliefs while retaining trust, identifying common ground, and fostering acceptance and respect of divergent views. The game is currently under development and will be available on the web, free to access for participants worldwide, and accompanied by a promotional campaign to recruit participants through social media channels. This protocol describes the methodology for a randomized controlled trial that will compare participants who play The Good Talk! game with a control group that plays the widely known noneducational game Tetris. The study will evaluate a participant's open conversation skills, self-efficacy, and behavioral intentions to have an open conversation with a vaccine-hesitant individual both before and after game play.

RESULTS

Recruitment will commence in early 2023 and will cease once 450 participants complete the study (225 per group). The primary outcome is improvement in open conversation skills. Secondary outcomes are self-efficacy and behavioral intentions to have an open conversation with a vaccine-hesitant individual. Exploratory analyses will examine the effect of the game on implementation intentions as well as potential covariates or subgroup differences based on sociodemographic information or previous experiences with COVID-19 vaccination conversations.

CONCLUSIONS

The outcome of the project is to promote more open conversations regarding COVID-19 vaccination. We hope that our approach will encourage more governments and public health experts to engage in their mission to reach their citizens directly with digital health solutions and to consider such interventions as an important tool in infodemic management.

INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID)

PRR1-10.2196/40753.

Political Bot Bias in the Perception of Online Discourse

Four nationally representative studies ( N = 1,986; three preregistered) find evidence for a bias in how people perceive opposing viewpoints expressed through online discourse. These studies elucidate a political bot bias, where political partisans (vs. their out-party) are more likely to view counter-ideological (vs. ideologically consistent) tweets to be social media bots (vs. humans). Study 1 demonstrates that American Democrats and Republicans are more likely to attribute tweets to bots when those tweets express counter-ideological views. Study 2 demonstrated this bias with actual bot tweets generated by the Russian government and comparable human tweets. Study 3 demonstrated this bias manifests in the context of real recent elections and is associated with markers of political animosity. Study 4 experimentally demonstrates the consequences of bot attribution for perceptions of online political discourse. Our findings document a consistent bias that has implications for political discussion online and political polarization more broadly.

Using dialogues to increase positive attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccines in a vaccine-hesitant UK population

Recently, Altay et al. (Altay et al. 2021. J. Exp.Psychol.: Appl. (doi:10.1037/xap0000400)) showed that 5 min of interaction with a chatbot led to increases in positive COVID-19 vaccination attitudes and intentions in a French population. Here we replicate this effect in a vaccine-hesitant, UK-based population. We attempt to isolate what made the chatbot condition effective by controlling the amount of information provided, the trustworthiness of the information and the level of interactivity. Like Altay et al., our experiment allowed participants to navigate a branching dialogue by choosing questions of interest about COVID-19 vaccines. Our control condition used the same questions and answers but removed participant choice by presenting the dialogues at random. Importantly, we also targeted those who were either against or neutral towards COVID-19 vaccinations to begin with, screening-out those with already positive attitudes. Replicating Altay et al., we found a similar size increase in positive attitudes towards vaccination, and in intention to get vaccinated. Unlike Altay et al., we found no difference between our two conditions: choosing the questions did not increase vaccine attitudes or intentions any more than our control condition. These results suggest that the attitudes of the vaccine hesitant are modifiable with exposure to in-depth, trustworthy and engaging dialogues.

How psychological safety and feeling heard relate to burnout and adaptation amid uncertainty

BACKGROUND

Psychological safety-the belief that it is safe to speak up-is vital amid uncertainty, but its relationship to feeling heard is not well understood.

PURPOSE

The aims of this study were (a) to measure feeling heard and (b) to assess how psychological safety and feeling heard relate to one another as well as to burnout, worsening burnout, and adaptation during uncertainty.

METHODOLOGY

We conducted a cross-sectional survey of emergency department staff and clinicians (response rate = 52%; analytic N = 241) in July 2020. The survey measured psychological safety, feeling heard, overall burnout, worsening burnout, and perceived process adaptation during the COVID-19 crisis. We assessed descriptive statistics and construct measurement properties, and we assessed relationships among the variables using generalized structural equation modeling.

RESULTS

Psychological safety and feeling heard demonstrated acceptable measurement properties and were correlated at r = .54. Levels of feeling heard were lower on average than psychological safety. Psychological safety and feeling heard were both statistically significantly associated with lower burnout and greater process adaptation. Only psychological safety exhibited a statistically significant relationship with less worsening burnout during crisis. We found evidence that feeling heard mediates psychological safety's relationship to burnout and process adaptation.

CONCLUSION

Psychological safety is important but not sufficient for feeling heard. Feeling heard may help mitigate burnout and enable adaptation during uncertainty.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

For health care leaders, expanding beyond psychological safety to also establish a feeling of being heard may further reduce burnout and improve care processes.

Underestimating Counterparts' Learning Goals Impairs Conflictual Conversations

Given the many contexts in which people have difficulty engaging with views that disagree with their own-from political discussions to workplace conflicts-it is critical to understand how conflictual conversations can be improved. Whereas previous work has focused on strategies to change individual-level mindsets (e.g., encouraging open-mindedness), the present study investigated the role of partners' beliefs about their counterparts. Across seven preregistered studies (N = 2,614 adults), people consistently underestimated how willing disagreeing counterparts were to learn about opposing views (compared with how willing participants were themselves and how willing they believed agreeing others would be). Further, this belief strongly predicted greater derogation of attitude opponents and more negative expectations for conflictual conversations. Critically, in both American partisan politics and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a short informational intervention that increased beliefs that disagreeing counterparts were willing to learn about one's views decreased derogation and increased willingness to engage in the future. We built on research recognizing the power of the situation to highlight a fruitful new focus for conflict research.

Interventions to reduce partisan animosity

Rising partisan animosity is associated with a reduction in support for democracy and an increase in support for political violence. Here we provide a multi-level review of interventions designed to reduce partisan animosity, which we define as negative thoughts, feelings and behaviours towards a political outgroup. We introduce the TRI framework to capture three levels of intervention-thoughts (correcting misconceptions and highlighting commonalities), relationships (building dialogue skills and fostering positive contact) and institutions (changing public discourse and transforming political structures)-and connect these levels by highlighting the importance of motivation and mobilization. Our review encompasses both interventions conducted as part of academic research projects and real-world interventions led by practitioners in non-profit organizations. We also explore the challenges of durability and scalability, examine self-fulfilling polarization and interventions that backfire, and discuss future directions for reducing partisan animosity.

Attitudes in an interpersonal context: Psychological safety as a route to attitude change

Interpersonal contexts can be complex because they can involve two or more people who are interdependent, each of whom is pursuing both individual and shared goals. Interactions consist of individual and joint behaviors that evolve dynamically over time. Interactions are likely to affect people’s attitudes because the interpersonal context gives conversation partners a great deal of opportunity to intentionally or unintentionally influence each other. However, despite the importance of attitudes and attitude change in interpersonal interactions, this topic remains understudied. To shed light on the importance of this topic. We briefly review the features of interpersonal contexts and build a case that understanding people’s sense of psychological safety is key to understanding interpersonal influences on people’s attitudes. Specifically, feeling psychologically safe can make individuals more open-minded, increase reflective introspection, and decrease defensive processing. Psychological safety impacts how individuals think, make sense of their social world, and process attitude-relevant information. These processes can result in attitude change, even without any attempt at persuasion. We review the literature on interpersonal threats, receiving psychological safety, providing psychological safety, and interpersonal dynamics. We then detail the shortcomings of current approaches, highlight unanswered questions, and suggest avenues for future research that can contribute in developing this field.

The promise and pitfalls of cross-partisan conversations for reducing affective polarization: Evidence from randomized experiments

Organizations, activists, and scholars hope that conversations between outpartisans (supporters of opposing political parties) can reduce affective polarization (dislike of outpartisans) and bolster democratic accountability (e.g., support for democratic norms). We argue that such conversations can reduce affective polarization but that these effects are likely to be conditional on topic, being especially likely if the conversations topics avoid discussion of areas of disagreement; usually not persist long-term; and be circumscribed, not affecting attitudes toward democratic accountability. We support this argument with two unique experiments where we paired outpartisan strangers to discuss randomly assigned topics over video calls. In study 1, we found that conversations between outpartisans about their perfect day dramatically decreased affective polarization, although these impacts decayed long-term. Study 2 also included conversations focusing on disagreement (e.g., why each supports their own party), which had no effects. Both studies found little change in attitudes related to democratic accountability.

The Power of Listening at Work

Listening is associated with and a likely cause of desired organizational outcomes in numerous areas, including job performance, leadership, quality of relationships (e.g., trust), job knowledge, job attitudes, and well-being. To advance understanding of the powerful effects of listening on organizational outcomes, we review the construct of listening, its measurement and experimental manipulations, and its outcomes, antecedents, and moderators. We suggest that listening is a dyadic phenomenon that benefits both the listener and the speaker, including supervisor-subordinate and salesperson-customer dyads. To explain previous findings and generate novel and testable hypotheses, we propose the episodic listening theory: listening can lead to a fleeting state of togetherness, in which dyad members undergo a mutual creative thought process. This process yields clarity, facilitates the generation of novel plans, increases well-being, and strengthens attachment to the conversation partner.

Receptiveness to Opposing Views: Conceptualization and Integrative Review

The present article reviews a growing body of research on receptiveness to opposing views-the willingness to access, consider, and evaluate contradictory opinions in a relatively impartial manner. First, we describe the construct of receptiveness and consider how it can be measured and studied at the individual level. Next, we extend our theorizing to the interpersonal level, arguing that receptiveness in the course of any given interaction is mutually constituted by the dispositional tendencies and observable behaviors of the parties involved. We advance the argument that receptiveness should be conceptualized and studied as an interpersonal construct that emerges dynamically over the course of an interaction and is powerfully influenced by counterpart behavior. This interpersonal conceptualization of receptiveness has important implications for intervention design and raises a suite of novel research questions.

The Conversational Circumplex: Identifying, prioritizing, and pursuing informational and relational motives in conversation

The meaning of success in conversation depends on people's goals. Often, individuals pursue multiple goals simultaneously, such as establishing shared understanding, making a favorable impression, having fun, or persuading a conversation partner. In this article, we introduce a novel theoretical framework, the Conversational Circumplex, to classify conversational motives along two key dimensions: 1) informational: the extent to which a speaker's motive focuses on giving and/or receiving accurate information; and 2) relational: the extent to which a speaker's motive focuses on building the relationship. We use the Conversational Circumplex to underscore the multiplicity of conversational goals that people hold and highlight the potential for individuals to have conflicting conversational goals (both intrapersonally and interpersonally) that make successful conversation a difficult challenge.

The straw man effect: Partisan misrepresentation in natural language

Political discourse often seems divided not just by different preferences, but by entirely different representations of the debate. Are partisans able to accurately describe their opponents’ position, or do they instead generate unrepresentative “straw man” arguments? In this research we examined an (incentivized) political imitation game by asking partisans on both sides of the U.S. health care debate to describe the most common arguments for and against ObamaCare. We used natural language-processing algorithms to benchmark the biases and blind spots of our participants. Overall, partisans showed a limited ability to simulate their opponents’ perspective, or to distinguish genuine from imitation arguments. In general, imitations were less extreme than their genuine counterparts. Individual difference analyses suggest that political sophistication only improves the representations of one’s own side but not of an opponent’s side, exacerbating the straw man effect. Our findings suggest that false beliefs about partisan opponents may be pervasive.

Ending Conversation is a Fraught Endeavor

Have you ever been in a conversation that lasted too long or ended too soon? According to recent findings from Mastroianni et al., conversations rarely end when people want them to end. I propose a framework for studying conversation and outline new questions that follow from Mastroianni and colleagues' generative studies.