Depolarizing Our Divided Discussions

When conflict is cliché, complexity is breaking news. —Amanda Ripley

Eager to have a jaw-clenching, emotionally fraught argument about abortion? How about immigration, the death penalty, or climate change? If you think you can handle it, head for the second floor of a brick building on the Columbia University campus in New York. It’s the home of the Difficult Conversations Lab.

If you’re brave enough to visit, you’ll be matched up with a stranger who strongly disagrees with your views on a controversial topic. You’ll be given just twenty minutes to discuss the issue, and then you’ll both have to decide whether you’ve aligned enough to write and sign a joint statement on your shared views around abortion laws. If you’re able to do so—no small feat—your statement will be posted on a public forum.

In the research described here, psychologist Peter T. Coleman had spent two decades bringing people together to discuss polarizing issues. He studied the conversations that went well, then tested ways to make more of them possible.

To put you in the right mindset before you begin your conversation about abortion, Peter gives you and the stranger a news article about another divisive issue: gun control. What you don’t know is that there are different versions of the gun control article, and which one you read is going to have a major impact on whether you land on the same page about abortion.

If the gun control article covers both sides of the issue, making a balanced case for both gun rights and gun legislation, you and your adversary have a decent chance at reaching consensus on abortion. In one of Peter’s experiments, after reading a “both-sides” article, 46 percent of pairs were able to find enough common ground to draft and sign a statement together. That’s a remarkable result.

Peter also randomly assigned some pairs to read another version of the article. In that study, 100 percent of those pairs generated and signed a joint statement about abortion laws. The measure was whether they could state some shared views, not whether all their disagreements disappeared.

That version of the article featured the same information but presented it differently. Instead of describing the issue as a black-and-white disagreement between two sides, the article framed the debate as a complex problem with many shades of gray, representing a number of different viewpoints.

The Trap of Binary Bias

At the turn of the last century, the great hope for the internet was that it would expose us to different views. But as the web welcomed a few billion fresh voices and vantage points into the conversation, it also became a weapon of misinformation and disinformation. By the 2016 elections, as the problem of political polarization became more extreme and more visible, the solution seemed obvious to me. We needed to burst filter bubbles in our news feeds and shatter echo chambers in our networks. If we could just show people the other side of an issue, they would open their minds and become more informed. Peter’s research challenges that assumption.

Peter’s experiment suggests that exposure to an opposing view is not always enough to prompt reconsideration. Hearing an opponent can also give us more to argue against. A discussion framed around two extremes may hide the concerns people share and the differences within each side.

Psychologists have a name for this: binary bias. It is a basic human tendency to seek clarity and closure by simplifying a complex continuum into two opposing categories—an “us vs. them” or “believers vs. nonbelievers” framing. This cognitive distortion ignores the spectrum of perspectives that exist between extremes and can actively reinforce polarization. To paraphrase the humorist Robert Benchley, there are two kinds of people: those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don’t.

The Antidote: Complexifying

An antidote to this proclivity is complexifying: showcasing the range of perspectives on a given topic. We might believe we’re making progress by discussing hot-button issues as two sides of a coin, but people are actually more inclined to think again if we present these topics through the many lenses of a prism. To borrow a phrase from Walt Whitman, it takes a multitude of views to help people realize that they too contain multitudes.

A dose of complexity can disrupt overconfidence cycles and spur rethinking cycles. It gives us more humility about our knowledge and more doubts about our opinions, and it can make us curious enough to discover information we were lacking. In Peter’s experiment, all it took was framing gun control not as an issue with only two extreme positions but rather as one involving many interrelated dilemmas. As journalist Amanda Ripley describes it, the gun control article “read less like a lawyer’s opening statement and more like an anthropologist’s field notes.” Those field notes were enough to help pro-life and pro-choice advocates find some areas of agreement on abortion in only twenty minutes.

Overcoming Binary Bias by Complexifying

To resist this simplification, look for views and concerns that the two-camp framing leaves out. When reading an account, ask whether it represents the disagreement accurately and explains uncertainty. In your own communication, distinguish disagreements about evidence from disagreements about values or practical choices.

Changing the question can help too. Asking “how”—for instance, “How can we address climate change?”—invites discussion of possible actions. Asking “why” can be useful as well, but may invite people to rehearse their existing position. In Peter’s lab, participants exposed to the more complex account asserted fewer opinions and asked more questions.

The results of complexifying extend beyond a single issue. In the experiment, the article didn’t just leave people open to rethinking their views on abortion; they also reconsidered their positions on other divisive issues like affirmative action and the death penalty. If people read the binary version of the article, they defended their own perspective more often than they showed an interest in their opponent’s. If they read the complexified version, they made about twice as many comments about common ground as about their own views. At the end of the conversation, they generated more sophisticated, higher-quality position statements—and both parties came away more satisfied.

Complexifying in Practice: The Case of Climate Change

Climate change illustrates what a binary account can leave out. The classification discussed here distinguishes six groups: alarmed, concerned, cautious, disengaged, doubtful, and dismissive. These groups differ in concern and engagement, not just in whether they accept a proposition. A debate dominated by its loudest voices can obscure those differences. The classification alone does not establish how common each view is in a given population.

It is also important to differentiate healthy skepticism from denial. Skepticism—characterized by critical thinking and openness to new evidence—is foundational to science. Denial, by contrast, is an a priori rejection of evidence and represents a closed-minded stance. Conflating the two through binary framing shuts down the very curiosity that complexifying aims to ignite.

Scientific reporting can also oversimplify. Coffee headlines, for example, may celebrate a benefit or warn about a risk without explaining what was studied. A sample headline such as “A daily cup of coffee may improve cognitive health, but drinking more could increase risk.” appears more qualified, yet it still needs evidence for both claims. Accuracy requires explaining the study, its limits, and what remains uncertain; adding a second claim does not by itself supply that accuracy.

For a long time, I struggled with how to handle politics in this book. I don’t have any silver bullets or simple bridges across a widening gulf. I don’t really even believe in political parties. As an organizational psychologist, I want to vet candidates’ leadership skills before I worry about their policy positions. As a citizen, I believe it’s my responsibility to form an independent opinion on each issue. Eventually, I decided that the best way to stay above the fray was to explore the moments that affect us all as individuals: the charged conversations we have in person and online.

Resisting oversimplification can improve a difficult conversation. A journalist can show which claims are supported and where genuine disagreements remain. At a family gathering, asking about a particular concern may open a discussion that arguing over labels would close. These approaches may reveal shared ground, though they do not guarantee agreement.