Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Finding Common Ground With Kurt Gray
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 503 of Live Happy Now. Last week we talked about polarization and what’s driving it, and this week we’re here to find some common ground. I’m your host, Paula Felps, and today I’m happy to be sitting down again with Kurt Gray, a professor in psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of the new book, Outrage: Why We Fight About Morality in Politics and How to Find Common Ground. In this episode, Kurt walks us through the steps for learning to create more civil dialogue, explains the role that empathy plays in overcoming our outrage, and explains why we actually need people who don’t think the same way we do. Let’s have a listen.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:00:45] PF: Kurt, welcome back to Live Happy Now.
[0:00:47] KG: Thanks for having me again.
[0:00:48] PF: Oh, my gosh. What a great conversation we’re having. I love this. It’s so important for us to understand where we’re coming from with our outrage and our divides. Last time we talked about your book subtitle, which begins, Why We Fight About Morality and Politics, and today we want to talk about the rest of that subtitle, which is that ever important and How to Find Common Ground.
I would argue that most people do want to find common ground. We don’t want to be divided. We don’t want to keep fighting with each other, but in my experience, a lot of times that common ground is actually the idea that the other person is going to come around to our way of thinking. That’s not really common ground. How do we get past that and really start to heal these relationships that have been fractured, get over this divide and start finding common ground?
[0:01:41] KG: Yeah. Such an important question. As you say, so many people want to bridge divides in their life. There’s an organization called More in Common. They did a report that said 65% of Americans belong to the group they call the exhausted majority. They don’t want to fight. They just want to live their lives and have better relationships, better conversations at work with their family, what have you. Before we get to the bridging divides, I also want to point out a question that I get a lot, which is, sure, what about the kind of evil people on the other side of the political party? I think it’s really important to distinguish our perceptions of political elites, you know, that we think bad of.
The different question, which is what we’re talking about here and what you brought up, which is like having conversations with other everyday people, with friends, with families, right? You can judge media talking heads or politicians, but at the end of the day, I think we want to have better relationships with our parents, our children, our coworkers. To touch on something, we started talking about last episode, really, it’s the intention or desire to understand that’s so important, right? If you go into this conversation, as you say with this idea, like I’m going to bring them around. I’m going to win. At the end, they’re going to be like, “You know, I was so wrong about abortion. I was so wrong about immigration. Please, let me change my political affiliation. You nailed it.”
[0:03:09] PF: Tell me you have a voter’s registration card, please.
[0:03:13] KG: Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. Going in with this idea that you’re going to change is not going to work. Instead, you have to try to understand where they’re coming from.
[0:03:20] PF: How do we prime our minds to want to understand that? Because that’s a factor too. People don’t always want to understand the other side. We just want them to understand where we’re coming from so that, as you said, they’ll just absolutely change their mind.
[0:03:34] KG: Well, it helps if there’s a relationship that’s already there, right? This helps if your parents, your child, believe something differently, and you want to keep that relationship, right? There’s already a motivation there, but I think, if you’re committed to the kind of health of our country and the fact that – or your organization or your team, whatever, like you need to accomplish things together. We need to work together. We need to compromise to like achieve our goals in society.
If you think about that, and I think, at least for me, that’s motivation enough, right? This common, like we’re all belong to a broader community. Also, if you deep down think as I do that no one, I won’t say no one, very few people are evil, right?
[0:04:20] PF: Right.
[0:04:20] KG: Everyday people. They’re good people. They’re trying to live their life. I have family, you know, who votes Republican, and I have friends who vote Democrat, and neither of those folks are evil, right? There are good people in my life and in other people’s lives who vote differently. So, I want to understand those people. I’ve got a framework. I’m happy to talk about it. I’ve had to approach these conversations.
[0:04:45] PF: Yes, I would love that. I think we all want that right now.
[0:04:48] KG: Okay. Three letters. I talk about – you always need cutesy frameworks so people can remember them. They are CIV, and they spell CIV, the beginning of civil conversations. It’s backed by research, but also work with practitioners. I mentioned last time, essential partners. They work to bridge divides and fractured communities, and it’s through conversations with them that I got these three tips at CIV.
The first, connect. It’s just a goal of being human, right? Before you talk about politics, you just need to connect with someone as a person. What this means is, you don’t sit down to someone and say, “Hey, who did you vote for?” Right? “How could you do that?” Right? That’s a terrible conversation. It can be tough, right? If someone – so I hate bumper stickers, or like sweatshirts, or the red hat, right, or the blue hat, if you will, right? If you’re sitting down next to someone who’s like, “I have a political affiliation.” It can be hard not to talk initially about it.
[0:05:53] PF: Right.
[0:05:54] KG: But at first, just try to talk with them as a person, because if we look inside ourselves, everyone listening, you realize that politics is actually a real small part of who we are as people right? We have goals for our career, for our health, for our family, for our careers, for the nation, but you know, politics, whether you’re red or blue, is actually a fairly small part of like who we are as people. If you remember that, you can talk to people as human beings. Connect with them, ask them about their hopes, their dreams.
One of my favorite studies by a social psychologist named Nick Epley. He had people talk with strangers next to them, connect with them, on the train from the suburbs into Chicago. He asked people, what would be a better train ride, sitting alone with your thoughts or having a conversation with people? People said, almost uniformly, sitting alone with my thought – I’m not talking to some weirdo. I’m not talking to some rando on the train. Well, it turns out, when he randomly assigned them to have a conversation with someone next to them, they felt connected with them, they felt happier, they felt more engaged.
People even got assigned to have really powerful, deep conversations where they had to ask a lot of questions, ask the person next to you, when’s the last time you cried? Who is your first love? You know. You sound crazy. You sound crazy if you ask him – right?
[0:07:24] PF: It’s like, why do you want to know that?
[0:07:24] KG: Yeah, exactly. Maybe they’re like, don’t start with that, but like when you’re having a conversation with another human being, recognize the things that are human about them. When it comes to the New Year’s resolutions. I was at a New Year’s party, I said, “What are you most excited about in your life about the upcoming year?” Someone mentioned, “You know, I’m excited about the SpaceX shuttle launches, because I love space and it’s exciting to see the shuttle.” Whether they’re red or blue, I didn’t know, but I’m like, “Oh, you love space. That’s cool.” You know. So, that’s the connect part. Figure out what gets them going, what drives them, and see them as a person.
[0:08:02] PF: So then, what’s the I?
[0:08:06] KG: The I is – yeah, right, is invite. Once you’ve connected with them as a person, they’re not just to someone who’s wearing a hat or someone with a bumper sticker. You invite them to share their beliefs. I like to say everyone likes to get invited to a party, but no one likes to get demanded to attend a party, right? Like, “You better come to this party.” It’s a little aggressive. But we approach politics with the same way or how did you vote for this person? I can’t believe you thought that explain yourself.
It’s not a great way to foster understanding. So, the invitation is very simple. You want to show that you’re trying to understand. Your intention is making a sense of who they are. So, Paula, I know you voted differently than I did this last election. I’m really trying to understand why, just for my own well-being. I know you had reasons and good reasons. So, just trying to understand, kind of like in your mind, like what made you think about the candidates or the issues and why you voted, you know, how you voted. You could say, “No.” You could say, “I’m not ready yet.” You can even say, like if you’re not comfortable discussing that, “We can talk about it later.” Give someone an out, because we know, right? Consent, right? You have to give someone a legitimate out to say no.
Then if they feel like they have the choice to say yes, they can tell you where they’re coming from. They’re going to offend you. I just want to say that, right? These are contentious things. These are hard things to put into words, right? You’re talking about abortion, someone’s going to say like, baby killer or hate women, right? Depending on what side you’re on. You know, because those are the talking points in the media. Those are like, are like knee jerk reflexes. You’re going to want to talk about practicing. Let those wash over you a little bit and try to rephrase it, right?
It sounds like being pro life’s important to you. The rights of unborn children seem important to you. Is that what you’re saying? They’ll say, yes, right? I’m trying to protect them. Great. Now we understand. It’s all about harm. Like we said in the last episode, right? It’s all about harm. Okay. I think I understand. Then once you get that, then the V comes, which is validate and maybe like three points and people are like, “Oh, my goodness. Can I just like argue against them?” You can. You’re allowed to, but it’s not going to go well. So, the V, is validate.
It doesn’t mean agree. It’s not CIA, right, it’s C IV and validate just means acknowledging. I guess that’s an A acknowledgement, but, but validating that it was difficult to share that and you appreciate them sharing it, because they’re worried you’re going to attack them, right? Like everyone’s worried they’re going to get attacked, but we often don’t think about that the other side is concerned about getting attacked.
They’re not predators as I talk about in the book, right? They feel like prey. So, you need to say thanks very much for sharing that. I understand it was hard to put it into words. I appreciate knowing where you’re coming from. As you know, I don’t totally agree, but that’s okay. I appreciate what the harms you see are. Then you can say, “Well, here’s where I’m coming from.” Then you can talk and we can talk about how to talk about it stories versus facts.
[0:11:18] PF: Yes. Yes. Please, because you talk about how facts do not bridge divides, like it doesn’t – and especially with fake news. That has made it worse, but we can’t use facts to build a bridge.
[0:11:30] KG: Exactly. Right. So, you got to see –
[0:11:31] PF: Talk about that a little more.
[0:11:33] KG: Right. You’re like listening. Everyone – they feel like they feel understood. They feel heard. We all want to feel heard. Now, here’s your chance to say your piece. We often say the wrong thing. So, when we ask hundreds of Americans, what would make you respect someone on the other side in a political conversation. The majority of people say, facts. Give me the facts without any spin, without any internalizing. There’s some common ground we can go from. As researchers, my team and I, we said, “Great. Here are the facts.” They say, “No, those are not the right facts.”
[0:12:12] PF: Because we live in a world with multiple facts, alternative facts, even.
[0:12:18] KG: Exactly, right. Totally different ecosystems, informational ecosystems. So, your facts are not my facts. Their facts are not our facts. So, it turns out that what we need and what actually works to bridge divides are stories. Our minds have evolved telling stories. Our minds function today, telling stories. When I teach statistics to students, it’s a real pain, like the central limit concept is not an intuitive concept, you know? But telling stories about yourself and about where you come from, that is an intuitive thing. So, it turns out that if you tell a story about your beliefs, particularly a story grounded in concerns about harm, about vulnerability, that makes people on the other side see you as more rational for believing what you believe. Also, they respect you more, because it seems more true.
[0:13:12] PF: We’ll be back with more of Kurt and Live Happy Now in just a moment.
[0:13:21] PF: Welcome back to live happy now.
[0:13:24] KG: I’ll give you an example from a study we ran. We had two people on campus have a conversation about guns. One person was actually an accomplice of us, of ours. She was a college student who always took the opposite view of our participant, who is usually a passerby on campus. So, the person walking through campus said, “I’m gun control. Pro-gun control.” She would say, “Well, I’m pro-gun rights.” Anyone who thinks otherwise is un-American. So, she like went for it, you know?
[0:13:57] PF: She just hit that button right away.
[0:13:59] KG: Exactly. Like let’s kick it up a notch. Then she says, “The reason that I’m pro-gun rights is because.” And she would either give them a fact, a true fact about how many times people use guns and self-defense in the country. Statistic, or she would say, here’s a story. My mom used a gun to defend herself and our family from a home invader when I was a kid. It’s just one anecdote. We’ve been taught in school right to ignore anecdotes. But when it comes to politics, right, that experience, that story of personal suffering, a fear of vulnerability. That makes us understand where the other person is coming from and makes us see them as not only vulnerable, but rational for having their view and from those perceptions of rationality, we get more respect.
We’ve shown that the superiority of stories over facts and these conversations exists in op-eds for the New York Times. It exists in interviews on Fox News and CNN. It exists on social media channels in the comments of YouTube videos about abortion everywhere, basically. It doesn’t mean that facts are unimportant. I’m a scientist. I deal with facts. But it just means if you’re going to start a conversation, don’t start with saying, “Hey, I heard this on NPR and you’re a monster.” Just start with a story from your own life.
[0:15:22] PF: I like that. That takes some thought on our part beforehand. That makes us consider, so why is it that this is so important to me and process our own stories and work on how we would share that with someone? I think that’s important too, because we can get locked into, this is what I think, this is what I believe. I’m going down this road. We’re a little bit on autopilot, like that’s always what we’ve thought. If we do have to pause and take a step back and think about the story behind why we think that, I think that’s really good for us as our own personal development tool.
[0:16:01] KG: You’re absolutely right. There’s this finding in social psychology called the end of history effect. These are very cute term, but basically it means that people think that they will now be forever unchanged in their beliefs. You can look back and you say, I’m a different person than I was as a teenager or when I was 20, but now I’m forever unchanged, right? Like my views will always be my views. But if you reflect, you reflect on the stories as you experience through your life that have changed you and made you who you are, then you can appreciate that change is still possible in the future.
I think that openness to yourself also creates an openness with others. It says like, “Well, maybe I could change in the future a little bit if I understand where other people are coming from.” So, I think it’s absolutely right that we can do some work ourselves in thinking how we’re thinking about things and why.
[0:16:53] PF: I think this is a great time of year. People are adopting new practices and just starting their – restarting a morning practice or whatever. I think that’s a great thing to just spend a little time contemplating, maybe even writing down and exploring why you believe and think and why things matter to you the way that they do.
[0:17:12] KG: Absolutely. I think to add to that, maybe one thing people can think about, and this goes back to the point you made about the importance of practice and practice having disagreements or having some tension in our lives, because tensions uncomfortable by definition. So, when you think about your own political beliefs, I think it’s important to think about the tensions that we all have, right? Because when we go to conversations, if we’re a hundred percent certain about everything we believe, then it’s not going to be a great conversation, because there’s no wiggle room, right? I know everything and nothing. That’s a terrible starting place.
You can be 99% certain. I’ll take that, right? You just need 1% uncertainty, like taxes, like, “Yeah, I think raising taxes on mom-and-pop shops that makes me feel uncomfortable.” Right? Whatever it is, just like a little seed of humility goes a long way when it comes to conversations about politics.
[0:18:08] PF: Then how can learning to manage these differences actually strengthen our relationships?
[0:18:14] KG: Great question. I think it can, because it allows us to see that folks on the other side are, just like us trying to protect someone, right? If I know that someone believes something differently than I, that can make me push them away, but if I can see that they’re really concerned about something, because of an experience they had, then it makes me see them as, oh, I can really understand how you’re really concerned about protecting yourself. If it’s a family member, our family, right? It’s just motivated by something you grew up with and this harm that you suffered, right? It can make me see them in a way that makes me have empathy for them and makes me understand that they’re trying to protect all of us as well.
[0:18:58] PF: One thing that you bring up, and I think this is super, super important for us all to realize. I think we know it at some level, but maybe not, and that is that we need people with different thoughts and opinions. You referenced earlier how we try to form these communities where we think alike and maybe look alike and there’s no discord that in that way. But we do. We need people who don’t think like us, who don’t have the same opinions. Why is that?
[0:19:24] KG: Great point, right? Living in an echo chamber, right, can make us feel more certain and have some comfort with our outrage, but it doesn’t make for a more productive society. It doesn’t make for better ideas. Our ideas are better when we have disagreement. Ultimately, our society is founded on pluralism, on some disagreement, right? Every society where one party is in charge and gets to say how everything goes, those societies are terrible to live in, right?
So, like, you know, far left, far right, party takes control. Decides everything. We need compromise. We need discourse and disagreement. That’s not to say we shouldn’t strive for change and for progress and for making the world a better place. It’s not saying we should be complacent with the inequalities we’re faced or whatever. But it is saying that we should appreciate folks who are trying to move things forward and also folks who are being concerned about tradition.
Thomas Jefferson said we need two parties. We need a party for pushing change forward, for progress. We need a party for tradition. I think appreciating these competing impulses can lead us down to kind of like messy middle road. It’s not comfortable, but I think ultimately, it’s the best we’ve got.
[0:20:45] PF: Yeah. That also requires us to consciously change our mindset about, so we can move from conflict to compromise. We really do have to change how we’re looking at other people and how we view even our own thoughts and their opinions.
[0:21:02] KG: See it as an opportunity for learning, right? Talking about mindset, right, we can have the fixed mindset. This is how I am forever or a growth mindset where this is an opportunity to learn. So, as a social psychologist, right, it’s my job to learn about politics and morality. I think all of us could learn something when we talk about someone who is different from us. If you travel to a new country, you can ask about different practices than you’re used to, right, or you even shift work teams and someone at your new work team says, “We do things a little differently here.” “Oh, interesting.” Right? Like, why is that? So, I think every change, every disagreement is a sense, a way to learn something new about yourself and about how the world could be. You don’t have to agree at the end of the day, but it’s still an opportunity to learn.
[0:21:53] PF: I love that. As we fire up this new year, what’s your prognosis? Are we taking steps toward dialing down our outrage? Is it getting worse? What do you see going on out there?
[0:22:04] KG: Yeah. I think that predicting the future is always hard. I think I’m hopeful. I’m an optimist. That’s why I wrote this book, especially with the second part of the subtitle, right, how to find common ground. But I could see us having more empathy and compassion for other everyday people. You know, I could see us maybe more separating the elites that are out there. You know, media talking heads, politicians from other people who just want to live their lives and have a functioning society.
My thought is that we’re going to have more compassion for everyday people and maybe less patience for the shenanigans, leaders or the corporate class or whatever you want to say, whatever you want to call them, right? Kind of thinking more about everyday people and kind of maybe a little more skepticism, I hope, about the promises of people in the media, let’s say.
[0:22:58] PF: I love that. For everyone who can hear your voice today, what’s an action step they can take? What should they do to start getting over the outrage and start finding common ground?
[0:23:10] KG: I think trying to understand. I think that’s the number one tip, and that’s what I dedicate the book to, to everyone trying their best to understand, right? Try a little less to win, especially now the election’s over, right? The election is a time to try to win. It is us versus them. But now we’re coming together as a country for another four or at least two years. So now, we just need to understand the people on the other side, someone who thinks differently than us. Approach conversations, and even think about ourselves, as you say, with this desire to understand what we’re thinking about and what harms we see.
[0:23:48] PF: Fantastic. Kurt, this book is incredible. Like I said, in our first episode, it is the book we need for 2025. I thank you for writing it, and I thank you for sitting down with me and talking about it.
[0:23:59] KG: Thanks so much for having me.
[OUTRO]
[0:24:05] PF: That was Kurt Gray talking about how we can and why we should find common ground with people who don’t share our beliefs. If you’d like to learn more about Kurt, discover his book, Outrage: Why We Fight About Morality in Politics and How to Find Common Ground, or follow him on social media, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on this podcast episode.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Live Happy Now, and if you aren’t already receiving us every week, we invite you to follow us so you never miss an episode. We’d love to hear from you, so please drop us a review and let us know what you think of the show. That is all we have time for today. We’ll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode, and until then, this is Paula Felps reminding you to make every day a happy one.
