Have a politically divided family? These tips help you talk across the dinner table

Over the last few years and through this year’s contentious campaign season, which was rooted in America’s deep divisions, there has been a coarsening in the way people talk to each other. We wanted to explore how some are trying to bridge divides. We asked our reporters across the NPR Network to look for examples of people working through their differences. We’re sharing those stories in our series Seeking Common Ground.

Jeanne Safer and Richard Brookhiser are no strangers to disagreement. The couple has been disagreeing with each other for almost half a century. Safer is a psychoanalyst and describes herself as liberal. Brookhiser says he’s a conservative Republican and works for the National Review. The two of them say they don’t agree on “pretty much anything” politically — and there have only been a handful of times they’ve voted for the same person.

Though friends occasionally criticize their marriage, Safer and Brookhiser say they’ve always stuck up for each other and found ways to talk about most topics. Although there are things they still don’t discuss — at all.

“Abortion,” Brookhiser says. “That was the issue that we both had strong opinions on that were opposite.”

Even when they find a topic too difficult, each says they try to center their conversations in respect and a desire to build understanding.

Clinical psychologist Allison Briscoe-Smith says this kind of mutual respect is critical to engaging with difference. She co-teaches a class from Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center on Bridging Differences. And she says that without this respect, a conversation isn’t possible — and you may want to disengage.

“I hear often ‘If I talk to that person, am I subject to violence and dehumanization?’ …” she says. “I am not inviting people to have a conversation with people that are violent towards you or dehumanizing towards you. That’s not a requirement … and bridging differences actually doesn’t require or ask us to do that.”

As the holidays approach, many people are gearing up to have similar conversations with loved ones who may disagree with them. These conversations can get personal fast.

Polling data from SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University shows that almost half of the U.S. electorate thinks members of the opposing political party are “downright evil.” In a 2022 Pew Research Center study, growing numbers of Americans said members of the other party are dishonest, immoral and closed-minded.

These divisions are visible in our conversations, in our relationships and in our brains. But research in neuroscience and psychology shows that as much as we disagree, there are ways to bridge these divides — and there are people who are actively using these strategies in their daily lives.

Digging your heels into the science

Neuroscience has shown that when two people agree, their brain activity is more synchronized than when they disagree.

Yale School of Medicine neuroscientist Joy Hirsch led a 2021 study that found that people’s brains lit up in similar ways when they agreed. She thinks this means those people share more information and that the two people are more in consensus. Versus when people disagree: Their brains act like a cacophony instead of a harmonious duet. Plus, they seem to engage more cognitive and emotional resources than when they agree with each other. Hirsch says one interpretation of this is that disagreeing is more taxing for us than agreeing.

“The amount of territory that the brain has devoted to disagreement was astonishing to me,” she says.

But if you do find yourself in a disagreement where mutual respect is present and you want to try having a conversation, science has a few tools for making it more productive.

A simple reframe

Tool 1: Focus on your breathing 

When we face potential conflict, our body’s automatic response may not help us regulate our emotions. Our pupils dilate. Our hearts race. Our palms may get clammy. And the amygdala — the threat detector toward the base of our brains — fires.

We may also feel angry at the other person.

“We get angry because we hear someone say something that we feel is just so wrong and we have to tell them that it’s wrong,” says Ken Barish, a psychologist at Weill Cornell Medical College who wrote the forthcoming book Bridging Our Political Divide. “So we have this mixture of anxiety and anger, and over time that becomes resentment. And contempt — and contempt is a very destructive interpersonal process.”

But Briscoe-Smith says we can begin to move through these emotions by slowing down and refocusing on breathing. This can help combat the body’s automatic response to conflict, helping us think more clearly and move to the next step.

“Can you slow this down just a little bit?” Briscoe-Smith says. “So you can kind of come back into yourself. … Can you take a breath and then align with the intention?”

Tool 2: Refocus the conversation goals 

When we approach conversations as debates, we may feel there is a singular right answer to the topic at hand: our own.

“So people trade opinions,” Barish says. “I express my opinion. You express yours. And people just get angrier. Nothing really happens.”

Research shows that this tactic — spouting facts at another person or bombarding them with articles arguing their point — won’t do much to change the other person’s mind. Safer and Brookhiser call it “article thrusting,” and they say they abandoned that strategy a long time ago.

Barish’s tip?

“Don’t debate opinions. Discuss concerns.”

Tool 3: Empathy 

Humanize the other person you’re talking to by asking about their lives, their families, their hobbies — not just their opinion on a single topic. That can help create more common ground outside of the conversation at hand.

Also, Barish suggests trying to practice intellectual charity and humility by looking at the strongest parts of someone’s opinion instead of the weakest, and understanding where our own arguments could use some help.

Safer and Brookhiser say this approach that they’ve learned with time has changed the way they approach other people in general — not just each other.

“It really opens your mind to think that somebody that you disagree with takes care of you, helps you, is there for you,” Safer says. “It was really a revelation to me, actually, how much that means.”