How to fix our polarized conversations (with Robb Willer)
How to Be a Better Human
TED
4.1 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 1 February 2021
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Is your family, community, or even your country more divided than ever? Today’s guest Robb Willer is here to share some compelling insights on how we might bridge the ideological divide and offer some intuitive advice on ways to be more persuasive. Robb is a professor of sociology, psychology and organizational behavior at Stanford University. He studies the role of morality in politics. His research shows how moral values, typically a source of ideological division, can also be used to bring people together. His political research has investigated various topics, including economic inequality, racial prejudice, masculine overcompensation and Americans' views of climate change. Willer's writing has appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post, including his op-eds "The Secret to Political Persuasion" and "Is the Environment a Moral Cause?” Willer received a Ph.D from Cornell University and a BA from the University of Iowa. Before becoming a professor, he worked as a dishwasher, construction worker, mover, line cook and union organizer.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Ted Audio Collective. |
| 0:02.0 | Audio Collective. |
| 0:04.0 | How do you talk to someone who disagrees with you politically? |
| 0:10.0 | In case you haven't noticed, this is something that a lot of us are not good at. |
| 0:14.0 | Not good at all. |
| 0:16.0 | One of the only things that I feel certain we can all agree on |
| 0:20.0 | is that there are deep political divides all around the world. |
| 0:24.0 | But maybe I'm wrong, maybe you even disagree with me about that. |
| 0:28.0 | Maybe we disagree about how much we disagree. |
| 0:30.0 | I don't know. |
| 0:32.0 | It's a mind field. I'm Chris Duffy and this is how to be a better human. |
| 0:40.0 | Personally, I'm so conflict-averse. The last thing that I want to do is have a political argument with someone. |
| 0:46.0 | And to be clear, there are obviously a lot of people out there whose viewpoints are so extreme, who might fundamentally oppose your very existence, |
| 0:55.6 | that having a discussion with them is dangerous or it's out of the question. |
| 0:59.8 | So let's just take those people off the table for a minute. |
| 1:02.2 | But even when we're now just looking at the people who I can engage with, |
| 1:06.0 | the people who are reasonable, but just happen to disagree with me |
| 1:09.3 | about an issue like where our tax money should be spent. |
| 1:12.4 | Man, I still don't think that I have the tools to have a |
| 1:15.2 | productive conversation with them. It's honestly been a long time since I have talked about a political issue |
| 1:20.5 | with someone who disagrees with me and then walked away feeling like |
| 1:23.8 | wow that was really productive I'm glad we had that talk that is very rarely my interaction and I |
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