I'm Alan Alder, and this is clear and vivid conversations about connecting and communicating.

I like disagreement. I think disagreement is a good thing, right? I don't necessarily want everybody to be civil and reach middle ground or to have the same opinion because then sort of like, what's the point? What's the point of talking to other people if they're going to say the same thing you already know? Right. Most disagreements, people say, okay, I survived that and now I don't want to talk to that person or I don't want to talk to

that person about that issue. And I think a constructed disagreement is any disagreement that

actually makes us more interested, you know, more willing to interact in the future.

That's Julia Minson.

It was wondering why she and her husband got into frequent spats while they were practicing competitive ballroom dancing

that led her to a career in social psychology,

with a focus on how to turn disagreements from being toxic

to being constructive, even enjoyable.

She now heads the constructive disagreement project at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government

and has a new book, How to Disagree Better.

I've really been looking forward to talking with you about this because this is something that

as a nation we're experiencing in the most acute way. I was really struck by your estimate of how

much we disagreed personally during the day. Can you remember what the numbers are?

Yeah, so we did a survey because, you know, we were just curious, like, how much do people disagree?

And it turns out people have, like, over six disagreements so they can sort of, like, readily remember in the course of a week.

And then they, I believe, say something like over three hours of thinking about it, ruminating about it, you know, regretting it.

Regretting it.

Right.

There's just a lot of time thinking, you know.

And to me that doesn't sound super shocking, right?

Like I tend to agonize over my disagreements.

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