Discussing politics with strangers sounds awkward. Michael Kardas’ findings might surprise you.

Friday, September 27, 2024

Media Contact: Hallie Hart | Communications Coordinator | 405-744-1050 | hallie.hart@okstate.edu

How do you react when someone mentions a heavily debated political or religious topic in polite company? 

If you squirm and attempt to change the subject, you’re not alone. Social norms in the United States often tell us to steer clear of these discussions in public, so if a person dares to broach the subject with strangers, there might be a palpable sense of awkwardness as if a glass broke at the dinner table. 

What if, instead, a lively conversation followed? 

Dr. Michael Kardas, an assistant professor in the Department of Management at Oklahoma State University’s Spears School of Business, explored this idea in his recent study, “Misplaced Divides? Discussing Political Disagreement With Strangers Can Be Unexpectedly Positive.” He collaborated with lead author Kristina A. Wald from the University of Pennsylvania and Nicholas Epley from the University of Chicago for their paper, a timely publication during a presidential election year, appearing in Psychological Science. 

The research analyzed political and religious conversations between pairs of strangers, some who share views on a given topic and others who hold opposing views. Results indicated these strangers, especially those who disagreed, left their conversations with more positive feelings than they had anticipated. 

“Part of what is being learned in this research is that when people appear to disagree, even about a contentious issue, there’s often more underlying common ground than people expect,” Kardas said.

The study suggests conversation — a topic Kardas researches extensively — has the power to unearth these unexpected similarities.

Who is Dr. Kardas?

As a management professor, Kardas has unique credentials that allow him to understand human behavior in organizational settings. 

He holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and applied mathematics from Brown University, as well as a doctorate in behavioral science from the University of Chicago. 

Kardas, one of 10 Spears Business Richard W. Poole Research Excellence Award winners this summer, often studies discrepancies between expectations and realities of social interaction. His findings indicate people tend to underestimate the positive outcomes of connecting with others.

“Humans are a highly social species who experience happiness and well-being when we connect with each other and can be much less happy when we are mired in a conflict or when we feel lonely or disconnected from others,” Kardas said. “Yet, many of the choices that people make in day-to-day life are likely to perpetuate the very outcomes that people want to avoid in their social lives.”

What steps did researchers take?

To compare preconceived notions with outcomes of political discussions, Kardas and his team recruited 198 participants to a laboratory in downtown Chicago.

Kardas said they used political views as the sole criterion for selecting participants, striving to draw from opposite ends of the spectrum. This organically led to other demographic differences such as race and gender.

These strangers completed surveys about nine religious and/or political topics, including immigration policy, abortion and separation of church and state. The researchers then divided participants into pairs each assigned to discuss one subject. Before the conversations, some pairs were informed they agreed, others were informed they disagreed and a third category received no information about their partner’s stance.

Based on this information, or lack thereof, participants filled out surveys about expectations for their conversations. They made predictions that included how much they would like their partner, how much their partner would like them, how connected they would feel and how similar they would be. 

Each pair then discussed an assigned topic for 10 minutes with no experimenter in the room. Afterward, participants answered modified versions of the preliminary survey questions, this time reflecting on how they felt during their real conversations. 

Before their conversations, participants in the disagreement condition had significantly less positive expectations than did those in the agreement condition. However, after their discussions, participants reported similarly positive experiences regardless of whether they agreed or disagreed. Experiences exceeded expectations, especially in the disagreement condition. Across the board, few people described their interactions as negative.

 

 

All participants consented to video recordings of their conversations, and Kardas gained deeper insight while watching. The strangers stayed on topic most of the time and rarely showed hostility. 

You might wonder whether discussing an area of disagreement was a positive experience only because the strangers knew they were having the conversation as part of a research study. Although the strangers knew they were participating in an experiment at the time of their conversations, Kardas noted they also had this knowledge at the time they reported their expectations — and still underestimated just how positive their conversations would be.

“Seeing the data reveals that the conversations are positive, but seeing the conversations reveals it all the more vividly,” Kardas said. “These are cooperative conversations between people that don’t know each other but, at least once the conversation has begun, are surprisingly interested in understanding each other’s perspectives, even when the issues themselves seem contentious.”

When are these interactions more likely to be positive?

Kardas’ team conducted another experiment with 216 participants to measure the impact of context on predicted and actual positivity. 

Again, some pairs disagreed while others agreed, but a new factor was at play. Some pairs were assigned to have a dialogue about their topics through a video call, while others recorded monologues about the topics and simply exchanged those videos.

In general, participants in the disagreement condition had relatively negative expectations for both monologues and dialogues. However, after their interactions, those who engaged in back-and-forth dialogues were especially likely to report more positivity than they expected. This indicates interactive, spoken conversations might be surprisingly powerful for building connections across social and political divides —  and could also offer a possible explanation why social media “monologues” often turn nastier than face-to-face discussions.

“Although I haven't studied it, I think that there are several factors in the social media scenario that might lend itself to a less positive interaction,” Kardas said. “If people are not hearing another person's voice because they are typing, if there is the veil of anonymity, how does that impact the positivity of these interactions? I don't know, but anecdotally, they don't seem to be as reliably positive as the face-to-face, sustained conversations between strangers that we documented in these experiments.”

Why does it matter?

In a time of increasing polarization, people often seek to avoid political discussions, perhaps inhibiting their learning and further isolating themselves in bubbles.

With his study, Kardas burst those bubbles.

Any controlled experiment has limitations. Kardas noted his research focused on strangers, and he hasn’t conducted the same experiments with family members or friends. Also, if a participant labeled a topic as off limits, then they would be assigned a different subject to discuss. The researchers did this for ethical reasons, but the real world doesn’t always show this compassion about traumatic or personally sensitive matters. If a conversation descends into hate speech or personal attacks, then it’s far from positive.

However, if people simply disagree as they did in Kardas’ experiment, then they could have surprisingly positive discussions. 

“There might be a lot of ways that disagreements can spiral,” Kardas said. “But we found no evidence of it in these one-time conversations among strangers.”

While the strangers didn’t achieve perfect agreement, many participants’ attitudes did depolarize during their conversations. This highlights how labels do not offer the full picture of a person’s political or religious views. People tend to label themselves on opposite sides of polarizing issues, yet in-depth discussions reveal greater nuance.

Although politics might not be the No. 1 topic of choice among strangers at a business conference, Kardas’ insights into social interaction can — and do — translate to the workplace. For example, if professionals have varying viewpoints on a marketing campaign, an in-depth dialogue could reveal common ground, he suggested.

Perhaps Kardas’ research could also inspire thoughtful conversation during a commute to work. Kardas said he has talked about politics and religion with his Uber drivers, having meaningful discussions regardless of their viewpoints.

“These are heavy topics in part because they matter,” Kardas said. “They’re topics that people care about, and they’re the topics that people might be most interested to learn something about, if only they were having such a conversation with another person.”