Good Conversations Don’t Require Everybody to Agree, Neuroscience Shows

Good conversations do not require everyone to agree, neuroscience show

By Emily Falk Edited by Daisy Yuhas

With each turn of the news cycle, you may wonder how anyone in his good spirit, seeing what they see, could still have different political opinions from yours. I fight myself with some of these feelings. When I speak with people on the other side of a debate, I am often tempted to push them to see things as I do. Or I can stay close to the problems where I know we agree so that we can have a conversation that feels safe and easy.

But there is a third option to navigate these conversations: a curious exploration. My research and my colleagues on the way in which brain activity through people aligns or diverges as they converse suggest that seeking to persuade may not be the most fruitful way to approach a conversation. Instead, an open attitude, allowing us to cross a range of ideas and learn experiences from others, can be both more pleasant and productive.

In recent years, neuroscientists have identified an important phenomenon: brain synchronization, in which brain activation in two or more increases and decreases in similar regions at similar moments. When people ‘brain activity is synchronized, this seems to indicate a common interpretation and understanding of what they are going through. For example, when a person tells a story, and another understands it in the same way, the listener’s brain aligns with the speaker and even begins to anticipate what will come. On the other hand, when people interpret the same story in a clearly different way, perhaps because they have received different general information, their brain activity is less synchronized than people who have the same backgrounds and therefore share the same hypotheses.

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These ideas apply not only to hear stories or watch films, but also to respond to the media and political content. Powerful political speeches can synchronize the brains of people with each other, for example. But people draw their news from politically polarized, which means that they encounter information coverage of different events and receive divergent analyzes of the same events. This shapes their opinions on these problems and creates conflicting background hypotheses when they encounter new political stories. In parallel, studies show a divergence in brain responses when people with different political opinions engage in the news, as if they gave a completely meaning of different stories. In the research initiated by the late Emile Bruneau at the University of Pennsylvania, who died in 2020, and acquired by Nir Jacoby, now in Dartmouth College, our team scanned the brain of participants who identified as democrats or republicans while watching video clips of people talk about policies. We found that the activation of the participants’ brain in social and emotional treatment systems was more aligned with people on their own party than with those of the opposing party.

All this work suggests that our interactions could be more harmonious if we were more synchronized with each other. But evidence of a new technique called magnetic functional hyperscaning by magnetic resonance (IRM), which can follow brain activity during real conversations, complicates this idea. This method is exciting because it allows researchers to observe two brains in action at the same time. With a hyperscanning, we can see how people’s brains react during a real -time conversation. My collaborators and I used it to understand the dynamics of good conversations – exchanges where people have fun, reach a consensus on how to solve difficult problems or help each other in emotional challenges. We have discovered that even if its goal is to simply enjoy the conversation, stick to safe subjects where everyone is on the same wavelength is not the best solution. In a hyperscanning study, our team, including Lily Tso psychologists from Caldwell University, Shannon Burns of Pomona College, Sebastian Speer and Diana Tamir, both at Princeton University, gave friends and instructions for foreigners to get to know each other better. We found that the conversations that participants liked the most were not Those where their brain activity has remained perfectly synchronized all the time.

Foreigners, on average, have gradually increased their neuronal synches during a conversation, while friends generally started with each other. Then something interesting happened: after having started more in synchronization, the models of activity of the brain of friends in the regions which deal with social interactions began to diverge. They covered more subjects and explored a wider land than foreigners and, on average, appreciated more conversations. Foreigners explored fewer subjects and had less pleasant conversations. But some pairs of foreigners have shown a model more like friends. These pairs seemed to use synchrony as a starting point to explore more ideas rather than an end. In turn, these pairs of foreigners, whose brain activity diverged over the discussion, also judged their conversations as more pleasant.

And in the conversations where people had to discuss their differences in opinion, we met an equally intriguing observation. In a work that is still unpublished, our team studied what happened while people discussed political questions, such as the future of higher education and environmental concerns. We led these participants to enter these conversations in two ways: with a compromise objective or a goal to persuade. When people have entered the conversation that seek to compromise, we found that this led to a larger exploration (for example, covering more subjects, mental states and brain diagrams). In the end, this larger exploration has led to a greater consensus on how to solve major societal problems. On the other hand, the people who came to try to persuade their partner explored less in their conversations and finally managed to achieve a shared vision for a path to go.

Recently, I tried to put these results into practice while speaking with a colleague who had different opinions from those and I learned how the events that had taken place in his work and his community had shaped his opinions and decisions. Although the conversation was tiring and did not end with a complete agreement, it renewed our connection with each other and left me open to speak more.

Admittedly, individual conversations in isolation cannot correct the polarization of society. Institutions – including the media, industry and government – play a major role in the training of culture, hypotheses and divisions. However, these institutions are also made up of people, and conversations are a key tool to reinvent the world we want together. Our results suggest a set of possibilities for people who navigate conversations with those of all divisions. We can be more open, curious and exploratory when we speak with others rather than avoiding controversies or starting to push our point of view.

Are you a scientist specializing in neuroscience, cognitive sciences or psychology? And have you read a recent article evaluated by peers that you would like to write for Mind Matters? Please send suggestions to American scientistThe editor of Mind Matters Daisy Yuhas dyuhas@sciam.com.

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