How to talk politics when your body says ‘run’
Researcher Jaime Settle has found that just anticipating a political conversation with someone who disagrees can send your heart rate soaring — sometimes by as much as it rises during a panic attack.
Will this damage a relationship? Will I be judged? Is it safer to hide what I believe? Those calculations happen fast, often pointing you toward the exit. So what does it take to make the riskier choice?
Jaime joins Mónica to explore what to do when your body hits the alarm, why admitting "I'm nervous about this" can lower the temperature, and how talking about the conversation before having it can make honest disagreement a whole lot easier.
Credits
Host & Executive Producer: Mónica Guzmán
Guest: Jaime Settle, Department Chair and Professor of Government at William & Mary
Senior Producer: Tracy Egbas
Producer: Jessica Jones
Associate Producer & Graphic Designer: Fredo Viola
Contributors: April Lawson & Travis Tripodi
Artist in Residence: Gangstagrass
A production of Reclaim Curiosity
Distribution Partners: KUOW, Braver Angels, and Deseret News
Financial Supporter: M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust
Links & References
Jaime Settle — Department Chair and Professor of Government, William & Mary
Taylor Carlson — Associate Professor, Washington University in St. Louis
What Goes Without Saying: Navigating Political Discussion in America by Jaime Settle and Taylor Carlson
Frenemies: How Social Media Polarizes America by Jaime Settle
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Transcript
Please note that this transcript has been lightly edited for readability with the help of AI. Please forgive any slight errors.
[00:00:00]
Jaime Settle:
What we found is that for a lot of people in anticipation of a conversation — not even engaging in it, just the thought that they're going to need to engage in a political discussion — their heart rate can go up almost to the level of what people experience when they're having a panic attack.
Mónica Guzmán:
Hi everyone, and welcome to A Braver Way. I'm your host, Mónica Guzmán, and I don't know if I've been real open with you all about how nerdy I am about things in this space of political bridge-building. There is a fascinating set of research and observations. We're learning so much, frankly, about the human condition, about what makes us up, our psychology, our relationships, from trying to get closer to these challenges that are facing us right now as we're so divided and yet so desperate to be heard and to see the world as it is despite everything that's in our way.
So nerd moment. Last year, I'm at this conference, and I'm watching researchers present their work. And one researcher gets up, my pen starts flying. Like I'm there like a student freaking out. And I actually pulled up my notes from that day. I wrote in the margins, "Brilliant effing researcher," and I underlined it.
I also wrote, "Yes!!," exclamation point, exclamation point, all caps. I quoted some of the things she said, including, "Discussion is a full body experience, and we need to treat it as such."
I have to tell you, the last few years I've been doing this, I started off focused so much on, all right, what do we say to others? What are the skills? Clearly really important. But I've been growing in my sense that there's this inner world that each of us inhabits when we consider having a contentious political disagreement or while we're having it. All kinds of things are going on in our bodies that influence the decisions we make and what we say and don't say and what we avoid and what we engage in.
So this researcher, Jaime Settle, as you can probably guess, is who we're learning from today. She is a political scientist at the College of William & Mary.
I just came off this conversation, and you'll see me get pretty excited, especially with how she helps us explore what we can do to help ourselves and others — the people we care about — come into politically contentious conversations with less anxiety, less fear, with our biology maybe more grounded. So without further ado, here is my conversation with Jaime Settle.
Mónica:
So thank you again, Jaime, for joining.
Jaime:
My pleasure. I think it's so great that you do this, and I know this topic is important to a lot of people, so I'm glad to be able to help.
Mónica:
Yay. Awesome. Yes. So let's talk about what brought you to your work and what motivates you. It sounds like, like many people, you are in a family that has arguments — about sports, religion, geography — you've seen your family handle, but politics not so much. So can you tell us about that?
Jaime:
Yeah. You know, I think many of us research what hits close to home. And in my own experience, my family has political views all over the place, and I think in the past, on other topics of difference, we've always been able to navigate those conversations successfully.
We've been able to ask questions from points of view of genuine curiosity. We've been able to kind of look under the hood and try to understand, moving beyond the labels, and try to understand where other people are coming from. But over the course of my teenage years and into my adulthood, I realized just how much harder that was when it came to political disagreements, that so many of those topics felt off the table if you wanted to have things remain civil — and I think in some ways almost a concern that you don't necessarily want to know what people actually believe because it might change your evaluations of them.
And so for me, I approached this thinking about the amount of anxiety that many people had about politics more generally, and everything we've observed, the amount of contention, the amount of vitriol, and thinking about what does that mean for people in their day in, day out lives when it feels like our political moment is so contentious?
What does it actually feel like when you're trying to make decisions about who to talk with, whether to talk at all, what to say in those conversations? And I wanted to have more of a basis for understanding, generalizing away from my own experience, what that felt like overall.
[00:05:00]
Mónica:
Yeah. I can imagine the trajectory of watching these dynamics sort of freeze your family up and wondering, "What's going on under the hood?" And that's one of the things I admire about your work — it seems to be exactly what you're trying to do: lift the rug and see what is happening behind the scenes, in our bodies, in our hearts.
Can you give us an example, or take us to a moment or a situation with your family where you saw that kind of freeze? Like, what sorts of issues, what sorts of things would get you all to think, "Ugh, not fair"? Or were there particular personalities that seemed to clash?
Jaime:
Yeah. You know, I think there's some sense that some topics are more dangerous waters than others. So certainly topics related to the issues most closely tied to people's moral or religious beliefs. But in my experience, it actually had less to do with the topic and more to do with that moment in a conversation where you realize that you really have had access to fundamentally different kinds of information than someone else — where you realize that even if you've both been paying attention, what you've heard and the conclusions you've arrived at are really miles apart.
And that sense of, you know — do I know what I'm talking about? Do they know what they're talking about? I think maybe they're using different facts, but do I have the facts that support my own point of view? And then in some topics, it's not the facts that even matter.
So if you're moving beyond that, trying to understand why someone gets to those opinions — and I think that came up a lot. It's changed over time, where people are getting their information, the quality of the information that people have access to. People still report that face-to-face conversations are a really important source of information for them, especially as the rest of our information environment has become more polluted, so to speak.
Mónica:
That's a relief, actually, that people are still valuing in-person interaction for gleaning information. I'm just relieved to hear that.
Jaime:
Yes. And I think we would like to think that we have a healthy media environment where people can trust the information they encounter, but I think that people really do rely on their friends and family for a lot of information.
Mónica:
Yeah, and it certainly makes sense why.
So Jaime, let's go back under the hood. The work that you did that really got me to lean forward and pay attention at the conference where I first met you was on psychophysiology, which is a bit of a mouthful. So first can you just quickly tell us what in the world that is, and then we'll dig into some of your research and what you found?
Jaime:
Yeah. So psychophysiology is thinking about the physical, the physiological manifestation of what's going on in our brains. It's a specialized field of psychology that has designed a variety of different measurement techniques to try to capture some of these processes where our bodies are actually revealing something about the emotional experience that we're having.
I, in the book, am particularly interested in people's heart rates and thinking about whether or not people's heart rates change in response to the kinds of conversations that they're having. But there are a whole variety of different kinds of measurements that true psychophysiologists use to try to get a handle on what it is that people are experiencing.
[00:10:00]
Mónica:
Right. So heart rates. What did you learn about what happens to our heart rates when we anticipate a political conversation?
Jaime:
Yeah. So essentially what we found is that for a lot of people in anticipation of a conversation — not even engaging in it, just the thought that they're going to need to engage in a political discussion — their heart rate can go up almost to the level of what people experience when they're having a panic attack.
So other research has found that when people are having a panic attack, their heart rate is elevated eight to 20 beats per minute above what their baseline is. And for about half of the subjects in our study, they experienced an increase in their heart rate of that same magnitude when they found out that they were not only going to need to talk about politics, but needing to talk about politics with someone whose viewpoints were different.
And so when you think about that — when you are that activated, when your heart is racing — that really affects your ability to think clearly, and it really changes the cognitive experience you have in a conversation.
Mónica:
Yes, absolutely. And just to distinguish — this was when you're anticipating a political conversation where folks might disagree. If it was apolitical conversations, not a thing. But it was anticipating the political conversation.
Jaime:
Yes, and this is compared — we thought, "Well, maybe this is just about politics." Politics is so contentious. Maybe if we just show people videos of a protest or where there's clashing, maybe that will do it too. And it is something about the anticipation of that interpersonal interaction.
So it's not just contention. It's not just people yelling at each other. We actually showed — do you remember the Jerry Springer Show from back in the '90s?
Mónica:
Oh yeah.
Jaime:
We actually showed people clips from that, just to understand more about this baseline, and it is something in particular about knowing that you yourself are going to have to engage in that kind of conversation. It's not just the exposure to disagreement itself.
Mónica:
Right. So you might have skin in the game. You used really interesting language earlier — you said that these psychophysiological things like heart rates end up revealing something that's going on under the hood about your emotional reality, about what's going on when you make these decisions. So what is it revealing? Because it sounds like it's not always necessarily conscious.
Jaime:
Right. So one really important point is that there's not a perfect mapping between an increase in heart rate and a discrete emotion. Your heart rate could be increasing because you're excited. We know some people love politics and love that sort of cut and thrust of going back and forth, and so for them, the heart rate increase might not be a negative.
Whereas heart rate increases can also be associated with anxiety, or even anger. So it's not telling us which emotion is being activated — just that this is a very emotionally activating experience for people. Now, we can map, and we asked people to tell us about their emotional experience, and we know that the heart rate does tend to increase more among people who are having more of the kind of negative, anxiety-related kinds of experiences.
Mónica:
So you tracked that separately — how anxious people tended to be.
Jaime:
Yes, exactly. But the importance of the physiological measurement — this was not just people telling us. This was their bodies actually showing us that, whatever emotion they were feeling, it went along with this physiological change.
Mónica:
That's fascinating. So why did you choose to measure the body's reaction to the anticipation of the discussion rather than the discussion itself?
Jaime:
Well, we did both. I have data from both types of studies. We did actually do a second study. But we started with the anticipation because we don't think of a political discussion as a single decision. It's not just a yes or no on participating. We actually think of it as a series of decisions.
We think of it as a cycle that people go through where they're making a number of different decisions at every stage. And because of the way that most social scientists conduct studies, we're measuring what happens. But my co-author, Taylor Carlson, and I also wanted to know what are the conversations that don't happen. What are the conversations that fail to materialize?
[00:15:00]
Jaime:
And so we wanted to back up a step. Before we focused on the discussions that do happen, we wanted to understand the lead-up to that. And for us, that was a really important way to think about what happens in people's brains when they make the decision to opt out of a conversation, to try to avoid getting entangled with someone and talking about politics.
And then once it's clear that they are going to be engaging in a political discussion, what does that lead-up feel like? What's going on in people's heads in the build-up to that? So long before we even think about what is it that people say or what does disagreement look like, we wanted to get that ramp up where people are bringing in their expectations and maybe stereotypes and assumptions they have. How does that affect their decision-making in advance of a conversation?
Mónica:
Right. And I'm really curious to understand how instrumental all this under-the-hood emotional priming — that we don't necessarily cognitively call up, it just happens — how much that ends up determining the kinds of conditions that are going to make a conversation successful or unsuccessful, or whether we're even going to follow necessarily what we might say are our desires.
"I really wanted to talk to that person, but I don't know, I froze up." So what are we to make of this? Does this end up taking away our agency? Can we try to notice it more?
Jaime:
Yeah, that's a really interesting question. So I think the biggest impact is on the kinds of conversations that actually emerge compared to the kinds of conversations that could have been. What we find is that there are certain kinds of conversations that people just pick the off-ramp for — they don't even allow to happen. And so we're missing out on a lot of conversations with disagreeable others or with people whose knowledge levels are different than our own.
And I think in terms of the assumptions maybe we bring with us, that sets us up to be a bit on the defense in a conversation where you are so much trying to game out what someone might be thinking or what they're about to say based on the assumptions you have about them. It can be very difficult to really actively listen and not assume that you know where that person is coming from based on the detection you've made about what their political views could be.
Mónica:
So the term "psychological safety" — how is that related here? Is psychological safety the lack of any trepidation, any under-the-hood stirring up that's going to put you in a place that you might not even be conscious you're in?
Jaime:
I think that's fair. We don't think of it in terms of safety per se, but we think about it in terms of threat to our psychological goals. And so when we feel that our goals are threatened — whether that's our desire to affirm our own identities or affiliate with others in some way — when those goals feel threatened, we're going to change our behavior to reduce the threat to those goals.
And I think those are kind of two sides of the same coin, right? It's getting yourself to a place where you feel like you are well-equipped to allow yourself to feel a little bit uncomfortable. But I think there is something particular about political disagreement that really can be disarming and activate many of these — be threatening to many of these goals at once.
Mónica:
Yeah, for sure. And I want to get to the costs and how we go through a process of deciding and determining all these things. But first, I hear a lot of people say things like, "Listen to your body. Trust those things." So how trustworthy are these signals?
Can we just kind of sit back and go, "Well, if my heart rate went up and my body decided it doesn't want that conversation, I should just say, 'You know what? That was the right call'"? What would you say to that?
[00:20:00]
Jaime:
So I would encourage people to slow down for a second and make a choice about whether they want to override that. Our bodies give us all sorts of signals all the time that we choose to override. We are sort of evolved for one sort of threats and dangers, and we live in a very different world.
And our bodies can still respond in many of those same fight-or-flight ways, but we have to make the decision about whether or not that cue is sending us a signal that we really need to pay attention to. I think the reason it can be useful is that if you are having that strong, that adverse a reaction to the idea of talking about politics, it's a good reminder to stop and say, "Okay, what are my goals here? What am I trying to accomplish? What might the other person be experiencing or perceiving right now?"
And so as a marker to slow down and acknowledge the idea that there could be some tension, that there could be something uncomfortable, I think it's a great signal from your body to listen to. But getting that signal and just saying, "Oh, I'm out — my body doesn't want to do this, I'm not going to do it" — I think that is the wrong takeaway message.
Mónica:
Right. It's maybe too abrupt. Maybe we have a little more agency than that. And you mentioned we override our body's signals all the time. Do you have an example in mind of a common way that we do that?
Jaime:
Well, I should be clear, I'm not a psychologist — I'm a political scientist here. But thinking about it in terms of other phobias that people might have — I was on a plane yesterday, and there are people who have these really strong reactions to getting on a plane, but they really want to go travel to see their family or friends. They really need to take that work trip. And they say, "I understand I'm having this reaction, but I want to be doing this thing."
I think that's very common. And another way — our general stress response. Many of us lead very busy lives juggling major responsibilities at work with family and at home. And you have that wave of stress, and then you have the adaptive way of saying, "Nope, I've got this. I'm going to take it down, and I'm going to put things back in perspective." So I think we are equipped with those skills. It's just changing the frame a little bit to think that we need to apply some of those skills to political discussion.
Mónica:
That's right. So in this case, what I'm hearing is: all right, these are the body's signals, and if we can notice them, then we can, like you said, stop and make a choice. Do we want to override? Or do we realize, you know what, conditions are not great, I don't think I'm going to get what I want when I'm in this state, so let me avoid and maybe come back another time?
Jaime:
Right. And I think also as a reminder that your discussion partner or the people in the group you're talking with may be having their own version of this. They may not be, but as a reminder that you're not alone — that you're entering a social interaction where everyone's bringing their own background and baggage. Just as a way of facilitating that empathy: think about not only why does this other person believe what they do, but what might they be experiencing right now in this moment?
Mónica:
That is such a good reminder. I think a lot of people think, "I'm the only one feeling crazy right now," but that's almost never true. It's nervous systems meet nervous systems. None of us are robots with nothing but objective discernment about every single option in front of us.
Well, let's move then to after you did this psychophysiology research. You dove into the hidden calculations. You said we make lots of decisions, and again, some of them seem to happen without our foremost cognitive mind super consciously on those decisions. They happen very, very quickly. And you've put them into a framework called the 4D framework. Do you want to walk us through what the four Ds are?
[00:25:00]
Jaime:
Yeah. So the 4D framework is meant to help us think about the process of discussion as a cycle. And people go through this again and again and again. So the first step is what we call detection. It is at the moment that a political discussion could emerge — what is it that people are detecting about the people in that discussion, the context in which it's happening? What are they trying to glean? How are they trying to get their footing in a conversation? All this sleuthing that people do to try to understand what other people may be thinking.
The second D is decision. This is the moment where you actually decide, are you going to follow the conversation? Are you going to let it emerge, or are you going to try to take an off-ramp? Are you going to try to steer it somewhere else? And we have a variety of different techniques available to us — we all know times when we've really found ways to just change the subject if we don't want a particular conversation to happen.
If a conversation does happen — if both people have decided they want to have it — then the third D is the discussion itself. What do people choose to say? Do you say what you actually believe, or, for reasons related to your desire to keep the peace or to build bonds or demonstrate your knowledge or reveal your lack of knowledge, what is it that you choose to say? Do you censor what you're saying or conform to the group's opinion a little bit?
And then finally, the fourth D is determination. Based on how that conversation went, what do you take away from that? How have you updated your understanding of people who may disagree with you? How do you update your understanding of yourself as the kind of person who does or does not engage in a political discussion? And that's kind of updating your head space so that the next time an opportunity presents itself — and you're back at that detection stage — what happened to you last time is very much feeding into the decision process you'll engage in the next time.
Mónica:
Right. So it's a learning model. I love that you use that language, "update." You're always updating your models, just as a human, walking around in a world and trying to understand it as best as you can so that you know how to navigate it. That's fascinating.
I have so many places I want to go from here, and maybe the first is zooming in on detection. This is fascinating to me because we are trying to make guesses about other people and about our relationship to them, to kind of figure out the probabilistic landscape of what we may or may not wade into. We make a lot of assumptions. And I saw somewhere in your research that people believe they can infer other people's politics just by looking. Can you tell us about that?
Jaime:
Yeah. So this was a question that political scientists had made kind of assumptions about but never really probed — like, how is it that people go about trying to figure out other people's viewpoints? So we approached it from a very open-minded perspective, and the first thing we did is just ask people. On a survey, we had an open-ended question and said, "If you were trying to figure out what someone's political views were — you know, without directly asking them — how would you go about doing it?"
And some people said, "I wouldn't do that." About a quarter of the sample essentially said, "That's inappropriate. I wouldn't do that."
Mónica:
That's so responsible of you, quarter of people.
Jaime:
So yes, very civically minded. And then there were some — another large portion — that said, "I would just ask them. Why would I beat around the bush? I would just ask them directly."
But the vast majority of the people in the sample gave us answers that revealed any number of techniques. Some were about the way that people present — and this could be based on known patterns of association based on gender or race or class, things the media often picks up on in terms of mapping people's identities to their political views. And it turns out the public is not unaware of those things.
So some of this was the physical presentation. Some of this had to do with perceptions people had about differences in how Democrats and Republicans speak, or the kinds of music they listen to, or the books they choose to read, or the television shows they want to watch — these kind of revealed cultural preferences or differences in personality.
[00:30:00]
Jaime:
Some people said they would try to get at it by talking about something that was not politics per se, but that was related enough where if you know what they think on that topic, it could be a good clue about what they believe on that. Religiosity is a big one here — across many different faiths, people who are the most religious often tend to vote more politically conservative.
So people are sleuths. And what we found that was really interesting is that the people who told us they would only talk about politics if they knew what the other person's political viewpoints were ahead of time — they were the people who had the most refined skills in terms of learning how to make those guesses. They were more confident they knew how to guess other people's political views, and they also gave us more robust answers about how they would.
Mónica:
So I want to ask a question right there — they were more confident, but were they right?
Jaime:
That we didn't test, but my guess is that they were probably a little bit more accurate — but they were overestimating their ability to make these detections. On social media, we do know that people make assumptions about other people's political views based on the content that they post, but that people overestimate the extremity of other people's political views based on what they post.
Mónica:
That's for sure. And given that — we're talking about this in the context of detection, people deciding whether the conditions are right for coming in or out of a conversation — if they misjudge someone else's politics, therefore they misjudge maybe some threat that they might feel, then they might be avoiding a conversation that could have been really constructive.
Jaime:
Exactly. Another study we did was as simple as the cue of somebody's name — what signal do our names send about what our political views are? And we don't — for the most part, we don't pick our names. We're stuck with what our parents gave us. For the record, Mom and Dad, I love my name. But the fact that so many Americans have become these kind of amateur political scientists, trying to map these patterns, really means that we may be shutting the door on conversations that could have been really healthy and productive — but we just guessed wrong. We just read the cues wrong and led ourselves astray.
Mónica:
Well, let's come back to the body. The body's signals have evolved to try to protect us, right? It's always out of a sense that we want to keep threat at bay. So here's all of these sensations that are going to set you up or not for something coming up, or get you to try to move away.
So given all of that, how then do we get to the point where we can sort of trust what we're detecting? I'm thinking about the people in your study who just said, "Well, I would ask. I would just ask what their politics are." But there are costs to direct engagement too. A lot of this work is based on the social costs that we perceive, and so these micro decisions that we're making in these four phases are all ultimately about trying to evaluate the cost-benefit analysis, the risk profile. So what are these costs that have become so important to us to try to mitigate?
[00:35:00]
Jaime:
Yeah. So I think the big ones — and we found the most traction in terms of our desire to affiliate. Essentially, the social costs and the worries we have about our relationships to people based on having the political conversation or revealing what it is that we actually believe.
I think our politics have become so polarized that people realize the stakes are much higher, and that revealing what you believe about politics can signal, for better or worse, a lot of other differences that you might have with people. And so the people who were most concerned about the cost to their social relationships — that the friendship would disintegrate, or that the closeness you feel with your sister might come under threat if you revealed your differences in politics — those were the people who had the most suboptimal behaviors. They were the people who opted out of the conversations. They were the people who didn't reveal what they actually believed.
And for them, the preservation of the social relationship was much more important than the civic benefits of engaging in the political conversation. I think a second, real close runner-up there is what we think of in terms of the affirmation goals that people have — this is your sense of self and your self-identity. And because of the polarization, because of the politicization of so much of our culture, if you feel that your politics are under attack, you may feel that many other aspects of your identity are under attack as well. And so it can be very challenging to be willing to reveal those things or open up that side of yourself to disagreement or criticism or pushback from other people, because you may just not be ready to change all of those pieces of who you are.
And I think over the course of my lifetime, the stakes just feel really different than they did in the past.
Mónica:
They absolutely do. So we talked about, sometimes in the anticipation of a conversation, you're detecting and you may misattribute something, and you may not engage in a conversation that would have been constructive. But another possibility that you've just said is you may wade into the conversation but not be all that honest, because you don't think that your true opinion is going to be worth sharing because it might threaten something you value more.
And I bet listeners are going, "Oh yeah, I know that feeling." I was in a conversation just in the last couple of days where I think I did that — I held back on the truth of things because there's a kind of harmony that I need to keep. And all of these things sound like healthy tendencies. So how do we evaluate when these desires and needs to protect ourselves might be costing us in another way? Because when you're not honest and when you don't show yourself — that could cost you in your relationships down the road, because now your friend doesn't even know you.
There could be all kinds of things. But in my work, I talk to a lot of people who feel, "Well, gosh, I've tried to listen and I've tried to be really kind, but now I feel like I'm shut out and I can't talk about it. It feels so dangerous that now I'm trapped in my own little bubble."
Jaime:
Yeah. For me, how I think about it: first, we are all paying this individual cost, and we're bearing this cost to our sense of selves, to our relationships. And when we choose to opt out, the problem is we're missing this collective benefit.
It is really easier for each of us to opt out than to do the hard thing of participating. But what is that collective benefit that we're missing? I think about it in a few ways. From the point of view of political philosophy, there are all sorts of civic, big-picture benefits — on principle, we should be talking with each other more.
But I think about it a little more concretely. One: I think this actually contributes to increased stereotyping, because the people who are probably most likely to break those stereotypes for us may be the ones most likely to silence themselves. And so we're missing out on all these chances to learn that the association we have between, say, people who drive big pickup trucks and voting Republican isn't all that true. There are all sorts of people across the political spectrum who drive pickup trucks. But we're missing out on the chance to actively break the stereotypes among the people we know.
[00:40:00]
Jaime:
I think the other thing we're missing out on is this: it's very easy — one of the cognitive fallacies — for us to imagine that the people in our out group are all the same. It's called the out-group homogeneity effect. In my in group, oh, we're all different. We all have a ton of variety in what we believe, and there's so much nuance on my side. But those other people in that group — they all believe the same things. And when you don't get exposure to the range of opinions among people in your out group, you very easily make assumptions that they all believe something when in fact there may be a range and a mix of opinions.
And I think it's a lot easier for us to learn those lessons anecdotally, observe them, and then generalize up, as opposed to someone just telling us, "Well, surveys tell us there's a huge range of opinions among Democrats, or there's a huge range of opinions among Republicans." So to me, that's what we miss — we really miss the chance to learn from the full spectrum of viewpoints and perspectives in our own lives.
Mónica:
That's right. Which to me translates into: we miss reality. There's a part of reality that you see better when you're able to connect across difference, even when it's risky. And of course, sometimes — I'm sure you'd agree — sometimes whether it's the signals in your body or your own estimation of the cost-benefit analysis, it's a good decision not to engage in that conversation.
But it does seem to me, in the research that I see, that we are overestimating the threat in a lot of cases and keeping ourselves out probably more than we are engaging too much. What do you think? Do we know that? Do we have a sense?
Jaime:
I think so. I think it's important to keep in mind the full gamut of conversations that could emerge. Another important part of our book is really this focus on conversations that happen almost incidentally, among more casual ties — not your closest friends, not your family, just the people you tend to interact with day in and day out.
I think people are smart to be mindful and to think a bit. There are certain professional relationships and social ties that we really do need to preserve, and if talking politics is going to threaten those, then I understand. But I think people could compensate by actively pursuing more conversations where there's less social threat or consequence.
Now, I acknowledge that this happens more to me — I'm a political scientist — but I think of the number of times on an airplane or an Uber ride or any of these just sort of low-stakes environments where politics maybe creeps its way into the conversation. What's the harm in getting into a political disagreement with your Uber driver? You might learn something. It's probably someone whose life is very different than your own. And so I think taking more risk when you have the opportunity in those lower-stakes situations could compensate for the times you're not able to because you really recognize that the consequences are just too high.
Mónica:
I absolutely love that. I think that is so spot on. I talk to folks who are all over the map on the number of political issues that would really emotionally activate them and which issues feel like red lines to them versus not, and it just seems true that to a person, each one of us has an edge that we can push.
[00:45:00]
Mónica:
Each one of us has an edge that we can meet with capacity to meet it — meaning our bodies would not freak out too much. Maybe there'd be a bit, but not so much. And so if we look for those edges and push those edges, that's enough.
You were talking about the collective benefit. We each estimate our individual costs, and it always seems safer to just opt out if there's going to be any risk. But we have to keep in mind — I love the way you put this — there's a collective benefit that we're leaving on the table if we all do that too much. So your solution seems really elegant to me: okay, you can't go to where it's really hot, you can't jump into the fire. Look for the place where it's just warm. It's just a little bit on the edge. Everyone ought to be able to find that.
Jaime:
And it can build up those skills as well. When you're practicing in these lower-stakes environments, it gives you a chance to see how your body's responding, see what it feels like to override that response. And we talked earlier about the discussion as a cycle. If you can have one of those discussions that does change your preconceptions a little bit or bolsters your confidence that you are able to have it — that can help build up courage so that your edge is pushing a little warmer and warmer and warmer, until you feel more comfortable doing this.
Mónica:
Yeah. You just said that key word: build up courage. That's what so many of us want. We want the courage to be honest even when it's uncomfortable, so that we can show up. We want the courage to be able to stand up for ourselves and maybe even listen to something that's really hard and learn something that we feel a little threatened by.
I think a lot of us want the courage to be able to see the world as it is, even when it's so divided and so scary. So that's a perfect segue. I have a couple of situations for you, and I'd love for you to take what you've gleaned from this research into these situations.
So on the one hand, let's say there's a listener who finds themselves getting these body signals and them feeling pretty strong, but at the same time they have this huge desire to push past them. But they're afraid that those signals, that raised heart rate, is just putting them in a situation where that capacity just isn't there, but the desire is.
"I want to be able to talk to my uncle, but I just freeze." What, if anything, is the direction to take there? What is the thing to look at? What is the thing to try?
Jaime:
Yeah. So the first thing — we talked a bit about this idea of using your own signals to give you a sense for what other people might be experiencing. But I think you can flip that and share. If the other person in the conversation — if you're doing a pretty good job masking your racing heart and sweaty palms — they may not know. But I think everyone is receptive to the idea. How much more inviting is a conversation when someone says, "I really like to talk with you. I just want you to know this is tough. I'm a little nervous. My heart's racing a little bit." And there's no shame in sharing what it is that you're experiencing.
It can help bring a shared goal to a conversation. And there's other work in psychology and political science that says conversations and relationships can be more fruitful — and there's more to be gained when you communicate across lines of difference — if there's a shared goal that people are pursuing.
And so you can almost use your physiological activation or nerves to your advantage, to try to help the other person understand. And most people — especially, like you said, in the situation of your uncle — if that person cares about you, hearing that you want to engage with them, they're going to want to do what they can to meet you halfway. And just knowing that you're having this experience may change the way they approach that conversation.
Mónica:
I love that. Yeah, I mean, usually when somebody tells me, "Hey, I need to talk to you about something, but it's really hard," I immediately soften. If it's somebody I care about, I soften. I think to myself, "Am I the person that they need me to be right now? How can I be the person they need me to be right now?"
And something tells me that just going through that in a millisecond probably sets you up to receive them better.
Jaime:
Yes, because what you even just did on camera. Your physiology changes. Whereas before you might have been a little more in your face, you relax a little bit. You probably soften your voice a little bit. You're a little more measured in what you have to say.
[00:50:00]
Jaime:
And so this is, again, thinking about it — we have really good conversational skills from other parts of our life. We're just not used to thinking about needing to transport those into the realm of a political conversation.
Mónica:
Or to share them with someone that we're a little afraid to talk to. That seems so counterintuitive.
Well, it kind of brings me back — you used the word "masking." I think we all probably have the experience of we're freaking out, but we don't want to let anybody know. What is the cost we're afraid of paying if people know? Why is masking such an automatic reaction?
Jaime:
Yeah. I think one thing is we know that there's a strong norm or expectation in the US — people are supposed to be politically knowledgeable. You're supposed to vote, you're supposed to be engaged. Even people who don't engage in those activities often report that they do, because of this idea of the civic norm of doing so. And so I think there's a sense that we're supposed to be comfortable having political conversations. We're supposed to be able to defend our points of view well with accurate information, and we're supposed to be so good at explaining them that we could persuade other people to adopt our viewpoints.
And so I think that when we find ourselves in a moment where we're not feeling equipped to live up to that ideal of the engaged citizen, we put on that mask — to try to pretend that we are and buy ourselves a little bit of time. And most people, in reality, certainly not every moment of every day feel like they're bringing their A game to have a high-quality political conversation. But somehow we assume that other people are more prepared to do so when we meet them in that moment.
Mónica:
The collective illusion. And I suppose we think it makes us all, at least seemingly, upright. But maybe it makes us create this norm that keeps us all from being a little more honest about our emotional realities and trusting other people with that.
Because when you share it — when you say, "I'm actually nervous about this" — it empowers the other person to help improve the conditions. So they soften and then you soften.
Jaime:
Yeah, exactly. And I think the other thing we have to keep in mind — one of the consequences of polarization and the high rates of partisanship, and this I think is most true for people who really are passionate about politics and really do care — you can feel like you're becoming the exemplar or the representative for the political identities that you feel attached to. And so now there's this added pressure of, what is this other person going to think? Are they going to judge everyone who believes what I believe, or everyone who presents as I present?
And that is a lot of social pressure to put on yourself. And I think there are techniques you can build into a conversation to make sure — and we hear people do this all the time — where you say, "I don't think everyone thinks about it this way, but here's what I think." Or, "Just because I tend to vote for Republicans doesn't mean that all Republicans do that." Sort of breaking apart and helping people understand that you are not speaking for every person who shares the identities that you do.
Mónica:
That's right. So you're almost kind of meta-gaming it a little bit, and you're ensuring that as the other person updates their models, they're updating it with a little more precision, at least according to your perspective.
So in other words, there's so much you can verbalize — and it's not just where you are emotionally, to see if there can be some guidance or some softening. But you can also verbalize these other pieces. "By the way, I don't want you to get the wrong idea. By the way, just a reminder, this is just me." And that really does help a lot.
So here's the second situation. If we think of a listener who says, "There's somebody that I wish I could talk to, but I think they get really emotionally activated when they consider talking to me. And so I don't feel heard by them. I would like to hear them. But they're — ugh. What could I do to improve the conditions for that person, respectfully, lovingly? How can I make it so that people are not afraid to talk to me?"
[00:55:00]
Jaime:
Good on that listener, right? To think through conversation in that way and want to take on the role of the caretaker and the guardian of the conversation in order to bring on other people.
So I think the first thing is trying to understand what is it that is feeling most threatening to that person, or what do they see as the stakes of the conversation? And that can be really tough to suss out. I'm not even sure sometimes people are able to articulate it directly when asked. But if you can have a conversation about the conversation first — think about what is it that is — are we seeing the stakes of this conversation in the same way? Are there particular patterns of communication that could be threatening to one of us and not the other?
And there's so much individuality in terms of how we experience this. One of the parts of the book is that we look at other psychological traits that could contribute to how people experience conversation. Some people are really conflict-avoidant — they like social interaction, but they just don't want conflict. For other people, it may be a social anxiety story. It may be that it's nothing about politics; they just find some intense conversations more difficult.
And so if you can get a sense for the individual you care about — what is it that is threatening? And maybe for them, it's not the substance, it's the style. Maybe you don't realize it, but you tend to raise your voice and get more animated. And that's what's off-putting to the person. It's not the connection, it's not revealing the views — it's about how that conversation might —
Mónica:
Right, it might not even be the content. So we make assumptions about where the threat is.
I love this idea of having a conversation about the conversation, because it is difficult to suss out. You can't read their minds. You might think you can. You might think you already know, but do you? Can you check those assumptions? Can you go up and ask?
And it seems to me like it ought to be possible to ask in a way that sculpts out what's threatening. "I don't want to talk about this now, trust me. I'm just curious about what is difficult about these kinds of topics for you, just because I want to understand. And I wonder if someday maybe we can engage a little bit more on it."
I've found that folks are really struggling right now because people close to them are putting up some hard boundaries about political conversations, and a lot of times those hard boundaries are not understood by the person. They come as a shock even. "You don't want to talk about politics? Why? I thought we were having fun."
Jaime:
Yeah. Yes.
Mónica:
"Really? I thought we really exchanged something really valuable." But the inner world of another person is not that obvious. So this idea of, if possible, try to bring that inner world out — but that means you have to make a container of trust, that you're not going to take these things people share with you that are so internal and then use them against them.
Jaime:
Yes, exactly. And I think also thinking about what baggage is this person bringing with them to the conversation? It may have nothing to do with you. It may have nothing to do with your previous interactions. It's just they've had enough bad interactions recently that they've decided to take a hiatus for themselves.
And so I think part of the problem may also be the leap to an assumption that it has to do with you or your conversations with them, as opposed to how this person is trying to navigate the political environment more broadly.
Mónica:
Preach. That's such a good point, because it's so easy for the person on the other side of the boundary to internalize it and think it's my fault, it's something I'm doing — and it might be. And to your other earlier point, it might also be a style thing. I like to tell people there's two people to a dynamic.
Jaime:
Yeah. Yes.
Mónica:
"Well, these conversations are always hard because they interrupt." It's like, well, what do you do? There are so many reasons. But what a beautiful point that it's a pretty anxiety-inducing world out there right now, and people have to figure themselves out. And sometimes we just need to kind of accept it and give people space and not try to fight it too hard.
So a couple other questions, just to wind us down a little bit. Your first book, "Frenemies," was about social media interactions, so you've gone into the digital and into the in-person. Where do you think the bigger challenge lies? Given everything we've talked about under-the-hood stuff, social media and in-person are very different contexts. What do we need to know about that?
[01:00:00]
Jaime:
I think that it is easier to opt out of social media than it is to opt out of in-person interactions. And so I think for people who have had negative experiences on social media — whether related to politics or not — there are clear ways to distance yourself from those kinds of interactions, whether it's no longer using a platform, or changing your settings, or whatever the case may be. Whereas that's not really an option for most in-person situations. They're your family. They're your boss, whatever it may be.
And so I think that inability to fully opt out is something — it's so integral to human social relations. But that means I think it's the more persistent one that's going to be difficult to navigate.
The upside though is the human connection you can have face-to-face, that embodied connection of being able to read someone else's body language or capture those micro expressions on their faces. We have much better skill development and training for interpersonal face-to-face interaction than we do on social media. And so, you know, 20, 25 years ago there was so much optimism that online connections or social media connections were really going to help bring people together with different points of view and allow for more constructive exchange. And I think we've seen that that's unlikely for a variety of reasons.
And so I actually think that people — the negative experiences they've had on social media are making them more inclined to want to come back to face-to-face interactions.
Jaime:
And they're hungry for it in a way that I think we didn't necessarily realize we needed or wanted at the heyday of social media.
Mónica:
Absolutely. Yes. And I love what you said about the skills development and training just isn't there on social media. You know, it's still relatively new, and we don't often think of it that way — that we just don't have as many tools. The facial expressions, the tone of voice, all of these things.
And when you can bring more of those tools to bear, you may have a higher probability of success. I'll ask you this, though, and it's totally a question of curiosity — is it the case that in person, your body may overreact more easily than online because your bodies aren't even in the same room? Or is that not true at all because our minds are still perceiving threat from a couple of words on a screen?
Is there any difference in the psychophysiology?
Jaime:
Yeah. I am sure someone has tested this — I have not. My instinct tells me that face-to-face interaction is going to be more activating. Just like the study I did conduct found that even the idea of engaging face-to-face was more activating than watching other people engage in conflict. So my gut tells me that when you are called upon to interact in a face-to-face scenario.
That being said, social media platforms are constantly changing and evolving. But we've all had apprehension — back in the days of Facebook, you post something, someone posts a comment, and you have to make that decision. I always felt physiologically activated in that moment. Or in a text conversation, the three dots pop up, and you're waiting, thinking, "Did they interpret what I said correctly? Are we —" You can feel it.
[01:05:00]
Jaime:
So I do think it plays a role in digital communication. But I think that because we have more control over the situation and we're not being viewed in the moment of our decisions about how to engage, a little bit of the pressure may be off in social media. But that could also be why people behave so poorly on social media — because they're not getting the cues about how what they're saying is being interpreted.
Mónica:
That is a beautiful point. I had not thought of it that way. That's right. Because our body signals are also regulating us and moderating us to the harmony of whoever we're with — and that disappears when we're online.
Jaime:
Yes. Yes.
Mónica:
So your psychophysiological studies were done some time ago, and I've seen a lot of research about political anxiety skyrocketing since then. If you were to do it again in this political era, what do you think you'd find?
Jaime:
I think some things would replicate and transport cleanly, and others would not. So one of the things we haven't talked about yet today is that in the physiological study where we actually had people talk about politics, we recorded this conversation and we measured how they talked about their own political identities.
And I think the finding we had then — which was that people kind of hedge their identities. They maybe told us on a survey that they were a strong Democrat, but now when they're in this conversation, they present themselves as not so much of a partisan. And there was more hedging going on. I think some of that has changed a bit. I think we've entrenched ourselves a bit more.
I think there's a lot of people who are also just defining themselves in terms of what they are not. So it may not even be "this is where I am," but "I want to make clear that I'm a Republican, but I don't support Donald Trump." Or, "I'm a Democrat, but I would never vote for Mumdani," or whatever it may be.
So I'm curious to see how that held up. But my read is that things are so much harder than they were even 10 years ago. When Taylor and I published this book, we looked back — we started collecting data in 2012, 2013. And the things we were using in our studies and experiments as the contention of politics, by the time we were writing up the book in 2020, '21, that seemed like a cakewalk. It was hard to imagine that that's even what we were disagreeing about back then.
And so I think one of the big differences is that many Americans right now perceive that democracy is at stake. And they mean different things by that. But it no longer seems to be just about policies. It seems to be about the health and integrity of the system.
Mónica:
Of the whole thing holding us together. Absolutely. Yeah. And there's a subcurrent of anxiety that you can feel rising around that, and people aren't really sure what to make of that, how to bring that into their lives or not, what they should do.
So here's the hope question. I feel like in this line of work, you always have to ask the hope question. Given what you do, what you just said about how things have changed, but also the unique insights you have and some of the constructive strategies that you've brought up — how do you feel about our ability to get some of that collective benefit, fight back the stereotypes, be able to represent ourselves honestly, despite all the emotionally activating politics going on out there? What's your read?
Jaime:
So I always point to my students as the source of hope for me. If you think about what today's teenagers and college students — the under-25 set broadly — their experience in the political world has been so turbulent. Just think about what they were socialized to as they came of age and when they were casting their first votes.
But yet, somehow so many of them still want to be engaged with politics, are thinking about careers where they can go make a difference, are curious about other people around them, perceive ways that things could be better. And that to me is really inspiring — that even when what you have seen your entire life is politics marked by contention and divisiveness and toxicity in so many ways, they still see the possibility for something better. That gives me hope. That they still want our country to be stronger and better and want to step up to make a difference themselves. So on the days that I find my research agenda too depressing, that's what I focus on — my students keep me grounded.
Mónica:
I love that. Yeah, there's always renewal on the horizon. There's always the possibility — and even in our own lives, in some of the ways that you helped us see today.
So Jaime, thank you so much for the work you do, and the beautiful way you have of explaining what it all means. This was fabulous, so thank you so much.
Jaime:
Thank you. I enjoyed the conversation a lot. I really appreciate the chance to talk with you.
Mónica:
All right. Well, onward. Onward through all of it. Thanks again.
A Braver Way is produced by Reclaim Curiosity and distributed in partnership with Braver Angels, KUOW, and Deseret News.
Our theme music is by the fantastic number one Billboard bluegrass-charting hip hop band, Gangstagrass. You can subscribe to A Braver Way on YouTube and follow us on your favorite podcast app.
Want to chat? You can join our listener text line by texting the word "brave" to 206-926-9955, or email us anytime with anything at abraverway@reclaimcuriosity.com. I'm your host and guide across the divide, Mónica Guzmán. Take heart, everyone. Till next time.
