idemic levels in the United States, shaping national politics, friendships, and even family dynamics.

But today's guest says it doesn't have to be that way, that each of us can adopt simple practices to reduce the polarization in our lives and in our communities.

He's Peter T. Coleman this week on "Story in the Public Square."

(bright inspirational music) (bright inspirational music continues) Hello and welcome to "Story in the Public Square," where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G. Wayne Miller, also with Salve's Pell Center.

- This week we're joined by Dr. Peter T. Coleman, a professor of psychology and education at Columbia University.

He's also the author of "The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization."

Welcome, Peter.

- Thank you very much for having me.

- There's a lot that we wanna talk to you about today, but we have a lot of guests come on this show who are purveyors of polarization.

You are one of the rare few who actually are offering a solution.

What drew you to this kind of work?

- Well, that's a great question.

So I've been studying conflict.

I'm a professor at Columbia University, study conflict there, run a center, which is a science practice center, and one of the areas that we study are, like, really deeply entrenched, long-term intractable conflicts and how they get stuck and the conditions under which they change.

So I've been studying the phenomenon of kind of polarization and difficult conflicts for decades now.

But I think particularly my focus on political polarization in the US was really teed up in 2016, '17, when the political rhetoric got more and more intense in America.

And I was being approached by a lot of organizations that were interested in doing bridge building work, but I felt like they didn't have a good handle on the science, like the conditions under which you wanna bring people together or don't.

And so I felt a need to write a book that basically summarized high level takeaways on what to do in these kinds of climates.

- Well, and we're gonna get to some of those takeaways in a few minutes, but let's talk about, sort of do a little table setting here.

- Yeah.

- Is polarization as bad as it seems or is it just the way it's always been and we're just maybe a little bit more sensitive to it now?

- Yeah, so political polarization, not a bad thing in a two-party system.

It's good to have passionate, true believers on different sides, more conservative, more progressive, challenging each other and offering some kind of check and balance.

In the 1950s in America, the parties had a lot of overlap and people were calling for more polarization, more clarity on the differences between the parties.

The good news is, we've got it, right?

There are clear distinctions between Republican and Democratic, you know, basically platforms and parties at this point.

But what we have seen really since the mid to late 1970s is it's increasing sort of the sense of enmity and contempt for those on the other side.

And this is from Main Street from, you know, the Pew tracks just attitudes Republicans towards Democrats and vice versa.

Those have gotten more hostile and suspicious over the decades.

And in Washington, we see the dysfunction there where it's extremely difficult to get anything bipartisan and any, you know, there's a lot of obstructionism, and also just, again, voiced contempt for the other side.

So this has been an increasing trajectory for decades and it doesn't seem to be slowing.

And historians are worried about, really genuinely worried about a civil war.

not only John Meacham and Doris Kearns Goodwin, but there's a political scientist named Barbara Walter who really believes that we're starting to see the kinds of political violence and the spike in political violence that could culminate in not a civil war of people sort of standing in a field in uniforms, but of militant groups that have weapons, taking out infrastructure in the country.

We saw a wave of this last Christmas Day when across five states, there were multiple power substations that were attacked simultaneously.

So there's evidence of this kind of mounting political violence and it's concerning us all.

So yes, I think it's, by some measures, worse than it's ever been.

- So, Peter, you mentioned one of the dangers clearly is the possibility of civil war as you described it, obviously not two apposing sides, pointing rifles at each other.

What are some of the other dangers of polarization today, both to the nation and to individuals?

I mean, obviously, we're talking about a lot of people in this country, but we're talking about the effect on individual people.

We see this all the time on social media and Facebook and Twitter, the kinds of attacks that are made.

It must take a toll.

Long way of saying, get into a little more of the dangers to the country and to individuals.

- Well, again, there are many.

People study different aspects of polarization, but at a personal level or a family and community level, half of America has experienced becoming estranged from someone in their family or a close former friend.

So there is a lot of loss at a time when a lot of Americans sort of feel the lack of belonging and feel sort of more acute loneliness.

So there is an impact on our relationships, on our important relationships.

There's increases in toxicity that we're experiencing, particularly in younger people.

And this is a constellation of things.

This is not just politics, right?

Because it's social media and it's other types of anxiety from COVID and from losing time in school.

But when you don't have people that you used to be able to turn to, to talk to because you feel estranged from them, it makes matters worse.

So it is, in some ways, the polarization that we're experiencing is in some ways like a toxic substance.

There's brain science research that shows that when people are triggered by a sense of outrage and a taste for retaliation against the other side by something they see on Twitter or hear on the news, it triggers a part of our brain that is also triggered by narcotics.

So there is an addictive quality to the sense of outrage.

And social media platforms know that, mainstream media platforms know that, and they're preying on that.

So at an individual and sort of family and relational level, it's bad.

But the other thing I'll just say is that at a national level, it is what I call a first order problem.

If we, as communities, as states, and as a federal government can't come together to think constructively about policy issues, like, you know, sensible gun reform, right?

Gun ownership reform, where 90% of the population supports a certain measure, and yet we still can't do that.

That speaks to this kind of pathology in our governance and our incapacity to solve critical problems.

- Peter, what factor does fear play in this?

And you're a professor of psychology, so you obviously have thought about this and probably researched this as well.

There are a lot of things that people are afraid of on both sides of the aisle.

Climate change is one of them.

We're seeing that, at least type of evidence, as we tape this with the wildfires and the smoke coming down from Canada.

There were concerns about job loss or people who have lost jobs and cannot get back into the workforce.

You mentioned COVID, there were certainly fears there.

Talk about the role that fear plays on the psychological level of people.

- Well, so humans are hardwired to respond to a threat in very primitive ways, very automatic ways.

And so a lot of what you're describing can be experienced as a threat, and we oftentimes look for people to blame, groups to blame, right, so that we don't feel such responsibility for these things.

But all of the factors that you're describing create a time of uncertainty, great uncertainty, and great change, right?

There's so much tumble.

Now we have ChatGPT, and so all of our professions are going away.

There is tremendous uncertainty and instability.

And in times like this, people are in a heightened state of vigilance and they do experience sometimes more neutral things as threatening, and we look for others to put that threat on and to blame, so that we have something we can do about it, something that we feel is tangible.

So fear is a core component of this, but in some ways, it is not just a fear of the other, but it's how all of these things create conditions that make us more susceptible to fear and to the manipulations of our fear by those in power and those in the media that seek to capitalize on it.

- Peter, I promise you, we're gonna get to the solution in just a second, but you mentioned something that's, it's just a fascinating phenomena to me, that Americans tend to ascribe more extreme views to their political opposites than are actually held by members of the other perspective.

Can you explain that phenomena a little bit for us?

- Yeah, it's called the misperception gap.

There's a group called More in Common that studies this pretty consistently and regularly.

But we find, and frankly, I took the assessment this past summer and I found that my assessments of the other party's positions and attitudes and actions were about 30% off.

They were about 30% more extreme than they usually are.

And that's pretty common.

Most of us believe that they, whoever they are on the other side of the political fence, are more extreme in their attitudes, are more extreme in their actions, right?

Have more coercive and intractable attitudes.

And so what that does is it triggers in us a like response.

When we believe they're extreme, we react and respond in more extreme ways.

And this is a vicious cycle, which is part of what we're facing here, are the psychological dynamics that drive us apart.

- So despite this fairly grim reality, you say there's reason for some hope and some optimism at this particular moment.

What is the basis for that?

- So, I mean, what I was talking about earlier, this sense of estrangement that many of us feel, that the good news is that the vast majority of Americans are just exhausted, right?

We're exhausted not only by COVID and staying at home and economic downturn and threats to the climate and to weather, extreme weather events, and that kind of instability and uncertainty, but we're fed up with politics as they are.

We're fed up with screaming matches on television and in Congress and, you know, we're looking to leaders to have reasonable solutions to difficult problems.

And so the good news is that the vast majority of Americans, something like 80 plus percent, are what we call, fall into the exhausted middle majority.

This is the group of people that are not at the extremes, true believers, and in for a full fight.

They're really looking for compromise.

They're looking for alternatives.

Those are the conditions where we've seen other nations, Costa Rica, the Scandinavian nations, New Zealand, nations that had come out of civil strife and pivoted towards more peacefulness, usually come out of an extremely difficult time that is exhausting, where people, the masses feel fed up, and they are actively seeking an alternative.

That's the good news.

- So Peter, you talk about exhaustion, and it's physical exhaustion, not just mental exhaustion.

And I think that certainly captures the mood of the country now.

But you've developed five practices to help individuals change the way they think about change, an important step to getting ahead of polarization.

We're gonna go through all of them.

Start with resetting.

That's practice number one.

What is that and how can we practice that?

- Yeah, so the premise of this is that when societies are stuck in divisive patterns like this, you need two things.

You need enough people to be in misery and want change, but you want some clarity about what do you do, what's the alternative?

And so that's what these five levers are.

These are things that come from science, and they're basic principles, but they're things you can do to enact in your life.

So resetting is really the intentionality of what I wanna do and what I don't want to do.

So let me give you a quick example.

There's a group in Congress called the Select Committee for the Modernization of Congress.

It's a mechanism in Congress to kind of help repair the polarization in Congress.

They had started work a couple of years ago as a bipartisan committee to really look at why Congress is so divided.

And then January 6th happened.

And so not only did they suffer trauma directly, some of them hiding in their office for hours by themselves, afraid for their lives, but they have felt that some other members of the committee hated them and were trying to harm them.

So this committee had to say, "All right, how are we ever going to get this group of a dozen Congress people together problem solving?"

And what they had to do is do a significant reset.

And the leadership said, "Okay, this is not business as usual.

We need to start by just being honest about what our experiences were around that day and around the election and what our genuine concerns are and share our stories."

And so they really had to sort of say, "All right, we're shocked and destabilized from this event.

We need to start a different course by carefully and intentionally deciding what to do."

And this is what I recommend you do if you have a brother-in-law or a neighbor that you feel estranged from and you wanna reach out to them, think carefully about what's the point, what's your objective?

What do you hope to have happen?

Because if you just stumble into these conversations with people that have triggers and political differences from you, you know where that's gonna go.

So you have to reset and approach these kinds of encounters intentionally.

- [Jim] Peter, the next item, the next practice that you talk about, is bolstering and breaking.

What does that entail?

- Yeah.

Yeah.

So this is the idea that when you're, you know, what we tend to do, what we've learned from international peace building is what good, well-intentioned do-gooders like myself try to do, is we go into situations that we're not familiar with and we try to introduce new ideas or new practices, and they oftentimes don't have much impact.

This is true with international peace building.

Well-intentioned organizations, billions of dollars put into places that are war torn places that have little effect or backfire.

What we don't do is go in and say, "What's working here?

Who is it that's actually providing goods for services and governance that are trusted by the community?"

We don't start with what organizational psychologists call positive deviance.

Who are the people on the ground in difficult circumstances that are already doing good things?

That's what I really implore people to look for if you feel fed up and want a different alternative.

One recommendation is there's a website called the Bridging Divides Initiative.

It's out of Princeton.

It is a map of the US and you can toggle into your county and your city, and you can find that there are a half dozen or more bridge building groups that already sprung up in your community that are doing good work.

So if you're interested in talking to somebody of the other side, understanding the problem better, you can engage with these groups that are already doing that and know how to do that, right?

You don't have to do it on your own.

You don't have to make it up yourself.

So that's just finding what already works in the community and trying to bolster that.

It's what I call, it's a community immune system that's already fighting polarization.

So just lean into that and allow them to help guide you.

- [G. Wayne] The next practice is complicating.

- Yes.

- Describe that.

- So, you know, in times like this, it's very easy for us to oversimplify, it's very seductive to listen to people that say, "They're the problem.

They're coming for us, they're coming for your rights, they're coming for your daughters."

And when the rhetoric and politics becomes simplistic, overly simplistic about highly complex issues, right?

As opposed to really talking about the complexity of immigration and the pros and cons and challenges around that, we talk about a wall, right?

So we oversimplify issues and it's very seductive.

It's easy to do, it's more comforting to have certainty in these times.

So we have to swim against that and try to intentionally introduce complexity in our life.

So this is what I do.

Two, three years ago, I decided, because the media was so polarized, that I would intentionally seek out four or five people that I think are smart, well-intentioned, well-informed individuals who differ fundamentally from me politically, and I follow them on the news and I follow them on Twitter.

And so when a news story breaks, and my tendency is to go to my comfort news and hear the story I want to hear, I intentionally seek out these people to get information that I may differ with them positionally, but I believe they're decent, right?

They're well-intentioned.

And I try to enhance my understanding of these complicated realities by bringing in information that isn't just comfortable to me, that in fact challenges me, but maybe gives me a more accurate understanding of the problem.

- The next process sort of blows my mind a little bit.

Moving, literally movement.

- Yeah.

Well, this comes out of, actually out of fairly recent neuroscience research, but basically one of the traps that peacemakers, like myself, I'm a trained mediator, we fall into is the way we usually do our work is we invite people to a table to sit down opposite of each other, and try to talk through problems.

And most of the time, that's great.

But when the problem has settled into your kind of neurological structure so that you can't really even process information that contradicts your assumptions, then it's necessary to try something else.

And one of the things we've learned from neuroscience is that even old guys like me have neuroplasticity.

We have the capacity to kinda shake up our neurological structures and see things or think about things differently.

And one of the things that facilitates that is physical movement.

So even one of the recommendations we have, and what we'll talk about, is the challenge is get up, you know, if you're stuck, if you're writing something, thinking about something or feel emotionally stuck, shut the doors, turn on a great song that moves you, and get up and dance like an idiot by yourself.

(Jim and G. Wayne laugh) Just move, because it helps start to shake up our assumptions and our understanding and they can free us up a little bit.

But more importantly, related to polarization, is the power of actually walking with others who differ from you.

So last summer I reached out to a neighbor of mine who I felt estranged from and I said, you know, we hadn't talked for a year and a half or so because of our political differences.

And I said, "Would you go for a walk with me in the park?"

And he was initially suspicious, but agreed.

And we went outside and walked outside.

And what we find in practice and in neuroscience, and diplomats have known this for decades, is that, if you're stuck in a position, moving with people in sync, outside side by side and sort of seeing the world go by you together, is a leg up in connecting you and finding some sense of connection or compassion or a feeling of cooperation.

We find this from research with dance teams and combat troops and marching bands that they physically get in sync in a way that you don't if you don't move together.

So it's a secret weapon that you can use if you're stuck with a friend or colleague and you can't sit down and talk with them, say, "Would you take a walk with me outside?"

Be someplace safe, you don't want to go to the back of a parking lot.

(Jim and G. Wayne laugh) But go someplace where you can move together physically, and it can free you up and connect you in ways that are surprising.

- That's great advice.

Something I never would've thought of until we came across you, so thank you.

The fifth one is adapting.

Tell us about that.

- Yeah, so the hardest part of this whole story is that the problem that we're facing around intractable divisions in this country, which are so baked into our culture right now, are not really amenable to quick fixes.

There aren't simple things that we can do.

And so we are gonna try to do things that are gonna backfire or not work or have little effect that we anticipate.

It could have been last summer when I went for a walk that it backfired and we got in, but I went into it very intentionally.

I really asked myself, "What do I want to do here?"

I mostly listened in that process of that walk.

And in doing so, my friend, my neighbor, basically talked himself out through his own talking points and came to his own doubts, his own concerns about his own party and his leadership.

So it requires that we be open to the fact that some of these things that we try to do may not work, may not work right away, may fail, and that we need to learn from them and adapt.

I walked away from that walk with my neighbor and I thought, "The next time we do this, it's gotta be on his terms."

'Cause he felt like I was bringing him to do something.

So I said, "Let's meet again however you want to meet," right?

So learning from what things work and what things don't work as you try to navigate out of these times is a really important piece of this.

These political times we're in are what we call an infinite game.

It's not something that people are gonna win or lose.

It's gonna keep going.

So the question is, how do you adapt to what's working and adjust when things don't?

- And Peter, you mentioned the challenge, and I'm assuming this is the Once-a-Day Political Courage Challenge that you've developed.

- Yes.

- Could you tell us what it is?

- Yeah, so about a year ago, you know, I published this book in 2021 in June, and about a year ago after it was published, I thought, "People don't read books anymore.

(Jim and G. Wayne laugh) So what are we gonna do to make this real in people's lives?"

And so we sat down, a group of my former students, and my oldest daughter and I sat down and thought about it and we said, "Let's, if we were to live this, if we were to take these five principles that we just walked through, resetting and finding what works and moving and complicating, how would we do that every day in our life?"

And we basically generated 100 small, what we call micro exercises.

They're little nudges, they're little activities that you can do.

And then we partnered with a group called Starts With Us, which is a nonprofit, and they built a website, which just allows you.

So last summer I did a pilot of this with a group of former students, and for five days a week, for four weeks, we agreed to just try it once a day.

And it's, again, the easiest, smallest exercises are five minutes.

Some of them can take longer if you choose, but we give you options.

And the idea is to start to develop different habits, not only relating to us and our own tendencies, but importantly the second week is really focused on the people we are comfortable talking politics with, but who we're probably not very honest with these days because there's such a tendency to protect each other and censor each other that we don't speak honestly.

So the second week is focused on sort of how do you introduce candor into your own in-group talk, third week is how do you reach across the divide, and the fourth week is are there things in your community that you would wanna work on together with those on the other side?

So it's a set of activities that we invite people to try and we're trying to basically build a movement of the exhausted middle majority, which includes, I assume, the three of us, to engage in a different way and develop new habits and norms and relationships that can start to affect the political dynamics from the bottom up.

- The website, we should note, is findingthewayout.startswith.us.

- Yes.

- Peter, we got about 30 seconds left here.

At the end of the day, are you an optimist or are you a pessimist about the future of the American Republic?

- I'm extremely worried about the American Republic, but I'm optimistic because I've had the fortune of the last couple of years of really meeting the hundreds and thousands of members of groups that are doing good work at the community level all the way up to DC that are really trying to kind of stem this tide and do everything we can to elicit our better angels.

So I'm really optimistic that that group, that this movement that's happening, can make a difference.

- Well, Peter, your work and your book are an important part of that.

The book is "The Way Out" and it's the Once-a-Day Political Courage Challenge as well.

Thank you so much for being with us.

That is all the time we have this week.

But if you wanna know more about "Story in the Public Square," you can find us on social media or visit pellcenter.org where we can always catch up on previous episodes.

For G. Wayne Miller, I'm Jim Ludes, asking you to join us again next time for more "Story in the Public Square."

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