How to Disagree Better - Hardcover

Minson, Julia

 
9780593855003: How to Disagree Better
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0593855000 ISBN 13: 9780593855003
Verlag: Avery Publishing Group, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

Celebrated Harvard Kennedy School Professor and behavioral scientist Julia Minson has devoted her career to understanding the psychology of disagreement and its relevance to negotiations, conflict-resolution, and decision-making. In this revolutionary book, Minson reveals the counterintuitive secret to living a life of less drama and more impact

How many times have you tried to resolve a dispute by overwhelming someone with a flood of facts, appealing to your counterpart’s emotions, or pointing out the hypocrisy of their arguments only to end up in an even deeper disagreement than when you started? Julia Minson’s two decades of research into the science of disagreement uncovers two insights that can change every disagreement: persuasion doesn’t work nearly as well as we think it does, and displaying receptiveness to opposing views is the key to not only preventing conflict, but also to forging stronger relationships and making better decisions.

The science shows that receptive individuals don’t just fight less, they also get more done—they are better negotiators, better peacemakers, and yes, better influencers than the rest of us. Through original research and case studies, How to Disagree Better will show you:

  • Why persuasion doesn’t work as well as you think it does
  • How you can reach better conflict outcomes simply by signaling receptiveness
  • That disagreeing well is a skill all of us can learn
  • How to apply these ideas at home with your partner and kids, as well as at work in your negotiations and decision-making

By practicing receptiveness, you’ll see your conflicts soften, your conversations deepen, and your relationships grow stronger. You will create a richer, wiser, kinder life for yourself and for those around you—and you will find them agreeing with you a little more often, too.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Julia Minson is a Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School. She is a behavioral scientist with extensive research experience in conflict, communication, negotiations, and decision making. Her primary line of research addresses the “psychology of disagreement”—how do people engage with opinions, judgments, and decisions that are different from their own? Her work on receptiveness to opposing views and related topics has been published in top academic outlets in the social sciences and covered by the popular press including CNN, TIME, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.

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1
Disagreement, Conflict, and What's Wrong with Everyone Around You

Here is a poorly kept and perpetually embarrassing secret about my academic career-my passion for the science of disagreement did not come from observing the harm that violent conflict sows in the world or studying the academic literature and identifying theoretical gaps that needed filling. My passion for disagreement was primarily fueled by my years as a competitive ballroom dancer, training with, competing with, and regularly fighting with my partner and later husband, Ryan.

I began ballroom dancing as a little girl in Russia. This might seem strange to many American readers, but in Eastern Europe in the eighties, taking ballroom dancing lessons was as common as taking ballet or tap lessons is in the United States. All the little girls wanted to do it, and all the little boys were forced into dancing with their sisters. By the time I had met my husband, I had thousands of hours of training and years of competitive experience under my belt. Ryan, who had never danced a step in his life, wanted to learn to dance because he had grand plans to flirt with a woman he expected to see again at a friend's wedding. I was his teacher.

My husband has an infuriating quality. He is just good at things-not necessarily amazing, but notably above average at almost everything, especially things that require physical coordination and musicality. When it came to dancing, he improved quickly because of his talent and interest-and also because his teacher (soon his girlfriend) had endless time and energy for teaching him. We practiced during every available hour and on every patch of hardwood we could find. I quickly came to realize that I had more fun dancing with this complete beginner than with my competition partner. As weeks turned into months, I decided that I would rather break up the competitive partnership I was involved in and dance with Ryan, even if that meant going back to the basics.

There are several unique aspects to ballroom dancing that make it the perfect microcosm for the study of conflict. First of all, the two partners are in perpetual intimate physical contact. The front of your body is literally plastered to your partner's, meaning that you can feel their most minute movements, down to their breath and their heart rate. Good physical contact improves your ability to lead and follow-to coordinate your movements wordlessly and instantaneously. Indeed, after dancing together for years, I could move my body in response to Ryan's much more quickly than it took my conscious brain to understand what was happening. And when everything worked, when we moved in complete harmony, when we felt in sync with the music and with each other-it was like telepathy. To this day, few experiences I have had compare to this feeling of "oneness."

But of course, it didn't always work. One of us would lose our balance, move too slowly, stretch too far or not far enough, and the other person would get annoyed. And the finely honed sense that allowed us to feel each other's every movement also allowed us to feel each other's every mood. I'd get upset with his tightened grip on my back, he'd get upset that I was upset, and the magic would dissolve in an instant. Left in its place was another couple glaring at each other across several feet of empty dance floor.

Like every dance partnership, when things went badly, we tried to diagnose the cause. Predictably, the cause was the other person. His claim that I had moved too slowly was met with my claim that he had not provided enough momentum. When I said he miscounted the rhythm, he said I was the one who started counting from the wrong measure. When he said I was leaning too far back, I said that he was not counterbalancing enough with his own weight. In fact, every practice, two hours a day, seven days a week, featured a dozen instances where we were both absolutely sure that the other person caused the problem and was simply failing to acknowledge it.

This state of nearly perpetual conflict on the dance floor was especially baffling since we knew each other and the choreography as well as any two people possibly could. We were in love and rarely fought about anything outside of dancing. We had world-class coaches to help us solve our problems, and we were both highly intelligent and analytical people. So how could he be so sure I was to blame and I be so sure that he was? And why did our different perspectives have to lead to so many ugly spats?

My only consolation was that just about everyone around us had the same problem. Observing other dancing couples, ranging from relative beginners to nationally ranked professionals, I saw the same strange phenomenon: Highly trained people who deeply cared about improving their performance were similarly unable to agree on the basic physical facts of which one of them missed the beat or rotated too far.

In my early twenties, I decided to get a PhD in social psychology, not because I had ambitions to bring peace to the Middle East or to restore democracy but because I wanted to figure out how to stop fighting with my dance partner.

Psychological Causes of Conflict

I applied to graduate school and was fortunate enough to be admitted to Stanford. There, I studied under the legendary psychologist Lee Ross, who at that time was scientifically proving a truth that, while seeming obvious, has profound implications: Most conflict stems from the simple fact that everyone thinks they are right. In his work, Lee argued that most people go around the world believing that their perceptions, experiences, and interpretations of events reflect an objective, knowable external reality. Lee called this phenomenon "naïve realism"-a term borrowed from philosophy and intended to highlight that people "naïvely" believe that their perceptions and judgments are "realistic" in some deep, fundamental sense.

Through many clever experiments, Lee and his students demonstrated how this stance then led to conflict across a broad variety of contexts and topics. Because of naïve realism, any time a person had an opinion (which is basically always) and encountered another person (often), they both entered the conversation with a firm conviction that they "got it." Because both people believed themselves to be fundamentally reasonable and objective, to the extent that their opinions diverged, the seeds of conflict had been sown. As soon as I encountered Lee's work, I realized that I had found my intellectual home. From that time forward, naïve realism and its logical extensions formed the basis of my research program.

In retrospect, it is likely that Lee, who had spent decades working on the conflicts in Northern Ireland and the Middle East, found my desire to apply his theories to squabbles between ballroom dance partners silly. But as an immensely curious person, who found almost all human behavior fascinating, he also recognized what was unique about this particular context: If people who were as close and aligned as Ryan and I were couldn't get past the differences in our perceptions, what hope was there for the rest of the world? Was there some fundamental psychological commonality in conflicts between lovers, colleagues, and nation-states? Indeed, over the years it turned out that competitive ballroom dancing was an excellent laboratory in which to study conflict-a context wherein two parties often saw things fundamentally differently but deeply cared about the outcome and had to reach consensus in order to move forward (or backward, or sideways). I quickly realized that naïve realism was exactly what was causing the issues between Ryan and me.

A unique feature of...

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Verlag
Avery Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2026
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593855000
ISBN 13 
9780593855003
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
320
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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