Rachel Carlson

Versus when participants disagreed with each other.

In those cases, people's brain activity wasn't as synced up.

It was kind of like a cacophony instead of a harmonious duet.

And, as they disagreed, Joy says it seemed like each brain was engaging a lot more emotional and cognitive resources.

So Joy is hypothesizing that disagreement might be really taxing on us.

Like you're expending more energy when you disagree with someone than when you agree with them.

Okay.

First, kind of like we said before, we decide if we want to have a conversation with someone and also if that person is going to be receptive.

Decide, do I want to have a conversation with this person?

Yeah.

But if we do decide to engage with that person, the first step in a potential disagreement is simple.

Focus on your breathing.

Can you take a breath?

Allison co-teaches that Bridging Differences class with Rudy I mentioned earlier.

She told me that this moment, slowing down, breathing, can help us move into step two, which is coming back to our goals for the conversation.

Right, like she described it as an intention?

Yeah, why we're having it, what we're looking to get out of it.

Because research shows it's not super easy to change someone's mind.

And it can be pretty ineffective to spout facts at someone to try to do this.

Yeah.