Rachel Carlson

Like, they're really reflective about each other's opinions and about each other as people in general.

But we also were able to join each other's worlds.

And this joining of worlds was proof that these kinds of conversations can happen.

Yeah.

Jeannie and Richard have been married for a really long time, and they have so much mutual respect for one another.

That's a really key baseline component of these conversations, and it's not a given for everyone you meet.

It's not easy, but we're going to try to work through it.

So today on the show, the neuroscience of disagreement.

When we have the opportunity to engage with someone who thinks differently than we do, what's going on in our brains, and how can we make the most of those conversations?

Okay, Emily, imagine that you and I are about to have a disagreement.

So our pupils might dilate, our heart might start racing, and we might start to sweat a little more.

That's Rudy Mendoza-Denton.

He's a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley.

Rudy co-teaches a class from Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center on bridging differences.

He says we might not even notice these things while they're happening to us.

But on top of all of them, we start making these split-second decisions about whether or not we trust someone just by looking at their faces.

Those decisions, though, aren't always accurate.

Who's that?

That's Oriole Feldman-Hall, a researcher and social neuroscientist at Brown University.

And she says when we interact with someone we've decided is untrustworthy, or even someone who just belongs to another group than us, our amygdala starts to respond.