On Friday, Virginia Festival of the Book attendees gathered in the UVA Bookstore to hear Dr. Tania Israel discuss her latest book, Facing the Fracture: How to Navigate the Challenges of Living in a Divided Nation. The conversation was moderated by Marissa Allweiss Wendte of the Karsh Institute of Democracy.
Following an introduction by Wendte, Israel described her long-standing connections to Charlottesville and the University. The daughter of a UVA professor, Israel grew up in town and attended local middle and high schools before heading north for college. She returned to Grounds and started her career in health promotion as a pregnancy counselor at Student Health and Wellness (“SHW”). It was here that Israel first developed an interest in bridging political divides. In the early 1990s, she started a “Common Ground” group at the Gordon Avenue Library, facilitating conversations among people with opposing viewpoints on the issue of abortion. “It didn’t change what I thought about abortion,” she said, “but it changed what I thought about the people who disagreed with me.”
Today, Israel is a Professor of Counseling Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She continues to prioritize teaching curiosity and listening skills, and she is known for her research on interventions to support sexual and gender minorities. The latest iteration of her work on polarization began in the wake of the 2016 election. Israel noted that today, two-thirds of Americans are stressed about the political discourse of the country. For many, this stress permeates all aspects of life. Unlike Israel’s first book, which centered around communicating across the political divide, Facing the Fracture explores how individuals can cope with such stress.
Israel identified three cognitive biases that contribute most to political polarization today. First, confirmation bias leads us to focus on the information we believe is true or correct while ignoring the rest. Most people can recognize when others fall victim to confirmation bias, but are reluctant to admit that they themselves do as well. Naïve realism makes us believe that “we” are objective and “they” are biased. Finally, with motive attribution asymmetry—the most corrosive cognitive bias, according to Israel—“we” are motivated by caring and love, and “they” are motivated by hatred and selfishness.
These cognitive biases are part of a larger evolutionary trend that explains our ingroup tendencies. According to Israel, humans have always relied on community. Initially, our own communities protected us from other tribes. But while the types of threats we face have drastically changed over the course of human evolution, the way we view “others” has not sufficiently adapted. As a result, we rely on the models of particular people we have in our heads, passing judgments and forming conclusions before we even talk to them.
Israel offered several suggestions to overcome cognitive biases and political division. First, she drew a contrast between dialogue and debate. Debate often involves convincing a third-party or outside character, which is not the fullest use of human dialogue capability. “Dialogue needs to be about wanting to know what the other person has to say,” Israel explained. It should be “warm” and rooted in trust from an existing relationship. Simply presenting facts is unlikely to change minds, and might actually drive people further away. Instead, Israel advocated for sharing stories and listening for the sake of understanding rather than argument.
Israel then commented on the tendency for young Americans, particularly students, to describe feeling unsafe in the face of disagreement. She emphasized the distinction between feeling unsafe and being unsafe, as well as the difference between feeling unsafe and feeling unsettled. While acknowledging the importance of boundaries, Israel stated that it is important to stay in challenging situations and build resilience. There are ways to “turn down the volume” on certain (negative) narratives, such as by turning off news notifications or using intentional breathing to regulate the nervous system. Further, engaging across the political divide requires three skills: being able to stay, being able to leave, and being able to discern which to do. Israel hopes that in honing these skills, people will not only listen to others, but also to themselves. “A lot of us have personal growth to do before we can even begin to deal with others,” she said.
In her concluding remarks, Israel discussed the power that individuals hold in shaping the political climate. She urged audience members to maintain their relationships with people who hold different opinions. Finally, she hopes that stressed Americans will move beyond seeing two options—to stay informed or to stay mentally healthy—and begin practicing stress-reducing activities at a personal level. A renewed focus on mental and physical well-being can have far-reaching positive effects on individuals, families, communities, and even democracy itself.
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