Educating the Public on Evidence-based methods for improving inter-group civility.

ClearerThinking.org Provides Online Tools to help people Challenge their own Beliefs & Biases

CivilPolitics’ mission is to educate the public on evidence-based methods for improving inter-group dialogue, with evidence defined broadly to include academic studiesempirical studies of community interventions, and also the practical wisdom learned by organizations that are bringing people together in the community.  As part of this last area of evidence, we are asking our partners in the community to answer a set of semi-standardized questions designed to help us learn the common themes that run through successful community work.  If you would like to have your organizations’ work profiled, please do contact us and/or fill out this form.  This is the seventh post in the series that details the experiences of Spencer Greenberg, who is the founder of ClearerThinking.org, which produced this political bias exercise, among other programs.

What is your group’s mission?

ClearerThinking.org’s mission is to help you make better decisions and avoid bias, both in your own life (e.g. your work, relationships and education), and in decisions you make that impact society at large (e.g. who you vote for and which policies you support).

What specific programs/events/curriculum do you run? Briefly describe what it is you do.

We create free courses, tools and tests designed to help you understand important findings from cognitive science, psychology, economics, and mathematics, and apply these findings in your day to day decisions. We are a non-partisan organization.  A

Our projects include:

Subtitling political debate videos (in collaboration with philosopher Stefan Schubert) to make you aware when factual inaccuracies, ovations, logical fallacies occur:

http://www.clearerthinking.org/#!the-2016-presidential-debates–subtitled/wt7g0

Our political bias test (also made in collaboration with Stefan Schubert), which helps you understand ways which your political views may be biased or inaccurate:

http://programs.clearerthinking.org/political_bias_test.html

Our Belief Challenger program, which walks you through two evidenced based techniques we developed for helping you challenging deeply held beliefs:

http://programs.clearerthinking.org/challenge_your_deepest_beliefs.html

Our Common Misconceptions test, which helps you understand whether you tend to be overconfident or underconfident, and teaches you about common misconceptions you may hold:

http://programs.clearerthinking.org/common_misconceptions.html

We have many other free tools, tests and programs as well.

What has worked well in your programs/events? If someone else wanted to replicate your programs, what specific advice would you give them as far as things to do to replicate your successes?

We have found that people love to learn about themselves, and therefore that offering tests can be a powerful way to make people more interested in important topics like bias and decision making.

What have you tried in your progams/events that has NOT worked well? If someone else wanted to replicate your programs, what advice would you give them as far as things to AVOID doing?

We find that people greatly prefer shorter online programs to longer ones, and therefore shorter programs may end up having larger impact overall.

Among the ideas listed on CivilPolitics’ website, based on psychological research, that have been suggested as ways to reduce intergroup divisions. Which of these ideas are reflected in the work you do?  

Providing Information on Common Goals/Threats, Reducing Certainty of Individual Beliefs, Helping people see their own bias and become motivated to reduce it.

We help people challenge their existing beliefs with programs such as our Belief Challenger program, and our Common Misconception Test.

Where can others learn more about what you do?

ll of our content is free, and available on our website: http://www.clearerthinking.org

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On Trust, Conversation, & Relationships from the Institute for American Values’ David Blankenhorn

CivilPolitics’ mission is to educate the public on evidence-based methods for improving inter-group dialogue, with evidence defined broadly to include academic studiesempirical studies of community interventions, and also the practical wisdom learned by organizations that are bringing people together in the community.  As part of this last area of evidence, we are asking our partners in the community to answer a set of semi-standardized questions designed to help us learn the common themes that run through successful community work.  If you would like to have your organizations’ work profiled, please do contact us and/or fill out this form.  This is the sixth post in the series that details the experiences of David Blankenhorn, who is President of the Institute for American Values, which recently launched its Better Angels initiative, and which has been bringing people together across partisan divides for decades.

What is your group’s history in terms of getting involved with improving community relationships?

Almost all think tanks focus either on the activity of government or the needs of individuals. IAV is distinctive in that we focus on civil society – those relationships and associations that exist in between the government and the individual. While often overlooked by both think tanks and policy makers, civil society is a big thing. From families to Little League to church socials to community service projects, the relationships and institutions of civil society take up most of our time and fill up most of our lives. This sphere of society is a primary incubator of our cultural values. In the 1980s and 1990s, we brought together liberals and conservatives to help reframe the conventional wisdom about the two-parent home, the importance of fathers, and the role of marriage. In the 2000s, we brought together American scholars and scholars from the Arab and Muslim world for sustained engagements on international civil society. We worked to give voice to those who had previously been voiceless, such as children of divorce and donor-conceived persons. And we brought together diverse scholars for a fresh investigation of thrift, which is the ethic of wise use. And in the 2010s, we are equipping up to eight millions Americans to become depolarizers in their communities and networks and make an enduring impact on American government and society in favor of nonpolar principles and practices.

What specific programs/events/curriculum do you run? Briefly describe what it is you do.

Better Angels is not one organization, but rather a diverse group of leaders and co-sponsoring organizations working together to create a social movement. The three components of Better Angels are (1) scholarly research, (2) public argument, and (3) community organizing.

What We’ll Do: Years 1-3

In the area of public argument: annual reports to the nation, community presentations, articles and op-eds, media interviews, and a podcast series and other website-based and social media communications.

In the area of scholarly research: establishing the nation’s Leading Depolarization Indicators, contributing to the initiative’s educational and training curricula, convening interdisciplinary scholarly consultations on depolarization, publishing timely scholarly articles and reports, and evaluating the Better Angels initiative.

In the area of community organizing: recruiting and involving Better Angels affiliates, holding annual national conferences, creating, testing, and launching a national training program on nonpolar principles and practices, and helping to start new local initiatives for depolarization.

What has worked well in your programs/events? If someone else wanted to replicate your programs, what specific advice would you give them as far as things to do to replicate your successes?

We seek to be the change we want to make in the world, and our public conversation series models this.  Also, by partnering with grassroots organizations we are able to greatly increase the impact of our work.

What have you tried in your progams/events that has NOT worked well? If someone else wanted to replicate your programs, what advice would you give them as far as things to AVOID doing?

Stay true to mission and avoid mission creep.

Among the ideas listed on CivilPolitics’ website, based on psychological research, that have been suggested as ways to reduce intergroup divisions. Which of these ideas are reflected in the work you do?  

Providing Information on Common Goals/Threats, Reducing the Perception of “Zero-Sum” competition, (any win for one side = a loss for the other side), Showing Examples of Positive Relationships , Reducing the Perceived Differences Between Groups, Showing Examples of Cross-Group, Unexpected Agreement or Disagreement

Just as our topic is distinctive, so too is the way we approach our topic. Put simply, we aim to end the culture wars. Ending the culture wars does not mean putting an end to disagreements. Nor does it, or should it, mean splitting every issue down the middle. But it does mean putting an end to the paradigm of polarization that today so completely dominates, and so harmfully distorts, our entire public conversation.

That’s why we never call ourselves “liberal” or “conservative.” Why we focus so relentlessly on scholarly excellence aimed at reframing core issues. Why we insist on being interdisciplinary, bringing together scholars from across the human and natural sciences. Why we so often form diverse groups of scholars who work together over time, aiming for a fresh approach. Why we give such high priority to conversation and engagement. And why our signature product is the jointly authored public appeal or report.

What might you add to these ideas?

Patience and active listening to the other; the building of trust in relationships — when we wrote a public letter in 2001 to our counterparts in the Muslim and Arabic world (entitled, “What We Are Fighting For: A Letter from America”), they wrote us back in a public letter, surprised at having been addressed in a conversation. These letters were highly publicized in the Arabic world and in the Middle East and this led to the creation of our Shared Values project. The first year of the project was spent convincing the other side that we were trustworthy. It was only through patience and active listening of the other that we were able to accomplish this.

Where can others learn more about what you do?

http://www.americanvalues.org

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Diversity in political opinion leads to better policy

Both in my academic and industry work, I work a lot on crowdsourcing answers, as multiple sources of information are inevitably going to lead to better conclusions.   The key to good crowdsourcing is not the volume of people, but the diversity of people in any dataset (e.g. this paper).  David Blankenhorn, of the Better Angels initiative, applies this same logic to improving policy through diversity of political thought.

From the article:

“Diversity,” like so much else these days, divides us….diversity, properly understood, might be our last best hope of repairing our broken politics and depolarizing our society. Consider three factual propositions.

Diverse groups make better decisions. If you’re an investor seeking an accurate prediction of next year’s inflation rate, should you go with your own best analysis, depend on a famous expert whose judgment you trust, or put your faith in the mathematical average of 50 predictions made by experts holding widely divergent views on inflation? Research suggests that the third strategy is consistently more likely to produce the most accurate prediction. Diverse groups are smart.

Like-minded groups make us individually dumber. I like to imagine that my political opinions come from evaluating evidence and sorting through facts, but I’ve learned from the research that it just ain’t so. Like you and nearly everyone, my political stances are largely shaped by ordinary human needs to belong, to maintain cherished relationships, and to protect or try to enhance my status within the groups that matter to me.

….

Groups shaping our political views have become less diverse. Both of our main political parties increasingly consist of like-minded people. It’s hard today to find a liberal Republican or a conservative Democrat. Our residential communities are also increasingly politically like-minded. In 1976, about one in four Americans lived in a county in which presidential candidate won by a landslide. Today that number is one in two. Increasingly, the news sources we use today tell us only what we already think. Finally, friendship circles today are increasingly politically defined, with liberals befriending other liberals and conservatives rarely inviting a liberal to lunch. (Where would they go — Cracker Barrel or Au Bon Pain?) So many of us today are nearly fully enveloped in political similarity. The main results are dumbed-down thinking and increasing polarization.

Creating a more civil political environment is not just beneficial for our relationships in our communities…it also leads to better, smarter policy.

– Ravi Iyer

 

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Lessons from 25 Years Bridging Divides at the Public Conversations Project

CivilPolitics’ mission is to educate the public on evidence-based methods for improving inter-group dialogue, with evidence defined broadly to include academic studiesempirical studies of community interventions, and also the practical wisdom learned by organizations that are bringing people together in the community.  As part of this last area of evidence, we are asking our partners in the community to answer a set of semi-standardized questions designed to help us learn the common themes that run through successful community work.  If you would like to have your organizations’ work profiled, please do contact us and/or fill out this form.  This is the fifth post in the series detailing the experiences of Dave Joseph, who is a senior vice president for programs at the Public Conversations Project.

What is the the history of the Public Conversations Project?

Public Conversations Project is a 25-year-old, Boston-based nonprofit committed to helping people bridge divides of identity, core values and worldviews. Our approach, Reflective Structured Dialogue, has its basis in family systems therapy, narrative therapy and appreciative inquiry. Its founders began by attempting to figure out how to help people have constructive, respectful conversations about the issue of abortion.

It is designed to build trust, deepen relationships and provide the foundation for collaboration between people who see each other as opponents or enemies. We design and facilitate respectful conversations about complex and controversial subjects, so that people can speak from the heart, listen deeply and remain in community, while acknowledging their differences.

We have addressed differences of race, ethnicity, gender, class and sexual orientation; we have extensive work in intra-faith and interfaith conversations; we have designed and facilitated dialogues addressing issues of community, faith and science, child labor, the environment, sustainable development, immigration, post-conflict reconciliation and many others.

What specific programs do you work with? Briefly describe how you got to where you are.

We have worked with many organizational and community partners, collaborating to help them accomplish their goals.  We have designed dialogue guides (written and video) on a range of subjects that are available for free download from our “Resources” webpage.  We also co-sponsored the Boston Transpartisan conference recently (videos are available here).
We provide numerous workshops in Boston and other areas (detailed here).  As well, we also design and facilitate meetings and conferences that have addressed such issues as guns; domestic violence / marriage promotion / responsible fatherhood; international development.

What has worked well in the programs/events that you have been involved with? From your experience, what advice would you give others?

  • Having a clear purpose for the event is essential, so that participants understand what to expect and not to expect—and that their expectations are shared.
  • Co-creation with participants of communication agreements that support the purpose of the event helps promote participant ownership and adherence to shared commitments.
  • Structure that promotes inclusion of all voices and democratization of the opportunity to participate is helpful.
  • Designing questions for participants that invite speaking from personal experience and sharing of personal stories that promote connection, curiosity and community.
  • Engagement of participants to promote reflection and deeper understanding of their own views, as well as those of others.
  • Preparation of participants to identify their hopes, concerns, past experience and invite their advice as to how to structure successful, respectful conversations.

What have you tried in your programs/events that has NOT worked well  If someone else wanted to replicate your programs, what advice would you give them as far as things to avoid doing?

  • Whenever possible, avoid activities for which proper participant preparation has not been done.
  • Avoid responding to last-minute requests to step in and facilitate events that you have not been able to play a role in designing. If you don’t know people’s agendas, concerns and past experience, you’re likely to be in for unpleasant surprises.

Among the ideas listed on CivilPolitics’ website, based on psychological research, that have been suggested as ways to reduce intergroup divisions. Which of these ideas are reflected in the work you do?  What might you add to these ideas?

Reducing the Perception of “Zero-Sum” competition, (any win for one side = a loss for the other side), Showing Examples of Positive Relationships , Reducing the Perceived Differences Between Groups, Affirming One’s Own Values to make people open to Others, Showing Examples of Cross-Group, Unexpected Agreement or Disagreement , Reducing Certainty of Individual Beliefs, Increasing Cross-Group Personal Connections through Fun, Meals, Talking, etc..

Please expand upon your use of the above ideas. How exactly have you operationalized these ideas? Which ideas have you tried and felt worked well? Which ideas have you tried and felt worked badly?

We highly value the practice of “”mapping”” / understanding the lay of the land beforehand in order to understand whether the situation is “”ripe”” for dialogue. 80% of our work is done before people ever come together, ideally through individual, oral conversations with participants or a written questionnaire to determine their hopes, concerns, expectations, past experiences, advice and how they can prepare themselves to get the most out of the experience. We also tend to work with a small planning group of the community/organization with and we are working, as they are the local/cultural experts. We see them as co-collaborators in designing an effective intervention. This builds participant commitment and ownership of the process, so they can be more likely to accomplish their purposes.

Communication agreements and structures that promote reflection (e.g. pause before speaking and between speakers) help reduce the likelihood of reactivity and conversations deteriorating into slogans, attacks and blaming.

From the above list, what other techniques and ideas would you add? How have you used these techniques in your work?

Our approach is derived from narrative therapy, appreciative inquiry and systems theory. We have also utilized techniques from internal family systems therapy, psychodrama, organizational development, anthropology and conflict transformation.

Where can others learn more about what you do?

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Our goal is to educate the public about social science research on improving inter-group relations across moral divides.