Dear Crucial Skills,

I hear lots of talk—and see lots of evidence—about how divisive the world is becoming. I hate to admit it, but I know I’m part of the problem. I feel an embarrassing amount of satisfaction when a comedian lands a great joke about a political party whose tenets I despise. And if I’m honest, I feel disgust toward people who hold certain positions opposite my own. I know I probably should feel more tolerant, but I don’t really want to. What would you say to me?

Signed,
Indignant

Dear Indignant,

You’ve been candid about your feelings. While I may not talk you out of how you feel, I’m confident I can help you understand how you got there—and perhaps a bit about the cost of staying there.

While you haven’t acknowledged harming anyone because of their opposing views, I ask you to give me some latitude to broaden my response. I’ll entitle my response “How to feel good about doing bad things.” 

I feel a need to broaden the topic because all of us have witnessed not just horrific politically motivated violence recently, but giddy applause for that violence from some who likely consider themselves moral and decent, and violent rhetoric in opposition from people who also consider themselves moral and decent.

I also want to broaden it because, in lesser ways, I’m one of those people, too. While I take no pleasure in violence, I admit, like you, that I am guilty of justifying my own rudeness or disgust. And it turns out the processes that allow me to feel okay about rudeness or disgust are the same processes that enable others to feel okay about more extreme actions.

The renowned psychologist (and my personal hero) Albert Bandura found that good people (like you and me) use certain mental manipulations to feel justified in doing things that are, at their core, harmful. Sometimes we employ these rationalizations ourselves, and sometimes we are unwittingly manipulated by others toward them. I offer seven common patterns based on Bandura’s brilliant insights for any who would like to understand not just what’s going on “out there,” but what might be going on in ourselves too:

1. Moral Justification: Do I frame hostility as moral? “I’m only speaking harshly to stand up for truth!”
2. Euphemistic Labeling: Do I use softening terms to sanitize my actions? “I only shared a couple of memes.”
3. Advantageous Comparison: Do I divert attention from myself by pointing to worse offenders? “Sure my side has made some mistakes, but it’s nothing like what they’ve done.”
4. Diffusion of Responsibility: Do I ignore my responsibility—even if it’s minor—in contributing to or supporting negative things that happen? “Just because some who share my views do awful things doesn’t mean I condone them.” 
5. Distorting Consequences – Do I ignore or minimize the harm caused to others? “It’s not my fault if they can’t take a joke.”
6. Dehumanization: Do I reduce others to labels? “They’re idiots, losers, or radicals.”
7. Attribution of Blame: Do I find ways to blame victims for their own suffering? “They brought upon themselves with their choices and behavior.”

Recognizing these traps is the first step, but awareness alone isn’t enough. I’ve suggested for forty years that our emotions (and related actions) are much less about the world around us and much more about the story we tell ourselves about the world. Here are some practical ways to reframe our stories and lay the groundwork for dialogue.

Start with Heart

Ask yourself: what do I really want for me, for others, and for the world we both live in? This question helps me dig deeper beyond the shallow satisfaction of one-upping someone to exploring the kind of human I want to be. Do I want to be part of creating a world where emotional and psychological violence are fair game in political disagreements? As I soberly reflect, I find it harder to take pleasure in derision.

Watch Your Language

If I am more circumspect in how I characterize my actions, and more humane in how I refer to those who differ from me, my emotions soften profoundly. I’m not suggesting soft-pedaling difference, I am simply suggesting dropping the double-standard of justifying my own pettiness while villainizing that of others.

Get Curious

Rather than assuming people hold their views because they are dumb or evil, I try to start from a perspective of “I wonder how the things that have influenced me differ from those that influenced them?” I’ve had some rich conversations with people from markedly different worlds than mine by starting from this place. We rarely ended up agreeing. But for my part I ended up appreciating.

Build Common Ground

Even in fierce disagreement, shared concerns like family, safety, or fairness often exist. Naming them creates a foundation of mutual purpose. Most people with views extremely different from mine are motivated to hold them by desires for safety, fairness, faith or other values I share.

There has never been a more important time for us to learn to be aware of how susceptible we are to adopting the stories fed to us by persuasive voices who thrive on division. Escalating rancor and violence is not evidence of irreconcilable differences. It is evidence of our failure to interrogate and master our stories about one another.

Sincerely,
Joseph