Remember the good old days, when you could have a
heated-yet-enjoyable debate with your friends about things
that didn’t matter that much — times when you could be a true
fan of the Manchester United soccer team when you didn’t
come from the city of Manchester?
How things have changed.
Now disagreements feel deadly serious. Like when your
colleague pronounces that wearing a face mask in public
is a threat to his liberty. Or when you see that one of your
friends has just tweeted that, actually, all lives matter. Before
you know it, you’re feeling angry and forming harsh new
judgments about your colleagues and friends. Let’s take a
collective pause and breathe: there are some ways we can
all try to have more civil disagreements in this febrile age of
culture wars.
1. ‘Coupling’ and ‘decoupling’
The first is to consider how inclined people are to ‘couple’
or ‘decouple’ topics involving wider political and social factors.
Swedish data analyst John Nerst has used the terms to
describe the contrasting ways in which people approach
contentious issues. Those of us more inclined to ‘couple’ see
them as inextricably related to a broader matrix of factors,
whereas those more predisposed to ‘decouple’ prefer to
consider an issue in isolation. To take a crude example, a
decoupler might consider in isolation the question of whether
a vaccine provides a degree of immunity to a virus; a coupler,
by contrast, would immediately see the issue as inextricably
entangled in a mesh of factors, such as pharmaceutical
industry power and parental choice.
2.____________________
Most of us are deeply committed to our beliefs, especially
concerning moral and social issues, such that when we’re
presented with facts that contradict our beliefs, we often
choose to dismiss those facts, rather than update our beliefs.
A study at Arizona State University, U.S., analysed more
than 100,000 comments on a forum where users post their
views on an issue and invite others to persuade them to
change their mind. The researchers found that regardless of
the kind of topic, people were more likely to change their mind
when confronted with more evidence-based arguments. “Our
work may suggest that while attitude change is hard-won,
providing facts, statistics and citations for one’s arguments
can convince people to change their minds,” they concluded.
3. Just be nicer?
Finally, it’s easier said than done, but let’s all try to be
more respectful of and attentive to each other’s positions. We
should do this not just for virtuous reasons, but because the
more we create that kind of a climate, the more open-minded
and intellectually flexible we will all be inclined to be. And then
hopefully, collectively, we can start having more constructive
disagreements — even in our present very difficult times.
(Christian Jarrett. www.bbc.com, 14.10.2020. Adaptado.)
No trecho do quarto parágrafo “
whereas those more
predisposed to ‘decouple’ prefer to consider an issue in
isolation”, o termo sublinhado introduz
