Asking the right questions is often about noticing a person's conflicting answers

My brief experience as a professional journalist in 2004-2005 frustrated me in a couple of ways. One is that I rarely felt like I was getting to the real story. I'd go to a board of education meeting or the county supervisors meeting, both full of folks disagreeing about everything short of which day of the week it was. I'd listen to it, interview the people, hear about this view or that one, but never feel like I got to the root of the issue. 

And nothing really changed.

I didn't have a clear picture of why I struggled so much until I read a recent article by Amanda Ripley explaining that I wasn't the only one with this problem. There's an epidemic of not asking the right questions and it's killing the ability of people in our country to talk to each other.

As politicians have become more polarized, [journalists] have increasingly allowed ourselves to be used by demagogues on both sides of the aisle, amplifying their insults instead of exposing their motivations. Again and again, we have escalated the conflict and snuffed the complexity out of the conversation

Conflict is a fact of life and is a healthy part of a pluralistic society. However, I don't think anyone would argue that our voting public is in a good place. In Ripley's article, she interviews researchers who classify what is going in our country as "intractable conflict."

In this hypervigilant state, we feel an involuntary need to defend our side and attack the other. That anxiety renders us immune to new information. In other words: no amount of investigative reporting or leaked documents will change our mind, no matter what.

(Emphasis mine)

It gets worse.

Intractable conflicts feed upon themselves. The more we try to stop the conflict, the worse it gets. These feuds “seem to have a power of their own that is inexplicable and total, driving people and groups to act in ways that go against their best interests and sow the seeds of their ruin,” Coleman writes. 

The result of all of this is a situation where everyone is worse off. Something like the equivalent of burning down the house to prevent your ex from getting it. The experience is so scarring, too, that people often overcorrect and refuse to engage in any sort of conflict with anyone. Then, of course, nothing gets solved and problems fester.

So what to do? Ripley interviewed academics psychologists and professional mediators and came away with both a different goal for journalists and some ways to get there. 

The key is solving intractable conflicts is to introduce complexity. It muddles the internal narrative that each of carry about the person opposing us. It also is just a more accurate way of thinking about an issue. Ripley references Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's famous TED talk "A Single Story:" 

The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but that they are incomplete.

***

Ripley goes on to describe several different techniques for making our stale narratives more complex. It's too much to put into a single post, so I'll focus on one today -- amplifying contradictions. 

Ripley frames this while watching a group interview Oprah conducted with several people, some of whom support Trump and others who oppose him. Two professional mediators joined Ripley to review Oprah's performance. She first interviews a Trump supporter named Tom:

“Every day I love him more and more. Every single day. I still don’t like his attacks, his Twitter attacks, if you will, on other politicians. I don’t think that’s appropriate. But, at the same time, his actions speak louder than words. And I love what he’s doing to this country. Love it.”   

Hearing this, Winfrey turned, without comment, to the woman next to Tom to solicit her (polar opposite) opinion. 

Both mediators jumped all over Winfrey for failing to respond to Tom. It was a perfect opportunity, said Cobb. “I would have said, ‘Gosh Tom, I didn’t know from out of the gate that we were going to have this kind of complexity in the room, and I compliment you because it’s so easy to say Yes or No, but you’ve actually said two things at the same time.”

(Emphasis mine)

Amplifying contradictions is about catching those time we hear a person in conversation say two things at the same time, then asking to explain the contradictions. Not as a "gotcha" moment but rather a way to draw out nuance. 

Listen for the next time someone is talking about their opinion about...well, anything. The thing is, we have multiple views about pretty much any subject. Heck, I've got conflicting views about frying bacon. (I like it prepared medium rare except when in a breakfast burrito. Then I want crispy so it contrasts with the eggs and cheese. See? Nuance!) 

It's weird, but as much as we humans like to talk, we often don't explain enough. Instead, we fall in to the trap of telling a single story. We stereotype ourselves.