From "Me versus You" to "Us Versus the Problem"
The Power of Adversarial Collaborations
Jacob Hess was raised in a religious household that emphasized everyone was a child of God. But he was also exposed to the kind of conservative radio which insisted that liberal people were immoral, dangerous, and out to destroy America. Like many, he bought into that narrative.
Those beliefs were challenged when Hess’ brother died during his second year of graduate school. As Hess navigated his grief, a cadre of liberal students from his program enveloped him with love and support. Hess saw that stories he had long believed about liberals being vile were just “silly fairytales.”
Hess’ awakening to how easy it is to profoundly misunderstand people set him on a new professional path: studying and guiding dialogue between adversaries. It was while leading a liberal-conservative dialogue class with a progressive counterpart when Hess met Phil Neisser.
Neisser is Hess’ opposite in many ways: atheist, socialist, political scientist, and residing in the liberal state of New York. Yet the two mens’ interest in dialogue between people with divergent worldviews led them to become dear friends. That is, friends who disagree about almost everything.
What they do agree on is the importance of joining together in dialogue with adversaries. In 2012, Jacob and Phil released their co-authored the book, You’re Not as Crazy as I Thought (But You’re Still Wrong).1 The book offers a window into transforming from a “me versus you” approach to difficult problems to an “us versus the problem” collaboration. It isn’t an approach that aims to change minds, but rather one that seeks to create collaborations between adversaries.
What’s the point in collaborating with your opponent?
I want to dig into adversarial collaborations today, and not because foes should become besties for life2 but because walking around in a world where you hate or are afraid of people you disagree with kind of sucks.
In my conversations with Neisser and Hess, they explained that failure to start dialogues has important public health implications. Believing, for instance, that half of the people in the country are despicable leads to fear and anger and deep despair. In contrast, aiming to see opponents’ humanity can make the world feel brighter, the future more hopeful.
Politics feels pretty contentious these days and promises to grow more so through the election season. And bitter feuds between adversaries exist in many additional pockets of the world, including academic science. Cool heads do not prevail and scientists are often exceedingly harsh with one another. But just as in politics, contentious science isn’t a given.
A recent guest essay in The New York Times written by Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein offered tribute to the late Nobel Laureate, Daniel Kahneman. Sunstein’s essay, “The Nobel Winner Who Liked to Collaborate With His Adversaries,” explained that Kahneman viewed “angry science” as demeaning and reductive, not to mention self-reinforcing. Distaste for angry science led Kahneman to explore an alternative approach he called “adversarial collaboration.”3
Kahneman described adversarial collaborations this way:
The idea is that people who don't agree on a scientific idea commit themselves to work together towards a joint truth, either by experimentation or by discussion.
Kahneman’s first adversarial collaboration, touchingly, was around a scientific dispute about motion and priming with his wife, Anne Treisman.4 Another adversarial collaboration occurred with a research group that had harshly critiqued his work. Kahneman explained, that initially, “one of them said he thought a controversy would be more interesting.” Kahneman did eventually convince them to collaborate, but he never reached agreement with them or with his wife. Still, Kahneman concluded:
The outcome was vastly better for everybody than the alternative, and we ended up on civil terms. In general, a common feature of all my experiences has been that the adversaries ended up on friendlier terms than they started.
Even when no one’s mind might is changed through adversarial collaboration, people generally feel better about having collaborated than they would have had they not. Because though we humans tend to be stubborn as mules about our beliefs (thanks to a bias called belief perseverance), we can be extremely effective in moving from a position of fighting against one another to a position of fighting a problem together.
Guidelines for adversarial collaborations
Adversarial collaborations are simple in theory, but not exactly intuitive to put into action. We can take some helpful tips from the science of collaboration and dialogue work, like that from Hess and Neisser.
Agree to disagree. It’s helpful for adversarial collaborators to acknowledge that, yes, they are hoping to change the mind of the other side. And that they may not succeed (or likely won’t—darn that belief perseverance). Rather than staking success on minds being changed or consensus, we can instead define success as collaborative effort undertaken and increased mutual understanding achieved.
Separate people from their beliefs. As Niesser told me in our interview, he can strongly disagree with some of Hess’ ideas without objecting to Hess as a person. That said, Neisser admitted that while writing their book, it could be hard to absorb ideas that he found loathsome. So, when his ire would go up, he’d take a break and do some reflection that helped him to see Hess the person separate from his beliefs.5 Such an approach allows us to continue to see people as essentially good without pretending we like what they are doing or what they believe.
Agree on a common methodology. Common methodology in scientific collaborations involves designing how a hypothesis will be tested. This is a forcing function to compel opposing groups to settle on a shared approach. In other kinds of collaborations, it’s might to be about a shared approach to conversation. Phil and Jacob explained that dialogue groups are typically started by setting ground rules. For instance: Be curious about where others are coming from—this shows respect and invites the other side into your community. And, as a bonus, it's more likely to change the other person's mind that any reasons or evidence you communicate.
Shared methodology provides helpful structure to keep things moving forward, and, just as importantly, offers an actionable way to be in on the project together.
Foster a relationship outside of the adversarial collaboration. We tend to diminish the complexity of people we are in conflict with, reducing them down to the thing we most vehemently disagree about. Rather than giving in to the temptation to be reductive, consider that despite vast differences, you likely also have areas of commonality—ones you may overlook while focusing on your differences. For example, perhaps you both love piña coladas and getting caught in the rain.6
You Don’t Need to Agree to Be Collaborators
Hess and Neisser, Kahneman and his wife, and some politicians who decide that the value of collaborating outweighs the fun of fighting aren’t all that likely to change one another’s minds. Nevertheless, approaching disagreement as a shared project creates an atmosphere that’s a little less angry, a lot more pleasant, and which leaves us less terrified of living in a world with the people we strongly disagree with. Sometimes, it even offers us powerful new insights into complex truths or better solutions for complex problems. Sometimes, you might even end up with a surprising bestie for life.
1 I discussed You’re Not as Crazy as I Thought (But You’re Still Wrong) in a previous post about what happened when I reached out to someone I disagreed with. Admittedly, it wasn’t quite as sweet of a story as Hess and Neisser’s!
2 I don’t actually believe that many adversaries are going to end up as card carrying BFFs, but do want to share that interviewing Hess and Niesser was one of the sweetest professional experiences I’ve had in the past several months. These men truly adore each other, despite their many differences. It filled me with inspiration, hope, and pure joy to see it.
3 Kahneman wasn’t the first to consider codifying adversarial collaborations. He acknowledged this and cites a 1988 article by researchers Gary Latham, Miriam Erez, and Edwin Locke, who described a join design approach to resolving scientific disputes.
4 You’ve got to wonder—or at least, I did—how often Kahneman and his wife fought over loading the dishwasher. Did they apply tools of adversarial collaboration when they encountered tension over how the bowls should be stacked?
5 This advice is similar to parenting advice to make it clear to children during discipline or feedback that your criticism is about the behavior, not about the child, themselves: “I love you even though I really hate it when you throw my shoes in the toilet.”
6 Yep, I am indeed referencing this Jimmy Buffet classic. In this musical story, a husband and wife have grown bored with one another. The husband puts a wanted ad out for a partner who likes the things he does, only to find his wife is the one who responds to the ad. Despite being married for years, they have similarities that had never realized.
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