Flip The Script On The Polarizing Affects Of Social Media

Why are we experiencing so much polarization in culture? A common answer is social media. But what is some of the reasoning on how social media contributes to polarization? Today on the episode, Tim and Rick speak with Michael Whitenton (Ph.D.) about three types of polarization that social media incites - ideological, perceived, and affective. Michael also talks about the books and resources he uses for a course he teaches to undergraduate students on how to have courageous conversations in divided times, and they get into some of the hard realities of fostering bridge building conversations in public spaces.

Show notes and a full transcript are available.

Transcript

Rick Langer:

Welcome to the Winsome Conviction podcast. My name's Rick Langer. I'm a professor at Biola in the Biblical Studies and Theology department. I'm also the director of the Office of Faith and Learning and the co-director of the Winsome Conviction Project with my good friend Tim Muehlhoff.

Tim.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Rick, it's so fun to be doing this podcast with you and doing the Winsome Conviction Project. And the cool thing is we have, over time, almost serendipitous, but we know God opens doors, we've created a network of bridge builders. People we-

Rick Langer:

We've gotten involved in the network of it.

Tim Muehlhoff:

We have.

Rick Langer:

We haven't created it.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Oh, we didn't create it. No, you're right.

Rick Langer:

We discovered that they're out there and become a part.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Yes, you're right.

But we have just met fascinating people. And one of those people is Michael Whitenton. He's a lecturer at Baylor. He teaches a course on bridge building. But the last time we talked to him, he had just gotten promoted to the Baylor Bridgebuilding Fellows program.

Rick Langer:

Yeah.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Right?

Rick Langer:

He's directing it, as I recall.

Tim Muehlhoff:

He's directing it, yes.

Rick Langer:

Not participating, but doing it. Making it happen.

Tim Muehlhoff:

I like to think that it was our podcast that pushed it over the edge.

Rick Langer:

I would think that was probably the difference maker.

Tim Muehlhoff:

That's the one who got him up the hill.

Rick Langer:

The only problem is he'd already done it before he got on the podcast, but we can work on that part later.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Uh, details.

Okay. So we had Michael on. It was just a great conversation. When it ended, we thought, man, we literally have been writing down questions we wanted to ask him. And so we invited Michael back.

Michael, welcome back.

Michael Whitenton:

Hey, I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me back.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Well, we really enjoyed having you.

So we literally have written down some questions and we're going to start with one that Rick and I have been thinking about for the last four and a half years. And that is, social media.

Rick Langer:

Oof.

Tim Muehlhoff:

We don't want to demonize it. We don't want to say all of our problems are going to lay at the feet of social media. But by golly, Michael, when we work with organizations, when we work with universities, it makes everything so much harder that you can make some progress when you're in this meeting or you're facilitating a group discussion, and then people just go off and say things on social media that literally has undone everything we tried to accomplish. So we would love to come to you and just say-

Rick Langer:

If you could solve that for us, we'd appreciate it.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Yeah, solve the social media problem.

Give us your take both as an academic and even personally, your personal approach to social media. What are your thoughts on this complex issue of social media?

Michael Whitenton:

Yeah, sure. Let me just start by saying my brain loves social media so much.

Rick Langer:

Your brain is supposed to love it. It's designed to make you love it. That's the problem.

Michael Whitenton:

Yeah, that's right. It knows what's been made for it.

For instance, I've never been on TikTok. That's true. My students don't really understand that. I'm quick to point out that that's just because I know myself and that I would love it and I would never sign off. So I actually, I deactivated all of my social media, I think back in August. Something like that.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Wow, really?

Michael Whitenton:

Yeah.

So here's the thing. When you read for explanations about polarization, and so I realize that polarization is a technical term. Can I put my professor hat on for just a second?

Tim Muehlhoff:

Yeah, sure.

Rick Langer:

Sure. We wear that hat occasionally too.

Michael Whitenton:

I know. Okay, good.

When we talk about polarization, when you hear people talk about that, really, we're talking about, well, either some combination of the following three things, and these things sometimes get those Venn diagram circles overlap here. But there's ideological polarization. Ideological polarization is just a viewpoint, diversity, as people disagree on things. It's very much neutral. We tend though, we tend to think people are way different than they actually are from us in terms of our in-group versus our out-group. In fact, some studies show that we think people are about twice as extreme as they actually are.

Social media is a big part of that. If we're not actually talking to people who believe differently and all we're getting is through the news cycle and through social media ... The algorithms play to stuff that makes us angry and the news tends to report things on the extremes. And so if that's where you're getting your information from, here, back to that quote from Monica Guzman, whoever's underrepresented in your world will be overrepresented in your imagination. If your imagination is full of extremes from social media, then you tend to think people are twice as extreme as they are.

So that's perceived polarization. So there's ideological polarization and perceived polarization. Both of those things drive affective polarization. Now, affective polarization is feelings of distrust and dislike for out-group. So for people that don't believe like you, for people who voted for a different candidate, who are part of a different religion. Usually there's some disparity between the way they feel about somebody who's part of their group and not part of their group. Affective polarization though tends to be, in our current moment, pretty bad actually. So bad that people like Peter Coleman and others, Peter Coleman is at Columbia, have argued that we are more divided than at any point in our nation's history.

Rick Langer:

Wow.

Michael Whitenton:

And that is including the Civil War.

Rick Langer:

Wow.

Michael Whitenton:

And a large part of that, there's a lot of reasons for why we're polarized. Our brains seem to be wired to win and to want to be in groups. Cooperating is a really good thing, but the flip side of cooperating usually involves excluding other people. So that's part of it. But a real big part of this, if you read anybody on why we're so polarized, is social media. Precisely, because like I mentioned earlier, you get a lot of folks who, sorry, a lot of the news stories, all the news stories, if it bleeds, it leads. And I think we can take that metaphorically as well. We get people on the outskirts. You don't see a lot of news stories about the politician who brings people together. Occasionally, but not often, even though those people exist.

So I made the decision to back out of it. For me, it was really helpful because I stopped thinking that the world was falling apart. And for me, I welcomed that change, you know. We got problems, but everything didn't seem quite as urgent as I had thought.

Rick Langer:

And I assume your life continued to exist. I don't mean that just sarcastically-

Michael Whitenton:

Nope.

Rick Langer:

... but you're an academic. You're living in a world that requires communication, being up-to-date. People come to you for relevant current information, and it has not kept you from functioning in that capacity.

Michael Whitenton:

No, that's exactly correct. And actually, it is worth pointing out that I use some, it's not that I ... I haven't stopped reading the news. But even there, I'm using, I don't get any money from these folks, but allsides.com.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Oh, we love AllSides. We love AllSides.

Rick Langer:

Plug that a million times.

Michael Whitenton:

Good. AllSides is great. Ground News, I don't know if y'all have heard of Ground News.

Tim Muehlhoff:

No.

Michael Whitenton:

It's similar. Similar kind of thing, uses an algorithm to ... Not an algorithm. It uses AI to show the lean of the sources. What I like about Ground News is there's also a feature called Blindspots. So you can click Blindspot and it tells you, if you trend to the right, here's sources that are being reported from right-leaning sources.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Oh, wow.

Michael Whitenton:

And if you turn to the left. So it really helps you fill out your media consumption.

Rick Langer:

So give us the website or the search again?

Michael Whitenton:

Ground News. I'm not sure what the URL is for that. But Ground News is an app at the very least. And then allsides.com.

Tim Muehlhoff:

I love the Blindspot. That's really-

Michael Whitenton:

Yeah, it's really helpful.

Tim Muehlhoff:

That's really cool.

And you feel like, just for a second, spiritually, your soul, how has it affected your soul not going to social media?

Michael Whitenton:

For me, a big barometer for spirituality for me is, how connected do I feel to other people? And how carefully am I able to see the ultimate and indescribable dignity of the person that I'm talking to, especially when we disagree. And if that's the marker, then it's been a real big spiritual boon for me because I'm able to see this person that I disagree with as a person that I happen to disagree with, and not as a representative of all that is wrong in the world or whatever narratives we fill our head with.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Can I ask-

Michael Whitenton:

I should say we fill our head with, but also what is being filled by social media.

Tim Muehlhoff:

What's being poured into our head as well.

Michael Whitenton:

That's right.

Tim Muehlhoff:

I teach a class on marriage, so I'm just curious to ask this question, feel free not to answer. Did your wife join you? That would be wild if you had a little bit of a split marriage. You know what I mean? Feel free not to answer, but did she join in?

Michael Whitenton:

I happen to be married to probably the nicest person that's ever existed. She is so kind.

Tim Muehlhoff:

We would love to meet her.

Michael Whitenton:

She's amazing. You would like her. Because the thing is, and I say this only half-jokingly, there are very few people in this world that have ever disliked her. And for someone to not like her, it does raise red flags for me, to be honest. Not in a biased way, it's just that, "Wow, she's so kind."

Anyway, so I say that to say she has a small business. She's a small business owner and she runs some wonderful music and movement classes for kids, zero to six. Songbird Kids. Shout out to Songbird Kids.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Good. Love it. Love it.

Michael Whitenton:

So her livelihood or her income depends on interacting with social media, but I think we've both taken a step back. Neither one of us were really happy with what social media does to us on the inside.

Tim Muehlhoff:

That's so good.

Okay, so we are impressed that you started this bridge building course and now you're the director of a fellows program.

Michael Whitenton:

That's right. The Bridgebuilding Fellows program.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Bridgebuilding Fellows. That's ... just sounds awesome.

Michael Whitenton:

It's kind of a mouthful. Yeah, thanks.

Tim Muehlhoff:

And that our podcast played a small part in. I'm just going with that narrative.

Michael Whitenton:

It is.

Tim Muehlhoff:

I'm just going with that.

Michael Whitenton:

I think so.

Rick Langer:

You might be over-milking that, Tim. But far be it for me to judge.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Well, listen, if your wife becomes wealthy because we gave a shout-out-

Rick Langer:

Wow.

Tim Muehlhoff:

... there's something happening with this podcast.

Michael Whitenton:

I think we can put it all ... we can all look back to this moment.

Tim Muehlhoff:

All right, thank you.

Rick Langer:

Cool.

Tim Muehlhoff:

So you had to pick a text, you had to pick. And you can't have 50 million texts for your class. So give us the books you picked and what were the books that almost made it?

Rick Langer:

And why?

Tim Muehlhoff:

And why?

Rick Langer:

What are the things that you wanted to get planted in people's minds?

Michael Whitenton:

Sure.

For the course, the Bridgebuilding Fellows program where it didn't use text, we can come back to that. But for the text, we used a combination of Monica Guzman's, I Never Thought of It That Way. The whole title is, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times.

Rick Langer:

That's a great subtitle.

Michael Whitenton:

By BenBella Books.

It is. It's a great subtitle. And this book is so easy to read. I've read it cover-to-cover a few times, obviously. But I also read the audiobook. The audiobook is amazing. She reads the audiobook. You feel like you're getting to hang out with the author which is cool because she's a very cool person.

What I like about that book though, especially in terms of college students, is that it's written in a cadence that is very hip. I don't really know how to describe that more academically. It's not lowbrow at all, but it's very accessible. And you get the impression that, like I said, that this author is really hip, that she understands. And the students have really gravitated toward that aspect. She's also so smart and such a gifted journalist. So you put those two things together and she also, I forget what her exact role is at Braver Angels, but she's pretty far up there in Braver Angels' club.

Rick Langer:

You see her on the blogs and emails and stuff from them all the time.

Michael Whitenton:

That's right.

So the other book is by Amanda Ripley. It's High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out. Amanda Ripley, she's a journalist. And this book High Conflict ... I'll come back and say more about Guzman's book. I realized I just gave you the title and didn't say anything about it. But with Amanda Ripley's book, when she talks about High Conflict, she means that this, at least as I understand her, this mindset where we get intoxicated by fighting, by arguing, by this loop, it's a dopamine loop. It does feel good when you, quote, "own someone." That does release dopamine and feelings of superiority and control. And at a time when we feel out of control, when we feel like we don't know what the future is going to look like, it makes sense that we would gravitate toward that.

But Ripley's point is that eventually for a lot of us, we get to a point, and this is certainly true of my own life, where I got to a point where I was just so tired of all of the fighting, what she calls saturation points. That you get to a saturation point and you need out. And sometimes it's actually hard to get out because it's a cycle. And usually we've constructed a world that we live in that is populated with other people that support that high conflict kind of attitude. So most of us have them, friends who, when in the moment we're around them, they're just complaining from start to finish whatever it is that's bothering them. Those sorts of things fuel that thing.

Now, of course, she's not saying you need to cut people out of your life. But she's got a bunch of case studies, and some of them have to do with a guy escaping gang violence after years and years of being involved in it. Another has to do with someone leaving the FARC in Colombia. And then also, Simon Greer actually, the original Bridging the Gap exchange program is in that book.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Oh, that's great.

Michael Whitenton:

So that's high conflict.

I'll just say about Guzman's book, the thing that is really helpful about that, she gives really concrete advice about how and when to have conversations and whether to have it. Like, should you do this on social media? Her answer is, usually not. Should you do it on the phone? You can, but it's much better to do it in person where you can be in proximity and see their face and see their hands. I say that because you can learn a lot about somebody, about what they're feeling if you could see their hands and see their face. And I just mean in terms of nerves, you know?

Tim Muehlhoff:

Yeah.

Michael Whitenton:

I do facilitate a lot of dialogues. I usually am checking their hands. Just, how are they feeling? And if their hands are vibrating, which is not uncommon, I know that they're pretty keyed up and that I can filter it through that ... filter whatever they're saying through that.

The last thing that I use is Perspectives from Constructive Dialogue Institute. Have y'all talked about Perspectives on the podcast? Do y'all use Perspectives?

Tim Muehlhoff:

No.

Rick Langer:

No. We've talked about other things from Constructive Dialogue Institute, but tell us the story.

Michael Whitenton:

Perspectives, it's a fantastic software. It's a hybrid learning environment. They got a big grant from someone, my apologies to the grantor, a grant agency that I can't give you the ... but it's one of the big ones. And so it's free for anyone that wants to use it. And they have a learning management system, an LMS that you can plug participants in, including students into.

What I do is I use this like a reading. It's got modules on the science of polarization and why we disagree. Jonathan Haidt, of course, is part of Constructive Dialogue. So his whole thing about Moral Foundations Theory, his whole elephant and the rider piece are all part of this learning system. And I use it to flip the classroom a little bit. So they do a lot of these modules and perspectives like they would a reading, but it's interactive enough that I can have them come to class and then we can do more work with the materials. So if they did a learning module on listening or getting curious, then I don't have to necessarily talk with them about what Perspectives says about listening. They've already worked through that in a relatively interactive way. When they get into the classroom, now we can just practice listening.

So we'll do 30 minutes of, here's a prompt. One of my favorites in the middle of the semester, not on week one, tell me about a time, tell a story about a time that you really blew it at bridge building. And then the other person just asks curious questions. And some really powerful stuff comes out of those conversations.

So those are the three. And I use PDFs for other books and stuff like that throughout.

Tim Muehlhoff:

If our listeners wanted to get to the Perspectives, just go to Constructive Dialogue Institute website and they can find it right there?

Michael Whitenton:

I think so. If I were them, I would search Constructive Dialogue Institute. And then I would just add onto that, Perspectives. It'll pop up there.

Rick Langer:

We'll chase down the link and make sure we add that-

Tim Muehlhoff:

Yeah, that's great.

Rick Langer:

... on the podcast.

Michael Whitenton:

That's awesome.

Tim Muehlhoff:

You know what's interesting, Michael? All of us are huge fans of Simon Greer, Bridging the Gap. When he does his training, which we've gone through a couple times with ... we're in the discussion with Pomona College. We originally got paired three years ago and we've been doing it three years. It's just been amazing-

Michael Whitenton:

Wow. That's awesome.

Tim Muehlhoff:

... to bring Biola and Pomona students together. He actually shows a clip. He took this tour when there was racial unrest through, I think St. Louis?

Rick Langer:

Yeah, it was St. Louis.

Tim Muehlhoff:

St. Louis.

Rick Langer:

After the George Floyd killing.

Tim Muehlhoff:

I so respect him for doing this. He shows a clip of a meeting that went sideways. It's pretty intense.

Rick Langer:

[inaudible 00:20:56].

Tim Muehlhoff:

Somebody got up and walked out. So I love that exercise of saying, listen, tell me a time when this didn't work and what can be learned, why it didn't work. And so I think that's just a brilliant exercise. And Simon really does a good job and I'm so glad that you have people that think that way.

Rick Langer:

I grew up in Colorado and did a lot of skiing. And if you ask a person who's skied, "Tell me a time when you fell," it's kind of like, "Well, there's 10 million of them." So it's not like it's hard to come up with one. And I think we should think about bridge building a little bit more like skiing in that sense-

Michael Whitenton:

Yeah, sure.

Rick Langer:

... where it is totally normal, totally expected that you will fall.

Michael Whitenton:

That's right.

Rick Langer:

And that's actually part of how you learn. One of my buddies and I, in high school when we first, we were learning to ski, we're like, if we didn't have a couple of really, pretty robust falls a day, we didn't feel like we were trying to get better. And it's a bit-

Michael Whitenton:

That's right.

Rick Langer:

... like that with bridge building. They don't always have to be robust because there's a human being involved on the other end too. But the point is that it's just not a thing that happens automatically perfectly. And that's just fine. That's how you learn.

Michael Whitenton:

Well, and there's so much at stake. In these conversations, there's usually some deeply held values. Sometimes a sense of ... a part of your identity is at stake or feels like it's at stake. And then our nervous system is so wrapped up. And we only have the one, this one nervous system that tells us that we're being chased by a lion.

Rick Langer:

Yeah, right.

Michael Whitenton:

Or, [inaudible 00:22:35].

Rick Langer:

The lizard brain kicks in.

Michael Whitenton:

That's the only one we have. Even things that aren't actually unsafe, feel very unsafe. And civil discourse, constructive dialogue kinds of conversations across difference, trigger that same part of the brain. So part of it is also just learning that, okay, yeah, I'm actually not danger ... I'm not in danger right now. I might feel very uncomfortable, but I'm not actually in danger.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Okay. But can I push back on that just a little bit, Michael?

Michael Whitenton:

Yeah, go ahead.

Tim Muehlhoff:

I agree with that. But in today's social media context, something that could be attributed to me or somebody films part of what I'm saying-

Michael Whitenton:

Yeah, sure.

Tim Muehlhoff:

... I make a mistake, I think in today's cancel culture, I think a lot of us do live in fear.

Michael Whitenton:

Of course.

Tim Muehlhoff:

I need to be incredibly careful and not take risks. And I can't fail because that failure could really come back.

Rick and I did this class together. Actually, I did the class, Rick came in and we did some really creative things. And in the idea of that, we do these evaluations, I'm sure at Baylor, at the end of every semester anonymously-

Michael Whitenton:

Sure, yeah, Of course.

Tim Muehlhoff:

... students. Michael, it was some of the most negative comments. And one student even intimated just a little, "Dr. MuehlHoff, you do know that some people have gotten fired because of X."

Michael Whitenton:

Scary.

Tim Muehlhoff:

So for the first time, I thought, "Oh my gosh, was that a little bit of a challenge or threat?"

So what to do about that? I don't know if I want to do bridge building because I don't know if my career would make it if I do it or whatever. Any thoughts about that?

Michael Whitenton:

Yeah. Well, first of all, let me just say, man, I'm sorry. That is really rough. And I think anybody that's been teaching for a while has had some kind of run-in with that. And certainly I have. And man, I'm sorry that that happened to you.

Tim Muehlhoff:

I appreciate that. Thank you.

Michael Whitenton:

I want to differentiate because there's definitely levels of unsafety. Unsafety, is that a word? There's levels of safety or lack of safety. And when we're talking about questions around one's livelihood, I take it that that's a real question of safety. That's not a question of, is this going to be an uncomfortable conversation? Which is really more what I was thinking about. Is it uncomfortable to hear someone say this thing that you value so deeply or this part of yourself is not valid? Yeah, it's deeply uncomfortable. Now, is that unsafe? I guess it depends on the context, really. And so I want to differentiate between public contexts and private ones.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Oh, that's really good. Yeah, that's really good.

Michael Whitenton:

Bridging in a public context is always fraught, you know. And we're going to be doing a bridging event actually around free speech at Baylor next week. That's going to be a public event and so there's going to be a panel of students who are sharing their perspectives. And it's only natural that they are aware that they're going to be sharing that publicly for the same reasons that you've articulated, is that this thing could be taken out of context or whatever. But I think those public things are very fruitful, but they serve a different purpose. So here, bridging conversations, when I say bridging conversation, what I mean 99% of the time is, something private, is sometimes in a group, sometimes one-on-one. And always with the understanding that it's an explicit, when you can make it explicit, that what's shared is going to stay confidential.

Tim Muehlhoff:

That's good. That's really helpful

Michael Whitenton:

Because if we don't have the safety to share honestly, one, we're not going to do it. Or if we do it, it might hurt us. Maybe physically and maybe in terms of materially. So I want to keep those things separate for me. And I also want to acknowledge too, that for some people, and for some topics, that threshold, the line between emotionally safe and unsafe is paper thin. And in those contexts, I want to say, hey, not everyone has to bridge on everything. We all have something that we are not ready for. And I don't know that it benefits anyone for us to push things before we're ready.

Tim Muehlhoff:

That's really good.

One thing we've done here, and it's hard to know exactly when this one's going to drop, this episode, but we are creating right now something called endthestalemate.com. It's a website you can go to and practice and have a bad day.

Michael Whitenton:

Oh, that's wonderful.

Tim Muehlhoff:

It's just going to be you in your dorm room, in your apartment, in your house, where you get to scream at the computer, "I think that's crazy." But it's in the privacy where we start to develop these perspective-taking muscles. It's actually going to be focusing on the election. It'll for sure be out June 18th whenever this drops. But just go to endthestalemate.com and just keep checking because when it drops, you'll be able to actually listen to diverse perspectives and try to do perspective-taking. And just know that a relationship won't be harmed if you just have a really bad day and phrase something like, "Okay, I shouldn't have said that."

Rick Langer:

Except the relationship with your computer, which will never be the same again.

Tim Muehlhoff:

When you said the Perspectives thing from the Constructive Dialogue Institute, it made me think of that a little bit. We're going to definitely check that out though. That's so cool.

Oh, go ahead, Rick.

Rick Langer:

I was just going to say, we should probably wind some of this down. It'd be great, I can't imagine all things you'd have to talk about, so give us just a couple of things that you'd really want to highlight for our listeners that you think would be valuable for people who do care about bridge building. And let me just put it in Christian Biblical language of loving one another. One of the greatest gifts of love is actually being willing to listen and give a person, another person, the gift of your full attention, even if it's a person you disagree with. And in fact, that's the classic way perhaps for us in a very ordinary sense to love, I hate to call them your enemies, but love people who are your fundamental difference, out-group, whatever you want to call it.

Anyhow, that's a big concern that we have. And anything that you would say that you'd really want to highlight in that realm that would be helpful for our listeners.

Michael Whitenton:

Yeah, sure.

I think staying curious about yourself and others. But let's start with yourself. One of my students recently said, I forget how they put this, but something like, "How can you love your neighbor if you don't know them? And how can you know them if you don't listen to them?"

Tim Muehlhoff:

Yeah, that's good.

Michael Whitenton:

But then the flip side of that too is, how do you love your neighbor as yourself if you don't know who you are? And so paying close attention to the reactions you have in your own self. I think of the eminent philosopher, Taylor Swift, who has-

Rick Langer:

Oh yeah, go for [inaudible 00:30:53] today, I like that.

Tim Muehlhoff:

That pains me. This pains me.

Michael Whitenton:

Just lean toward it. Lean toward the discomfort, Tim.

So who says, "Hi, it's me. I'm the problem, it's me." That's from Anti-Hero, Tim. I'm guessing you maybe don't have that song memorized.

Rick Langer:

You might want to check it out, Tim.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Michael, you so could have made that point without bringing in Taylor Swift. Good Lord, man.

Michael Whitenton:

No, I couldn't. There's no way. There's no way.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Yes, go. Please continue.

Michael Whitenton:

Couldn't have been done.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Please continue.

Michael Whitenton:

But seriously, oftentimes in bridge building, we tend to point the finger at the other group and blame them for why this can't work. But in all conflict, eventually someone says, "Okay, enough." And why not have it be you that says, enough?

So I think curiosity, cultivating curiosity. Cultivating curiosity about yourself, about other folks. And I think too, this, to come back to that Guzman quote that whoever's underrepresented in your world will be overrepresented in your imagination, this is true. And let me give you a concrete example of what we've seen at Baylor around this from the Bridgebuilding Fellows program. We took folks through, this is with funding from Interfaith America for the Institutional Impact Grant, we took students through the Bridging the Gap curriculum, which your listeners can look up. It's available free on Interfaith America's website. And we took them through that, about 30 of them. And then we did a few dialogues around topics that they chose.

We did that over seven weeks. So we had them just talking to each other. It was a pretty religiously and politically diverse group. So we measured affective polarization, that distrust that we have of out-group. We measured affective polarization before it and after the training. I just got these numbers earlier this week so your podcast is now the first place where I can say that.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Wow. Good. Good.

Michael Whitenton:

I know. Get ready. That we saw a 45% reduction in affective polarization.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Wow.

Rick Langer:

Wow.

Michael Whitenton:

And in particular, the feeling of warmth, and that's how we measure affective polarization is, how warm do you feel toward the in-group and out-group. And that's a subjective measurement, but you're doing the measuring. And this can be a little convoluted so hang with me here. So the in-group, warmth on the way in, before we started the training, all right, it was around ... it was in the upper 70s. It was pretty normal, consistent with averages. On the way out, the out-group warmth was in the low 70s. So it almost caught up with in-group which is truly remarkable.

So I guess the take-home here is that with a little bit of work ... Here's the thing, it doesn't feel good. It does not feel good to distrust and dislike people. You get the dopamine hit, but it also just doesn't feel great, you know. We can balance these things. We can balance conviction and liking, you know. We can do both of those things. And so if you put in the effort here with exposure, whether that's reading through AllSides news or working at these things that people call depolarization, and then actually getting in proximity to people who believe differently without trying to change them and just trying to understand them and be understood-

Tim Muehlhoff:

Wow.

Michael Whitenton:

... and just ask yourself, what's that like?

Tim Muehlhoff:

Oof.

Michael Whitenton:

It's pretty remarkable.

Tim Muehlhoff:

That's really good.

Michael Whitenton:

That would be my encouragement. You don't need a big fancy degree or training to do that, you know.

Tim Muehlhoff:

That is really good.

Michael Whitenton:

You just got to have a little bit of courage.

Rick Langer:

That's great.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Michael, that's really good.

Hey, as you were saying that, it just made me think that heartbreakers are going to break, break, break and takers are going to take, take, take. And sometimes you just got to shake it off.

Rick Langer:

Tim.

Michael Whitenton:

That's right, Tim. You nailed that.

Rick Langer:

Some people should not have access to a search engine.

Tim Muehlhoff:

No, Michael, this is such helpful ... it really is such good stuff.

Rick Langer:

Oh, boy.

Tim Muehlhoff:

And it's just so great to know that there is a network of people that are doing really, really good work. And so thank you for the good work that you're doing. We'd love to have you back in the future if you'd love-

Michael Whitenton:

Sure, I'd love it.

Tim Muehlhoff:

... to come.

Michael Whitenton:

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.

Rick Langer:

It'd be great to have a check-in after you've done some of the bridge building, Baylor build bridging fellows experiences and stuff. I'd love to hear it. We just love getting the reports from the front and seeing how people are doing and celebrating those things with them.

Michael Whitenton:

Absolutely. I'd love that.

Tim Muehlhoff:

That'd be great.

Rick Langer:

Thanks a ton for being with us, Michael.

Thank you all for joining us, listeners. We're really grateful to have you and would love to have you subscribe to the Winsome Conviction podcast on Apple Podcasts or Google Play or wherever you get your podcasts. And would also encourage you to check out the winsomeconviction.com website. We have a bunch of resources and articles there. But also, it's a great place for you to sign up to get our mailing list. We send out a quarterly newsletter. It's also a place that you can give us feedback, ask questions, or maybe bring up topics you'd love to have us talk about. Maybe even point us to people who you've met who are doing a great job at bridging buildings, loving neighbors, crossing boundaries and convictional divides.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Or your favorite Taylor Swift song.

Rick Langer:

Or your favorite Taylor Swift song. Which, probably, yeah, we probably don't need that.

So we can find that on the internet. Right, Tim?

Tim Muehlhoff:

We can.

Rick Langer:

All right, good.

Thanks so much for joining us. We really appreciate and don't want to take your efforts for granted either. Thank you so much.