Disagreeing Well: 5 fundamental skills for open debate

The world can feel like it’s getting ever-more polarised. Televised debate is shrill. Social media is both siloing us off into echo chambers and creating daily outrages on which instant opinions must be formed and battlelines immediately drawn. But it doesn’t need to be like this. Diverse communities can hold diverse opinions and still co-exist happily. As a society, we can have free speech, reasoned dialogue and diversity of thought if we learn to disagree well.

Encouraging this kind of respectful, attentive debate has always been one of the key roles of the nation’s universities, which is one of the reasons that University College London (UCL) has launched its Disagreeing Well programme, an initiative designed to promote the kind of careful listening and thoughtful dialogue that enables all of us to challenge our assumptions and open up our minds to new perspectives.

A centrepiece of the programme is a Disagreeing Well Skills Series of videos written and hosted by international conflict mediator and UCL alumna Mia Forbes Pirie in which she explores five fundamental skills for open productive debate.

Mutual respect and curiosity

Disagreeing well is based on mutual respect, which is harder to achieve than it sounds. It means accepting that we can’t and shouldn’t control the person who we are talking to and that it’s ok for them to have different opinions. For us to genuinely respect somebody’s opinion we should be curious as to why they hold it, which involves getting to know them and opens up the possibility of authentic connection. New research in psychological science also indicates that individuals often perceive those who disagree with them as poor listeners, even when attentive. This misperception underscores the importance of mutual respect and curiosity in discussions

Understanding is different to agreeing

One of the main barriers to disagreeing well is the increasingly pervasive contest-style approach to conversation in which there has to be a winner and a loser. A study published in Language and Cognition examined how individuals respond to one-sentence assertions, focusing on understanding and agreement. The findings indicated that participants often provided evaluative responses (agree/disagree) regardless of their understanding of the statement, suggesting a tendency to conflate comprehension with agreement. If we approach conversations as a way of getting a more complete vision of the person’s opinion, we are more likely to find common ground. And if we can’t, we can still recognise that someone’s opinion can be worthy of respect even if we disagree with it.

Distinguishing between the person and their opinion

In the overwhelming majority of cases it’s possible to make a distinction between the whole person – their capacity for joy and kindness –  and their opinion on a given topic. Not least because opinions can change and are almost always held for an understandable reason of some kind, whether it’s cultural or based on particular experiences.

Preparing to listen

Authentic listening is hard. It requires attention and humility. It involves being fully present, which requires preparation and a willingness to encounter things that you might not want to hear. Crucially, when you listen openly and attentively to someone else, they are much more likely to listen similarly to you. A psychological study from 2023 found that reflecting on personal values before discussions can promote intellectual humility, leading to more harmonious interactions

Preparing to speak

There is no point speaking if no one is listening. How then do you encourage the person you’re talking to, to actually listen while you’re talking? Preparing to speak in an open, impactful way is not about producing gotcha lines, it’s about being calm, connecting with the person you’re talking to and creating an environment which is conducive to them actually hearing what you’re saying.