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We learn techniques for working across the aisle without compromising our values from a Democratic politician in one of the most conservative states, Oklahoma.

Episode summary:

Trying to have a conversation with someone who has an opposing view can be exhausting. This week, we explore what it means to have productive discussions when we disagree. Democratic Oklahoma State Senator Jo Anna Dossett recounts her experience bridging political divides with Republican senators in her state with  active listening and self-compassion. Later, we hear from political science professor Lilliana Mason about the blurred line between personal and political identities, and how connecting with individuals on an emotional and social level can lead to more fruitful discussions than just focusing on facts. 

Today’s guests:

Jo Anna Dossett is an Oklahoma State Senator.

Learn about Jo Anna Dossett: https://tinyurl.com/muxw7yvz

Follow Jo Anna Dossett on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dossett4ok

Follow Jo Anna Dossett on Instagram: https://tinyurl.com/293n98fc

Follow Jo Anna Dossett on Facebook: https://tinyurl.com/yc3mszhx

Lilliana Mason is a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University.

Learn about Lilliana Mason’s work: https://tinyurl.com/w2hy6fhk

Follow Lilliana Mason on Twitter: https://tinyurl.com/29sumyxb

Resources from The Greater Good Science Center:

Eight Keys to Bridging Our Differences: https://tinyurl.com/45ntehyp

Four Lessons From Mediators for Bridging Differences: https://tinyurl.com/bdhf68te

What Will It Take to Bridge Our Differences? https://tinyurl.com/3sua8uz5

Six Techniques to Help You Bridge Differences: https://tinyurl.com/ypsbycf4

15 Practices to Help Kids Bridge Differences: https://tinyurl.com/mvw4s649

More Resources on Bridging Differences

TIME – How Americans Can Tackle Political Division Together: https://tinyurl.com/3phj6y7j

APA – Healing the political divide: https://tinyurl.com/38kzvm5k

BBC – Crossing Divides: What the research tells us: https://tinyurl.com/yahmwdth

Stanford – How to Bridge Political Divides: https://tinyurl.com/yc7ha55p

Tell us about your experiences and struggles bridging differences. Email us at happinesspod@berkeley.edu or use the hashtag #happinesspod.

Help us share The Science of Happiness!

Rate us on Spotify and share this link with someone who might like the show: https://tinyurl.com/d3mc7e6t

Jo Anna Dossett: I grew up in a very rural area. That’s characteristic of Oklahoma you know, within minutes you can be in the middle of a pasture with hay bales and livestock.

My parents were very conservative. And it’s just, it’s been in my adulthood that I’ve kind of adopted some different ways of thinking, ways of teaching my own children, that vary from how I was raised which is in a very patriarchal, theocratic, authoritarian kind of way. 

I was a teacher for 16 years. We had undergone such steep cuts to public education funding in Oklahoma. I was seeing conditions in my workplace just deteriorating, that was my motivator to run for office. I flipped a seat, red to blue. That was back in November, 2020 and have been serving here ever since.

Allison Briscoe-Smith: Welcome to The Science of Happiness, I’m Allison Briscoe-Smith, a child psychologist and Senior Fellow at The Greater Good Science Center, where I implement research on how we can bridge our differences, I’m filling in this week for Dacher Keltner.

Today we’re talking about strategies, grounded in research, that we can use to preserve and strengthen relationships across differences.

Our guest is Oklahoma State Senator Jo Anna Dossett. A Democrat in the very conservative state of Oklahoma. Senator Dossett has to get the buy-in of her Republican colleagues to get any legislation passed – so she’s really had to dig deep to find ways to work across disagreements.

Jo Anna Dossett: It’s some real inner child stuff. You gotta be there with your inner self with your own conflicting ideas. 

Allison Briscoe-Smith: Later in the show, we’ll hear from Lilliana Mason, a political scientist who can tell us how we got to be so divided, and the social and emotional work that might be able to bring us back together.  

Lilliana Mason: Most of our human motivations are pushing us away from each other and pushing us towards distrusting one another. If we’re gonna deal with this, it’s gonna be a social process.

Allison Briscoe-Smith: My conversation with Senator Dossett, after this short break.

Welcome back to The Science of Happiness. I’m Allison Briscoe-Smith, Senior Fellow at The Greater Good Science Center. Dacher will be back next week. 

This week’s episode is about something that is very near and dear to me, and that is Bridging Differences.

And what do we mean when we say that? At it’s simplest, bridging differences is about how we connect with others.It’s clear political polarization is high and getting worse. According to the Pew Research Center, every year, more republicans and democrats think members of the opposing party are immoral, lazy, and unintelligent. And now, the majority of each party thinks that about the other side.

Oklahoma State Senator Jo Anna Dossett is a Democrat representing a majority of Republican constituents in one the most conservative states in the nation. And she’s living proof that we can strive for what we believe in while respecting the people we disagree with, all the while strengthening our relationships with them. 

Here’s part of our conversation.

Senator Dossett, we’re so excited to have you here. 

Jo Anna Dossett: It is great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Allison Briscoe-Smith: You know, I’m a person that doesn’t really, like, many Americans, doesn’t really know what happens behind the veil, like behind the scenes. What we see is the megaphone or what didn’t get passed. Can you tell us a little bit about why you think bridging differences is important? And what’s one small concrete thing that you do to build those relationships? 

Jo Anna Dossett: Just yesterday I had Senate Bill 1742. It provides up to 12 months of insurance coverage for a woman’s birth control prescription.

 As a member of the minority I absolutely must have a good chunk of the majority who can agree to the idea that I’m trying to advance.

Now birth control is just kind of a dicey subject here in Oklahoma. Some of my fellow members here in the Senate have a very difficult time separating birth control from abortion. In their minds, it’s all one and the same, and it’s all bad. So I knew running this bill to begin with it was not gonna be easy at all.

So I just went office to office lobbying every single member. And I find when you take the time to listen to people, build relationships, learn people’s fears, they start to trust you, and in turn you start to trust them more. 

I was in one senator’s office and the senator told me that his concern was that 12 months of insurance coverage might apply to something that he called “abortifacients.” And it was on that day that I learned that word. I had never heard it before, the second it took me to, to really take that word in, I knew what he was talking about. He’s talking about emergency contraceptive, that’s what he was talking about. And then I in turn became very deeply offended inside. 

I certainly grew up with that mindset, that, that was something that was evil. And I’ve gone a different direction but that little girl existed. That teenage girl existed for a long time. She’s still inside me, so yeah, when words like that come out, I also sometimes feel like that scared little girl. That’s some hard stuff. That really is some hard stuff. 

But when you’re there lobbying someone for their support you cannot show your personal offense. You cannot get angry. You cannot walk out the door. You can’t do that. 

But you gotta be there with your inner self. You’ve gotta be there with your own conflicting ideas. I needed that vote. 

Allison Briscoe-Smith: I, of course, as a child psychologist, love that you’ve invoked our inner child. I’m also hearing you invoke a strategy that we try to support folks in thinking about. That in that moment, offering our self-compassion. I hear you doing that with “I was that girl. I believed that. I feel this tension. What does this person need?” These are the complex pieces that you’re offering.

Jo Anna Dossett: Yeah and one of my instincts was to explain to the senator, oh no, a doctor would never prescribe a drug like that in a 12 month supply. That’s just simply not how that works. But I thought, no, that, no, that this senator is not going to learn that lesson today. It’s not gonna happen. I’m a former teacher. I’m pretty good at gauging people’s capacity, to learn things or not learn things in a certain timeframe. I said,” no, senator, I understand your fear. What can I do to calm it? What can I do? What can we do together to calm your fear so that you can vote for this bill?” 

And he said, “You need to add an amendment and you need to include in the language that this insurance coverage that is required in the bill would never apply to abortifacients.” And so I, of course, then you kind of get a little offended again because you know, the senator’s using this word that is so highly offensive. But I pressed that down, disregarded that feeling for a minute, and I said, “Okay, what language do you need?” And he told me what he needed. And so right then and there, I had his confidence, I had the senator’s vote. 

Allison Briscoe-Smith: There’s research and a bridging practice that’s called putting people before politics. So the way that we teach is to just ask questions that uncover the stories and experiences, and to really listen there. I heard you doing that, that you went to someone’s office and you sat and If they were able to talk to you about what they were afraid of and that made a difference.

Jo Anna Dossett: I’m not sure if I’m ever gonna be able to teach anyone here that abortifacient is not a word we should use in the time I have here in this building. You know that is a word that has been on that Senator’s mind for probably 30 or 40 years. 

And It does feel a little bit like an attack. And so for me, while it might have felt like a bite to me, don’t bite back based on the longstanding relationship I have with that Senator if I calm my emotion down a little bit.  I know that he was not trying to attack, he was not trying to attack.

In fact, he was just fearful of something. So I have to go in that direction of being a calmer of fears, as soon as I responded in kind, or as soon as I said that offends me, then our conversation was over. I don’t get the vote. I don’t get the four or five votes that he’s gonna bring with him. The bill dies and we don’t get to work on access to birth control anymore. So there is an incentive to control your emotions.

Allison Briscoe-Smith: It is such a helpful story to hear. And you’ve hit upon the sciencey based kind of pieces, the active listening, the getting curious, the putting people in relationships before the politics. You’ve actually equipped us with strategy, with language of:Can you tell me about your fear and how I can assuage that? How I can actually do that? And then you’ve had to do this while balancing a place that lets you all achieve the superordinate goal that you began with, which is: women’s health. 
Jo Anna Dossett: He told me what he needed. And, I said, simply, Senator, I’ve never filed an amendment before. I’m pretty new around here. 

And he said, here, let me show you. And so he called the bill drafter up right there on his desk, and that was it. I had all of the votes that he was gonna be able to bring with him because he’s a powerful and influential person. His caucus members do watch how he votes and they vote accordingly. And then it passed 14-3. The three folks were ones just out of deeply held convictions. Were just not, I’m not gonna be able to get ’em there.

One of them though, and I know he was watching, just kind of watching, and I walked outta the committee room and he was like, you did a good job. And I said, thank you, Senator and I kind of joked, I, know you won’t be able to help me on the floor. He said, no, I won’t be. But he said, between now and then, you should go talk to the bishop of the Catholic diocese here in Oklahoma City, and you should go talk to so and so and see if they can’t help you a little bit on this. 

If you go to someone and ask for their help, that immediately sets them at ease. I’m working on this idea. I cannot get it across the line without you. Will you help me, please? Typically, the response is an open door, an open mind.  

Allison Briscoe-Smith: Senator Dossett, I just wanna thank you for coming here today and your effort and, and sharing this with.

Jo Anna Dossett: It is such a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

Allison Briscoe-Smith: Coming up after the break –  why it’s nearly impossible to bridge political differences with logic – and what actually works, according to a political scientist

 Lilliana Mason: What I recommend to my students today is to go home to Thanksgiving and ask the person that you disagree with how they came to their opinion. Try to find out what their thought process was.

Allison Briscoe-Smith: More, after these ads.

Allison Briscoe-Smith: Welcome back to The Science of Happiness. I’m Allison Briscoe-Smith, Senior Fellow at The Greater Good Science Center, filling in for Dacher Keltner this week as we talk about the science and practice of bridging differences.

 Lilliana Mason: When I was a teenager, I would have arguments with my uncle at Thanksgiving dinner, like probably many people do. I would bring all this information and facts and his reaction to me usually was to scoff at me and belittle the things that I was saying and act like he was really great. 

Allison Briscoe-Smith: Lilliana Mason is a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University.

Her uncle’s reaction helps us understand the psychology of “talking politics.”

 Lilliana Mason: There are certain feelings, there are psychological biases that come in when we are talking about two groups in conflict to every single member of those groups. If we feel good about ourselves, we believe that our group is higher status than other groups.

Allison Briscoe-Smith: In all likelihood, Mason’s uncle felt like parts of his identity were being attacked.

 Lilliana Mason: Every time we had an election, it felt like it wasn’t just our party that was competing, it was also our racial group and our religious group and our cultural identity and all of these parts of who we believe that we are in the world felt under threat. So our parties became socially different from each other.

Allison Briscoe-Smith: Mason wanted to know if our country’s increasing disdain for the other party is more motivated by specific issues, like taxes or immigration, or by how strong our sense of political identities are. So she looked to the American National Election Studies Data which, for decades now, has measured how hot or cold people feel towards the democratic and republican parties, how liberal or conservative they identify as, and how they feel about specific policy issues.

It also includes a question about anger.

 Lilliana Mason: Whoever the candidate is that’s running against your party’s candidate, how often do you feel angry when you think about that person? 

 Lilliana Mason: The people who felt angriest at the other party’s candidate were those who had really strong ideological identities.

Allison Briscoe-Smith: What was totally unrelated to how angry they felt was how strongly they felt about the actual issues. 

Lilliana Mason: When we have these strong identities, we’re more likely to feel angry at our opponents. Not because of the things that they’ve done, but simply because we don’t like them_, they’re threatening the status of our group.

Allison Briscoe-Smith: This explains why Mason’s litany of facts didn’t have an effect on her uncle. 

 Lilliana Mason: Any new information that comes at an angry person is not gonna be processed. They’re just focused on making sure their group is victorious. They’re not really interested in reasoned conversations and incorporating new facts.

Allison Briscoe-Smith: Instead, strategies like the one Senator Dossett used, of directly asking her colleague what he was afraid of, can assure the other person that we’re not trying to attack them or their group and help avoid a potential flare up of anger.

 Lilliana Mason: If the fear of the threat is reduced, like, I’m not here with bad intentions. Then we’re more able to process information to listen to what the other person is saying, and also to think of that other person or people in the other group as humans. And so they don’t have to resist any type of interaction with you because they are actually not under threat in that moment. That type of approach tends to open people up more and allow them to have a more relaxed type of conversation. If we’re gonna deal with this, it’s gonna be a social process and at the very least we can understand it as a sort of emotional and an identity based problem so that we can come at it with better solutions.

Allison Briscoe-Smith: Thanks for listening to The Science of Happiness. 

And I hope some of these practices will support you in your own lives. You can find a link to Bridging Differences Playbook in our show notes. it’s full of useful tools and resources, including the practices we talked about today.

Funding for this episode came from the New Pluralists Funder Collaborative.

Haley Gray: Hi I’m Haley Gray, a producer here at The Science of Happiness. And on the next episode we explore how to make life more enjoyable through the practice of job crafting.

Maria Tims: You need to have some self-reflection. Like, what is it that I really like about my job? Which tasks are contributing to that feeling and it becomes possible to create more of these moments through job crafting.

Allison Briscoe-Smith: I’m Allison Briscoe-Smith, Senior Fellow at The Greater Good Science Center, where I get to learn and teach about bridging differences.

Our executive producer of Audio is Shuka Kalantari. Our producer is Haley Gray. Sound design is from Jennie Cataldo of Accompany Studios and our associate producer is Maarya Zafar. And our executive director is Jason Marsh. The Science of Happiness is a co-production of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center and PRX.