The Art and Science of Transformative Dialogue
Not changing the content of beliefs, but our relationship to them.
By Ryan Nakade
The goal of the CURE:PDX project is to prevent politically motivated violence, not change what people believe. However, this approach begs an important question: What if people hold beliefs that contain problematic content, such as support for violence as a legitimate means of social change, or dehumanizing views about certain groups? What to do in instances where there seems to be a direct link between problematic beliefs and violent actions?
To resolve this dilemma, we’ve developed a method called “transformative dialogue.” Transformative dialogue, abbreviated as “TD,” seeks to shift relationships towards beliefs, rather than alter its content. Through specific dialogue skills, TD encourages a reexamination of our posture, attitude, mindset, or “dispositional state” towards any ideology or belief system. It promotes moving from a stance of blind, unconscious, uncritical reactivity to conscious, self-aware, recursive reflectivity – all without changing the substance or content of beliefs.
The theory behind TD is simple: while many hold problematic beliefs, particularly ones which support or condone violence, only a few actually act on them. The qualities cultivated through TD help to buffer against violent impulses that inspire or justify such beliefs, decreasing the probability of violent action. Studies will be cited throughout this article that corroborate this hypothesis.
An analogy can be made between TD and mindfulness practices, where one strives to be aware of their thoughts, instead of being lost or consumed by them. Such awareness is generated through dialogue.
Image from recoverywithin.life
TD is distinct from debate, as it first seeks to establish rapport, mutual humanization, safety, and non-ideological points of connection, before utilizing techniques that subtly shift attitudes and mindsets. This diagram lays out the theoretical differences between TD and debate:
The TD process can be broken down into four stages:
Preparing for dialogue
Building trust and rapport
Asking powerful questions using the SMAC framework
Sharing your own beliefs in a productive, perspective-opening way
This article will cover steps 1-3. Part 4 will be covered in another article, Transformative Dialogue P.2
Preparing for dialogue
Engaging with those deemed to have problematic beliefs can be stressful, difficult, and emotionally taxing. Therefore, adequate preparation is crucial before engaging in such an endeavor. This can start with a “situational assessment,” where you can ask yourself:
Is it safe to interact?
Will your interlocutor feel safe?
Are you the right person to intervene?
What value will you create by interacting?
What are your real goals, motives, and agendas that you’re bringing into this conversation?
If you determine that you are not the right person to engage in conversation, think of someone who is better suited. Perhaps you lack the requisite trust and rapport necessary for productive dialogue, or one of the parties doesn’t feel safe and comfortable with having the discussion.
It is also crucial that awareness is brought towards our goals, motivations, and real intentions, so “gotcha” attempts, loaded questions, or subtle efforts at conversion don’t creep into the discourse, which can generate defensiveness, broken trust, and psychological reactance in your interlocutor. These reactions can nullify the effectiveness of TD.
Therefore, a useful preparation technique is “curiosity loading,” where a list of questions are written down and vetted prior to discourse. This does several things:
1) It helps to assess one’s motivation for engaging, catching any insincere impulses that don’t stem from genuine curiosity, openness, or interest in the other person
2) It helps “prime the pump” of curiosity, galvanizing a curious mindset that fuels effective dialogue
3) The list of questions acts as a helpful roadmap during dialogue, offering something to reference should the conversation go off the rails or deviate from the original intention (which can often happen when discussing charged topics).
Another helpful technique is modeling, where one demonstrates the qualities, virtues, or positive traits exhibited during the conversation. This can be done by first clarifying what traits you want your interlocutor to embody during dialogue, like empathy, charity, or active listening, and then committing to those traits yourself – a way of “walking the talk.”
Finally, agree on a good environment to have a discussion, where both parties can feel safe and comfortable.
Building Trust and Rapport
After cultivating curiosity, clarifying motivations, and agreeing on a good time/place for dialogue, the dialogue process should begin with building rapport and additional points of connection prior to discussing the issue. For example, if the topic of discussion is political violence or perceptions of certain identity groups, make sure to start the discussion by talking about common interests, like food, movies, hobbies, sports, and other non-ideologically loaded topics. Once a container of trust is built, discussion of polarizing topics will be easier.
After the conversation about the issue begins, start by acknowledging the other person’s perspective, using paraphrasing, mirroring, and other active listening skills. Acknowledging the other’s viewpoint, emotions, experiences, and concerns doesn’t mean agreement, but rather that you demonstrate both an understanding of their perspective, as well as a sincere attempt to understand them. If you get something wrong, allow your partner to clarify what they mean. This puts people at ease and makes them relax and feel heard. You can ask questions like: “Tell me more about that?” Followed by paraphrasing: “I’m hearing you say ____, is that correct?”
Once common ground, rapport, and trust is established, we can now turn to the core tenets of TD: The SMAC framework.
Asking powerful questions using the SMAC framework
SMAC stands for self-awareness, metacognition, abstraction, and complexity. The objective of TD is to nurture these attributes in the person you're conversing with. This is achieved by posing thoughtful questions that promote contemplation and self-reflection around the formation of one's beliefs. Broadly, SMAC-centric questions center on an individual's thought process, understanding, and relationship to their beliefs, rather than attempting to refute or displace the actual content of those beliefs.
Self-awareness questions are used to illuminate the subjective factors involved in belief formation. The goal is to generate increased awareness around how one’s experiences, emotions, values, perceptions, and biographical factors contribute to adopting specific beliefs. Here are examples of self-awareness questions:
“How did this issue become important to you?”
“When did you change your mind to your current position?”
“What was that shift like?”
“What’s it like to talk with people you disagree with? What kind of relationship do you have or want with them? How do you want to be treated by them?
“What emotions arise for you around this issue? How do you manage them, especially frustrating or difficult ones?”
Self-awareness questions are first on the list as they are the least threatening, and flow naturally after building rapport and trust around non-ideological topics. This is why we recommend beginning with self-awareness questions. The following three categories of questions can be asked in any order.
Next we move to metacognitive questions. Metacognition means “cognition about cognition,” or “thinking about thinking,” representing a reflective disposition towards one’s thinking processes. Like critical thinking, the goal of metacognitive questions is to generate increased awareness around how one thinks and forms conclusions, rather than questioning the conclusions themselves. This study shows how those holding “radical” views lack mechanisms of reflection. Questions include:
“Walk me through how you arrived at that conclusion? What was that process like?”
“I hear you don’t trust these sources, so how do you determine what sources to trust?”
“There is a lot of mis/disinformation out there - what is your process to distinguish between true and fake news? How do you do that?”
“I hear you saying that ___ is bad – what is your criteria to assess what’s good or bad, or correct/incorrect? What goes into that consideration or metric?”
“What is your process around changing or adapting your beliefs around this issue? What are your conditions of disconfirmation, i.e. under what conditions could you be incorrect?”
Now we come to abstraction questions, which alter the level of abstraction around a conversational piece or talking point. Hitting a wall in a conversation usually involves discussing the issue at an unhelpful level of abstraction, which can take two forms:
Getting stuck on minute details, i.e. “getting “lost in the weeds.” This could manifest as conflicts around specific factual points, like a date, time, or place, instead of looking to the values, principles, or broader ideas behind it.
Getting stuck on overly abstract talking points i.e. getting “stuck in the clouds”. This takes shape as getting fixated on vague, abstract talking points, like “the system is broken,” without further clarification about what that means, or any specific examples.
Manipulating the level of abstraction allows one to circumvent such obstacles. This process is depicted through the “ladder of abstraction:”
The top of the ladder represents more abstract, general, and universal ideas, where the bottom represents more concrete and specific things. Let’s take the concept of “capitalism” and see how changing the abstraction level can facilitate smoother dialogue:
If the concept of “capitalism” becomes problematic as the focal point of discussion, deconstructing the concept into more specific, granular questions, like “what specific policies or economic arrangements do you take issue with?” can help move dialogue forward. Abstracting upward can also be helpful, as moving to a broader, more general, and less polarizing concept, like economics or work, can take the charge off a polarized idea while still retaining core aspects of the original concept (abstracting too much can make it seem like the issue is being bypassed). Discussion can then focus on the deeper, higher-level principles behind an idea or talking point.
As someone once said: “To be an effective speaker, one must climb up and down the ladder of abstraction.” Here are some questions that help with that process:
“What are some specific examples of that?” (going down the ladder)
“What about that is important to you?” (going up the ladder)
“What does ___ look like or mean to you?” (going down the ladder)
“What does this value or principle look like in practice?” (going down the ladder)
“What's the central issue at stake here?” (going up the ladder)
Finally, we come to the last principle of SMAC - complexity. Complexity questions seek to move away from black/white, reductive, oversimplified thinking to more nuanced, complex, multi-dimensional styles of thinking. These are questions that move from black and white to shades of gray, identify contradictions or paradoxes, and expand the scope of the issue to include additional contexts or considerations. This study shows how framing an issue in a more complex way helped to resolve polarization and enable better discourse, while this study shows how those with “extreme” views were unable to resolve more complex tasks. Complexity questions help to build the muscle of complex thinking, leading to less polarizing or escalating dialogues.
Examples of complexity questions include:
“What is the relationship between ___ system and __ institution?” “How do these two things connect?”
“I’m wondering how ___ variable (social media, geography, economics) contributes to this issue, in addition to what you said?”
"If you were to create a pie chart depicting the causes of this issue (e.g. gun violence), which factors would be included and what proportion would each represent?"
“To me this seems like a contradiction. Can you help me understand? How do you apply this principle to this specific issue?”
“How do you apply this idea to ___ context?”
“Can you describe for me the theory of change behind this strategy – how would this policy or action impact ___? What are the causal dynamics at play here?”
“What do you mean by ‘the elites’ - what qualifies someone as an elite (as opposed to ‘the people’)?”
“How do you want those who disagree to see your perspective?” “How do you think they see it now, and how could you convey it to them in a way that they could understand?”
“What are some disagreements you have with your ‘side?” “What explains that difference?”
“Under what conditions could your strategy work, and in what situations would it not work?”
Each type of question can be asked iteratively, and adapted to specific instances as needed.
You can use the following criteria as a guide to develop your own set of powerful questions:
Are they rooted in genuine curiosity?
Do they stimulate metacognition or prompt self-reflection?
Are they tailored to the right level of abstraction?
Do they highlight nuances, contradictions, and complexities?
Do they foster deeper critical thinking by illuminating latent assumptions?
Do they promote openness to diverse perspectives?
Do they help in building trust and strengthening relationships?
Do they create a balanced amount of cognitive dissonance, nudging individuals out of their comfort zone without overwhelming them?
Of course, practice is key – not only with others, but also on ourselves: the more we pose these questions to ourselves, the more effective we’ll be when asking them to others. Doing so helps keep us in the right mindset to best engage with those we disagree with, fostering curiosity, critical thinking, self-awareness, and open inquiry.
If your organization or community is interested in trainings related to depolarization, violence deescalation, community norm change, and other related trainings, contact Curepdx@cvg.org for more information