DEEPS: A Socratic Solution to Divided Times

Toxic polarization feeds on misunderstanding, destroying relationships and threatening democracy. DEEPS can help.

A Pew study from September 2023 asked Americans to describe the tone of political discourse. The word “divided” and its synonyms were chosen most, with “bad,” “messy,” and “chaotic,” also popular. Most Americans (61%) find talking to those they disagree with about politics “stressful and frustrating,” a worsening from two years prior, and such stress and frustration has consequences. As of August 2024, ¼ of Americans had ended a friendship over a political disagreement.

Political polarization has been described as the “ideological distance between political parties”. While an inescapable and potentially productive part of a republic, affective polarization is a more recent and dysfunctional phenomenon. Here, “Partisan hostility is characterized by seeing one’s opponents as not only wrong on important issues, but also abhorrent, unpatriotic, and a danger to the country’s future.” As indicated above, such polarization is on the rise, with favorable feelings towards out-party members dropping almost 25 points since 1980. Now, approximately 60% of both democrats and republicans, “see the opposing party as a serious threat to the United States and its people.”

Much has been written about the causes of affective polarization or “negative partisanship,” from the realignment of social identities along partisan lines following the Civil Rights era (i.e. the formation of so-called “mega identities”) to changes in the media landscape beginning with ad-hungry cable news and intensifying under mind-siloing social media. The consequences have also been documented, from the aforementioned ending of relationships, the impact on physical health, support for extremist candidates, and the risk of further political violence (a la January 6th)—including civil war. 

As a Carnegie Endowment review of polarization shows, vitriolic divisiveness thrives on misunderstanding—about the policy beliefs of out-group members and demographic make-ups of an opposing party. Inversely, Iyengar et al. writes, “If misperceptions about party composition increase partisan animus, it is possible that correcting them could reduce affective polarization. Happily, this is exactly what scholars find.”

While affective polarization is a national problem requiring systemic solutions, you needn’t wait for federal VR empathy training workshops to ameliorate inter-party animus in your everyday life. Simple changes in your communication patterns can help you understand your interlocutor better, perhaps preventing the implosion of friendships, reducing stress levels, and modeling healthy disagreements for your community. At the very least, such changes should make holiday dinners less dreadful. 

DEEPS is a system for improving communication in disagreement: five questions you can ask to better understand your interlocutor before responding. It takes inspiration from Socrates, who spent most of Plato's dialogues asking questions rather than objecting or soapboxing.  

• D: Define your point 

• How would you define “__________”? 

• What do you mean by “__________”? 

• E: Explain further

• Can you explain what you mean by that? 

• Expand on that for me.

• Can you unpack that? I’m unclear.

• E: Example 

• Can you give an example of a time when that happened? 

• Is there a case study you can point to? 

• P: Point

• What’s your point, exactly? 

• What’s the upshot, here? 

• What can we draw from that, though? 

• S: Source

• What’s your source? 

• Where did that statistic come from? 

• Who said that? 

DEEPS is a system you can run through your brain as your blood starts to boil. Recall the last time a family member, friend, or colleague broadcasted an opinion that made you bristle (intentionally or unintentionally). How did you respond? Did you (A) shut down or scramble to change the subject? Perhaps you (B) fired back with an objection—a string of facts and stats that you were sure would bury any further opposition (and impress those within earshot)? While such responses are understandable and even attractive, I think they’re inferior to DEEPS. 

(A) This allows this person to saturate the environment with a comment that you (perhaps rightfully) found harmful. Without a retort, they may take silence as acquiescence and agreement, and other impressionable listeners may do the same. You, on the other hand, spend the rest of the day with one corner of your mind hung up on the destructive comment and the drive home thinking about what you wish you had said. DEEPS gives you an alternative to handing over the high ground.

(B) We’d all like to be Matt Damon in the bar scene of Good Will Hunting, cocked with an arsenal of factoids, carefully compiled into an air-tight deduction, with page numbers from obscure texts to boot. Rarely will we be so prepared on the spot, though, and such recall is harder when we’re seeing red. Even with an elegant line of reasoning at the ready, it is unlikely to convince our interlocutor to change their mind. It is better to ask questions via DEEPS, which—as Socrates repeatedly demonstrated—may have our interlocutors reveal to themselves that they aren't as certain as they thought previously.

In want of a well-crafted argument, firing back with a punchy if oblique objection (something to the ultimate effect of “you’re an idiot”) might feel satisfying, but it's likely to accelerate a cycle of each person hearing only what they expect or were primed to hear, volleying with increasing tension in a series of (perhaps unintentional) straw man attacks. The more we talk passed each other the more enraged we become—and all the worse for actually listening. Though there might be a catharsis in such scenarios, it is worth exploring an alternative that leads to greater wisdom and less drama. DEEPS is such an alternative. 

Why ask questions? For one, running through DEEPS internally—finding the most fitting question for the moment—while your skin prickles and your jaw tightens, creates a space between the stimulus and the reaction—it makes it less likely that you’ll fire back with some half-baked objection of your own, or worse, a scolding insult. Asking questions also refocuses and controls the contours of a discussion, prompting something called “instinctive elaboration” on those hearing the question where the listener can think of little other than the question asked.

Though it may seem you’re giving your interlocutor the upper hand and showing humility that you want to learn (which you hopefully are also doing) you are in reality grounding the debate.  Additionally, you are confirming that you actually understood what they said before responding (avoiding the straw man charge). If this exchange is to continue as a debate (i.e. if you confirm that you are in a disagreement), it’s better to identify the weak points in their view (a dubious premise, a non-sequitur in their deduction, etc.) before launching your response. Ideally, though, DEEPS would help transcend the debate structure, nurturing a more productive and harmonious exchange that considers differing viewpoints across common ground.

To this end, asking questions is good for you too—the one on the receiving end of the potentially triggering opinion. Identifying and seeking to close an “information gap” correlates with increased curiosity, attention to incoming information, improved memory, dopamine release, and emotional intelligence. So who knows, if you both use DEEPS simultaneously, you may arrive at an intellectual synthesis. 

As stated earlier, polarization can be healthy for democracies—it is good for people to have clear and distinct options in their politics. Disagreement is also productive when non-caustic. John Stewart Mills wrote of the dialectical exchange, “It is only by the collision of adverse opinion that the remainder of truth has any chance of being supplied.” DEEPS offers a guidline to ensure that a “collision” remains civil.

Opportunistic politicians have been fanning the flames of toxic partisanship, entrenching us more deeply in our tribal dug-outs (this is likely one of the reasons why Americans think we are more ideologically polarized than we actually are). If we understand each other’s position more deeply and still find them to be wrong, we can more effectively respond to it. I think it’s more likely that, through DEEPS, we’ll find aspects of another’s perception that make sense and aspects that don’t, leading to a further refinement of our own thinking.

Philosopher Heidi Maibom, following Nietzsche, has argued that it's only through accessing a multiplicity of perceptions that we can grasp the nature of reality and our moral obligations within it. Asking incisive questions of those we’re inclined to disagree with, and listening carefully to their response, is how we access the subjective reality of someone who thinks and feels across the partisan divide—and how we can then understand the world more completely.