Thinking about Evidence

Chris Lundberg, professor of Communication at UNC and the founder and CEO of Vocable Communications, asks what it really means to educate good citizens in a divided age. Should universities focus on teaching facts or on teaching how to listen, argue, and think together? Lundberg makes the case for learning to disagree well—turning opinion from a possession into a starting point for shared understanding. Together, we explore how hope for democracy lies not in perfect consensus, but in the everyday practice of thinking and talking about evidence. 

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Transcript

Michael Lee : [00:00:00] When we disagree is a show about arguments, how we have them, why we have them, and their impact on our relationships and ourselves. Your coworker is late to the meeting. Again, they're so selfish, you think, but when you're late it's because traffic was terrible. Your kid was sick, or your previous meeting ran overtime.

This tendency to explain others' behavior by their character while explaining our own circumstances. More charitably is called the fundamental attribution error. Another fancy way to say this is motive attribution, asymmetry, and it's a major source of interpersonal and political conflict. Social psychologist Lee Ross identified this pattern in some research in the 1970s.

When we see somebody cut us off in traffic, we assume they're a jerk. We don't consider, they might be rushing to the hospital. But for ourselves, we always have good reasons. This attribution, asymmetry, wreaks havoc in relationships. Your partner [00:01:00] forgets to pick up the milk because they're thoughtless. You forgot because you're overwhelmed with work.

These character judgments, accumulate creating narratives about people who people really are that become self-fulfilling prophecies. The history is littered with these attribution errors. The porn war seen as morally deficient rather than disadvantaged mental illness was attributed to weak character rather than biology.

Individualistic societies like the United States show stronger fundamental attribution error than more collectivist cultures, which emphasize more situational factors. This creates misunderstandings in multicultural teams where the same behavior gets interpreted through different attribution lenses.

This error, of course, shows up in politics too. Supporters attribute their candidates mistakes to circumstances or to the other side. Throwing mud and mud slinging while seeing their opponent's Mistakes as character flaws or evidence of evil. The same policy success is either personal triumph or favorable [00:02:00] conditions depending on your political affiliation.

Overcoming this bias requires conscious perspective taking before judging someone's character. Ask what situational factors might explain this. When someone frustrates you, imagine defending their behavior to a neutral third party. This doesn't mean excusing bad behavior or tolerating abuse, but understanding its origins can help us respond more effectively in disagreements, explicitly discussing situational factors can diffuse character attacks and refocus on solving problems rather than just assigning blame.

I'm Michael Lee, professor of Communication and Director of the Civility Initiative at the College of Charleston. Our guest today on When We Disagree is Chris Lundberg. Chris is a professor of communication at the University of North Carolina, a pastor and a corporate and political consultant. Chris, tell us an argument story.

Chris Lundberg : Well, I was gonna start with one of my favorite confrontations, which I believe happened [00:03:00] at the University of South ca or of Southern California. In like 1997 when you challenged the Redlands basketball team to a three on three contest, the didn't happen. The was settled. 

Michael Lee : There 

Chris Lundberg : happen. 

Michael Lee : That didn't happen.

Chris Lundberg : The argument was settled there. No man, thanks for having me on. I podcast is fantastic. Like I love work you're doing. Thank and as always, I've had strong personal admiration for you. I don't know, like there's a big theme. Here's a, here's a small example of the small theme. I I was helping to do curriculum reform at UNC.

The goal was to figure out what students needed to learn to be better citizens. And I remember very distinctly an argument I had with a colleague of mine who I admire who's in another department I won't say kind of general humanist type. And we got to this impasse where I was like, look, you know what, whatever content we teach people, they need to learn how to talk, listen and think about evidence.

And he was like. If we don't know the [00:04:00] specifics of it, you know, historian, so I'll out 'em you know, those who don't know history are condemned to repeat it. And what I found to be so weird about that argument is a bigger thing that I'm real invested in these days, which is what do people know to be better ci need to know to be better citizens?

And like, what stuff do we focus on? And that's our, you know, so I've had like. Versions of this argument over and over and over now with lots of different constituencies, and I, I, I, it's really, it, it sticks with me as your, as your prompt says. 'cause I wonder why it's so tough to figure out what we need to do.

So I learned to talk to each other better. 

Michael Lee : Let's start with the, the first one. You and, and this unnamed historian, your position is basically. Students should be taught how to talk, listen, and think about evidence in a more constructive, nuanced way. How do we get what's true and how do we measure it out?

And how do we associate risks with that? This has a higher risk of being true than that. This person [00:05:00] says, no, you gotta get into the weeds and know specifics. Go into the archives and. Talk about X, Y, and Z. Yeah, 

Chris Lundberg : yeah. Or whatever version of that. Yep. 

Michael Lee : And then, but your position, I presume, because I I, to put cards on the table, happened to share your position.

Your retort is, well, how do you know what the specifics are if you don't know how to evaluate the evidence first? 

Chris Lundberg : Yeah. That, that, I, I think that's absolutely right. I think. If you talk to anyone in any discipline of the university or any expert in anything, in anything and, and you say, Hey, how do we solve this problem?

It's, you know, the old what to, to hammer. Everything looks like a nail. And so I found how many, for as many people as I've talked to about this problem, surprisingly, everybody feels like you need to master their subject matter area to figure out how to have a conversation about the issues that flow from it.

So people in the sciences are like, well, gosh, you gotta understand math and scientific method to really have a meaningful argument about, I don't know, vaccination or whatever. Uhhuh people in history are like, you gotta understand the broad partisan trends [00:06:00] that have made up American politics if you really wanna meaningfully engage politics.

And the funniest part was almost all, in almost every instance people say, you're arguing against learning the specific thing that I want to teach you in favor of something abstract and weird. And I always kinda say like the question's, not what specific content people need to learn to be better at disagreement.

I think the question is also just maybe we should also learn how to disagree. 

Michael Lee : Yeah. Really speaking to the choir on this show. Glad you found your way here. 

Chris Lundberg : No, I, I've been paid a lot of money. Well, no, but the way I always say it is like I, my my, I my son's learning to play basketball. Yeah. You know, 'cause he wants to repeat the same success as dad and Southern California over my week.

Oh man. 

Chris Lundberg : And so, you know, the weird analogy is like, if I want him to learn basketball, I don't give him a biography of Dr. Naysmith. I don't. Tell him to go to a class where he learns kinesthetics and the [00:07:00] neuropsychological linkages between the brain and coordination. I take him to the foul line and I have him shoot.

Michael Lee : Right. 

Chris Lundberg : And I think that's, you know, I, I know that's something that's, that, that's big for you too. But for all the different places where we're fighting about the role that the university has and making better citizens, I think we're spending a ton of time having people. Learn background in theory and definitions in very little time, really learning how to do the rough and tumble of argument.

Michael Lee : Really practicing the skillset. And, and to your point, I mean, the metaphor I always go for is it's sort of a container, you know, communication, excellence, and evidence analysis is a container. It sort of depends on what you, what content you put into it, into the vase, into the jug. But it does a weight kind of specific content, but it's applicable in all these different environments ranging from basketball to vaccinations, to, to dung Beatles, and, and you, you name it.

The, the larger issue at, at 

Chris Lundberg : your house. It's probably a vase at my house. It's jugs and d Beatles. It's a vase, but yes, it's a Voz Voz V. That's right. 

Michael Lee : And, and you, you use this as a [00:08:00] springboard into a larger compassion project, which should, what do we do to, what should good citizens focus on? What should good communicators?

Focus on. And so flipping this back in your direction, what should they do? What's your alternative to j content, specific knowledge and becoming an expert in a thing. 

Chris Lundberg : I just came back like two days ago from this big conference at the a EI and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center. And it was at the, the goal of the conference is to get together all the like hot folks and civic thought.

I'm not one of 'em, but somehow I kind of, you know, got myself on the agenda and, and what I noticed was. There's like three schools of thought. So there's one group of folks who are like, gosh, you know, you need to read the founders. You need to read our constitution. You need to understand our institutions.

And once you understand all that stuff, the rest of American life will make sense to you. Like good citizens will spontaneously emerge. I call, I'll call that one, the 1776 project. 

Michael Lee : Okay. 

Chris Lundberg : And then there, there's like a, there's [00:09:00] the, there's the kind of 16, 19 project version too, which is like. You need to really see the exclusions in democracy, see the inequities that have, you know, kind of shaped American life.

And so, you know, having some sense of the, the shaky ground that democracy's built on. Well, that'll fix us. And then there's a bunch of folks that I think essentially are, you know about politeness. They're like, we need civil discourse. And civil discourse is polite discourse, which by the way, is a definition that I vehemently disagree with.

But yeah, Mo, so those are the three. And, and I, what do I think they should do? I think. Ultimately, I want people to have common ideas, common practices, and common means of resolving problems in the context of American, demi, democratic life. And that means you need enough of the, of a sense of the things that animate different people and parties in American democracy.

You need enough of a commitment to the idea that the institutions, though flawed are. [00:10:00] Decent in keeping us together over long periods of time so you don't quit when you don't get what you want. And then you need, like, basically to be able to hear things charitably and respond in a way that, you know, charitably engages the substance of the argument instead of making it about, you know, the, the joy of the fight.

And that's one weird thing that I think that we haven't really grappled with is that I think we're in a culture where. We prove arguments by pointing to who doesn't agree with them. When the right people disagree, an argument is good. And we largely see arguments as kind of wars the position instead of ways to learn things.

So we need to learn that last part. I think, you know, like that it, that opinion is not the ending point. It's a starting point and we need to a charitably engaged opinion as a starting point for coming to know things together. I 

Michael Lee : think there's kind of, it seems like at least the way you sketch these 1776 project, the 1619 project, and then I think implicitly the position you're defending, and correct me if I'm wrong here, is that [00:11:00] the world is very complex.

That it's difficult to say that there is this kind of great resounding truth in any one version of the past, the present, or the future. And the question is, how are we gonna continue to coexist and understand which path we should take amidst those complexities with a total lack of black and white? And with that implies a certain set of skills and a certain set of relationship management strategies and tactics, and a certain sense of humility about what you can know and lack of certainty about what you already know.

But the way that you sketched it, at least, and one of the resounding kind of fears I've had is, okay, well these content specific experts have a value system, and what I'm recommending in terms of civil discourse or civility or respect or whatever it is, is more or less a method, right? But what am I defending and why am I defending this method?

Chris Lundberg : Yeah, yeah. I love that. I mean, one way I put it is. The funny, the funniest thing is somehow we won. [00:12:00] At one point we learned not only that opinion was a possession as opposed to a starting point for us figuring out mm-hmm who's right, what's right. But if you think about it, we think it's a huge moral victory when we train people to get to a point of dispute and say, okay, agree to disagree.

You know, like, and, and it's just like relevant cultural knowledge that it's a good outcome for us to agree to disagree. I think that's tragic. 'cause my understanding of the kinda roots of democracy are that we disagree to agree that we stake out differences in interest, perspective, and opinion. And then we kinda work through 'em.

And so, you know, I say the same thing to the read the founder's people to the figure out structural inequities, people to the be nice and polite people, which is all three of those things are right. You know, like. Having a knowledge of the founding principles of the Republic is crucially important. Even having an American identity, I think is crucially important.

Something that ties us [00:13:00] together. Is it, is it, is it crucially important to also see the structural inequities built into it? Yeah. And should we be nice at all when it's at all possible? Yes. But you know, your point, I think is, is absolutely right. What, what we need is a framework for saying we can recognize the value of all those interventions.

And we can still say that like at root. The modern university has done a terrible job of teaching students how to think and speak and resolve arguments. Very, very rare exceptions. You know, I mean, obviously including your yourself, that's something that you focus on and there are lots of folks who are doing it.

But it's funny how quickly the. Kinda blocking and tackling the, the, the concrete stuff. That's the day-to-day of democratic. Yeah. Life blocks out drops outta the curriculum. 

Michael Lee : Well, and to the point about your opinion as a possession, and it is an expression of your authentic self. And so for me to deny your opinion is a kind of violence against your person really gets in the way of the kind of blocking and tackling that you and I are both committed to.[00:14:00] 

And one of the issues that, my 

Chris Lundberg : opinion is that you're wrong on that, Mike. So conversation settled, turn off podcast. 

Michael Lee : I'm going to end this session as quickly as I possibly can. And, and with that in mind, I would say. I wonder, and this is an issue that I deal with all the time, which is, okay, well then how do you do the blocking and tackling at a scale required to make an appropriate or impactful cultural intervention?

In other words, to teach people the kinds of respect, humility, curiosity, et cetera, to sort out a very complicated world and not retreat to psychologically secure, but really ineffectual. Coalitional positions about what is absolutely true and what is absolutely authentic. And so what the show is sort of there trying to do this work at scale.

Some of the other trainings and dialogues we do, we're trying to do it at scale, but part, so pessimistic, part of me thinks it's very easy, easy to radicalize into certainty [00:15:00] into blacks and whites. At scale and the remedies are all one-to-one, one person with a small group relationally, you and I. And so it's hard to, it's hard to mop up the floor as the water is still flowing in.

Chris Lundberg : Mm-hmm. Yeah. I, I, I, I, I, I mostly agree. Yeah. So I guess what I, my way of thinking about it is I think professors are nerds. What I, I love being a nerd, but one of the things about being a nerd is over time you're kind of taught that the main model for pedagogical intervention is you take an idea in your head that you've gotten from some great literature or wherever, and you transmit it to individual students, and then you observe the individual student doing the thing and you tell 'em they did a good job or didn't do a good job.

You know, there's the inter lecture. Then there's the seminar where you let 'em kind of test stuff out a little bit. 

Yeah. 

Chris Lundberg : I actually think we could do a lot more, and I know you're behind this and working on this, if we [00:16:00] don't see our only means of advancing democratic culture as being modeling or exposure.

So most folks say like, Hey, you know, if we bring some speakers to campus and model it for other people, well holy cow, the kids will learn what to do. Or you know, if we expose them to other ideas. They'll just say, oh, hey, I never heard that other idea before. And yeah, that's it. I'll change my mind.

And of course, like with the data, say that that doesn't work. So I think one of the things to do is to focus on practices and capacities. So when I talk about how to set up curriculum for this, one of the big things that I think is you train students in the basic outline of a specific kind of speaking situation.

So it could be a public speech, could be a debate, could be a pitch, could be a stakeholder simulation, whatever, and you give them. The duty to perform as close as they can to those guidelines, but you also give them the obligation, the responsibility to respond to other folks. Mm-hmm. And say what they've seen that's good.

What they say, that that struck them poorly, et cetera. [00:17:00] And then I think you empower students or even groups to do a lot of the teaching. So it's not on the professor or the workshop facilitator. Mm-hmm. It's, you know, one of the best ways to learn is to competently set up. Series of processes that invite people to reflect on their experience and to feed back the what the experience was for them as they heard from other people.

So it doesn't completely solve the scale problem, but it does help in that. I think it's not just about the model of the individual master professor teaching the padawan about what are the best means of communication and instead. Empower people with processes and practices, and then give them the opportunity to reflect on 'em together and then teach them that it's not about mastery of any one practice.

I don't care. I mean, I like it when kids learn how to debate or be good at public speaking or be good in a stakeholder simulation or a deliberation, but I don't really [00:18:00] care individually. What I care about is that they thought about how they're a different person in each one of those contexts. The goal, I think, has to be to start kind of developing a capacity for judgment.

I mean, one of my, if you want a great, great editorial, I just read about this the other day in the Seattle Times, really, really good. Came out on Sunday. Andy Perron, Chris Lundberg it's called, we Think we know how to teach students how to do democracy. Okay. If we don't, or something like that. I love the 

Michael Lee : promotion.

Let's get it in. Yeah. Right. 

Chris Lundberg : Woo hoo. Hit those comments. They're really good. The funniest part was, so it's the sense that kind of makes a version of the argument I'm making now uhhuh. And the funniest thing was all the comments say, yeah, that's what you're saying is sort of right, but we can just never fix this problem because of the other side.

It's like, it's the exact opposite of the idea that we're trying to, I hope inculcate in people that you say, I only have responsibility for what I say and do and how I interact with other folks and the kinds of processes that I engage in set up. So I don't, I do think it's a tough scaler problem. [00:19:00] The other thing is, you know, I don't want to over overrun here.

Ron Daniels wrote this great book, what a University of Democracy, and one of the funniest things about that book is he is like, yeah, we need to train people in pluralism. 

Mm-hmm. 

Chris Lundberg : And he has all kinds of suggestions for that. He basically thinks that was taken care of for the first a hundred years of the American University by student debate clubs.

Yeah. So like that's another thing is it's not just that we have to do in the classroom, it's also. You know, there you, you need a cultural intervention that says we can learn to disagree and in fact, disagreement is productive and to disagree is respectful and evaluate evidence, yada, yada, yada. 

Yeah. 

Chris Lundberg : But I think it's also, and and, and it's about changing how we do teaching so that it's not just teaching people theories and concepts, but putting 'em into practice and kind of supporting those, I don't know, para academic, para deic, student organizations 

Michael Lee : co-curricular.

'cause what else? 

Chris Lundberg : Yeah. 'cause what else do we got? I mean. That's the basic thing. 

Michael Lee : Yeah. You and I agree on that and, and, and that's the point where I sort of think of the [00:20:00] university as the initial point of a coiling widening circle of potential impact, right? It starts mm-hmm. Theoretically, in the classroom, starts theoretically in these kinds of relationships.

And then widens to co and para curricular activities, whether it's debates or bringing in speakers or campus events, workshops, dialogue. And then it involves retirement centers, community radios, public libraries, corporations, government, state governments and the like. And then widens into the kind of national conversation about our hopeful collective peaceful, but sometimes antagonistic, coexistence, and also emphasizes.

To, to really, I think, put a finer point than is deserved on what you were saying, which is more learning by doing and less learning by listening or presumed osmosis. I mean, the, the example I give all the time to go back to your endless and tiresome basketball analogy is about, is about. You could listen to me all day long, talk about [00:21:00] dribbling a basketball, and then let's, let's give you one and let's you see, see you do it in the lane.

And those are two very different kinds of animals. Oh. Or just see 

Chris Lundberg : how easily I ripped it from you at the top of the key and that, that No, I think, I think that's absolutely right and it's, it, it, it's, it's a frustrating position. The it, it's, so, it's not just the kind of culmination of building individual capacities.

I think funnily enough, I'd, I'd characterize a lot of these university. Civility and discourse programs is basically private communication instead of public communication. Like you need to discipline yourself. You need to think about how, whether or not you're being mean, you need to think about why it's better to be a, a better democratic friend than you'd otherwise be.

Making a public means there's a different level of intervention, you know, building things into student life activities and the curriculum, all that stuff he said I think is exactly right. And dot, dot, dot. I think one of the biggest problems with the easy solution in our context is that basically the, one of the great things about being a communication person, and maybe this is me seeing everything as a nail because [00:22:00] I'm a hammer, right?

But one of the things I love about it, and I'll totally willing to admit to that possibility. One of the things I love about it though, is that you gotta distinguish not only between like process and content, but I think you need to think about the difference between an individual position. And or, or institutional position and the kind of larger, I'll say it and nerd cultural ecology of the argument go.

And what I mean by that is, there we go. So, yeah, so what I mean by that is like what I've seen outta most of these civics programs, whether it be whatever flavor it is, uhhuh, is that they say, look, the only way we can restore American democratic life is for you to learn X kind of content. And weirdly enough, instead of that.

Becoming an opportunity for us to all talk about what different xs should be included. It has in very real terms made the fight over civic education. It as polar, if not more polar, that our national discourse 'cause the folks on the kinda read the founders and learn the nice basis of liberal [00:23:00] political philosophy side are like, what's wrong with these structural inequity people?

That's all identity politics. Structural inequity. People are like, well, what's wrong with these? You know, people who are doing white identity politics, right? And they say, you just gotta read the founders and the politeness. People are like, why are you fighting so much? Can't we all just get along and agree on a common goal?

And you know, I, at least for me, again, hammer nail problem. But like the essence of civic discourse and especially civil discourse is not a specific way of conducting yourself or a specific thing to talk about it is to recover the old kind of Roman and Greek concept. A means of speaking for the good of the city or John Dewey said, no conversation is intrinsically public.

It only becomes public as soon as when you and I are talking. We talk about the effects of some something on someone else. And so like to me that's the big shtick is that we're at big risk of, of making the conversation about how to fix our democracy. More partisan than the democracy itself in some ways.

Right. [00:24:00] 

Michael Lee : We could certainly play into to that vortex without a doubt. And, and as we close, I was, I would like to end on a, on a hopeful note, which is where as you scan the culture and scan these kind of three options as you've laid them out, where do you see the most hope for the birth of a kind of robust dialogue and debate?

Democratic public sphere. What kinds of efforts or initiatives, books, editorials in the Seattle Times, where are you hopeful? 

Chris Lundberg : I'm hopeful for things like this podcast because it's got great answer, right? It's got, but it does, it has an ethos where you say, just let folks say what they're gonna say and mm-hmm.

I'm, I'm not gonna grill 'em as much as I'm gonna try and understand where they're coming from and, you know, let the folks in the audience kind of sort out what they agree with and don't agree with, but like, more to the point. That's the funny thing about democracy. I'm, I'm perennially, maybe it's the pastoral part in me.

I am perennially, not optimistic, but hopeful for democracy. [00:25:00] There's this, you know, there's an awesome old distinction in theology. A number of polks talked about it. Eric Rahm, non theologian also talked about it. Who cares, who else talked about? Anyway, there's a difference between hope and optimism.

Barack Obama cited this too. Optimism is the idea that in this case, that if we really firmly, firmly believe in our democratic foundations, things will inevitably get better. 'cause that's the character of America. Hope is the idea that the world is messed up. You know, pastoral part of me, it's say the world has fallen.

And hope is in the idea that if and when we commit ourselves alongside other people. To making the world different. There are real possibilities. And so I wanna say in some sense, like as long as folks aren't saying the other methods are bad and are open to the idea that we're all hacking at a kind of common set of things, which is about democratic behaviors or listening, talking, arguing, and resolving things together.

Then all of the different things people are trying, whether it's reading, the founders, thinking about inequity, trying to be more polite, [00:26:00] doing student debate, clubs, doing community deliberations. All those things have substantial nascent promise, and it's just a question of us, I think. The core thing is to reestablish that kind of higher principle of what it means when we listen and what it means when we talk.

And to me, the core principle behind that is I am the person that I am. I believe the things that I believe I am made by the community around me. I only become a human in front of other humans and vice versa. And if that's the case, the question's not, am I right? The question is, what can we be together?

And you can't ever surrender them, am I right? But you know, you can put at the forefront what we can. Can we be together as a means of instilling hope in the durability of the Democratic project? Thus say, if I can, 

Michael Lee : can we be together as a is a great question. To conclude with Chris Lundberg, thank you so much for being on When we disagree and I'll see you on court.

Chris Lundberg : See you on court my friend. Good to talk. 

Michael Lee : When we [00:27:00] Disagree is recorded at the College of Charleston with creator and host Michael Lee. Recording and sound engineering by Jesse k and Lance Laidlaw. Reach out to us at When We disagree@gmail.com.