There was an interesting thread about social identities and communication in Charles Duhigg’s Supercommunicators.
The first is that a reminder of these identities have a noticeable impact in our behavior. For example, without any intervention, studies with graduate level students found that women consistently performed consistently worse than men in math tests. That’s because, by default, they were aware of a stereotype that women are worse at math than men.
However, in tests where these women were reminded of other identities, e.g. that of a puzzle-solver or a successful sportsperson, the performance differences disappeared.
These identities matter a ton in communication because conflicts escalate when they move from being about the topic to being perceived as threatening the person’s identity.
That’s where motivational interviewing comes in. With tricky issues, motivational interviewing focuses on asking questions to help a person understand both sides of an issue and why they might be for against it.
The goal isn’t to persuade – it is to simply understand both sides of the issues and reinforce that there are other identities they could choose. He made the point with fascinating examples involving polarizing issues such as gun rights and vaccines.
All in all, two takeaways –
(1) Conflicts often escalate because of a perceived threat to a social identity.
(2) Motivational interviewing is a useful tool in such situation to better understand how a person might think of both sides of an issue.
