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Hate: Difficult Conversations

This guide provides information on hate in our society. It focuses upon online hate and strategies for dealing with it.

Conducting Constructive Dialogue

What is Constructive Dialogue?

A form of conversation where people with different perspectives try to understand each other — without giving up their own beliefs — in order to live, learn, and work together.

The 5 Principles of Constructive Dialogue

  1. Let go of winning
  2. Get curious
  3. Share stories
  4. Navigate conflict with purpose
  5. Find what’s shared

Promote Dialogue using the PSI Approach

Prepare
Support
Intervene

  • Prepare describes making a space ready for constructive dialogue. This includes setting expectations, establishing norms based on those expectations, and helping students begin to make connections and build trust with each other.  

  • Support describes building constructive dialogue skills and creating opportunities for dialogue. This includes teaching students to ask constructive questions, helping students practice dialogue skills (listening, asking questions, telling stories), using structures that enable dialogue to thrive, and building in time for reflection.

  • Intervening is addressing and deescalating rising pressure or intensifying interpersonal conflict. It can look like intervening with a question, redirection, correction, or observation of dynamics. Instructors might also intervene by restructuring the dialogue (for example, from full-group to small groups, or from pairs to a go-round) in order to break up an unhealthy or unproductive dynamic.

Consider the six moral foundations that might shape your stance on a particular issue

Care, fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority, sanctity

 

 

During a discussion:

  • Invite conversation
  • Uphold norms
  • Stay rooted in purpose
  • Sustain conversation

When conversations get heated:

  • Ask questions
  • Acknowledge meaning
  • Talk about talking
  • Address the breach
  • Change course

Establish norms for having conversations

Group Norms are explicit standards that describe both what individuals can expect to experience in a dialogue and how they should expect to participate.

  1. Communicate your perspective thoughtfully and with the intention of being understood.
  2. Give others the benefit of the doubt: listen with curiosity first, rather than judgment.
  3. Speak for yourself – use “I” statements.
  4. Embrace discomfort as an essential part of the learning process.
  5. Honor confidentiality – others’ stories are only theirs to tell.
  6. Participation is voluntary – you can “pass” if you don’t want to share.

Examples of Constructive Questions

  • What makes you say that?
  • Why is that important to you?
  • How do you know?
  • Can you say more about what you mean when you say      ?
  • Why do you think that is?
  • Have you always felt that way?
  • Say more about that

From: Manhattanville University. Center for Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship. Professional Development Day: Facilitating Constructive Dialogue. 26 August 2024. Materials developed by Constructive Dialogue Institute. https://constructivedialogue.org/