Make It A Habit: Ask ‘Why Is This Issue Important to You?’

By Julian Adorney (jadorenewal17@gmail.com)

I was talking to a friend about what we should do about gun violence. I’m pretty supportive of gun rights and he views guns as a scourge our nation shouldn’t have to deal with, so I was prepared for things to get heated. I had my facts and figures and arguments lined up.

And then…I asked him a simple question. Instead of deciding I was going to try to win the debate, I asked him “Why is this issue so important to you?”

What poured out was not what I expected. My friend opened up about his own history with guns and how he felt guilty for the violent impulses he had had as a child. The Columbine shootings came up (he had almost lost a family member in the shootings). By the end of the conversation, I felt like I knew this man a lot better than I had just an hour or so ago.

I’ve started asking this question, “Why is this issue so important to you?”, more and more in politically charged conversations. I’ve found that, if the other person’s willing to play along, it can bring some profound benefits.

First, we often go into political discussions wanting to win. But as social psychologist Jonathan Haidt points out in The Righteous Mind, we don’t arrive at our political opinions through reason and logic. Instead, our “elephant” (our emotions, experiences, and subconscious) decides what we want to believe, and then our “rider” (our conscious thought processes and logic) tries to justify those beliefs. This is why, when we try to win a political argument, it can feel like banging our head against the wall. No matter how many of our interlocutor’s arguments we knock down, they just bring up new ones and we never actually change their minds. The reason is simple: we’re knocking down their surface-level justifications, but we’re not doing a thing to affect their elephant, which will continue believing what it wants.

Asking “Why is this issue so important to you?” can save us from feeling like we’re banging our heads against the wall. It flips the interaction from an argument into a discussion in which we each try to learn more about the other person’s perspective. That in turn can make the discussion more peaceful, more joyful, and more open. 

This question also allows me to learn more about the issue so that I end up closer to the truth. Odds are good that my interlocutor knows something that I don’t. Maybe he has a unique take on the issue that I’ve never considered. Maybe he’s in possession of facts or powerful stories that, if I knew them, would add some nuance to my own position. By asking “Why is this issue so important to you?”, I stand a better chance of unlocking those nuggets and becoming more knowledgeable about this issue as a result.

But the biggest benefit to this question isn’t political; it’s human. If I’m talking to a friend or family member, then I probably want to deepen our relationship. I want to forge a stronger connection with them and get to know them on a deeper level. Asking them why a given issue is so important can do that. It can coax out stories and experiences that help me to better see my interlocutor and to connect with them in a more profound way. If they reciprocate the question, then it gives me an opportunity to share some of my own core values and experiences, which helps me to feel seen in turn. Both seeing others and feeling seen can be powerful antidotes to the loneliness that so many of us feel in modern society.

And sometimes, the person will refuse to answer this question. Every so often, I’ve asked this question and my interlocutor has brushed me off with vague generalities. What this tells me is that, for whatever reason (whether it’s their anxiety, or the fact that we barely know each other, or something that I said or did that offended them), they don’t feel safe enough with me to open up. That’s valuable knowledge too. It tells me that the support structures of our relationship are weak, and that maybe we need to shore those up before we start a political conversation that might shatter too-weak supports. If I get into an argument with someone who doesn’t fully trust me, we both might leave feeling hurt; and it might even mean that the relationship gets ruptured beyond immediate repair.

I think a lot of us approach political discussions with the goal of winning. But I don’t think we should. I think a better goal might be to learn: to learn about the other person’s ideas, to learn about the other person, to learn if we might have experiences and values in common in spite of our political differences. If enough of us approach conversations with the goal of learning rather than winning, maybe we can start to knit our great country back together.

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