What Good is Perspective-­Taking if No One Changes Their Perspective?

The speakers stood in the free speech quad and were accompanied by towering ten-­foot signs. The signs condemned homosexuality with Bible passages—painted in crimson red—as support. At a progressive public university, they immediately attracted a crowd looking for a verbal fight. The confrontation happened right outside the communication building where I was starting my master’s degree in communication. The vitriol was so pronounced it garnered attention from local news outlets. One of my professors, knowing I was Christian, suggested this ugly confrontation be the subject of my thesis. “Certainly, we can do better than yelling at each other.” Soon, three conservative Christians and three self-­identified gay students agreed to a seven-­week project preparing them to talk about their differences. Six weeks were spent engaging in perspective-­taking, culminating in a meeting where differences would be addressed directly. At the end of this qualitative study, not one participant reported in their journals changing their view on the morality of homosexuality.

When sharing this story, I’m often asked: “If no one changed their perspective, what’s the point?” It’s a fair question. As the guest editor of this theme issue promoting perspective-­taking and the director of Biola University’s Winsome Conviction Project, where I direct workshops helping people see the world through the eyes of another, it is an objection I regularly encounter. In the following, I’d like to answer as both an academic and practitioner in arguing that perspective-­taking is crucial to accomplishing what is artistically described in ancient Jewish wisdom literature: “Like apples of gold in settings of silver is a word spoken in right circumstances.”¹ My assertion is that perspective-­taking is essential to creating the right circumstances for a person’s opinion to be changed—in both speaker and listener—even if that change is not immediate.

In the introduction to this theme issue we defined perspective-­taking as the “capacity to assume and maintain another’s point of view.”² To understand the benefits of perspective-­taking it will be helpful to add depth to this definition by consulting a philosopher who has most informed my view.

Maria Lugones: Perspective-­Taking as World-­Traveling

Philosopher and social activist, Maria Lugones, creatively defines taking another’s perspective as world-­traveling. Not only does Lugones provide useful insights into perspective-­taking, but she is also open about her attempt to apply it to her estranged mother. “I will not think what I will not practice,” she asserts.³ To understand her process, it is helpful to unpack her terminology.

Arrogant and loving perception

Arrogant perception is the unwillingness or “failure to identify with persons one views arrogantly.”⁴ People who hold this view “ignore, ostracize, stereotype” and even classify as “crazy” those with different perspectives.⁵  The end result is those who I consider different are removed from my “field of vision.”⁶ If people do stay in proximity, an arrogant gaze can foster a negative communication spiral where those who “are perceived arrogantly” in turn perceive others in the same manner. As the Apostle Paul would observe, you reap what you sow.⁷  In contrast, a loving perception fundamentally entails “seeing myself” in another person or group.⁸  “I think part of the failure of love includes the failure to identify with another woman, the failure to see oneself in other women who are different from oneself.”⁹ Loving perception is a pre-­disposition to care for another where we approach others—even those with whom we disagree—with “loving eyes” which is contrary to an arrogant posture.¹⁰

World and world-­travelling

A world need “not be a construction of a whole society.” Rather, it “may be inhabited by just a few people.”¹¹ As we’ll later see, a world can just be one person—like Lugones’ mother—or a culture where she’s stereotypically viewed as a lesbian, academic, feminist, or Latino. Lugones’s frustration is obvious when she asserts “there are many worlds that construct me in ways that I do not even understand or I may not accept the construction as an account of myself.”¹²

How can I come to understand how I’ve been constructed in another person’s or community’s world? I first must come to the realization that to know another I need to step out of my own interests, fears, and imagination. To understand another person’s world, I must travel to it. “The shift from being one person to being a different person is what I call ‘travel.’”¹³ For Lugones, one cannot effectively travel or take the perspective of another while assuming an arrogant gaze. “The agonistic traveler is a conqueror” who only wants to do perspective-­taking to gather information to be used to dominate others. “One needs to give such an attitude up if one wants to travel.”¹⁴

Yet can world-­traveling work when the interpersonal and emotional distance is great between individuals? Lugones invites us to consider how she chooses to travel into her estranged mother’s world.

Loving my mother also required that I see with her eyes, that I go into my mother’s world, that I see both of us as we are constructed in her world, that I witness her own sense of herself from within her world. Only through travelling to her ‘world’ could I identify with her because only then could I cease to ignore her and be her and be excluded and separate from her.¹⁵

What Lugones is describing is what renowned anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff labels “definitional ceremonies” where we allow people “to become visible and to enhance reflexive consciousness.”¹⁶  By entering her mother’s world she allows her mother to self-­define who she is, which may be at odds of what Lugones thought before perspective-­taking. Lugones never tells us if her form of perspective-­taking worked in repairing the relationship. For the sake of argument, let’s say it did not. What good can come of it if they remained estranged? Or, returning to my master’s thesis, what is accomplished if the two groups do not change their differing views of the morality of homosexuality?

I offer the following. First, I consider how perspective-­taking broadly sets the stage for productive conversations. Second, I consider how perspective-­taking is a crucial first move in starting a conversation that could easily become unproductive or even hostile. Last, I consider how perspective-­taking can promote personal health.

Perspective-­Taking Promotes a Ritual View of Communication

What good is perspective-­taking if no one fundamentally changes their perspective is fueled, in part, by valuing a transmission view over a ritual view of communication.¹⁷

Transmission view of communication

Imagine watching 16 full-­length movies every day! The average person today processes as much as 74 GB of information a day—the equivalent of 16 full-­length movies. The information comes through computers, cell phones, tablets, and other electronic enticements. Consider, that “only 500 years ago, 74 GB of information would be what a highly educated person consumed in a lifetime, through books and stories.”¹⁸ We are awash in information and often feel that the goal of communication is to pass along more information. Welcome to the transmission view where communication is fundamentally viewed as a process of creating, sending, and interpreting messages. Words like imparting, sending, and transmitting are most associated with this version of communication.

When we find ourselves in a disagreement with a friend, or co-­worker, we easily kick into this mode and think that the best way to engage is to provide facts, stats, studies, arguments, and experts. When embroiled in a disagreement, we recommend they check out the latest CNN or FOX survey, or podcast where an expert makes our point. The response? Even while we are talking the other person is thinking of websites, experts, or podcasts that support their position. Information begats more information and we quickly hit an impasse. While information was shared, little persuasion happened. “Our basic orientation to communication remains grounded,” notes culture watcher James W. Carey, “at the deepest roots of our thinking, in the idea of transmission.”¹⁹

In no way am I attempting to diminish the importance of imparting information or sending messages. After all, the New Testament is replete with examples of the importance of sharing the Gospel message, Christian doctrine, and apologetic proofs.²⁰ However, we would be naïve to dismiss growing research that is calling into question the effectiveness of the transmission view. In the Christian Scholar’s Review theme issue on “Conviction, Civility, and Christian Witness” (Summer 2022) psychologist Elizabeth Hall, theologian Jason McMartin, and philosopher Timothy Pickavance introduced readers to a self-­centered bias, or motivated reasoning that protects “one’s identity or standing in an affinity group that shares fundamental values such as political or religious groups; people feel protective of their in-­group.”²¹  In this current theme issue, these same researchers suggest individuals do not merely have intellectual insulation against views that challenge the norms or beliefs of their in-­group, but also experience powerful emotions that keep them from engaging perspectives different from our own. In addition to these intellectual and emotional defenses is a deep mistrust of those deemed other. Pew Research reports only 34% of respondents said most people can be trusted, which is down from 46% in 2018. The reason we surround ourselves with like-­minded people, in part, is we trust them and the information sources that inform the group. Outside voices or news sources are treated with suspicion and mistrust. Thus, even if counter messages break into a closed group, it is, rhetorically, immediately discounted.²²

Over the five years the Winsome Conviction Project has been in existence, the transmission of information between parties that fundamentally disagree has proved not only fruitless, but often harmful. Simply put, merely sharing polarizing information is not going to be productive. “If participants in a moral conflict act in ways prefigured [by their own groups] they cannot transform the situation they find themselves; they can only add fuel to the fire by doing ‘more of the same,’ and nothing changes.”²³

Is it time for a different approach? While not abandoning the transmission of convictions, is it time to prioritize and lead with another view of communication?

Ritual view of communication

The ritual view of communication predates the transmission view and is linked to terms such as shared experiences, association, fellowship, commonality, participation, and most importantly, cultivating bonds with others. “A ritual view of communication is directed not toward the extension of messages” but toward “the maintenance of society.”²⁴ This view builds off the notion that the roots of communication are inseparable from concepts such as commonness, communion, and community. The ritual view derives its name from the idea that our commonness is particularly created by daily rituals. People may have disagreements, but we all observe holidays, try to have family meals, send our kids to school, work long hours, find ways to unwind, mourn loss of loved ones, celebrate new births, create traditions, and on and on. While todays’ information age separates and pushes us toward ideological silos, the ritual view attempts to “draw persons together in fellowship and commonality.”²⁵

What perspective-­taking, or world-­traveling, accomplishes is the establishment of the ritual level before potentially divisive content is shared. Or to use Lugones, I start to see myself in the narrative of another. What many culture watchers and researchers bemoan is that Americans feel as divided as ever with no commonality in sight. According to Gallup, a record number of Americans believe we are deeply divided on key values, with only 18% feeling we are united.²⁶

After one perspective-­taking exercise, a gay participant in my thesis project noted of her Christian counterparts: “It was so good to see the human side of everyone and not the media or political side. Those perspectives seem more polar than our human sides—we all esteem, love, acceptance, and family.”²⁷ A Christian participant agreed and acknowledged a common humanity: “For me, the project has humanized the issue. It’s much easier to fight with armor on.” When reading these comments, notice how taking the perspective of the other moved them from a transmission view of communication to a ritual view of communication. Heading into the project, each group wanted to debate what constitutes love or a family (transmission) but slowly shifted to a recognition that both groups valued love, acceptance, and family (ritual). Their differing values did not cease to exist but rather were augmented with common desires and a recognized humanity.

From a communication standpoint, the importance of establishing identification with another before transmitting information on our favorite argument is crucial. In the study of rhetoric, the contributions of Kenneth Burke cannot be overstated. Burke was a literary critic, essayist, poet, and lay theologian who greatly influenced an entire generation of philosophers and rhetoricians. Though he wrote volumes on persuasion and rhetoric, he summarized his entire rhetorical philosophy to the following: When division exists, identification must be the priority. “Identification is affirmed with earnestness precisely because there is division. . . . If men were not apart from one another, there would be no need for the rhetorician to proclaim their unity.”²⁸ Burke described identification with the following: “A is not identical with his colleague, B. But insofar as their interests are joined, A is identified with B. Or he may identify himself with B even when their interests are not joined, if he assumes that they are, or is persuaded to believe so.”²⁹ Temporarily setting aside differences, what interests join us? Burke states that our moral growth, or identity is “organized through properties, properties in goods, in services, in position or status, in citizenship, in reputation, in acquaintanceship and love.”³⁰

As director of the Winsome Conviction Project, I’m particularly drawn to Burke’s idea that citizenship and love can be avenues of identification. When addressing Israelites who have been forcefully relocated to a foreign land, the prophet Jeremiah surprisingly commands that they, though not formal citizens, should still seek the welfare of this new and hostile land. “Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”³¹ Many bemoan the loss of citizenship or neighborliness today in such divided times. Yet, a ritual view of communication attempts to recover a sense of common ownership of our communities, states, and country. The same can be said of a longing for love. As already noted, the desire for romantic love and marriage was a salient form of identification for the gay and Christian participants in my thesis project. They certainly disagreed on the nature of love and the definition of marriage, but the common longing fostered identification with each other.

As Christian communicators, we are commanded to pursue others not as combatants, but rather, as neighbors as the Second Great Commandment dictates (Matthew 22:36–40). Perspective-­taking not only establishes the ritual side of communication but also helps me understand how my content is being received, which communication scholars call perception-­checking. For instance, in my thesis the Christian participants attempted to walk a fine line between loving the person but calling out the sin. This communication strategy was often phrased, “God loves you, but hates your sin.” Yet, how did this play with gay participants? Did it promote a ritual view of commonness, or push individuals away? One gay participant removed all doubt. “It is profoundly insulting to say, ‘God loves the sinner, but hates the sin.’ To me, that is like saying you love me but hate my face. Your language hurts me. Your language takes away my self-­esteem.”³² To borrow from Lugones, perspective-­taking allows me to see how I’m being constructed in the world of the person I’m trying to engage.

Perspective-­taking and communication climates

Communication scholar Jack Gibb thought it essential to focus on meta-­communication (communication about our communication). How we discuss volatile issues is just as important as our content. His insights were forged in the early 1960s at the height of social unrest in our country. He concluded that all communication happens within a communication climate that either supports our communication or works against it. A communication climate is the overarching sense of value a person feels as communication is happening. To summarize, Gibb identified certain communication postures that make a person feel devalued or defensive, such as being overly judgmental, emotionless, inflexible, and dogmatic; while empathy, acknowledgement, and seeking to understand fostered a supportive climate. In today’s argument culture, Gibb is having a resurgence with communication theorists.

In contrasting supportive and defensive climates, Gibb considered the difference between detached neutrality and empathy.³³ Neutrality occurs when a person is more concerned with getting their message across and ignoring the emotions or pain their message may be causing. In short, they are message centered, rather than person centered. Empathy is the attempt to see the view of another from their perspective.

Gibb asserted that empathy—facilitated by perspective-­taking—was the main way to cultivate a climate where differences could be productively explored. While Gibb promotes the importance of empathy, he did not fully develop the concept. Building off Gibb, communication scholars Lawrence Rosenfeld, Ronald Adler, and Russell Proctor define empathy as the “ability to experience the world from his or her point of view.”³⁴ They go further and break empathy into three parts. First, and most importantly for our consideration, empathy involves perspective-­taking. Second, besides merely a cognitive understanding, empathy entails acknowledging emotions. Third, empathy is concerned with the welfare of the other person.

During my thesis, participants were asked to present the perspectives of their counterparts. Ann, a Christian participant, while describing how much each of the gay participants longed to be loved and be able to marry the person—regardless of sex—whom they wanted, started to cry. “I can’t imagine someone saying I couldn’t be with my husband. I just can’t.” The reaction from the gay participants were telling. One later commented in her journal, “Ann, her voice shaking, her sweet face tearstained, her eyes unafraid to meet mine as she read of her sorrow at the pain inflicted on gay and lesbian people in the name of Christ.” Another self-­identified gay participant looked at the three Christians and simply said, “You can believe whatever you want, but thank you for feeling.”

As the director of the Winsome Conviction Project, I have moderated conversations between groups that have been productive and others that have not. What is the difference? For the ones that seemingly were productive, we took time to assess and, if necessary, improve the overall communication climate. For the ones that were not productive, we too quickly jumped into the issue that divided them. In short, the transmission of ideas happened before establishing the ritual view and the overall climate suffered. To be even more candid, unless a healthy communication climate is first established, then repeating a message over and over will not only be ineffective but could harden individuals against a certain position. In one study, 845 participants who were biased toward the idea of human-­induced effects of climate change, were repeatedly shown arguments supporting it. The outcome was that they experienced message exhaustion and increasing resistance. One key point suggested by the researchers was that when people are resistant to your message, avoid doubling down and find different ways to increase openness.³⁵ In today’s negative communication climate, increasing empathy/perspective-­taking is a salient way to avoid a defensive communication climate. Perhaps, this is what the ancient writer meant when they said, “Like apples of gold in settings of silver is a word spoken in right circumstances.”³⁶  If we want our message to get through, then we must create the right circumstances (climate) for it to be heard, rather than harden or fatigue the hearer by merely repeating our message.

Perspective-­Taking and Soft Start Up to a Conversation

The most crucial time in facilitating meetings where groups have gathered to air our differences is how individuals start. Their opening comments will either put people on the defensive or establish a positive atmosphere. Relationship expert John Gottman argues that the first three minutes of a conversation sets the tone for the entire interaction. Based on a six-­year longitudinal study of 124 newlywed couples, researchers could predict the future health and stability of the marriage based on how they started a conversation when facing disagreement or conflict. “Of the 17 couples who later divorced, all started off their conflict discussions with significantly greater displays of negative emotion and fewer expressions of positive emotion.”³⁷

Why is the start of a conversation so important? Gottman’s research can be augmented with an understanding of positive and negative communication spirals. Communication spirals occur when the actions—both verbal and nonverbal—of one person mirror and accelerate the actions of the other person. Both negative and positive spirals, notes interpersonal communication scholar William Wilmot, “tend to pick up a momentum that feeds back on itself—closeness and harmony builds more closeness and harmony; misunderstanding and dissatisfaction creates more misunderstanding and dissatisfaction.”³⁸ Spirals contribute to a relationship in either generative or degenerative ways. “Generative spirals promote positive feelings about the relationship and more closeness; degenerative spirals induce negative feelings about the relationship and more distance.”³⁹ Wilmot offers a key suggestion for halting degenerative spirals. To check a degenerative spiral, you must “alter your usual response—do what comes unnaturally. Change the patterns and you change the spiral.”⁴⁰

In a culture immersed in the transmission view of communication, we often start a disagreement by stating (transmitting) our position with supporting facts or experts we find compelling. The trouble is our content can easily offend and make a person defensive. The ancient writers compare an offended person to that of a fortified city.⁴¹ Often, “the grammar of one side becomes abhorrent to the other, as, for example, when pro-­life advocates use terms such as murder for abortion, and unborn child for fetus and pro-­choice advocates refer to back-­alley abortions, terminating pregnancy, and reproductive rights.”⁴² What is the natural reaction of a person offended? They start a negative or degenerative spiral where they offer arguments and facts the other person finds offensive.

As a facilitator, the best way to open a potentially volatile conversation is to engage in perspective-­taking by considering: What is the backstory of your belief? When did you first start to feel this way? What books, podcasts, or people have most influenced your thinking? How do you feel most misunderstood by my group? Once this definitional ceremony is over do not rush to offer a rebuttal. Rather, sit with both the content and emotions. Asking those questions is the first steps in leading with a ritual view of communication rooted in perspective-­taking. Often, people are simply too impatient to share their views or correct those of another resulting in what communication scholars identify as agenda anxiety. Over much trial and error, I’ve learned the first three minutes set the tone for the entire afternoon workshop. Asking a person to share their story—with all its twists and turns—not only provides valuable information but creates a welcoming tone that sets in motion a positive communication spiral that could last the entire interaction—even when disagreements are shared. We would do well to remember that a “gentle answer deflects anger, but harsh words make tempers flare.”⁴³

Perspective-­Taking Promotes Well-­being

Social scientist Arthur Brooks states we “live in an age of loud egos” where influencing others is often the goal.⁴⁴ Brooks quotes a study where more than half of youth say they desire to become an influencer.⁴⁵ The pull toward loud egos and influence has fostered a decline in our mental well-­being with rates of depression soaring. It turns out that influencing people is difficult in such divided times and our platform or sphere of influence often comes up lacking when comparing it to others. How can we foster a sense of calm and well-­being? Brooks asserts we can find calm in developing a quiet ego centered on a “self-­identity that is neither excessively self-­focused nor excessively other-­focused.” In short, “an identity that incorporates others without losing the self.”⁴⁶ How does one cultivate this type of ego?

Brooks and his researchers note that quiet ego is comprised of an inclusive identity (concern for others), detached awareness (ability to be objective about yourself), growth (belief there is always room for improvement), and most importantly for our consideration, perspective-­taking (the ability and desire to see things from a different point of view). If Brooks is correct, perspective-­taking can be of extreme value in fostering a sense of mental and spiritual calm in a world of loud and divisive egos even if no one is changed by the process but us.

Is Perspective-­Taking Still Relevant?

While my thesis was completed in the late 1990s, has our current communication climate become too volatile or divisive for perspective-­taking to work? Two opportunities suggest otherwise.

Pomona College dialogues

While Pomona College and Biola University are only twenty-­seven miles apart in southern California they could not be more different: Biola is a Christian university that leans politically conservative while Pomona is a premier liberal arts college that leans strongly politically progressive. 2025 marks the fifth year in which fifteen to twenty students are selected from each school to engage in high-­impact practices over two-­weekend retreats alternating between the campuses.⁴⁷ While the participants from differing schools strongly disagree about social issues and politics, they consistently report a deep appreciation for learning to engage in perspective-­taking with individuals with whom they feared there would be no common ground. Leading with the ritual view of communication rooted in perspective-­taking set a tone for honest and sometimes loud but civil conversations. Often, students continue the conversation long after the weekends are over via chat groups. One trans student from Pomona even reached out for help from a Biola student in how to write up a school article describing her experience with religious conservatives.

Brigham Young University dialogues

In a historic move, Brigham Young University (BYU) sent students and faculty to three evangelical schools including Biola in April 2025. Each school had one day to host and facilitate conversation. A quick Google search will produce theological differences between evangelicalism and Latter-­Day Saints. Where would we start? We decided to begin by attending an evening chapel to hear Biola’s president speak. To stand next to BYU faculty and staff—arms raised—in worship was a powerful moment of identification. One BYU faculty member confessed a “holy envy” at an auditorium full of colleges students signing at full volume. Yes, there are differences, but there is also a common desire to pursue God, worship, pray, and be institutions of faith in a sea of secularism. After worshiping together and eating meals, we addressed the elephant in the room—our theological differences. My favorite image was breaking for lunch only to have one table of Biola/BYU students staying put with Bibles out talking intently, yet respectfully. As with Pomona, the conversation continues with plans of future visits and a BYU professor and I being regular guest lectures via Zoom in each other’s classes in the spring of 2026.

Would any of this happen if we did “more of the same” and start with issues that divide us? What type of communication spiral would form if we spent our first three minutes going to the heart of our differences rather than perspective-­taking to foster identification? From experience with evangelical institutions and churches, the conversation would have quickly devolved. Traveling to each other’s world’s first opens the door for empathetic conversations.

Conclusion

I thought it fitting to end this essay with a quote that concluded my master’s thesis from Erich Maria Remarque’s classic, All Quiet on the Western Front, where he describes a change of perception that occurs in a young German soldier who contemplates the family photos of a young French soldier he has killed.

Comrade, I did not want to kill you. If you jumped in here again, I would not do it, if you would be sensible too. But you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth its appropriate response. It was the abstraction I stabbed. But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late.⁴⁸

The soldier didn’t forget he was in a war. What changed was a shift of focus from an abstraction—that called forth a hostile response—to seeing his opponent’s wife and fellowship. Such a shift—from demonizing to humanizing—with those with whom we disagree can foster change in how we communicate. Such a shift can, over time, pave the way to civil and compassionate interaction where change can happen in us and perhaps others.

1. Proverbs 25:11 NASB.
2. Claudia L. Hale and Jesse G. Delia, “Cognitive Complexity and Social Perspective-­taking,” Communication Monographs 43 (1976): 195.
3. Jennifer Micale, “Thought and Practice: María Lugones Leaves a Global Legacy,” Binghamton News, August 7, 2020, https://www.binghamton.edu/news/story/2580/thought-­and-­practice-­maria-­lugones-­leaves-­a-­global-­legacy.
4. Maria Lugones, “Playfulness, World-­traveling, and Loving Perception,” in The Woman that I AM: The Literature of Culture of Contemporary Women of Color, ed. D. Soyini Madison (St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 627.
5. Lugones, “Playfulness, World-­traveling, and Loving Perception,” 627.
6. Lugones, “Playfulness, World-­traveling, and Loving Perception,” 630.
7. Galatians 6:7–8.
8. Lugones, “Playfulness, World-­traveling, and Loving Perception,” 628.
9. Lugones, “Playfulness, World-­traveling, and Loving Perception,” 629.
10. Lugones, “Playfulness, World-­traveling, and Loving Perception,” 627.
11. Lugones, “Playfulness, World-­traveling, and Loving Perception,” 631
12. Lugones, “Playfulness, World-­traveling, and Loving Perception,” 631
13. Lugones, “Playfulness, World-­traveling, and Loving Perception,” 632
14. Lugones, “Playfulness, World-­traveling, and Loving Perception,” 635.
15. Lugones, “Playfulness, World-­traveling, and Loving Perception,” 630, emphasis added.
16. Barbara Myerhoff, Number Our Days (Simon & Schuster, 1978), 105.
17. Discussion of these two forms of communication are found in Tim Muehlhoff and Sean McDowell, End the Stalemate: Move Past Cancel Culture to Meaningful Conversations (Tyndale, 2024), 28–36.
18. Stefan Heim and Andreas Keil, “Too Much Information, Too Little Time: How the Brain Separates Important from Unimportant Things in Our Fast-­Paced Media World,” Frontiers for Young Minds 5 (2017), https://doi.org/10.3389/frym.2017.00023.
19. ames W. Carey, Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society (Routledge, 1992), 13.
20. To the believers at Corinth, Paul lays out his justification for holding to Christ’s resurrection which includes Jesus’s dying for our sins, burial, rising on the third day, appearing to Cephas and the disciples, and finally simultaneously appearing to hundreds of others. Paul is clear he’s merely transmitting information he received and subsequently now sending on to others: “I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me” (1 Corinthians 15:3).
21. M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall, Jason McMartin, and Timothy Pickavance, “Speaking Truth in Love: The Challenge of Public Engagement,” Christian Scholar’s Review 51, no. 4 (Summer 2022): 277.
22. Pew Research Center, “Americans’ Trust in One Another,” Pew Research Center, May 8, 2025, https://www.pewresearch.org/2025/05/08/americans-­trust-­in-­one-­another/.
23. W. Barnett Pearce and Stephen W. Littlejohn, Moral Conflict: When Social Worlds Collide (Sage, 1997), 16.
24. Carey, Communication as Culture, 20.
25. Carey, Communication as Culture, 15.
26. Gallup, “Americans Agree Nation Is Divided on Key Values,” Gallup, September 23, 2024, https://news.gallup.com/poll/650828/americans-­agree-­nation-­divided-­key​-­values.aspx.
27. Emphasis added. All quotes from participants—whose names have been changed to protect privacy— are derived from my unpublished master’s thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1997. Findings were later published in Tim Muehlhoff, I Beg to Differ: Navigating Difficult Conversations in Truth and Love (InterVarsity, 2014).
28. Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (University of California Press, 1950), 22.
29. Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 20.
30. Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 24.
31. Jeremiah 29:7 NIV.
32. Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 24.
33. Jack Gibb, “Defensive Communication,” Journal of Communication 11 (1961): 141–148.
34. Ronald B. Adler, Lawrence B. Rosenfeld, and Russell Proctor III, Interplay: The Process of Interpersonal Communication, 12th ed. (Oxford University Press, 2013), 132.
35. Jiyeon So and Hyunjin Song, “Two Forms of Message Repetition: Audience Favorability as a Detriment of the Explanatory Capacities of Processing Fluency and Message Fatigue,” Journal of Communication 73, no. 6 (December 2023): 574–586, https://doi​.org/10.1093/joc/jqad025.
36. Proverbs 25:11 NASB.
37. Sybil Carrère and John M. Gottman, “Predicting Divorce among Newlyweds from the First Three Minutes of a Marital Conflict Discussion,” Family Process 38, no. 3 (1999): 293–301, emphasis in the original.
38. William W. Wilmot, Relational Communication (McGraw-­Hill, 1995), 65.
39. Wilmot, Relational Communication, 65.
40. Wilmot, Relational Communication, 66.
41. Proverbs 18:19.
42. Pearce and Littlejohn, Moral Conflict, 165.
43. Proverbs 15:1 NLT.
44. Arthur C. Brooks, “The Bliss of a Quieter Ego,” The Atlantic, May 8, 2025, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/05/quiet-­ego-­happiness-­virtue/682718/.
45. Gili Malinsky, “More than Half of Gen Z Want to Be Influencers — but ‘It’s Constant’,” CNBC, September 14, 2024, https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/14/more-­than-­half​-­of-­gen-­z-­want-­to-­be-­influencers-­but-­its-­constant.html.
46. Brooks, “The Bliss of a Quieter Ego.”
47. To read more about this experience and how our dialogues are organized, see Tim Muehlhoff and Michael Y. Ahn, “Finding Common Ground: How Two Divergent Colleges Have Converged Around Conversation,” in Encouraging College Students’ Democratic Engagement in an Era of Political Polarization, ed. Angela M. McGowan-­Kirsch (Lexington Books, 2025), 195–213.
48. All Quiet on the Western Front, trans. A. W. Wheen (Fawcett Crest, 1928), 174.