Panel discusses nation’s decline in civil discourse

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The American Psychological Association presented a “National Conversation on Civility” on Sept. 26 at The George Washington University. Co-hosted by the National Institute for Civil Discourseopens in new window (NICD), the event was a wide-ranging discussion of the reasons for the decline in civility and mutual respect in the public discourse. Scott Simon, host of NPR’s “Weekend Edition Saturday,” moderated the panel, which included APA CEO Arthur C. Evans, PhD; social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, PhD; CNN commentator Sally Kohn; and Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer, PhD, executive director of NICD.

Evans kicked off the panel by citing APA’s 2017 Stress in America survey finding that nearly 60 percent of Americans felt stressed because of current social divisiveness, “which no doubt has contributed to the high levels of negativity in our civil discourse. Living with this type of stress is not good for our emotional and physical health.”

Evans said this stress contributes to the negativity in social discourse today, and that it’s often difficult for people of differing opinions to have meaningful conversations because they give each other little room to make mistakes. “What that does then is it leaves only the people who are at extremes to talk about the issue, and so it reinforces the idea that the only way you can talk about this is in an extreme way,” Evans said.

Haidt, of New York University’s Stern School of Business, said he is pessimistic about the future of democracy because the rise of social media has negatively changed how people interact. Haidt said he is concerned for the future because the digital world doesn’t allow people to escape politics – but he said the United States can move past the division because “it’s always been wrong to bet against America so far and probably it’s wrong to bet against America now.”

“However dire things get, as things get worse and worse, more and more people start working on them, and humans are very innovative,” Haidt said. “I’m pessimistic in many ways, but that means more and more people are working on it.”

The event was attended by 200 people in person and livestreamed on APA’s YouTube channel. More than 350 people watched the conversation live, including constituents of NICD who hosted house parties in 30 states. As of Oct. 14, 2018, more than 1,100 people had watched the video.