Cooling heated discourse: Conversational receptiveness boosts interpersonal evaluations and willingness to talk

Heated discourse over controversial topics can harm relationships while failing to change minds. In four pre-registered experiments (N = 3,707) we tested a brief intervention to mitigate the interpersonal costs of disagreement and increase the likelihood of future conversations around vaccine hesitancy. Specifically, we randomly assigned vaccine-supportive participants to training in signaling receptiveness to a vaccine-hesitant person's views. Across three studies, participants who were trained to signal receptiveness were seen as more reasonable and more trustworthy than those writing in their natural tone. Notably, the trained participants also evaluated their untrained counterpart more favorably. Participants trained to signal receptiveness were as persuasive as control participants who were instructed to be as persuasive as possible, and their counterparts reported being more interested in learning their views on other topics. Finally, receiving training in conversational receptiveness and learning that one’s counterpart was similarly trained increased participants’ willingness to discuss vaccines by 50%.