After the Election: Reducing Inter-Group Animosity Requires Building a Culture of Growth

Shifting to a Growth Mindset Can Heal Our Political and Social Relationships

Last year, one of my close friends, Natalia, took up running. She got deep into it. She joined a local running club, got all the gear, and trained for an upcoming race. Yet as she improved her running skills, something else in Natalia shifted, too.

It was imperceptible at first, but over time as Natalia embraced her new identity, the lens with which she viewed the rest of the world started to shift a bit as well. She began to see people as divided into two groups: runners and non-runners.

I, sadly (or not-so-sadly if I consider what my knees have to say about it) am decidedly not a runner.

For Natalia and me, this shouldn’t matter, right? I mean, we’ve been close friends for years, shared a lot of experiences, and have been there for each other in good times and bad.

And yet, this runner thing has somehow made things a bit weird for us. She had a whole new language for things that I didn’t understand and new things became important to her, things like energy gels, split times, and hydration strategies. I didn’t quite know how to relate.

I know I’m not the only one who’s experienced this. In fact, all across the country many of us are living out something similar—a distance in relationships we once felt were close. Maybe we, too, have changed the lens through which we see the world. Only it’s not about leisure activities, but something larger—and perhaps more important: our political identities. And for many of us living in the United States right now, this aspect of our identity is front-and-center.

A Time of Transition

In my last Substack, we looked at how transitions tend to pose a particular challenge to our mindsets. When we’re in a time of change, it can be especially difficult to gear ourselves towards growth. When I asked you to let me know which transitions you’re most struggling with, many of you described the challenge of restoring relationships after a deeply dividing event such as an election.

Poised as we are on the brink of decision day, we’re left to wonder: How will we navigate life on November 6 and afterward at Thanksgiving, and the upcoming winter holidays?

Regardless of who wins, navigating a post-election world will pose significant challenges.

I’m from San Antonio, Texas. And lots of my friends and family members don’t have the same political views as I do. And I’m not in the minority. The Pew Research Center reports that most Americans have at least some political diversity among their close friends. Majorities of both Democrats and Republicans say they have at least a few close friends from the other party. 

Growing up in Texas—and even 10-15 years ago—these political differences didn’t seem to matter as much. But today, it feels more precarious. It feels like more is at stake in our relationships with people who don’t agree with us and that more care is required if we don’t want our differences to overshadow the love and closeness we’ve built over the years.

When we think about how we might mend fences or at least find a way forward, our differing identities and views can seem like an insurmountable obstacle. Yet when it comes to political identities, it may surprise you to learn that ideological differences aren’t necessarily the primary force driving the divide between Democrats and Republicans. Instead, it’s mindset. And not just our individual mindset, but the ideas and beliefs held about the groups we’re part of—created and sustained by group leaders.

Our American politics largely embodies a national fixed-mindset culture. Many have proposed tactics for reducing enmity between Democrats and Republicans on the ground—not necessarily among the political elites and leadership who are essentially political professionals—but for us, the regular folks, who have enough of an integrated social network that we know and care for people who have differing views than we do. For us, we have to contend with what to do in our friendships and families no matter the outcome of the election.  Yet as research indicates, each of these evidence-based approaches is likely to fail unless we attend to one critical action first—engaging our growth mindset about ourselves and the groups to which we belong.

Recently, Science reported the results of a head-to-head contest of 25 interventions aimed at reducing partisan animosity among regular American adults, and winners included “highlighting intergroup contact,” “emphasizing common identities and shared norms,” and being “willing to learn.” But as research shows, if we’re in our fixed mindset about ourselves and others, we’re unlikely to want to put in the effort required to cross group lines (in other words, have intergroup contact), get to know one another, and reflect on the shared identities or values we might have in common. The problem is, in many cases it’s in our group’s best interest to keep us in our fixed mindset. Here’s why…

Group Leaders are Often Motivated to Create Fixed Mindset Cultures

What we know is that the differences we perceive between ourselves and our out-groups (groups we’re not a part of) can be intentionally amplified by group leaders who have a vested interest in us remaining loyal, dedicated members of our group. They want to ensure our identities are strong, fixed, and maximally different from “them” so that we do the things they want us to do—in the case of elections: vote the way they want us to. 

Leaders are culture creators of their parties and what they say and do, along with all the cultural artifacts of the group (buttons, t-shirts, websites, pamphlets, and so on) are purposely designed to reinforce the narrow, often stereotypical or caricatured lens through which we see our group and the not-our-group(s). And in America, this strategy is working: today, people are much more likely to see others with differing political views as closed-minded, dishonest, unintelligent and immoral—characteristics political leaders stoke with abandon. It benefits leaders of all parties to create a fixed-mindset culture in their groups where it is clear that we are like this and they are like that; and once we’re inside the bubble, it’s even harder to engage our growth mindset as individuals. 

Going against our group’s mindset culture would be like swimming upstream. 

Sure, it’s possible, but the truth is, if we’re doing it on our own, it’s unlikely. 

Perpetuating the Fixed Mindset

As many political leaders know, a fixed-mindset culture is in their best interest. They want members to draw broad conclusions about the other group so we’ll be more motivated to vote for our group. 

Consider how, when political leaders talk, they rarely speak of individuals or even about “some Democrats” or “some Republicans.” Instead, they talk about each party as if every single member has the same beliefs, ideas, values, and motivations—ones that are painted to be diametrically opposed to our own. Yet we know from widespread polling that the average Democrat and Republican share more common ground on many issues than this kind of rhetoric would have us believe.

Once our fixed-mindset views become entrenched it can lead to intractable conflict, where not only do we see those in our outgroup as unlike us now, we also see the rift between us as unable to change.

Then, something happens. There’s an event or a decision; like an election, with an outcome that we may or may not have wanted and worked toward, followed by the inevitable “after” transition. When we’re in our fixed mindset (that our leaders have so strongly instilled), we’re left with few constructive options for how to handle the aftermath, whether we are on the winning side or the losing one. Sadly, political differences are now cited as a primary reason that family members and friends become estranged from one another.

Fixed Mindset Cultures are Barriers to Intergroup Contact

Fostering contact among out-group members is essential to navigate long-term or intractable conflicts. Yet due to factors such as fixed-minded stereotyping, people may be unmotivated to make contact. In fact, “othering” often means that we see ourselves and our group as more flexible and less fixed than “they” are and this contributes to the belief that our group can change but their group can’t.

Indeed, one of our most limiting notions is the belief that the other group can’t change and that one’s position reflects something fixed and innate about their values and personhood. Again, a hallmark of the fixed mindset. 

Let me be clear about what I mean by “change” here. It’s true that it’s not always possible for us to change other people’s minds or views—and that’s not what I’m talking about here (nor is it a strategy I would advise). Instead, it’s about believing that groups and individuals can change (with or without our intervention)—and that belief allows us to soften a bit when we interact with each other.

As research shows, when groups engaged in long-term, intractable conflicts believed the other group was fixed and unable to change, people felt greater anxiety about inter-group contact and were less likely to want to connect. But one factor mediated this: mindset. When researchers prompted the groups to believe that it was possible for the other group to change, and shared examples of that change, people’s anxiety was reduced and they were more likely to want to engage in contact.

Growth-minded views of groups and people help us take a learning orientation instead of a proving and performing orientation (a need to always be right and to have others be wrong). And these views are essential if we want a post-election world where regular people on the ground are able to interact and come together.

As I mentioned earlier, in the head-to-head megastudy recently published in Science, inter-group contact emerged as one of the most effective methods through which regular Americans can significantly reduce partisan animosity. Yet as we’ve just seen, both groups are largely fixed-mindset cultures and therefore are unlikely to believe that such contact can result in actual change. So it’s up to us to find ways to engage our growth mindset, build growth mindset cultures around us, and drive that change.

Some other research may prove useful here, as well—this work involves negotiations. Laura Kray and Michael Haselhuhn showed that when we engage in negotiation with our fixed mindsets activated, we see the possible outcomes of the negotiation as all-or-nothing and we adopt the goal of flat-out winning. What happens as a result? People in their fixed mindsets produced worse outcomes and made objectively worse deals in terms of what was possible in the negotiation. However, when people were shifted to their growth mindset, they adopted learning goals and were able to expand the pie, identifying novel solutions by creating more win-win outcomes—they were also more likely to persevere and collaborate longer to find a solution.

Research has shown that mindset and our beliefs about whether groups can change is a key component to creating actual, meaningful progress in some of the world’s most intractable conflicts, including that between Israelis and Palestinians. An intervention that spoke to the idea that groups can change and improve over time improved intergroup attitudes, hope, and willingness to make concessions, even six months after the intervention. 

Mindset is an individual effort, and it’s also a group effort. So how do we shift the larger culture? We can start by seeing the lines that divide groups as dotted rather than solid. In other words, we start by believing and looking for evidence that change is possible. On top of that, we can soften our grip so that we don’t focus too heavily on any individual aspect of our own identity, and we can resist the urge to harden around perceptions of our in-groups and out-groups. And we can remember that it’s true that we’re actually often having some form of intergroup contact—whether that be with family and friends, or in the grocery store, or running errands. We are going to encounter people who don’t share all our group memberships and remembering to shift toward growth in these moments can help us navigate these interactions.

Shifting Our Mindset Culture

Yes, we probably have real differences from people in our out-groups, but those differences may not be as significant, or widespread throughout the group, as we’re led to believe. One way to find out is through conversation.

My friend Karen Gross founded a group called Citizen Discourse which provides a powerful example. The organization is helping people connect and create friendships across lines of difference. Much of their work focuses on simply facilitating conversations with compassion and a growth-minded learning orientation. In an age of technology and misinformation where people and ideas can quickly become abstracted in the extreme, these direct connections can be exceptionally powerful at demystifying our outgroups. And while I’ve focused primarily on political groups, this applies to all groups we’re part of.

When enough of us engage on an individual level, eventually we get a critical mass. Ideally, those at the top will see us driving this change and be forced to meet us partway. Seeing the tide turn, they may add their efforts to the change. (And this isn’t just about group leaders, but also people in the media and others who reinforce messages about group differences. They all have a major influence on our national mindset culture.) Eventually we can create a culture where sowing this deep divisiveness is no longer the norm.

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with belonging to or identifying with groups—we just don’t want it to come at the expense of stereotyping, overgeneralizing, or vilifying those in our out-groups. And in addition to these smaller group identities we can hold, we can also develop a larger, shared identity—that of people working together for the greater good.

Group membership in and of itself isn’t good or bad, it’s simply a part of life. We just want to be aware that no matter how strongly we may identify with one group, that group membership doesn’t have to be weaponized. If we start to stereotype or otherwise make broad generalizations about our friends and family in our out-groups, it’s a warning sign that we’ve engaged our fixed mindset. Instead, we want to try to see ourselves, our out-groups, and the individuals who are part of them in ways that go beyond the false fixed views that have been instilled by leaders and society. 

When it comes down to it, the groups that we’re part of can shift, aspects of our personal identity evolving right along with them. My friend Natalia experienced that and in my own ways, I have as well. If we can recognize and embrace the capacity for change in both ourselves and others, it’s a powerful first step to finding a way forward come November 6 and beyond.

Your friend in growth,

Mary