The Difficult Conversations Lab

The Difficult Conversations Lab at Columbia University matches people up for 20 minutes to discuss a controversial topic. The lab's psychologist Peter T. Coleman has been bringing people together to talk about polarizing issues over the past two decades. In one experiment, 46% of pairs were able to find enough common ground to draft and sign a statement on abortion laws. He randomly assigned some pairs to read another version of the same article which led 100% of them to generate and sign a joint statement around abortion laws.