As a Political Science major, I am often surrounded by heated discussions. Politics is one of those wonderful constructs that has the power both to unite people under one national identity and reveal fundamental divides. As a result, much like in The UCWbL, honest and respectful communication is essential to successfully completing an agenda.
How does honest and respectful communication influence the success of a political agenda?
In the past weeks, I set out to answer this very question and found many parallels to what we do at The UCWbL which can help us be better tutors. While I was able to find useful information about the theories and methods of effective communication, Lyenger’s and Westwood and Warner’s work on polarization pushed me to examine how we can utilize this information to have effective conversations with people whose ideas are vastly different from our own at The UCWbL. Both studies surveyed a pool of over one thousand Americans about their political affiliation and how they view the opposing side. Their findings revealed that people with different political affiliations still respond to those with opposing views quite similarly.
Both studies found that Americans, regardless of how politically involved they viewed themselves to be, held strong negative feelings about the opposing political party. Lyengar and Westwood described this view as an “outgroup,” the group of people that one does not agree with. People reported seeing the outgroup with such disdain that any information the outgroup presented was deemed illegitimate. These negative and judgmental views seriously impeded the communication between the two parties. The surveys reported that people were unlikely to communicate respectfully if they understood their interlocutor as a member of the outgroup.
How can we avoid such a dynamic in The UCWbL?
The UCWbL offers students the unique opportunity to work with their peers on their writing assignments. Peer-to-peer collaboration can benefit both writers and tutors. The tutors and writers share similar experiences and therefore, can effectively empathize with each other. In addition, it is easier for tutors to build rapport with each other based on these similarities. However, among students, an unwarranted common enemy can emerge: the professor. When I build rapport with my writers, I often commiserate about a heavy homework load or concerns about “midterm season,” but this conversation can all too easily devolve into bashing teachers. Professors can become the outgroup. If we as tutors perpetuate the notion that teachers are the enemy, we will hinder our ethos as perceived by both students and professors, and discourage students’ respect for their professors. Should a professor hear that tutors were speaking ill of their class or of them, they would be less likely to trust and use The UCWbL and eventually dismiss our services. As tutors, it is our responsibility to preserve the integrity of honest and respectful communication, especially as we build rapport with writers. To help avoid constructing professors as the outgroup, I made a list of possible responses to turn conversations in a more positive direction:
- “Yeah, midterm season is tough, but at least we’re almost through.”
- “Papers can be difficult when we don’t have long to write them, but winter break is right around the corner. Are you going anywhere fun for the Holiday season?”
- “I’m sure both you and the professor are trying your best. How about we dive into what you have so far.”
- “I’m sorry the class was difficult, maybe we can brainstorm a more effective writing process to make it easier.”
By avoiding making professors into an outgroup, we are ensuring that our core practice is extended to everyone in the DePaul community.
For more on this topic, check out my prezi: https://prezi.com/p/rcodbhu19ytq/
Work Cited:
Lyengar, Shanto, and Sean J. Westwood. Fear and Loathing across Party Lines: New Evidence on Group Polarization
Warner, Benjamin R. “A test of imagined contact as a means to improve cross-partisan feelings and reduce attribution of malevolence and acceptance of political violence.” Communication Monographs, vol. 84, no. 4, 2017.