Source: The Conversation – USA (3)
Even home-baked treats were rejected by a neighbor. Ajax9/iStock via Getty Images Plus I stood there in shock, staring blankly at the letter. A lawyer was notifying me that my neighbors – as well as anyone they hired – would be on my property the next day to cut some branches from a tree near the property line.
It ended with a stern command to lock up my “vicious” dog for the safety of the workers. I read the letter over and over, alternating between disbelief, anger and sadness. How did we get here?
Tensions had been building for months. My family had a boisterous rescue dog, who was full-grown but often acted like a puppy. We didn’t know much about her history, but it was clear she needed some basic training and socialization.
She tried to slip through gates to go exploring, pulled at the leash in excitement to get to other dogs, and never missed an opportunity to beg for food. She was making great progress, learning to walk on a leash and follow basic obedience commands.
But one evening she slipped out the side door and sprinted over to my neighbor’s backyard, smelling their grill. I didn’t know where she had gone, but when I heard a scream, I sprinted too.
Some issues are well-known potential flash points. For couples, there are disputes about money, chores and parenting practices. For siblings, there are disputes about fair treatment when we’re young and disagreements about eldercare and inheritances when we’re older.
For neighbors, there are disputes around property lines, shared driveways, trees – and dogs. And now here I was. My high-octane mutt was leaping around the patio table and barking excitedly while my neighbors huddled together over their steaks.
I quickly grabbed her and apologized profusely, explaining that she had slipped out but was very friendly – and was excited for grill night. My neighbors looked doubtful. In the beginning, I wasn’t concerned. I’m an ethicist and moral psychologist who researches moral conviction and civility, which I treat as a respectful approach toward conflict resolution.
I’ve spent my career studying misunderstandings and disagreements. I teach students ways to better navigate differing interpretations, complex conversations, moral dilemmas and bitter disputes. Civility research matters for ethics education across every discipline, especially fields such as law or medicine where contentious political and moral disagreements are likely to arise.
Consider, for instance, the tense conversations between healthcare professionals who disagree about whether the best course of treatment for a patient is to turn to hospice services.
Medicine is one career where fraught ethical decisions call for treating colleagues with civility. jose carlos cerdeno martinez/Moment via Getty Images Civility has a role to play in the workplace, too, where people need to navigate disagreements with colleagues and also between potentially conflicting professional and legal obligations, client expectations and ethical beliefs.
And anyone who’s ever been in an argument with their significant other understands how difficult it is to engage with civility and maintain the relationship in the face of what seems to be an egregious wrong.
Some people do it well. Others, poorly – which provides job security to couples counselors and ethicists alike. I’ve always prided myself on my ability to engage with anyone. So the next day after my dog’s unwelcome visit next door, I baked cinnamon rolls and took them over as a peace offering.
The husband grudgingly accepted the plate and mentioned that they didn’t like my dog because she always barked at them. I suggested bringing her over with some treats to introduce them; dogs bark at suspicious strangers, not friends with treats.
The husband looked doubtful.
Three days later, I received a note in the mail, informing me not to bring over any more “baked items.” Shock of a neighbor’s refusal to engage As a moral psychologist, I know the processes, methods and techniques for civil dialogue – and I try to practice what I preach.
Classic advice includes simple steps, such as making I statements (“I worry about…”), engaging in active listening (listening to ask a question, not just waiting to speak), avoiding inflammatory language (name-calling) and resisting virtue signaling (using inflated moral language to make yourself appear more virtuous than the other person).
Civility isn’t the absence of disagreement, heated disagreement or even outright anger, but continued engagement in the face of and despite such emotion. My neighbor and I had very different interpretations about the dog and how to improve the situation.
I know some people are unfamiliar with dogs, and others have a justified fear, perhaps based on a previous bite or attack. But I wanted to turn things around however I could, and I assumed that we’d be able to talk to each other as neighbors – not send notes in the mail.
That mailed note had been a blow to my pride. But this whole experience also felt like a setback professionally. Up to that time, I’d spent my career focusing on how to help people have respectful and productive conversations and to develop civility as a habit.
In the classroom and in workshops, I helped people improve their ability to identify hidden assumptions in their own – and others’ – arguments. I taught people a variety of moral theories and how to use them to analyze situations and their reasoning process.
I taught methods for evaluating evidence, how experience shapes belief, and the nonconscious processes that frame our interpretations, hijack our impartial judgment and bias our beliefs. I always hammered the point that civility is the attitude of engagement one takes toward someone else in the midst of disagreement.
It’s hard to resolve an issue if one party refuses to engage.
New Folder/iStock via Getty Images Plus But standing there in the kitchen, holding the lawyer’s letter about restraining my dog, it hit me that civility isn’t possible if one party won’t engage.
Perhaps this point seems obvious. Everyone knows that negotiations between warring parties can stall, couples counseling can fail and bitter disputes can extend into generational family feuds. I had always assumed these stalled negotiations were due to failures of civility.
But this situation with my neighbor differed entirely from those other types of failures. My neighbor not only refused to talk to me, but started routing all communication through a high-priced third party. In this case, only one party showed up to talk – and that was a different kind of problem.
In that moment, I realized that civility also required a certain kind of motivation. 2 precursors necessary for civility I had assumed that people would seek solutions when a resolution to a dispute was possible. After all, I wasn’t enmeshed in an intractable political war, a case of lost love or a bitter feud with causes shrouded in history.
This was a specific problem that had multiple potential resolutions. We had purchased our houses within a year or two of each other, and each set about making improvements to our homes and yards. We weren’t close, but we had always gotten along, sharing contacts for repair companies.
I hoped to talk with my neighbors about several ideas to improve the situation.
But after the chilly “baked items” letter, they never replied to a phone message, didn’t answer the doorbell, no longer acknowledged me on the street and turned down a different aisle when they saw me in a store.
Despite my own expertise and best efforts, my attempts to talk to my neighbors devolved into utter, frigid silence. I couldn’t understand why we couldn’t just talk it out and come to a solution.
My expertise and interest in engaging with others was creating my own blind spot. Extensive research across the decades shows that people in the United States are becoming increasingly less engaged with their fellow citizens.
Organized recreational league participation, volunteering, neighborhood meeting attendance – all these settings to interact with other community members are on the decline. Bowling leagues were famously a place to mingle with other community members. Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images And recent research shows that Americans are increasingly likely to view our fellow citizens as immoral, so we don’t want to engage with them.
The epidemic of self-censorship on college campuses, with students hesitant to share their own views for fear of being ostracized or “canceled,” is at an all-time high. As each of us chooses to withhold our views and beliefs, we reduce meaningful interactions even more – creating a problematic downward spiral.
I’ve come to realize that civility isn’t possible without a willingness to engage. And that willingness itself stems from respect for others and comfort with disagreement. These two motivations – toward others and toward disagreement – are precursors to civility.
This insight has shaped my teaching as well as my research. I no longer focus exclusively on how to make conversations more constructive, but delve into the motivations that are necessary for people to be willing to have tough conversations at all.
Rethinking conflict as rivals playing roles Motivations can’t be taught. They aren’t like facts you learn, but a spark that lights a candle.
And just as lighting a candle requires multiple causal factors – the presence of oxygen, a combustible object, a source of ignition – developing motivations requires multiple social and structural factors for that spark to grow into a flame.
Developing motivations occurs through a process, and a sports metaphor helps capture this idea. Consider two rivals on a tennis court and how they interact. They need not admire, like or feel empathy toward the other.
All that is required for a successful competition is to respect the other person in their role as a rival and to participate fully – giving them your best and the opportunity to respond. A disagreement can be like a game on the court, with respectful rivals playing their roles.
Jessie Casson/DigitalVision via Getty Images Although people don’t usually think of it this way, conversational disagreements are much like sports competitions. People taking part in a discussion can be rivals – presenting differing viewpoints, evidence and values – and they engage by listening, interpreting and challenging those claims.
Your fellow co-workers, citizens and neighbors have views, claims and beliefs that differ from yours. Anticipate challenges to your own claims and beliefs, and realize that the outcome depends on the process. Much as in a sports match, a disagreement doesn’t have a foregone result.
This isn’t about winning or losing, but about the process of the competition. In my view, respect for others is respect for their role in this disagreement. The outcome might be a strengthened relationship, deepened understanding or perhaps just an exchange of perspectives or information.
Now, when I teach classes or run workshops, I focus on setting up conversational structures to encourage people to see those they disagree with like players on an opposing team. Each person has a chance to “be on the offense” in presenting their views, claims and beliefs.
And just as in a competition, “defense” requires that those positions are scrutinized and challenged. Sometimes, people change their positions, clarify their views or concede a point. Just as often, they do not. But making this dynamic of presentation, analysis, critique and revision explicit helps to build respect toward others.
They are all fellows in this process: fellow rivals, fellow participants, fellow citizens. Missing out on practicing disagreement Unfortunately, contemporary society allows people to filter and personalize their experience to largely escape serious and meaningful disagreements with others.
We watch specific TV networks, listen only to certain podcasts, join preferred groups on Facebook and follow influencers we admire. Sticking to your own bubble of things you like and agree with means you don’t get practice interacting with different ideas.
Oscar Wong/Moment via Getty Images You may have many different policy preferences from those on the other side of the political aisle. But do you engage in substantive disagreements with them – or just avoid them?
Research on social and political sorting suggests the latter. All this may lead to people becoming less familiar with and less comfortable with disagreement.
My research colleagues and I are launching studies on how different ways of structuring conversations affect how comfortable people feel disagreeing, and how people can become more inclined to engage based on the roles and dynamics above.
People often avoid the uncertain or unfamiliar because they feel threatening. But the more you encounter an experience, the more familiar you become with it. You know more what to expect, which allows you to make better predictions and more strategic choices.
Thinking of your fellow citizens as conversational rivals allows you to think about a familiar experience – a competition or a game – to lower the stakes. Lots of people vied to be spelling bee champion, played sports in school or enjoy mahjong.
Competition is familiar, and structuring disagreements as a friendly competition with fellow participants helps establish expectations for a back-and-forth presentation and defense of your views, beliefs and values. Oddly, thinking of disagreement in this way may help change it in your mind from a threatening experience into a shared activity.
Developing your capacity before a crisis Admittedly, I struggle with sharing my personal views, and I’m naturally inclined to avoid conflict. But I’m willing to engage. The motivational sparks were always there; they just needed some development through guidance and reinforcement.
I was fortunate to have a father who loved to argue. He was always asking people questions, looking for views different from his own, challenging claims and trying on ideas. I realized early on that he was comfortable with – or rather, enjoyed – disagreement because it was the process through which he learned.
Not everyone has such a role model, but everyone has a model competition they’re used to, and perhaps enjoy, that provides a helpful guide. If one party won’t engage at all, there’s nowhere to go.
PeopleImages/iStock via Getty Images Plus Civility isn’t possible without the willingness to engage. Not everyone is ready right off the bat, but everyone has the motivational sparks and models to increase that willingness.
The sparks may just need a little tending to become a steady glow and then a strong flame. Civility also requires practice to develop. Like any virtue, it grows stronger through repeated performance and dwindles through disuse.
Luckily, opportunities to practice abound – in conversations between co-workers, arguments about immigration between citizens, and, yes, in disputes with neighbors. The first, and most important, step is the willingness to engage. Ideally, misunderstandings and disputes are resolved through conversation.
In my case, my neighbors and I never spoke again, and I’ve since moved to a new house in a different neighborhood. Unfortunately, if someone steadfastly refuses to engage, there is no magic wand that will make them.
Just like in marriage counseling, you can never expect a 100% success rate. But the value of this tale doesn’t depend on a happy ending. The real value for me was discovering the importance of the precursor motivations and realizing that everyone has these motivations – they just need to be developed.
Too often, people hope for success but neglect taking the right steps to get there. Conflict is unavoidable in life, and you need to be able to work through disagreements with others. Recognizing that others need to be willing to engage is one of those steps.
Recognizing that you also need to be willing is another. And developing the willingness and capacity to engage takes time, practice and effort when it is uncomfortable. Luckily, if you think of disagreements as forms of competition, you’ll realize that you are already many steps toward your goal.
Competitions are familiar, and respectful engagement with rivals is familiar. Everyone has the capacity to develop civility.
What we need now is to practice.
Deborah Mower has received funding from the National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, the Department of Justice, the Wake Forest Educating Character Initiative and the Andrew Carnegie Foundation.
Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/02/civility-requires-the-willingness-to-engage-a-dispute-with-a-neighbor-revealed-how-much-motivation-matters/