Executive Summary

The Dialogue Project is a research effort to explore what role business can play to help improve civil discourse and reduce polarization. It is supported by such companies as Google, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Chevron, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Southwest Airlines, among others, as well as the University of Southern California.

This report, based on nearly a year’s worth of research in conjunction with Morning Consult, provides disturbing new data on Americans’ deteriorating ability to debate difficult issues, as well as promising initiatives from the business world and recommendations from top CEOs.

Among the Morning Consult findings:

• Among the countries studied, the challenge of holding a respectful conversation with someone we disagree was most acute in the United States, Brazil, and India.
• Americans, even more than the citizens of European countries like the United Kingdom and Germany, think the polarization is a major problem. But they tend to blame others more than themselves.
• Women typically see this as a bigger problem than men – a big 63% to 51% split in the U.S.
• In the U.S., urbanites are nearly twice as likely as rural residents to say it’s very difficult to have respectful conversations while disagreeing.
• The COVID-19 epidemic seems to be having no net effect, good or bad.
• Similarly, the eruption of issues surrounding race, police brutality and Black Lives Matter, and immigration and Covid, has had a mixed impact on people’s ability to have respectful dialogue with those holding different beliefs.