Office Hours with Arthur Brooks - 4 Ways to Love the People You Disagree With

Episode Date: October 20, 2025

America doesn’t have an anger problem. We have a contempt problem.In this episode of Office Hours, I talk about how we can bring more love and happiness into a world that feels increasingly bitter and divided. Too often, contempt fills the space where love could exist. When we choose to love those who disagree with us, we not only make the world better, but we also make our own lives happier.A lot of what I share today draws from my book Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt (2019). I reflect on what I’ve learned about standing up for those we oppose, and why real change starts when we take contempt personally. I hope you walk away from this episode remembering that behind every cruel remark or dehumanizing label is a person with inherent worth and dignity.In the episode, I will also explore a psychological concept known as the Dark Triad—a trio of personality traits that can fuel conflict and polarization. If you're curious about how these traits show up in yourself or others, you can take a quick quiz at arthurbrooks.com/darktriads to see where you land.We’d love to hear any feedback you have. Please email us at [e-mail]. And please leave a review on Apple or Spotify. Thanks for listening! —Where to find Arthur Brooks: • Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://arthurbrooks.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• Newsletter: ⁠https://www.arthurbrooks.com/newsletter⁠ • X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/arthurbrooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/arthurcbrooks/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/ArthurBrooks/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGuyFRjJQFGCKzfHTBvWM6A⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthur-c-brooks/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠—Timestamps:(00:00) Intro(03:52) America’s growing crisis of contempt(04:50) What motive attribution asymmetry is, and how to overcome it(13:33) Why you should take hateful remarks personally and love your political enemies (18:59) Why anger isn’t the problem, but contempt is (24:23) How John Gottman identifies contempt in relationships doomed to fail(26:01) How Dark Triad personalities thrive in a culture of contempt(28:58) The neuroscience of habits and how they shape communication(33:07) How to break a destructive habit((42:09) Homework #1: Disagree better(43:20) Homework #2: Stand up to your own side(44:18) Homework #3: Go looking for contempt and meet it with love(46:29) Homework #4: Express gratitude(48:46) Q&A: How charisma connects to the dark triad(50:10) Q&A: When family cuts you off (and why it’s more common than you think)—Referenced:• How to Build a Life: https://www.theatlantic.com/projects/how-build-life/• Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt: https://www.amazon.com/Love-Your-Enemies-America-Contempt/dp/0062883755 • America’s Crisis of Civic Virtue: https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/americas-crisis-of-civic-virtue/ • Motive attribution asymmetry for love vs. hate drives intractable conflict: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25331879/ • ...References continued at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.arthurbrooks.com/office-hours⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠—Production and marketing by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://penname.co/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. For inquiries about sponsorship, email [e-mail]

The last 10 years have been one of unique ideological crisis. Crisis of what? Crisis of disagreement? No, people have always disagreed. In my view, it's a crisis of contempt. Schobenhauer defined contempt as the conviction of the worthlessness of another individual. When you take hot anger and mix it with cold, disgust, it becomes truly noxious, truly poisonous. And when you deploy it toward another person, you're going to have a problem.

permanent enemy. The Dalai Lama says when you feel hatred show warm-heartedness. And when you hear that you might be like you got anything else. But let's think about his holiness to Dalai Lama. He was exiled as a teenager, as the leader of the Tibetan Buddhist people. He was kicked out of his native Tibet. But he wasn't disappeared. His holiness of Dalai Lama is the most revered and most respected religious figure in the world. How? Over the last 60 years he's done that by loving his enemies, by taking his own advice. Hi friends, welcome to office hours. I'm Arthur Brooks. I'm a behavioral scientist dedicated to lifting people up and bringing them together in bonds of happiness and love using science and ideas. This show is about that, how you can lift people up as well using the ideas that we discussed in this show. That's a big topic today, because the truth of the matter is that we have a world that could use a lot more love and happiness. Isn't that right? You know a lot of people that are suffering for all kinds of normal reasons. Ordinary relationships. is hard, but a lot of extraordinary reasons as well. There's a lot of fear. There's a lot of hatred

in our world today. I think more than I've seen in decades, maybe my whole lifetime. And that's what I want to talk about today, how we all can bring more love and happiness to a world that's in crisis than in many ways has hatred where love could exist. How can we put it there? That's the day's show. I'll be diving in to how the political division around the world is actually working today, how polarization works, and how we can actually love our enemies. And when we do so, how it will lift each one of us up to more bonds of happiness and love in our own lives. We're being encouraged to hate our enemies, but when we resist that urge, when we transgress that trend, our lives get a whole lot better.

I'm going to show you the research on that and encourage you to do that. But most importantly, I'm going to tell you how you actually can. A lot of this is based on a book that I wrote in 2019 that's actually behind me here called, well, love your enemies. I didn't know the world we were walking into. I knew it was tough in 2019, and it's much tougher now.

I'll be talking about some of that, but updated to the most modern research on what it means to actually cross ideological lines, to love people with whom we disagree, how to actually do that. As always, please do keep in touch. If you like this show, you'd like to see something different.

You want to weigh in on the format. You want to ask questions because I answer questions at the end of each show. Please do so at the email that's appearing below me right now. Office Hours at Arthur Brooks.com. Don't forget to leave a review on Spotify or Apple and subscribe on your platform of choice. Also, subscribe to my newsletter. For those of you who don't know, I have a newsletter that comes out the same day as this podcast every Monday. And the newsletter is usually linked up, but gives you information that I don't even talk about here in the podcast.

and, you know, clickable links and all sorts of interesting ideas and ways that you can use the information. That's at www.Atherbrooks.com slash newsletter, and that's free. So go get that. I hope you'll enjoy it. Okay. Now, the subject at hand. The last 10 years have been one of unique ideological crisis. Crisis of what?

Crisis of disagreement? No. People have always disagreed. Crisis of, in my view, it's a crisis of contempt. that's what I'm going to talk about. Contempt is a complex emotional phenomenon, and it's really overtaking the way that we discuss our disagreements in the United States and indeed around the world. Many of you listening are living in countries that are suffering from the same

set of crises that we're seeing in the United States. What can leaders do about this? No, what can you do about this? I'm going to make the case that you can make the world better in your own way and get happier while you do it. I'm going to make the case that there's no good reason not to love your enemies, but I'm going to be, as I said before, practical in how you can actually get that done. Now, I want to wind back the clock a little bit. Before I was doing what I do now, which is I teach happiness at Harvard University.

I write for the Atlantic. I travel and speak all over the world. What a privilege it is to talk about that. I do this podcast. Oh, it's just great. Writing books. But before I did that, before I started in earnest doing this full time, which is about seven years ago, I was the CEO. I was the president of a think tank in Washington, D.C. That's a research organization

dedicated to better public policy. And as a behavioral scientist by background, as an academic by background, I had left academia and then did that CEO job for about 10 and a half years before I came back to academia. And during that time, I tried to stay abreast of the behavioral science research. I want to keep my skills up. It made perfect sense. But I was especially interested in the behavioral science around public policy and politics, because that's the world I was living in. It's not the world they live in now, but I was all in on that. So I was reading every article I could find in the professional academic journals, the esoteric stuff that academics write for each other, a lot of which I talk about on the show, but not

in an academic way. I try to talk about it in a popular way in the show and in my books. And I was reading a lot of that literature, and I came across an article in 2014 that really, really caught my eye. It was by three psychologists, and I'll link to this in the show notes, of course. It was an article on motive attribution asymmetry. Yeah, and that sounds really esoteric, right? I mean, motive attribution asymmetry, like some really technical phenomenon.

It's not. What it really refers to is when there's implacable hostility in conflict between two people or two groups of people, that you can't resolve. I mean, it's just, it goes on and on and on and on. Maybe it's a couple that can't get along and they wind up getting divorced. more seriously, maybe it's an armed conflict between two groups inside a country or two countries that are just always at war. And we know so many examples around the world, so many examples of all of those things. We know couples that are just, they just can't understand each other. We know groups that hate each other in the United States today. Boy,

oh boy, do we ever see that. We have more political violence than at any time in my adult lifetime, as a matter of fact. We're in a wake right now, political assassination. It's, And of course, around the world, we see constant war and constant conflict between groups of people that have traditionally been hospital toward one another. This theory, motive attribution and symmetry, explains it in the following way. When you see that, it's inevitably because there's a mistake. And the mistake is that both sides believe that they love, but the other side hates. So, for example, take the United States between the political left and political right. Now, I'm not talking about people who are just sort of lean Democrat or lean Republican.

I'm talking about people in the real margins, the 10% of people who are just truly convicted and completely convinced that the biggest threat to this country is people who vote for the other party. And there's a lot of people like that out there. I could cite the data. I'll drop something into the show notes that that proves that this is not a phantasm, that this is a real deal that is actually going on. When you ask people under those circumstances, which I have in my research, you will find inevitably that both sides say, the same thing. I love this country, but they hate it. They hate it. They hate what America stands for. That's what they say. Now, why is that a mistake? Because both sides to a conflict

cannot simultaneously love and hate. That's not possible for everybody to love and hate simultaneously. That means that one side of the conflict, or usually both sides, is mistaken. And they don't really understand what's going on with the other. Now, that was a pretty interesting article that I read because it talked about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which in 2014 was hot as can be, hotter now, obviously. It talked about the Balkans, you know, the Balkan wars of the 1990s. It talked about the Rwandan genocide of 1994 as well. But then this is what really caught my eye. The authors, this is 2014, it's 11 years ago. The authors noted that the level of motive attribution asymmetry, I Love, they hate, mutually, was the same in the United States between Democrats and

Republicans as it was between the Palestinians and Israelis. This is 11 years ago. And I thought, what? Really? I don't believe it. But maybe it's true. Now, that's really alarming because when you see something like that, it goes nowhere good unless you solve this problem. And we didn't solve that problem. I don't have to convince any of you that we haven't solved that problem. No matter what your political views are, that problem isn't solved. I started thinking to myself, because I'm, I'm as a behavioral scientist, I want proof. At least I want better evidence than just what I'm seeing in an article. So I started thinking to myself, how can I find evidence of this? And now, at the time, just like now, I traveled a lot for speaking. Now I travel 48 weeks a year. I'm on tour constantly.

I'm going to be somewhere near you. I'd love to meet you in person. Look on the website for where I'm going to be next. And I talk about happiness, which is not a big polarizing topic, to be sure. But During those times, I was talking a awful lot about public policy. And I thought, I'm going to ask a couple of audiences, a few questions and see whether or not I can find evidence of this mode of attribution of symmetry. Well, it didn't take very long for me to find this evidence. I was giving a talk in the Northeast at a conservative political activism conference. Don't get the wrong idea. I will talk to any audience. You know, I go to super progressive college audiences. I talk to apolitical business audiences. I talk to activists on both sides. I'll talk to anybody who wants. to talk seriously about ideas because I'm into it, you know? I mean, I want to talk. I want to listen. I want to, I want to discuss ideas because that's my, that's my bag. So on this particular day, I was at a political activist rally for 600 or so conservative political activists. And they were super fired up. I mean, this was not like a mixed crowd at all. They were there with their friends and they were listening to politicians mostly. I got there a little early and there's

about 15 speakers, which is one of these things where this kind of rolled through the speakers one after the other. And I looked at the program and I realized really quickly that this was maybe 14 presidential candidates and me. Nobody would mistake me for a presidential candidate. America is not ready for a bald president. Let's be honest here. But the other 14, man, they wanted the nomination for the Republican presidential candidacy in 2016. That's why they were there. And I listened in because I get there a little early and listened to other people before me. It's interesting. It's the right thing to do. I wanted to get the lay of the land. And they were doing what politicians always do. Left and right. Again, this is not a partisan statement at all. They were telling a highly partisan audience that was going to be supportive of one of them, you're right in your opinions. These things that you believe you're right. Why? Because you love America. And the people who aren't here, who's that? That's political progressives. They don't love America. They're basically stupid and evil for all of their views. And I thought, yeah, that's motive attribution asymmetry in action.

It's true. It's true. It's bad. So, and it was interesting because then I thought to myself, well, what can I do that will make this better? But what can I do that will actually really firm up this hypothesis? So I got up to give my speech and I thought, I said a little prayer, actually. I said, you know, what can I do that these other people speakers, these speakers can't do?

And then I thought, I know. I can say anything I want. because I don't need votes, right? So I got up and I gave my talk. It was about economic policy. It was not memorable. But here's the thing that I remember. In the middle of the speech, I stopped and I had prepared this and I said,

you've been hearing from a lot of politicians today. And they've been telling you that, you know, you're right and the other side is pathological, stupid and evil, effectively. But I want you to remember something. They're not stupid and evil, the people who aren't here who disagree with you politically. They're just American. who have different politics than you, have different views on policy than you. And if you want to convince them, which should be your goal, by the way, because that's the only

thing that's going to change the country is getting a majority viewpoint on something and get people to back it up with their votes. You've got to convince them. You can't do that with insults. Nobody in history has ever been insulted into agreement. You don't need to be a behavioral scientist enough of that. There's only one way to convince people. And that's with love love for your ideas and love for them. And it wasn't an applause line. I'll admit that. It was not an applause line.

But there was an applause line because this lady then said, actually they are stupid and evil. And it was, I'll admit, it was sort of a music in its way, right? Because, you know, it was kind of a festival environment. She wasn't trying to repudiate me or hurt my feelings.

But here's the point I'm trying to make. At that moment, my mind went to Seattle. Why? because Seattle was my hometown where I was raised. And for anybody who is even remotely sophisticated about the demographics of American politics, you know that Seattle is not a hotbed of American conservatism. It's probably the most progressive city in America politically.

And I came from a, well, I mean, my dad was a college professor, and my mom was an artist in Seattle. What do you think their politics were? But let me tell you something that they weren't. They weren't stupid and evil. My parents were great. They gave me incredible values.

They taught me the value of education. They taught me the radically equal dignity of all people with no exceptions. They brought me up right. They loved me. They took care of me. The politics was the least of it. The truth is, I didn't agree with their politics. I was kind of the, remember that old, you probably don't.

There was a sitcom in the 90s called Family Ties. And there was a super left-wing family. And they had a right-wing kid played by Michael J. Fox. He was fantastic in that show, hilarious. His name was Alex P. Keaton, you know, because he was a Reaganite. He had a poster of Reagan in his room and all that. So I wasn't exactly that. But by my 20s, I was kind of an enthusiast for the free enterprise system.

And I remember one time I was alone with my mom in the kitchen. I was back. I was living on my own. I was actually living in Barcelona at the time. And I was back for the holidays. and we were making dinner, me and my mom, and we had a great relationship. But she was being real weird and silent

while we were making dinner this one night. I said, Mom, is there something on your mind? And she said, yeah, actually there is. Your dad and I are worried about you. I said, what? I mean, what could it be? I mean, I'm making a living. You know, things are going well.

And she said, look, I want you to know that we'll love you either way. But I want you to be completely honest with me. Have you been voting for Republicans? And, you know, that gives you an idea. It was fine. The point is I had a great relationship with my parents. Rest in peace.

They died young. I missed them so much. And when that lady at that speech said that liberals are stupid and evil, even though I'm not especially politically progressive, she was talking about my mom. And I took it personally. Herein lies the solution to the problems that we have. is taking it personally when somebody talks about

somebody you disagree with that you love. My father taught me when I was a little boy that the mark of moral courage is not standing up to those with whom you disagree. Good.

It's a free country. Free speech. Fine. But the mark of moral courage is to stand up to the people with whom you agree on behalf of those with whom you disagree.

That's real moral courage. And people are afraid to do that. We know why they're afraid to do that. They're afraid to do that because they don't want to be socially rejected. There's a ton of good neuroscience research that shows that your brain was evolved to avoid being rejected by your tribe. It's true. That's why people will put up all sorts of

terrible, hateful nonsense from people with whom they agree politically because they don't want that to turn on them. You know, your friends are saying terrible things, bullying somebody on social media and you say, you zip in it, you're staying silent because you don't want them to turn on you. You're on a college campus and there's somebody who's, you know, saying terrible things. You disagree. But you stay silent. Why? Well, the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex in the limbic system of your brain is warning you not to get thrust out because if you get thrust out by your tribe, you're going to walk the frozen tundra and die alone. That's what your brain is telling you.

Of course, it's a lie. But that's why people are afraid. That's why they won't stand up to their own side. Even when their own side is insulting their friends, insulting their family, insulting their aunt, insulting good people who just happened to disagree, political. So that's why that happens, and it happens all the time. And I've seen lots of evidence of that. So the next night, or a couple of nights later, after that experience and at that speech of that activist conference, I was giving a talk someplace else, Kentucky or West Virginia,

I don't remember. And I started to think, I wonder how much of this is actually going around. So I asked the audience to vote on something. And I'm going to ask you to vote on it. I can't see you. You can see me or you're listening to me. But I want you to think inside your head. How many of you love somebody with whom you disagree politically?

I'm imagining 100% of hands going up or almost. Of course you do. Of course you do. How are you defending them? How are you defending them against your own side? You see the strategy I'm putting together here, right? You want to love your enemies? This actually starts not by liking.

your enemies or agreeing with your enemies? It starts with an effort to defend your enemies against hateful rhetoric on your own side. Now, okay, I know you're like, yeah, sure, fine. How? How? How? Brooks, how? And that's really what I need to talk about, isn't it? Because it's not good enough just to exhort you to some sort of incredible moral courage. I have to tell you how to do it. And that's what this show is all about. Practical wisdom. So that's where we're going next. Now let's pull this apart a little bit. What's the problem? What's the problem that we find in America today in the political discourse?

And again, I'm not adjudicating who's right and who's wrong on every issue here. You can do that perfectly. You don't need me to give you political advice. I'm talking about the social science behind the phenomenon so that we can solve the problem culturally. The problem is not too much anger. Now, if you turn on cable television, it's like an anger fest. And, you know, you got the debate at Toronto. robots kind of going after each other. Yeah, I got it. I know, I know. And they act really angry.

And it's easy to dismiss that as a problem of anger in the United States. But that's not right. Anger actually is a hot emotion. It's mediated by the amygdala in the brain. And it basically, in the limbic system of the brain. And it says, I care what you think and I want it to change. If you're in love with somebody, you're going to feel more anger than if you're not in love with somebody because you care more what they think and you have more of an investment in how they think. And when they think wrong, you get more mad. People often mistakenly think there's something wrong with their relationship because they're fighting. On the contrary, there's a complete lack of correlation between divorce and anger.

I'll say it again. Anger and divorce are not correlated. To which I say, thank God, I've been married for 34 years to a Spaniard. And like in Spain, where I've lived off and on for 35 years, anger is just and fighting in a relationship. That's just basic communication. I mean, it's yelling at the dinner table. If you're not yelling, you're not having dinner. And for the first few years, it was a little bit hard because, you know, I'm an American.

And, you know, we're a little bit more reserved and all that. But now, man, I'm in it. I'm in it. And we're love. And there's anger. And it's okay. That's not the emotion I'm worried about for America and for the world and for ideological polarization and motive attribution in cemetery. No, no, no, no, no.

I'm actually worried about a composite emotion. which takes anger and it adds in another negative emotion, negative basic emotion, which is disgust. Now, disgust is mediated about a part of the limbic system called the insular cortex or the insula. And it has one job, it's been evolved to do one thing, which is to alert you to pathogens. Before the advent of vaccines and antibiotics, the only thing that you had to keep you from being poisoned or to get germs in places where you shouldn't have germs that are dangerous is your sense of disgust. That's the reason that things that look dead, things that look rotten, that they disgust you because they're more likely to contain harmful bacteria. That's why you've been evolved using your insular cortex to say, no, I don't want to go anywhere near that. And it's such an incredibly useful little organ that you can go from having chicken in your refrigerator that's going to be a delicious dinner tonight to forgetting about it and finding it two weeks later and being disgusted by it and taking it to the trash like this.

that's because it stimulates. There's a smell. There's a look that has stimulated your insula. Okay, good, good, good. I mean, there's a reason for everything. All your negative emotions, you know, because you're a viewer of the show. You know that everything's got a reason. Evolution is smart.

But here's the problem. When you use it on another person, it becomes deadly because people aren't pathogens. When you treat somebody as if they were a pathogen, a deadly germ, you make an enemy. And this basic negative emotion discusses what we mix with anger to create a composite emotion that philosophers and psychologists call contempt. Contempt was defined by Arthur Schopenhauer, the great 19th century existentialist philosopher. Some say no. I know the philosophers are banging the table right now.

No, he was a nihilist. Anyway, whatever. He was a downer. Arthur Schobenhauer. He had a good first name. Whatever. Schopenhauer defined contempt as the conviction of the worthlessness of another individual. individual. When you take hot anger and mix it with cold, disgust, it becomes truly noxious,

truly poisonous. And when you deploy it toward another person, you're going to have a permanent enemy. That's the truth. And that's a lot of what we see today, right? Now, that's characteristic of motive attribution asymmetry and any relationship that's breaking down. We know this from tons of research. You know, I have an old podcast, I have. had that I discontinued a long time ago. I had as a guest on it, the great John Gottman. Many of you know who he is. He's the world's leading expert on marital reconciliation. He and Julie Gottman, she's also a psychologist there at the University of Washington and Seattle. They have the Gottman marriage lab and they bring couples in that are on the rocks and they help them to get over

their motive attribution in symmetry by helping them understand that you love and think that she hates and she loves and thinks that you hate and you help each other understand that you both love. And you need to communicate in a new way. And the way that he does that is by breaking down the contempt. See, the contempt that you express, you do so inadvertently. And that's why your partner thinks that you hate while she loves or vice versa. That's the problem. It's a communication problem, according to John Gottman. And so he'll bring him in. And by the way, I had read before I met John Gottman. I think I read it in one of Malcolm Gladwell's books, as a matter of fact. I think that's where John Gottman really got a big audience was because Malcolm Gladwell wrote about him in, I think

it blink, as a matter of fact, that he can tell in just a few minutes if a couple's not going to make it after meeting them for the first time and watching them have a conversation about something contentious. And I said, John, I've heard that you can see really quickly if somebody's not going to make it, just based on their actions on how they express themselves to each other. They said, yep. I said, tell me what you're looking for so I cannot do that with Esther, inadvertently. And he said, it's eye rolling, eye rolling. So they're talking about money. They're talking about kids. They're talking about the in-laws. And one partner's like, uh, right? You're always saying stuff like that. Now, what that shows, that's an, that's an inadvertent expression of contempt.

That registers with the other partner of a mixture of anger and disgust. That's almost like physical abuse because it says what you said is worthless. What you are right now is worthless. You wouldn't say that's your soulmate. No way, man. No, you would not. But you did when you rolled your eyes. And he says, when he sees that sarcasm, dismissal, derision, eye rolling. There's big problems ahead. Now, why do I bring that up? Because that's how we talk about politics in America and in many places around the world.

If you're not living in a place that sees this, lucky you, write in on the show so I can move there. That's all I can say. But that's how we talk about it. I think about the last time that your least favorite politician was on television and you were with your kids or with your friends, you're like, ugh, moron. That was like one of John and Julie Gottman's couples in the lab is what it came down to. And that registers with everybody else's contempt. That becomes a habit.

That becomes a habit. Now, one side note, I want to go back to an earlier episode of this show, because you probably express contempt. And you're a normal person. There's a whole class of people that aren't normal people who profit from the culture of contempt. Those are dark triads. Remember when we talked about dark triads? If you haven't seen that, go back, rewind a little bit, and go back to the dark triad

episode. That was a pretty popular episode because what had talked about was the personality constellation of that's shared by one and 14 people in America, according to samples. It's probably true around the world. Seven percent of the population has three characteristics. They're above average in narcissism, machiavellianism, and traits of psychopathy, psychopathic. Now, it sounds terrible like acts murderers. But just to be above the average on that doesn't make you, you know, necessarily somebody who's going to commit heinous crimes and go to jail.

What it's going to make you is somebody who really, really is all about you. That's narcissism, willing to hurt others or be dishonest with others to get what you want. That's Machiavellianism and who feels very little or no empathy or remorse. That's psychopathy. You've met people like that. That was like your worst romantic partner ever. That was the worst person you ever worked with who stole your ideas. It was dishonest.

That's the boss who is a complete psycho. Those are a lot of people in your life. And you learn to avoid them, right? Well, those people exist and they have thrived in the political internet space. You know, people who are writing Twitter about politics, disproportionately dark triads, narcissistic, machiavellian, psychobiles. And no joke, go back to that episode and look at the show notes. and I've got data that show that internet trolls are disproportionately psychopathic. Okay?

I mean, clinically psychopathic. It's not even an exaggeration. Okay, so what are we talking about with respect to political polarization? These are the people who are profiting from this terrible situation that we have. You hate it? I know. If you're still watching this episode, it means you hate it. If you turn it off in the first two minutes because this is so boring, well, you're not watching now.

So you don't even know I'm suggesting it might be a. dark triad. So that's important to keep in mind that there's certain people who are productizing you, dark triads, by keeping you in a state of political contempt toward people with whom you disagree and telling you they're wicked and they're evil and they're broken and they're pathological. Those people are monetizing you for maybe literally for money or maybe for votes or maybe for views or maybe for attention or maybe just for their trollish jollies. But you have to be aware of that. Now, let's talk about the rest of us, the other 93% of the population who are not dark triads.

We do contempt too because it's become a national habit. It's become a habit of discourse. Let's talk about communication habits. Now, habits are a very interesting area of research. There's a lot of neuroscience about how habits work. habits largely involve a little place in the ventral striatum, which is part of the limbic system. This subpart of the ventral striatum is called the nucleus accumbens. And the nucleus accumbens allows us to form habits and do things automatically so that we don't have to think about them consciously.

And that makes perfect evolutionary sense. If you want to do something that's good for you, you want to do it automatically so you can free up your prefrontal cortex, that meaty CEO suite and behind your forehead to learn new stuff and to do more new. things consciously. You want to do all the old stuff consciously. You want that to be a habit. Unfortunately, it also is behind all your bad habits. And that's where your habits tend to be programmed. This is the really nice treatment of this, popular treatment of this is Charles Duhigg's book, The Power of Habit. This came actually out before Atomic Habits of James Clear. So Doohigg has got a, his book is really great on the science behind habits reform. He explains the nucleus succumbens really nicely in that book if you're interested. So what do we do with this? Well,

we we reinforce by being in culture doing certain things. And some of it's really good. I mean, your nucleus accumbens makes it so that when you cough, you cover your mouth automatically without thinking. That's your nucleus accumbens. And that's a good thing to do. But there's also things that you do like checking your phone 205 times a day, which side note is the average number of times that somebody between the ages of 15 and 30 checks their phone each day. Yeah, that's your nucleus accumbens. It's like, I went into the light, phones out, right? I mean, look, if I had my phone on me right now and I weren't recording a podcast, I would have looked at my phone several times in the time that I've been talking to you. That's how habits actually work.

And it's also true with the way that we communicate. If we get into a pattern of rolling our eyes when our partner says something with which we disagree, that's your nucleus accumbens reinforcing a cycle of psychological abuse. You're not an abuser, but that's abusive. That's a problem. And that's what we're doing in politics today. Now, I'm making a very optimistic case here. You'll notice that I'm complaining about polarization, but I'm actually very hopeful here because what I'm chalking up most of our polarization to is not that we've got to break up and, you know, have a, you know, two countries or fight each other. No, what I'm saying is that for the vast majority of us,

we're making a mistake that's being reinforced by bad communication habits. And I'm going to give you solutions later on how to break these habits, which will start the cycle of healing in our country and will help you get happier. Okay. This is a good news story. This is not a bad news story. But we got to do the science first because that's what we do. That's what we do on office hours.

So that's a habit that most people have. as I've observed in which the research suggests. By the way, I'm going to, I'll throw into the show notes more about the nucleus accumbens. If you like that stuff, I just read a very interesting article from the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences from 2025 called neuroanatomic structures and neural circuits of habits. And you'll learn a lot from that, if that's your bag in the show notes. We, when I say we have this communication habit, I do too.

I've seen film of myself debating and rolling my eyes when somebody said something I thought was inadvisable. And my debating partner or debating partners, I guarantee you it didn't go home and say to their spouse. I debated Arthur Brooks on television tonight. He was making good points. They noticed that I was just subtly disrespectful, suddenly contemptuous and dismissing and a little bit sarcastic. And man, I mean, I made me look like a jerk. I earned that. And I'm sorry every time I did that.

It was a habit. It was my nucleus accumbens. It wasn't me. And that's what you need to reprogram. If you want your marriage to last and if you want your country to heal, each one of us needs to reprogram our nucleus accumbens so that we can communicate in a new way. Okay. So, question.

How do you break a habit? How do you break a habit? For years, as a younger man in my 20s, I had this terrible habit. I was a smoker. Smoked cigarettes. Now, I know. I'm old enough that I can kind of get away with saying, I used to smoke in my 20s because, you know, that was back in the, you know, the 1830s and

nobody knew that that was, you know, bad for you. Wrong. You know, I grew up in the late 70s and 80s and in the 80s, I was a smoker and trust me in the 80s, everybody knew that smoking was horrible for you and you shouldn't do it. I did it because I was a complete knucklehead. I was a musician and everybody smoked. But I knew I needed to quit. So at the time I was playing in Barcelona, which was like all cigarettes all the time, but I

knew I had to quit. And I was playing in the orchestra. Barcelona City Orchestra. The guy next to me, who sat in the orchestra next to me, was the principal trombone player. And he didn't smoke. And he knew how stupid it was. And he was American like me. And he said, you should quit. And I said, tell me about it. I've tried to quit a thousand times. I quit and I quit and I quit and I quit and I start and I quit. He said, that's because you're trying to use your willpower. He said, here's how you quit. Every time you want a cigarette, do something else. I said, like what? He said, like, have a beer. That led to other problem.

What I started doing, actually, was every time I wanted a cigarette and I was at home, I would get up and I would go walk around the block. Take big breaths as I walked around the block. And when I came back, I didn't want the cigarette as much. What was I doing? I was reprogramming my nucleus accumbens through a different kind of impulses. When you feel the craving, you do a different thing. And by about three weeks in, I wasn't a smoker anymore. Did I still crave it occasionally?

Yeah. I mean, it's been 35 years and I still crave it. I do. That's just me, right? And probably part of the reason for that is because nicotine is so effective at drawing dopamine into your prefrontal cortex, giving you a momentary kind of psychostimulate effect that's similar to using ADHD drugs. It's great for concentration. And maybe that's what I want. I don't know. That's one hypothesis. I don't smoke. And the reason I don't automatically smoke and reach for cigarette anymore is because I learned how to break the habit. Okay, back to the subject of hand. How do you reprogram your nucleus accumbens? you do it by doing something different every time you feel political disgust, every time you feel political contempt. What should you do? What should you practice? What should you do actively? Some people say, civility, be civil. Some people say, tolerance. And I say, that's nonsense. That's garbage. Because those are standards that are the lowest standards possible. You know, if I told you that Esther, my wife and I, that were

civil to each other, you'd be like, hey, Arthur, you need counseling. Because civility, really? In America, civility? Tolerance? My employees tolerate me. Well, that's a human resource crisis, right? No. Here's the answer to that. Many of you will recognize this passage. You've heard that you should love your friends and hate your enemies, but today I give you a new teaching. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. That's Matthew 544 of the Christian Bible. Want something non-Christian? Many of you watch the episode I did with my dear friend Rayne Wilson, the actor, who practices the Baha'i faith. That's what we talked about. The 19th century Persian religion, beautiful, beautiful religion based on love. Their prophet, Ba'uula, has said,

if you have an enemy, consider him not as an enemy. Do not simply be long-suffering. Nay, rather love him. The same teaching. Or let's take the Dalai Lama. Many of you respect the Dalai Lama. I've been working closely with the Dalai Lama for 12 years. We're going to do a series of episodes coming up of conversations that I'm having that I've had and that are on camera with His Holiness the Dalai Lama at his monastery in Darm Sala in the Himalayan foothills. Stay tuned because that's going to be a great series. We're working on that right now. Here's what he says. The Dalai Lama says, when you feel hatred, show warm-heartedness. And when you hear that, you might be like, you got anything else. But let's,

think about His Holiness to Dalai Lama, he was exiled as the teenager, as the leader of the Tibetan Buddhist people. He was kicked out of his native Tibet, which was overrun by the communist Chinese military, the world's most numerous military in the world. Might makes right, man. I mean, that's what's always happened. You know, poor people and pacifistic people, unarmed people, they're just disappeared. But he wasn't disappeared. His Holiness of Dalai Lama is the most revered and most respected religious figure in the world. How? Over the last 60 years,

he's done that by loving his enemies, by taking his own advice. My friends, this is power. Hating your enemies, that's weak. Loving your enemies? That's strong. As that Ali Lama has shown, as did Baha'uullah and Jesus Christ and the Buddha

and fill in the blanks again and again and again. That's the secret. That's my father's testimony to true moral courage. that's what we need to do today. I asked the Dalai Lama. He said that to me when you're feeling hate, show warm-heartedness. He said, remember a time when you did that by accident and how it made you feel.

He's an excellent psychologist. You understand that when you recreate an emotion frequently, what that will do is that will bring back the action that led to the emotion in the first place. In other words, if you recreate the feeling of how you felt when you were kind to somebody, you will be kinder. It runs the causality in reverse. That's very, very good. That's called the as-if principle in psychology.

It really, really works. Act like the person that you want to be, and you'll become that person. That's what the theory says. And it's, you know, Richard Wiseman, the British psychologist, wrote a whole book called the as-if principle. It's terrific and right. So that's what His Holiness was saying. Remember a time when somebody treated you with hatred and you were acted with love,

and how it made you feel? And then think that way and you'll do it again. And I remembered when he said that to me, a time when that actually happened to me. I had written a book. It was the first book I ever wrote that humans read. I had written books before, but they were, you know, academic. They were just so boring. So the year was 2006. And the book was about charitable giving. I know. And it was, it had a, you know, a mathematical appendix and the whole, nobody's going to read this book. Well, it turns out, the book had kind of some, it was interpreted as having certain political

overtones, which I didn't really intend. And the president of the time was George W. Bush, called me to the White House to discuss it. And, you know, when the president wants to discuss a book, suddenly becomes kind of a big deal. And I was on every, I was on every, I almost said podcast, no podcast in those days. I was on every drive time talk show. And I was on TV and it really, really changed my career. I also started to get emails from people I didn't know. They would, you know, W is reading the book and they got the book either to hate read it or to, you know, to enjoy it. And they would write to me. And when you read somebody's book, you feel like you know them, whether you like or not. And so people would write to me and say, you know, I'd love a book.

And my grandma taught me how to give charitably, et cetera. or they would write and say, you're an idiot. And it was in the latter category that I got an email from a guy, about a month after the book came out. Dear Professor Brooks, you are a fraud, which is a bad way to start email. My recommendation is don't write email that way. And but I'm a good sport. I start reading the email and I realize it's 5,000 words long.

It's going to take me 20 minutes to read this email, but I'm pounding through. I'm charging through it. It's just full of insults and is vitriolic and I'm feeling very defensive. But I realize that this guy is refuting, in his mind at least, everything I said in that book, every chapter, like, you know, the columns in table 3.1 are reversed. Moron, stuff like that. And, and, and I realized about two-thirds to the email that I was actually, I was feeling gratitude. I mean, he read my book. Nobody read my books. My family didn't read my books. So I thought, you know, I'm just going to tell him. I'm going to tell him. So I write back to the guy, I said, dear so-and-so, I know you hated the book. And I, you think it's terrible. And I'm terrible. And everything's

terrible, but it took me two years to write that book. And you read every word. I'm really grateful to you for that. Thank you. Send. And okay, then I go back to work. I'll never hear from it again. No, no, no, 15 minutes later. Ding, his email's back up. And now I'm apprehensive. Maybe you have to kill me now. I don't know. So, but no, I open up the email. Dear Professor Brooks, next time you're in Dallas, give me a call. Let's get dinner. What? What? I think he probably hate wrote the email, assuming I'd never see it. But when I wrote back in kind of a spirit of gratitude, which is an expression of love, by the way,

it changed his heart. And even if it hadn't changed his heart, because if he's super hardcore and still hates me even more, it changed my heart. In that 15 minutes, I felt like a different person. Remember the as a principle? That was really important. And there's a version of that for you, too.

So how do we get that back? I'm going to give you four assignments on how to do this because we have to be practical about this. If you're going to get this done for America or whatever country you're in, no, if you're going to do it for you, which you can and should, you need some practical advice. Number one is actually not my advice. It's agreeing. I'm not saying you need to disagree less politically. No, no, no, no. I don't believe in that. Disagreement is the competition of ideas. Agreement is mediocre. And maybe it's just because I've been living with a Spaniard all this time. But let me tell you. I mean, it's like, when I, when I go to the voting booth, I don't want one candidate on the ballot.

I want competition. When I go to the supermarket, I don't want one brand of like, you know, you already know if you watch this show what I eat. Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, chicken breast, and broccoli, which is pretty much my whole diet. I don't want one brand. I want competition. And when it comes to ideas in this country and around the world, I want competition because I don't know who's right and I want to evaluate it fairly. So I'm not saying to disagree less. I'm saying to disagree better. How? Starts with my dad's advice of standing up to your own side.

You're getting fired up. You're getting dopamine. You're getting a little bit of satisfaction. We all are, not you, all of us, from hearing somebody who says forbidden things about wicked people that you wouldn't say because you're too decent. to say it, but somebody in the internet says it. Somebody in your favorite newspaper when your columnist says it. Somebody on a podcast says it. And you're like, yeah, right? That's your brain rewarding you by saying, you're right. But that's unhelpful. And it's very important that we stand up to it. Now, you don't have to write into that podcaster and say, jerk, no. You just turn it off.

Vote with your attention. See, this is the attention economy, my friends. You turn off something with your attention, you voted. And when you vote for the people with whom you disagree, not because you agree with them, but because they don't deserve to be traded with hatred, that matters. It matters to you. Number three, go looking for contempt and go running toward it with love. You're a missionary. This is going to change. This one's going to change your life. Now, I know a missionary work is hard. I've had missionaries on both sides of my family and words that no human is ever uttered. Good news. missionaries on the porch, no. Pretend we're not home. That's more like it. It's missionary work is hard, but missionary work brings joy. I've known so many missionaries like, I worked for a guy who

was a member of the church in Jesus Christ, the Latter-day Saints, aka in the old days called the Mormons. And he was a Mormon missionary in France. And he's had doors slammed on him so many times. Joyful guy, joyful guy, because he felt that he was propagating truths that people needed to hear. and it was a joy to be able to bring that to other people, even though there's a lot of rejection involved in it. And the same thing is true here. You know that what we're talking about is right. You know that we should love our enemies and doing so is joyful work. And that means you need to go into the neighborhoods where people don't have the truth, which is the whole internet, which is probably your workplace, maybe it's your Thanksgiving dinner and meeting the contempt that you see with love.

Like, and making a commitment never to answer with contempt, only to answer with love. You know, John Gottman. I talked about him before. He has a he has an exercise with his couples who are quarreling. It's called this five to one list. When you want to criticize, which usually has contempt involved, you have to say five loving, beautiful things. First, you got to write it down and have notebooks. So, you know, it's like she picked you up late again. I'm going to lay into her from picking me up late again. Really so, it's just so inconsiderate. Okay, but first I got to come with five things. So, honey, it was really nice if you'd leave dinner out for me last night when I came home late from work. That was really considerate. You look beautiful today. I love

your mother-in-law. That's too much. But anyway, you get my point. By the time you get through five, you're not going to get to six because you've changed you. Make that commitment. I've made it publicly in my social media presence. I'm not going back on that. I'll hear from you. I'm accountable to you and I'm accountable to me. Go looking for contempt. Answer it with love. Your life will change. It will make you so happy. And last but not least, because the topic I'm going to talk about a lot more later. This is Graeme. gratitude. Gratitude neutralizes contempt. It's like pouring water on flames. Gratitude stands up to our natural evolutionary proclivity to be ungrateful wretches, actually. I'm going to have a whole

episode on expressing gratitude. I think it'll be our Thanksgiving episode appropriately, how to be a more thankful person. When you think consciously about the reasons that you're grateful to live in your country, to be in your family, to be in your marriage, I know it's not perfect. I know, I know, I know, I know. But when you focus on the things that actually are good and are grateful for them, your contempt will evaporate. It just will. It's incredible. You know, there's this, in Dale Carnegie's famous book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, he talks about Howard Thurston, the most famous magician of the 1920s. And he said, you wanted to go see this guy. What's the secret of why he's such a great magician? It turns out of all his tricks who were pretty conventional,

but he loved his audience. It's like he was in love with his audience. And his audience responded. They just, they wanted to go because Howard Thurston they could tell. And that's what made him magnetic. And he asked him later, how do you do that? And he says, well, I, I, you know, he started by with a little mantra in his dressing room where he said, I'm grateful because these people come to see me. They make it possible for me to make my living in a very agreeable way. I'm going to give them the very best I possibly can. And before he stepped out of the footlights on Broadway, because that's where he had his theater was in Broadway.

he would say to himself over and over and over, I love my audience. I love my audience. I'm grateful for my audience. That's why I start my podcast and my mind for you. And the truth is I hope it comes across that I care about what I'm doing here and I care about you.

And you can do that every day about your country, about your family, about your marriage, about this world, notwithstanding the disagreements that we have. And to do that, my friends, you truly are stepping into mission territory. You know, the whole world is the mission.

And it needs you to love your enemies and show the joy in your life that comes as a result so the people will want to be more like you and love their enemies too. I appreciate the time you've given me. Let's take a couple of quick questions here because the questions are rolling in. They're so great. One of them is about the dark triads that I talked about earlier in this episode. This is from James Burns by email. Thanks, James.

How does a charismatic personality tie into or relate to the dark triad type of personality? This is a really good question because I'm a really good question. It turns out there's two answers to this. Dark triads, remember, narcissistic, machiavellian, psychopathic, they tend to become more charismatic. Why? Because they learn what it takes to seduce people, literally seduce people sometimes, but also to seduce them into whatever that they want because they're manipulators for their own gain. And the way that they'll do that is by developing a charismatic personality.

A lot of research shows that dark triads become more charismatic and are more charismatic. That's a big positive link. But, on the other hand, charismatic people don't become more like dark triads necessarily. In other words, you can be very charismatic and not be a dark triad. But if you're a dark triad, you probably will be charismatic. If you're wondering, go take the test. We've got a test on our website. For those of you who haven't seen this before, we have a dark triad test.

Arthurbrooks.com slash dark triads. That's right below me right here. Go take the test. Learn more about yourself. If you're worried about it, it probably means you're not one, As a matter of fact, maybe you want to take it on behalf of your new romantic partner. Give you a good heads up. Here's an anonymous question through email.

Dr. Brooks, can you please make a video to help those of us who have been cut off or ignored my family? Yeah, I can and I will. I'm going to do a show upcoming. I'm thinking about it right now about family dynamics. Let me just say really quickly, if that's you, you know, really cut off or ignored by your family, I'm deeply sorry. I'm deeply sorry to hear that.

And I, you know, it breaks my heart every time I hear this. One thing is that is incredibly common. You feel super alone if you're cut off by your family or you have a schism. You're not talking to family members. Everybody feels alone. I'm talking about direct family, sisters, brothers, moms, dads, kids. 11% of mothers over 60 are not talking to at least one of their adult children. 11%.

That's just shockingly high. So I'm going to do an episode on that because I know it's painful and I know it's, but it's incredibly common and there are solutions to it. So stay tuned. That's all we have time for. I've gone on a long time. I hope this has been useful with you. I want you to love your enemies,

and I want you to be part of the solution in this country and world, and I want you to get happier. Let me know your thoughts at Office Hours at Arthur Brooks.com, which is our email address. Leave like and subscribe on Apple, YouTube, Spotify. Leave a comment. I'll read it, even if it's negative.

I will love you all the more, even if it's negative, but you're not my enemy. Follow me on Instagram, on LinkedIn, all the other platforms. That's a great way to interact as well. And do subscribe to my newsletter for the practical tips every Monday. day that goes along with this podcast, arthur brooks.com slash newsletter. Take the dark triads quiz

to all the kinds of cool stuff that we're talking about here. And in the meantime, let's work together to make a better world. Thank you so much for watching this podcast. It's an honor to have you here. See you next week.