Yes, there is a productive way to reframe your holiday political debates

Here we are again, in the season of gathering with loved ones, eating holiday treats and, perhaps, getting into heated political debates with a relative at the dinner table. 

As a psychological anthropologist who has studied how people think and make decisions about social issues, I still haven’t figured out why we do this to ourselves — but I’m glad we do. Although they may seem fruitless, these dinner conversations are an important part of our larger public discourse and help shape how we think about social issues. How we...