How to start assuming the best in people

The person who cuts in front of you in line is a jerk. The neighbor with a sign promoting a ballot measure you disagree with is evil. And the coworker who has an opinion different from yours is uneducated.

Ever make up a story about someone else to explain what they do or don’t believe? Most likely, you didn’t frame the person in a good light. That’s because humans have a natural instinct for tribalism that can cause us to assume the worst, says Steven Collis, a law professor at the University of Texas and author of Habits of a Peacemaker: 10 Habits to Change Our Potentially Toxic Conversations Into Healthy Dialogues.

“If someone thinks differently than we do about a given topic, our natural instinct is to think they must either be a fool or a monster,” Collis says. “We view the world as those who agree with us, and everyone else becomes an enemy. It’s a natural instinct we all have, and one we have to overcome.”

Compounding the problem is that many of us think we know more than we do about a given topic and about other people’s motives, Collis adds, noting, “It makes it hard to comprehend why somebody could possibly disagree with us. If we can all engage in developing our own intellectual humility, realizing how little we know about a topic, it will help us not assume the worst about people when they disagree with us and actually want to inquire more about why they think the way they do.”

Ask Questions

Instead of a natural tendency to jump to a negative conclusion, it’s possible to start assuming the best in people. The first thing you need to do is ask questions.

“Start off with not assuming that this person has bad motives,” Collis says. “Then, dig much deeper into why they think the way they do. Asking questions helps us get there—not questions to prove a point and not rhetorical questions to show people the flaws in their thinking. Genuine inquiries and understanding how they reached the conclusions they did.”

Asking questions helps you better understand someone else’s perspective. Collis says he often finds that when he disagrees with someone, he doesn’t disagree on the desired outcome, only the method to take to get there.

Asking questions has an added benefit of helping the person better understand their own views and why they feel the way they do about a given topic. “Many of us are operating from instinct,” Collis says. “Having to answer questions and talk about your views and think them all the way through helps you move away from gut instincts and think about something a little bit more.”

Find the Underlying Motivation

Asking questions helps you get to someone’s underlying psychological motivations—why they do what they do, and what they care about most. Dig until you feel like you truly understand their concerns.

“Do they care about equality? Do they care about fairness? Do they care about helping people or preserving social order? Once we understand that, we can move into having a robust conversation about a difficult topic,” Collis says.

For example, two people may disagree on the topic of affirmative action. The immediate assumption is that one person wants to help racial minorities and the other one doesn’t. But that’s not necessarily the case. “As you dig deeper and get into the psychological motivations, sometimes what’s going on is one of these people would love a world with more racial minorities in academia or in the C-suite, but they’re also worried about ensuring that we don’t undermine quality or social order while we’re doing this,” Collis says.

Once you understand the underlying motivations, you can reframe how you think of someone. You can also initiate a conversation on how to achieve shared goals as opposed to disagreeing or arguing over a topic at its highest level.

Why Assuming the Best Matters

Assuming someone has good intent allows you to have productive conversations about the hardest topics, Collis says, noting, “We’re often talking about really complicated problems for which there aren’t obvious solutions. Even making a step in the right direction in a conversation toward finding some solution is helpful.”

Ending a conversation with an understanding of the worries of someone you disagree with helps you going forward, too. “Subconsciously, you’re going to be thinking about those underlying worries more than just patting yourself on the back over your own righteousness,” Collis says. “That will get you thinking about the problem and solutions while taking into consideration others’ worries that perhaps you hadn’t taken into consideration before.”

While you don’t always have to agree with someone, overriding your instinct to assume the worst can go a long way toward changing a relationship, improving your outlook, and increasing your overall well-being.