Navigating political divides at Thanksgiving

Issue 58: Read a summary of an article we ran in the LA Times about how creating a shared sense of identity can make Thanksgiving dinners more pleasant

This week, Jay and Dominic wrote a piece for the LA Times introducing research about how feeling a shared sense of identity with family who hold different political views than you can lead to a more peaceful Thanksgiving. At the end of the newsletter, we share advice on how to handle political tensions at the dinner table this holiday season. Here is a snippet of our piece:

A few years ago, researchers observed that people were spending 30 to 50 minutes less at Thanksgiving dinners if they traveled to precincts where the political voting patterns were different from their own precinct. This was true even after statistically controlling for distance and demographics.  

Using anonymized geolocation data from more than 10 million mobile phones, the researchers compared the movements of people who went to areas with similar voting patterns and those who visited areas with different voting patterns. They found that people were quicker to leave the dinner table when they were in areas favorab…