Worldviews in Conflict: Negotiating to Bridge the Divide

In The Sneetches and Other Stories (1961), Dr. Seuss tells the following whimsical children’s tale of two imaginary creatures: a North‐Going Zax, who only goes north, and a South‐Going Zax, who only goes south.

Imagine a professional mediator weighing in on their conflict. Drawing on traditional principles of negotiation, the mediator explains to them that it is in their shared rational interest to find a mutually beneficial solution. Perhaps one could hop over the other, or maybe they could hold hands and swing past each other without losing their tracks.

To the mediator's surprise, this makes the two creatures even angrier. In fact, the one thing they agree on is that the mediator has completely failed to understand the underlying issue. Going north or south is not just what they do; it's who they are. When forced to consider stepping aside, each doubles down on the sort of Zax he is, on what he stands for, and on loyalty to his kind. The conflict between the Zax reflects a fundamental difference in orientation toward the world—a clash of worldviews.

Dr. Seuss's story offers a lighthearted caricature of warring ideologies, but the issue is deadly serious. We live by our worldviews, but we also die for them. All too often, we even feel prepared to kill for them.

Real‐world conflicts involve more serious and complex clashes of worldviews: the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, liberal democracy versus authoritarianism, creationism versus evolution. Most global and political conflicts involve differences in worldviews. As our world grows increasingly interconnected, and as differences in identity play an increasingly prominent role in our cultural discourse, we ignore these differences at our peril.

Differences in worldviews arise frequently in conflict situations, but the field of conflict resolution has yet to give proper weight to the role that worldviews play in both successful and unsuccessful negotiations. One essential problem is that negotiators often lack a clear conceptualization of worldviews—one that is coherent, that is applicable, and that captures the essential psychological features of worldviews. Another essential problem is that negotiators often lack a prescriptive framework to help them deal with the strategic and tactical complexities of worldview conflicts, relying instead on unchecked intuition.

This article contributes to the growing study of worldview conflicts by addressing these obstacles. Our objective is twofold. First, drawing on the existing literature on worldviews, we propose a descriptive theory of worldviews that is rooted in psychological concepts and applicable to the field of conflict resolution. Second, we address the ways in which clashing worldviews can hinder the negotiation process and provide a practical roadmap for navigating fundamental differences between parties when negotiating across worldviews. In doing so, we draw on scholarship in social identity theory, relational identity theory, and moral psychology.

We believe that worldviews constitute an essential component of conflict resolution—often in the foreground, always in the background. However, certain basic assumptions in the field of negotiation lend themselves to an impoverished conception of the role that worldviews play in conflict and negotiation. The dominant approach to collaborative negotiation, “interest‐based negotiation” (Fisher, Ury, and Patton 2011), encourages parties to detach from emotionally entrenched positions and analyze their rational interests. The interest‐based approach offers a powerful tool kit that, in theory, can be adapted to virtually any type of conflict. But it assumes that the most essential features of the conflict can be represented formally through concrete preferences and that parties share a common frame of reference through which to translate their interests into practical options for action.

In practice, however, we have found that this assumption often leads negotiators to adopt a reductive conception of what is “rational” or “logical”—one that can overemphasize pragmatic interests and miss critical aspects of each party's understanding of the conflict and of their relationship to it. As a result, negotiators fail to recognize the forms of meaning underlying each other’s interests, producing misunderstanding and exacerbating conflict. This is especially likely when negotiators deal with a conflict involving divergent worldviews; each side may struggle to represent what matters most to them in the form of rational interests, needs, and wants. The greater the gap between the parties’ fundamental conceptions of the conflict, the more important it is for each side to understand the other’s subjective orientation toward the objective features of the conflict.

At a practical level, understanding worldviews provides several benefits. First, we gain insight into people’s interests—the underlying goals motivating their behavior. If we understand each party’s worldview, we gain a powerful lens into their central aspirations and what sorts of solutions may be conceivable.

Second, we come to better understand the way disputants interpret each side’s actions and intentions. By understanding worldviews, we can analyze whether our interpretation of the conflict aligns with that of others—and can calibrate our strategy if there is a discrepancy. During the Vietnam War, for example, the United States government operated on a flawed strategy: inflict pain on the enemy and they will decide to negotiate to avoid further pain. The U.S. analyzed its involvement in Vietnam through the lens of a cost–benefit analysis and assumed that the North Vietnamese would do the same. They failed to perceive how deeply the North Vietnamese resented imperial invaders and the extent to which they were motivated to sacrifice individual well‐being to protect their country for future generations. What many consider the failure of the Vietnam War was, at least in part, a failure to strategize across worldviews.

Third, if we feel acknowledged for our worldview, we are more amenable to cooperation (Fisher and Shapiro 2005). But if we perceive that core dimensions of our worldview are being challenged or insulted, we may reject a pragmatic proposal, even when that proposal would serve our rational interests (Atran and Ginges 2012). The mere framing of a negotiation in transactional terms can offend a negotiating party who considers their own values to be sacred (Baron and Spranca 1997). Indeed, in some instances, such as what are sometimes referred to as “culture wars,” clashing worldviews—asserting, defending, or imposing them—lies at the heart of the conflict dynamic.

The term “worldview” is a translation of the German Weltanschauung, coined by the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1790/2000) to convey the overall impressions people have of the world as a whole—roughly, how it “looks” to them. After Kant coined the term, it gained acceptance among eighteenth‐ and nineteenth‐century German philosophers and social theorists. The idea of worldviews rose to prominence in the English‐speaking world in the early and mid‐twentieth century, when American and British cultural anthropologists began to use the term in studying differences between Indigenous and Western‐industrial cultures. Anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski, for instance, stated that “every human culture gives its members a definite vision of the world” (1922: 517), while Robert Redfield expressed the importance of understanding “the way the world looks [to] people looking out” (1952: 30).

Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in worldviews, primarily among sociologists studying the role of religion in intergroup conflict. This includes examination of the correlation between proneness to large‐scale violence and commitment to worldviews defined by factors such as deference to authority and distrust of outsiders (Eidelson and Eidelson 2003). To date, however, the field of conflict resolution has no conclusive definition of worldviews that is broad enough to do justice to the concept while also being precise enough for scientific and practical application. Scholars such as Mark Juergensmeyer and Mona Kanwal Sheikh have called for a greater emphasis on “worldview analysis” in the study of intergroup conflict, with a particular emphasis on the internal perspective of those who embrace a given worldview (2019). Sheikh, for instance, argues for the importance of “understanding the frames of reference behind competing worldviews” (2019: 210).

Social scientists and theorists have taken a wide variety of approaches to describing and explaining worldviews (Koltko‐Rivera 2004), yet relatively few have tried to define the term, each emphasizing a different aspect of the underlying concept. For example, Koltko‐Rivera defines a worldview as “a way of describing the universe and life within it, both in terms of what is and what ought to be” (2004). This characterization focuses on worldviews as descriptions of the world but does not consider worldviews as interpretive devices fitted to the scale of the individual’s encounter with the conditions of their personal life. Offering a different perspective, Taves, Asprem, and Ihm describe worldviews as “a complex set of representations related to ‘big questions’…that define and govern a way of life” (2018: 3). Although these representations may well have to do with ultimate and foundational questions of human life, we believe that worldviews are defined just as strongly by the attitudes, emotions, and other nonrepresentational qualities in which those representations are embedded—not just what they represent about the world, but how those representations fit into the broader context of our thoughts and feelings.

Many scholars treat the meaning of worldviews as given. For example, sociologist Karl Mannheim equates worldviews with ideologies and uses the two terms relatively interchangeably (1936). Some religious sociologists study worldviews by other names, referring instead to guiding narratives or to the “symbolic DNA” of ideologically driven groups (Rowland and Theye 2008). Other scholars have sought to explain worldviews by categorizing them in terms of their subject matter. Michael Kearney’s World View Theory and Study proposed a framework consisting of seven major categories with which worldviews tend to be concerned (1975). Similarly, Johnson, Hill, and Cohen (2011) have focused on categorizing worldviews on the basis of such beliefs as the nature of reality, knowledge, morality, and cosmic purpose. While these are useful approaches to cataloguing worldviews, they take for granted a specific conception of what worldviews all have in common; our aim is to render those commonalities explicit by considering more directly the question of what worldviews are and how they relate to other aspects of our psychology. In addition, focusing our understanding of worldviews too narrowly on beliefs can fail to do justice to the ways in which unconscious processes shape the beliefs at the core of worldviews and are embedded in and influence our overall approach to life.

Focusing strictly on beliefs also ignores a key function of worldviews. Beliefs are of course a major component of any worldview, but part of what makes beliefs so important to worldviews is how they fit together into a general interpretive structure capable of being applied to new situations and experiences. Sheikh characterizes a given culture’s worldview in terms of “the concepts they use, the categories they invoke, the imagery they paint, and the systems of representation that are part of their overall narratives” (2019: 203). Others have emphasized the integrative nature of worldviews, arguing that they are held together by the need for a coherent way of explaining and interacting with the world—the “necessity of having to relate to the external environment” (Kearney 1984: 52). Similarly, Clifford Geertz argued that worldviews not only describe reality but also render it amenable to personal and collective action (1973). These voices in the literature converge on an important insight into the nature of worldviews: beliefs surely are an important feature of worldviews, but part of what gives a worldview its distinctive character is how those beliefs are integrated into an overall sensibility that informs our personal lives—in a sense, what it is like for those beliefs to manifest themselves in our encounter with the world.

The concept of worldviews goes by many names: outlook, perspective, life philosophy, even a whole cognitive orientation. Each of these phrases captures slightly different aspects of the concept. Building on the literature above, our goal is to offer a definition that can be applied across a wide range of domains of both theory and practice—one that is precise enough to have explanatory power while remaining general enough to encompass the full scope of the subject matter of worldviews.²

We define a worldview as a unifying personal framework that organizes the ways in which individuals interpret central aspects of human life. It is the constellation of attitudes, beliefs, emotions, and values that structures our overall model of reality and guides us as we navigate our world. Simply put, your worldview is the lens through which you make sense of life as a whole.

Each of the major elements of our definition corresponds to what we believe to be the four essential characteristics of worldviews. First, worldviews are unifying. They synthesize various aspects of our encounter with the world into broader organizing principles. Worldviews can be held together by all sorts of things: political values, cultural norms and traditions, and principles we were taught as children. Often, the most fundamental influence is family: where we come from, who raised us, and who taught us to be the person we are. This sphere of influence can expand to include other people who comprise our social ecosystem. Through these relationships, we develop a social identity and absorb beliefs and values that constitute a large part of how we understand ourselves in relation to our world.

Second, worldviews are personal, rooted in the deepest parts of our psychology. They are not just a set of beliefs; they are the beliefs that underpin the way we experience the world. Moreover, as noted above, they consist of more than beliefs alone. They consist of memories, emotions, attitudes, perceptions, and other sorts of intuitions that are integrated into an overall orientation—and that are woven from the rich fabric of our inner psychological lives. A worldview can be so much a part of us, so self‐evident, that we fail to notice its influence on our thinking. In a conflict situation, this can lead to an emotionally charged impasse, for what others view as righteous may appear completely unjustified from our perspective.

Third, worldviews are interpretive. They generalize our knowledge and experiences into organizing principles through which we make sense of the world. Just as the American psychologist William James claimed that children acquire concepts to make sense of the “blooming, buzzing confusion” of the world into which they are born (1890), so do our worldviews allow us to understand reality in ways that seek to give a measure of coherence and structure to our personal and social lives. But a worldview also comes with blinders. Paying more attention to some aspects of reality means paying less attention to others, closing us off to alternative views of the world. Even when we are aware of how we see the world, it can be extremely difficult to stretch beyond an abstract recognition of another person’s perspective and to understand it deeply.

Fourth, worldviews are value laden. Our worldviews encompass wide‐ranging beliefs about reality as a whole, but they are held together by, and centered around, emotionally charged themes and principles that represent defining features of human life. Unlike abstract or scientific models of reality, worldviews are organized around deep sources of meaning in our lives, held together by values and themes that we find personally significant. These emotionally charged themes are integral to our concept of who we are, our place in the world, and how our lives should be (Iwry 2019). Sources of meaning in our lives thus act as building blocks for our identity, structuring our understanding of what “defines” us and offering a framework for how to live. Meaning plays an especially important role in worldviews, with some theorists going so far as to assert that one of the primary functions of religion itself is to create a worldview capable of reliably bringing meaning to human life (Geertz 1979).

Our worldviews are shaped by what happens to us, and the values at their core can change or deepen over time. For example, astronauts viewing the earth from orbit—arguably the most literal “worldview” there is—often return with a deepened appreciation for environmental causes and international peace; the life‐changing experience of space travel transforms these values into defining features of who they are and of their place in the universe (Yaden et al. 2016; Shapiro, White, and Shackleton 2019).

With this conception of worldviews in mind, we turn to the question of how to understand and deal with them when they collide—the clash of worldviews.

When our worldviews are implicated in a conflict, as is often the case, they can make the conflict even harder to resolve. We propose that three key factors contribute to the clash of worldviews.

1. Our worldview: First, there is the simple fact that we often fail to realize we even have a worldview to begin with. We live our lives seeing the world through our own personal lens, which is usually invisible to us. We rely on implicit assumptions and attitudes in interpreting our experiences—all the while thinking that we see the world exactly the way it is, free of personal interpretation. We are so deeply situated within our own view of reality that we rarely even notice its impact on our thinking, feeling, and behavior.

2. Their worldview: Second, we often fail to understand the worldviews of others. If we do not realize that we have a worldview, we may similarly fail to recognize that others do as well, that theirs differs from ours, and that the core assumptions through which they interpret the world might therefore differ from ours as well. Even when we do recognize and acknowledge that our counterparties have their own worldviews, it can be difficult to step outside of our own perspective to learn about and explore theirs. It takes considerable discipline to explore alternative ways of thinking and attitudes that feel foreign to us. Doing so can be unintuitive, effortful, and frustrating.

We might even worry that engaging with someone else’s worldview will threaten our own. Our worldview is rooted in deeply meaningful features of our identity, and we can be so anchored to our perspective that we instinctively react against the prospect of having to distance ourselves from it. We feel a sense of loyalty to the architecture of meaning we have built in our minds; considering a viewpoint that does not reflect a commitment to those core features can feel like an act of self‐betrayal. As a result, we are tempted to settle back into our own ways of seeing things, preferring the simple comfort of our familiar assumptions about the world over the hard‐won acquisition of a new point of view.

• 3.

  The gap between worldviews: Third, we tend to get bogged down in the differences between our worldviews and the worldviews of others. When we enter negotiations without being sufficiently mindful of the differences between our worldviews, we are likely to trip over those differences in ways that aggravate each other. There is a risk that each party will perceive their personal attachment to their respective beliefs and values as under threat—and, by proxy, that they themselves are being threatened. This in turn can trigger negative emotions that influence our thinking and lock the interacting parties into adversarial postures. The result can be a cycle in which the parties mutually double down on their own positions and give disproportionate attention to the conflicting parts of their worldviews. A potentially solvable problem devolves into a total clash of identities, where absolutism reigns and accommodation is viewed as surrender. Our thinking becomes rigid, we lose our tolerance for ambiguity, and we prioritize defeating the other party over solving problems with them as partners (Fisher and Shapiro 2005).

Some worldview clashes reflect differences in moral or political values (Haidt 2012; Greene 2014). Others involve conflicting assertions of fact, such as claims about religion, history, or the influence of socioeconomic factors on crime. Even when people appear to be arguing over facts, what they might really be fighting for—what they feel is at stake—is what those beliefs mean to them personally (Iwry 2021). Those beliefs might be more akin to intuitive convictions rooted in their identity, and whether those beliefs turn out to be true could have meaningful implications for them or their group. When warring groups argue over which of them has a superior claim to a geographic region, for example, what seem like conflicting beliefs about land ownership may reflect a more fundamental argument over social, political, or moral legitimacy. An attempt by an outside party to question those beliefs may well be interpreted not as an objective factual critique, but as an “assault on the sacred”—a personal attack (Shapiro 2016).

When disagreements about our most cherished beliefs arise, we feel obliged to defend them. We may even reject solutions out of spite for those who challenge those beliefs, even when those solutions would serve our interests (Atran and Ginges 2012). We feel a duty to stand for what we believe in. In doing so, we lose sight of other, broader aspects of our worldviews, including what we and our counterparties might have in common.

When salient aspects of our identities and those of others align, it feels natural to work together and view each other as allies. But when they conflict, cooperation can seem impossible. The classic example is when two people identify with groups that view each other as enemies. Picture a Palestinian and an Israeli sitting down to negotiate. Among other things, they might both be parents, artists, and advocates for labor rights, but when they are forced to view each other through the narrow lens of their oppositional identities, those commonalities fall away. And with them, so do feelings of affiliation and the willingness to find peaceful solutions to their conflicts.

The problem is not that our worldviews are necessarily incompatible—it is that we become too absorbed in the goal of defending them to broaden our perspectives and consider points of convergence in our respective worldviews.

Negotiating across worldviews requires parties to redefine the nature of their relationship (Shapiro 2016). A clash of worldviews threatens each party’s identity and can quickly produce an adversarial association—us versus them (e.g., Tajfel and Turner 1986). In high‐stakes political and social conflict, the lines of loyalty tend to be complex. When working with government leaders from disputing states, Shapiro has observed that they often have amicable cross‐group relationships behind closed doors but maintain stark distance in the public context. This suggests that relationships are malleable and that, in the right context, negotiators may be amenable to understanding the beliefs and values that inform each other’s worldview.

To help parties construct cooperative relations in the throes of conflict, Shapiro has developed Relational Identity Theory (RIT), which maps relational dynamics between interacting parties along two dimensions: affiliation (how close or distant parties feel toward each other) and autonomy (how free parties feel to make decisions without the other’s involvement) (2010, 2016).

RIT posits that a threat to identity—as in a clash of worldviews—produces a divisive mindset that Shapiro calls the tribes effect, an oversimplified distinction between the ingroup and outgroup (Shapiro 2016). When this happens, we view the relationship as adversarial, seek to justify our own position at any cost, and close ourselves off from the other’s perspective. Consequently, we respond in ways that damage the relationship and miss out on opportunities for value creation, even though collaboration often holds greater promise for producing a mutually beneficial outcome (Shapiro 2010). The tribes effect cripples the effectiveness of interactive problem solving (Kelman 2008), interest‐based negotiation (Fisher, Ury, and Patton 2011), and other collaborative methods of conflict resolution that rely on side‐by‐side problem solving.

Shapiro encourages negotiators to adopt a “communal mindset” that breaks free of the narrowing dynamics of the tribes effect. This alternative mindset encourages parties to find pathways to connection, to listen with compassion, and to remain open to engaging with one another’s perspective (Shapiro 2016). Inevitably, parties will adhere to differing worldviews, but they now can explore those differences within a common framework of shared association. A positive feedback loop forms in which improvements to the relational dynamic create space for exploring differences in worldviews, which boosts confidence in the relationship and the possibilities for constructive change.

The following is a user‐friendly road map for practitioners struggling to resolve these worldview disputes. It consists of three strategies: (1) become aware of your own worldview, (2) come to understand the other’s worldview, and (3) build bridges across worldviews. Drawing on the principles of relational identity theory, we suggest ways of applying these strategies and offer tactics that we have found useful to reorient the relationship in conflicts involving clashes of worldviews. These tactics have been field‐tested in multiple negotiation workshops with high‐ranking government officials, with participants reporting that they found these tools to be effective for promoting mutual understanding and affiliation between the parties.

These proposals are meant to be simple. The fact that they are simple does not mean that applying them is easy. On the contrary, our experience suggests that these challenges are extremely difficult to master in practice, and they can come down to fine‐grained details specific to the negotiating parties and the relationship between them. Given how deeply embedded in intuition the negotiation process can be, we believe it is useful to keep these high‐level strategies in mind as you navigate the conflict terrain.

1. Understand your own worldview. A powerful tool to help you surface important aspects of your worldview is called the BRAVE Framework (Shapiro 2016), which consists of five pillars of identity that form the acronym “BRAVE.” Reflect on how each pillar may feel endangered within you:

   • Beliefs: What ideas do you have about the world that feel threatened in this conflict? Consider issues that make you feel frustrated, angry, ashamed, or anxious.

   • Rituals: What personally meaningful customs or ceremonial acts feel under attack? Think about holidays, meaningful activities, and traditions.

   • Allegiances: To whom do you want to remain loyal—and whom are you anxious about betraying? Consider family members, friends, community members, and historical and symbolic figures.

   • Values: Which of your guiding principles and overarching ideals feel most threatened? Reflect on why those values are important to you.

   • Emotionally meaningful experiences: What personal or historical events from the past—glorious or traumatic—feel dishonored?

Shapiro has been incorporating the BRAVE framework into his negotiation training programs for years, with repeated positive results. At one international workshop, for example, he divided Israeli and Palestinian government officials into small mixed groups and had them explore their identities and worldviews together with reference to the BRAVE framework. The feedback from the participants was overwhelmingly favorable. Participants reported that they found the experience powerful, and that using the BRAVE framework enabled them to better understand their own worldview and to appreciate the humanity of others in their group. While this group had joined together previously for several trainings on interest‐based negotiation, this particular exercise—in which they gained new insight into each other’s worldviews—led to a noticeable increase in their level of affiliation and trust.

Understanding ourselves is not always easy. If you are having trouble stepping back to reflect on your cherished beliefs and values, ask yourself the following questions: What are some ideas that you believe are obviously true about the world, and that you cannot believe that others fail to see? What beliefs do others express that you vehemently disagree with? Why do these convictions matter to you in the first place, and what do you feel is at stake? Your answers may shed some light on your core beliefs, and on some of the values underlying those beliefs.

A more holistic approach with which to understand threatened aspects of your worldview is through a search for your mythos of identity—the core narrative that shapes how you see your identity in relation to that of the other side (Shapiro 2016). In every conflict, people weave together a story to explain the conflict and their role in it. What sort of character best represents you—perhaps warrior, victim of injustice, healer, or hero? What beliefs and values are embedded in that role? Consider the character you believe best represents the other side, such as infidel, villain, trickster, or traitor. Why do you cast them in that role—and which of your values and beliefs are they threatening? What is the relationship between your character and that of the other person? As you clarify the significance of the conflict between these characters, see if you can identify certain broad themes, principles, or values—such as justice, honor, or integrity—that underpin your worldview and motivate your behavior in this specific conflict.³

• 2.

  Discover their worldview. You must undertake two major tasks to discover the other’s worldview. The first task—and the most important part—is under your control: finding internal motivation and courage to become curious about the other’s worldview. You may feel compelled to protect your worldview from outside influence. It can feel satisfying to dismiss those who disagree with you. But in doing so, you ultimately are doing yourself a disservice. Shunning ideas and people that challenge your worldview denies you the opportunity to learn. It prevents you from considering alternative viewpoints that you might not have considered—ultimately preventing you from becoming more knowledgeable about the issues that matter to you. It also prevents you from gaining insight into how others think, which you can use to make your ideas, positions, and proposed solutions more persuasive to them.

As described earlier, when the commitments at the core of our worldview are threatened, it is natural to feel our guard go up. It is as though we can feel parts of who we are rising up to guard our values and beliefs against external threats. Consider whether any of the following types of “guardians” are at work in your interaction with those who call your worldview into question. Calling out and labeling these worldview guardians may help empower you to decide consciously how to respond to them. Look for five especially prominent guardians:

• Cognitive guardians prompt you to seek evidence that supports your preexisting beliefs, dismiss inconvenient facts, and develop self‐serving arguments that rationalize what you want to believe.

• Emotional guardians use emotions such as anger and disgust to fend off attacks on your worldview.

• Social guardians protect you from betraying your trusted circle of friends, family, and colleagues who uphold shared beliefs and values.

• Political guardians safeguard your and your allies’ political allegiances, beliefs, and values.

• Historical guardians craft and deploy narratives that translate salient features of the past into attitudes, rationales, and symbols that support your worldview.

Submitting to these worldview guardians can be tempting, but it comes at the expense of practical opportunities to learn how to be more persuasive to those who do not share your worldview. Trying to convince others to see things your way is pointless if you do not know how they see things in the first place. Only by understanding how others think can you present your point of view in a way that will make sense to them, that they will consider legitimate, and that they will be likely to accept.

The second major task required in order to discover someone else’s worldview is to ask them about their perspectives—and to listen for significant values, beliefs, and attitudes. What are the stories they tell about issues that are important to them? What underlying values might those stories share? What emotionally meaningful experiences might others see as explaining the world and their place within it? What sorts of metaphors and imagery do they invoke in their dialogue with you? Pay attention to issues that seem to spark strong emotions in them and consider what underlying values or beliefs they may feel are under attack.

Listen nonjudgmentally. Telling the other party that their views are extreme or radical emphasizes the differences between your standpoint and theirs and fuels divisive relations—and triggers the other party’s worldview guardians. Convey your recognition of their reasons for believing what they do, and your desire to understand those reasons.

• 3.

  Build bridges between worldviews. This strategy boils down to finding similarities in worldviews while respecting differences. Emphasize the importance of understanding each other’s perspective as a crucial step in overcoming conflict. Frame the dialogue as open‐ended and exploratory, which encourages everyone to share ideas without pressure to stake out competing positions. Create as many open spaces for dialogue as you can. Invite them to explore different perspectives with you, show them that you are not trying to sell them a bill of goods, and make clear that you genuinely want to understand how they see the world. (The best way to do this, of course, is to actually mean it.) This lowers the stakes, offers an opportunity to build trust, and creates an environment in which the other party may feel that they can afford to let their guard down.

Zoom in to problem‐solve specific aspects of your conflict, then zoom out to identify key themes that overlap between worldviews. If they disagree with you on a meaningful issue, search for shared values that can keep you linked. Translate what matters to you into the language of their worldview to help them identify with you and to build mutual affiliation, all while acknowledging genuine differences.

Find opportunities to acknowledge their autonomy in developing their own view of the world, even when you do not agree with their actual beliefs and values. Show that you respect the other party’s relationship to their worldview; demonstrate curiosity in understanding who they are, what matters to them, and why they see the world as they do. This communicates that you are not a threat to them or their values. It also promotes trust and rapport by giving them an opportunity to express safely what matters to them and to share their values with you.

Resist attacking the other party’s conception of reality head on. Many people handle disagreements by dismissing or insulting the other party’s beliefs and arguments, failing to recognize that they are threatening that party’s personal attachment to what they believe. Instead, show them that you understand their interpretation of the world (to the extent you do), and then offer them an alternative perspective that connects to their core beliefs and values. Try to appeal to their worldview and offer new positions or explanations in terms that feel familiar, safe, and even significant to them. Allow them to come to their own conclusions by working within the system of their beliefs and values.

Recognize that you are unlikely to understand their worldview as well as you think you can. There is a danger in presuming to know what defines others’ identities or values; it is easy to insult others by presuming we know what defines them better than they do. The best way to avoid this crude assumption is to invite the other party to share, and to listen to them actively and openly.

An important reminder: No two negotiations are entirely alike, and this makes it all the more important to learn as much as possible about each party and the ways in which they view the world. In most cases, the better and more deeply you understand each party’s worldview, the more effective you will be at negotiating across worldviews.

As our world grows increasingly interconnected, clashing worldviews are more prevalent and more difficult to ignore. Yet traditional methods of negotiation are insufficient to address this dimension of conflict, which implicates core aspects of who we are, what we believe in, and how we see the world and make meaning in it. To help disputants overcome this kind of clash, we have presented (1) a descriptive framework to understand worldviews and (2) a prescriptive set of strategies to help navigate differences in worldviews. Our hope is that these ideas will help to promote a richer appreciation of worldviews as a driving factor in negotiation and conflict resolution.