About:

ABOUT THIS EVENT

FREE

September 27th, Noon - 1:00pm CST

How psychology and neuroscience can help us to fix our politics

America is deeply polarized; our politics is characterized by mutual antipathy, anger and even hatred. One of the ways to help us heal our nation is to better understand what is driving these divisions. Psychology and neuroscience have an enormous amount to teach us, including how we process information that challenges our core beliefs; how people's beliefs come primarily from their intuitions; and how rational thought often comes after to justify initial beliefs. We can repair our fraying political and civic culture, but only if we properly diagnose what's happening and recover the art of persuasion.

Scholar Peter Wehner

Peter Wehner is an in-residence Senior Fellow at The Trinity Forum, a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, and a contributing editor for The Atlantic magazine. He has written for numerous other publications—including Time magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Financial Times, The Weekly Standard, National Review, Commentary, National Affairs, and Christianity Today. He has also appeared frequently as a commentator on MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, CBS, PBS, and C-SPAN television. Wehner served in the last three Republican administrations, including as Deputy Director of Speechwriting and later Director of the Office of Strategic Initiatives for President George W. Bush. Wehner is author of City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era (co-authored with Michael J. Gerson) and Wealth and Justice: The Morality of Democratic Capitalism (co-authored with Arthur C. Brooks). His most recent book is The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.

Moderator Sara Gorman

Sara Gorman, PhD, MPH is a public health expert and author based in New York. She has written extensively about psychology, misinformation, science denial, and behavioral science, among other topics. Her work has appeared or been reviewed in TIME, The New Yorker, Science, Scientific American, Psychology Today, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, Daily Kos, and NPR, among others. Sara’s first book, Denying to the Grave: Why We Ignore the Facts That Will Save Us, was published by Oxford University Press in September 2016, and a revised edition was released in June 2021. The book examines the psychology of healthcare decision making and theorizes about public perception of risk. It includes tips for the general public about how to discriminate between valid and invalid science and pointers for public health professionals and doctors on how to communicate with people who don’t believe what science has taught us about health. The book has been translated into Chinese and Portuguese. Sara’s second book, Modern Medicine: Conspiracy Theories and Distrust in the 21st Century, is now under contract with Oxford University Press.

HND VALUE STATEMENT

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this {article, book, exhibition, film, program, database, report, Web resource}, do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or Humanities North Dakota.

However, in an increasingly polarized world, we at Humanities North Dakota believe that being open-minded is necessary to thinking critically and rationally.

Therefore, our programs and classes reflect our own open-mindedness in the inquiry, seeking, and acquiring of scholars to speak at our events and teach classes for our Public University.

To that end, we encourage our participants to join us in stepping outside our comfort zones and considering other perspectives and ideas by being open-minded while attending HND events featuring scholars who hold a variety of opinions, some being opposite of our own held beliefs.

Humanities North Dakota classes and events are funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities