 Nowadays it feels like we're in conflict all the time, in Parliament, online, even around the dinner table. We believe our values are poles apart from that of our opponent and there's the no common ground between us. I'm in Chiswick to meet two researchers who want to flip this idea on its head. What if our values aren't quite as different as we first thought? Hello, hi guys. Thank you for meeting me here. So let's talk about your research. What motivated you to tackle this thorny issue? For me it's a fascination with values and how people mentally picture values in their heads and how they mentally picture the values of other people because values are at the heart of our most bitter conflicts such as war. But it's not just war is it? Because we see it on a smaller scale as well. Yes, so we can also see value conflicts in politics for example, in political debates around issues such as Brexit or climate change, sexism or racism and these debates make it appear like the country is quite polarised. So not only on a political spectrum between leaf and remain voters or conservative and Labour voters but also between young and older people for example. And all these debates make it appear like we all have very different values. Is climate change an example of that because it's something I really care about but it sometimes feels that other people just don't care the same way? It's a great example. When we see the news about climate change and the damage that it's causing and then we see examples of behaviours that just keep going, that keep damaging our environment, we can be tempted to draw very sweeping conclusions. Other people just don't care about the environment. I think we often forget that the things other people are doing for the environment. So in this morning hundreds of thousands or even millions of people have been commuting by public transport or by bike or walked as opposed to using their car. And at the same time we can forget the times when we've behaved in a manner that's not consistent with protecting the environment, times when we've done things that we know we shouldn't that are perhaps environmentally damaging. But often we've got a good reason for doing them. We have a reason that we can see like we had to make this particular journey that perhaps was actually unnecessary. And that's natural, that's human instinct to of course see the reasons why we do things. What we struggle with is to see the reasons why other people do things. And then we can we can draw big conclusions about differences between the values other people have in our own. But are they right? So I hear you have a demonstration for me. Absolutely. Shall we go? Yes, we do. Yeah, let's go. Come on. Okay, here we are. How has your work led us to a snooker hall? We have found that people are actually much more similar and different in their values. So the way we find that out is we give people surveys which ask them about their values. And these are surveys basically ask them questions about a variety of abstract ideas that people consider to be important to nations around the world. These are ideas like equality, freedom, independence, achievement, power, tradition. The list is very long. To demonstrate, let's let's assume that the wet bolts represent labor waters and the blue bolts represent conservative or Tobi waters. And so if we asked labor waters about the values of conservative waters and the other way around, usually find that they perceive the values of the other group to be quite different to their own values. People think their values are very far apart. Yes. But actually, we find that. So for example, for the value helpfulness, we find that 93% overlap, mostly meaning that both labor and conservative waters believe that helpfulness is important or very important. And it's particularly important to remember in all this that people are agreeing that these values are highly important. So if we imagine this end of the snooker table as being the distribution of people who are saying that these ideas really matter a great deal to them, there are relatively few people who consider them to be, say, less important. If we imagine this end of the table being those people who think the values are less important, there aren't so many compared to the people who agree highly with the concepts. Interesting. So what you're saying is even if I might think my values are stronger than the person I'm disagreeing with, I'm probably wrong. Exactly. So a lot of the time we're all just arguing about nothing. Do you think that we could apply this to politicians when they're tackling big subjects? Well, perhaps, but that's also very complex because of the vested interests and the group processes involved in political debate. But with people in general, certainly, we found that simple tasks can engage people with discovering their own values and the values of other people. And then they learn that their values aren't as far apart as they thought. And actually, the differences between people tend to be more in how they imagine fulfilling the values than in the values themselves. Amazing. Thank you both. Well, there we go. Maybe the best way to settle a conflict is to focus on what we have in common rather than our differences. Right then. Are you guys keen for a game of Winner Stays On? Absolutely. Who's first?