In a polarized climate, on issues of existential importance, it can be difficult even to hear opinions that contradict our own — on issues such as same-sex marriage, for example, or climate change, or Joe Biden vs. Donald Trump. It seems offensive that someone doesn’t see the world as we do, and there’s a tendency to correct them, to tell them they’re not just wrong, but deplorable.

Expressing such frustration may provide emotional relief, but it’s not likely to persuade. In fact, it can make people harden their existing views.

For a 2016 study published in Science, Broockman and Kalla worked with the Los Angeles LGBT Center and SAVE, a South Florida LGBT organization, on a field assessment of voter attitudes toward a new Miami-area law protecting transgender people. One group of door-to-door canvassers, a control group, said nothing to residents about transphobia.

But another group engaged in “deep canvassing,” a process based on asking sensitive questions, listening to the answers with sincere interest and then asking more questions. If residents expressed bias toward transgender people, the canvasser might ask them to recall a time when they were treated unfairly for being different and what that felt like.

The outcome? “These conversations substantially reduced transphobia, with decreases greater than Americans’ average decrease in homophobia from 1998 to 2012,” the research found. In effect, about 10% of the deep canvassing respondents shifted toward a more sympathetic view of transgender rights, with effects lasting for at least three months.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump says in an interview that the "biggest risk" to his re-election prospects in November is increased mail-in voting and whether he can win lawsuits to stop its expansion.

"My biggest risk is that we don't win lawsuits," Trump said in an Oval Office interview Thursday with Politico that focused on the 2020 race.

"We have many lawsuits going all over. And if we don't win those lawsuits, I think — I think it puts the election at risk," he added.