The science of constructive disagreement
Hi, I’m Burint!I study how people can disagree constructively
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
University of Vienna
Faculty of Business, Economics and Statistics
Disagreement doesn’t usually feel very constructive.
No. But avoiding it isn’t much of a solution either. I’m interested in how we can push back and sharpen each other’s thinking and still leave as friends.
Sounds like a difficult balance. People seem to either avoid the argument altogether or make a mess of it.
That’s the tension. Keeping quiet can mean leaving something important unsaid, but speaking up can put a relationship under strain. I study what helps people take each other’s ideas seriously without feeling they have to give in.
That sounds good in principle. But how do you actually study something like that?
I combine experiments with computational tools to study how people’s words, tone of voice, and facial expressions shape each other’s responses. Experiments let me test what makes a difference, while computational tools help me examine the back-and-forth in detail. Together, they help me understand why some disagreements move us towards a solution while others drive us apart.
Explore my code on GitHub
How did you get into this? It seems to draw on quite a few different disciplines.
I completed my PhD in Organizational Behavior at Imperial College London and my MSc in Data Science at King’s College London. Bringing those perspectives together lets me study a very human question in finer detail.
Explore my research
I imagine your students don’t always agree with you!
I’d be a little concerned if they did. I teach organizational behavior, so these questions come into the classroom too. My research informs what I teach, and sometimes a class discussion challenges my thinking and gives me a new question to investigate.
Explore my teaching