You can disagree about health and still keep the people you love

Key takeaways

• After the bitter 2016 election, Thanksgiving dinners that mixed guests from opposing-party areas ran 30 to 50 minutes shorter, according to location data from more than 10 million phones¹.
• Trust in science now splits by party: in late 2025, 90% of Democrats but 65% of Republicans had at least a fair amount of confidence in scientists³.
• People expect hearing the other side to feel worse than it does, partly because they underestimate how much they agree with their opponents⁶.
• Couples researcher John Gottman says most of the conflicts he saw were still unresolved four years later, and that the couples who did well learned to live with them and repair after fights⁸.
• Disagreeing is normal, but controlling someone’s food, medicine or friendships is a warning sign of abuse, not a difference of opinion¹⁴.

In November 2016, a few weeks after a bitter presidential election, families across the country sat down to Thanksgiving dinner. Researchers M. Keith Chen of UCLA and Ryne Rohla of Washington State University later measured those gatherings using anonymous location data from more than 10 million smartphones¹.

When hosts and guests came from neighborhoods that voted for opposite parties, dinner ran 30 to 50 minutes shorter than when everyone came from the same kind of neighborhood¹. Nationwide, the researchers estimated that about 34 million hours of cross-party family time vanished that year¹².

Campaign ads seemed to make it worse. Guests from media markets flooded with political ads cut their visits the most. That pattern didn’t show up the year before, when the ads weren’t running¹².

That study measured politics, not health. But the pandemic tied views on vaccines, masks and medical experts to political identity for many Americans, as the numbers below show. An argument about elderberry or a flu shot can start to feel like an argument about who you are.

This guide is about keeping the people, not winning the point. It draws on research about couples, intellectual humility and how people predict their own feelings. You’ll find a plan for choosing which topics to discuss, a way to repair after a fight, and the signs that a “disagreement” has become something worse.

Health views now travel with political identity

Pew Research Center has tracked public confidence in scientists for years. In its October 2025 survey of 5,111 U.S. adults, 77% said they had at least a fair amount of confidence that scientists act in the public’s best interests³.

The split by party was wide: 90% of Democrats felt that way, compared with 65% of Republicans³. Republican confidence fell 22 percentage points between April 2020 and December 2021, the first long stretch of the COVID-19 pandemic. It has stayed near that level since³.

The gap goes beyond confidence. In Pew’s 2024 survey, 80% of Democrats but only 52% of Republicans described research scientists as honest⁴.

Those splits reached into homes. In a 2021 poll of 573 registered South Dakota voters, run by South Dakota State University, 65% said they had disagreed with friends, family or both about COVID-19 precautions⁵.

About 30% of those who clashed with family said it damaged the relationship. And 37% of those who clashed with friends said they had stopped socializing with at least one friend⁵. That was one state, one poll and a tense moment. Still, it shows how fast a health question can turn into a relationship question.

None of this means one side is right about everything. It means that when you talk about health with a relative, you may also be talking about loyalty, trust and belonging. Seeing that can lower the temperature.

Hearing the other side usually stings less than you expect

Many people dodge hard topics because they expect the talk to feel awful. Research suggests that prediction is often wrong.

In five studies with 2,455 people, Julia Minson and Todd Rogers of the Harvard Kennedy School, with Charles Dorison, asked partisans to predict how they would feel hearing the other side. One task was listening to a speech by an opposing-party senator. People expected to feel worse than they did⁶.

The reason was telling. People underestimated how much they would agree with what they heard⁶. When the researchers corrected those expectations, people’s avoidance of opposing views fell by 24% to 34%⁶.

Minson’s work found a second mismatch. In arguments, people mostly felt irritated or angry. Yet they assumed the other person felt far more anxiety and fear than they felt themselves. In fact, Minson notes, the other side probably feels the same irritation⁷.

For you, this suggests the dread before visiting your vaccine-wary brother or your supplement-skeptical daughter may be bigger than the visit itself. You likely share more than you think: wanting the kids to thrive, avoiding needless drugs, getting honest information.

Many disagreements never get solved, and that can be fine

Psychologist John Gottman has spent decades studying couples in a lab, recording how they argue and tracking what happens to their marriages. One of his best-known claims surprises people.

In a 2000 interview, Gottman said that when his team brought couples back four years after recording their arguments, 69% of the time they were still having the same disagreements, in much the same way⁸. Only about 31% of their problems had been solved, he said⁸.

Treat that number as Gottman’s own estimate. In the interview, he didn’t name the study or sample behind it, and we couldn’t check it against a published paper. The figure is widely repeated, but repetition isn’t confirmation.

In Gottman’s account, the happier couples weren’t the ones without lasting disagreements. They had adapted. They could joke about the issue, stay affectionate while disagreeing and calm things down. Other couples became gridlocked, repeating the same clash with no give⁸.

Gottman’s advice for gridlock is to look for the hope or ideal beneath each person’s position⁸.

Picture a couple who argue every month about spending $200 on supplements. Under one partner’s position may be a dream of feeling well and needing fewer prescriptions. Under the other’s may be a dream of financial security. Naming both dreams doesn’t settle the budget, but it changes the conversation.

Gottman’s long-term data also point to what does harm. In a study that followed 79 couples for 14 years, Gottman and Robert Levenson of the University of California, Berkeley, found that couples who divorced early tended to be volatile, with high levels of anger and negativity. Those who divorced later showed little emotion of any kind, good or bad⁹. The paper builds on their earlier finding that criticism, defensiveness, contempt and stonewalling predicted divorce⁹.

This research studied married couples, so applying it to siblings, parents and friends is an informed guess. But the central lesson travels well. The goal is to disagree without contempt and to repair afterward.

Intellectual humility keeps the door open

Intellectual humility means recognizing that your beliefs could be wrong. It isn’t low confidence or having no opinions. It’s knowing where your knowledge ends.

In four studies published in 2017, Duke University psychologist Mark Leary and colleagues found that people higher in intellectual humility were more open, more curious and less dogmatic¹⁰. They were also better at telling strong arguments from weak ones, even on everyday topics such as the benefits of flossing¹¹.

One finding matters for families. After reading an essay they disagreed with, less humble people rated the writer as less moral, less honest, less competent and less warm. More humble people were less likely to judge the writer’s character by the writer’s views¹¹.

The trait didn’t belong to one camp. Leary’s team found essentially no difference in intellectual humility between liberals and conservatives, or between religious and nonreligious people¹¹.

Can humility grow? In 2018, psychologists Tenelle Porter and Karina Schumann reported four studies. More humble people showed more interest in learning the other side’s view and chose to read more opposing arguments¹². In a final experiment, reminding people that intelligence can grow made them more humble, which in turn made them more open to opposing views¹².

These findings are early. Most of the disagreements tested were imagined, and all the participants lived in the United States¹³.

Natural health already prizes this kind of humility

Natural health at its best rests on close attention: to your body, to how a food or an herb affects you, to what changes over weeks and seasons. That habit of observing before concluding is close kin to intellectual humility.

You can turn the same curiosity toward the people you love. Ask how they came to their view. Notice what they’re trying to protect. You can hold your values firmly and still say, “I could be wrong about some of this,” which is what any careful observer says.

Relationships are also part of health, as basic as food and sleep. Keeping a sister or an old friend in your life despite a dispute about flu shots or fasting is its own form of self-care.

A relationship-first plan

Use this plan with anyone you want to keep close. It works whether you’re the one with the unusual view or the one worried about it.

Step 1: Say what matters more. Try: “I care more about us than about settling this.” Saying it out loud tells the other person you’re not recruiting them.

Step 2: Sort your topics. Not every subject needs the same rules. Use the table below to decide which topics flow freely and which need an agreement.

Zone	Examples	How to handle it
Green: shared ground	Cooking, walks, gardening, the kids’ games	Talk freely. This is where goodwill is built.
Yellow: by agreement	A new diet, supplements, a practitioner you like	Ask first, talk one on one, and keep it short.
Red: paused for now	Topics that have led to shouting or weeks of silence	Agree to set it aside. Return only for a real decision, perhaps with a counselor.
Shared decisions	A child’s care, household money, an aging parent’s treatment	These can’t be skipped. Decide together, with a neutral clinician or advisor if needed.

Step 3: Make a topic agreement. Propose it during a calm moment, not mid-argument. For example: “Let’s keep vaccines out of family dinners. If either of us needs to talk about it, we’ll ask first and do it privately.”

Step 4: Ask one curious question before you share your view. “What got you interested in that?” or “What worries you most?” People in the Harvard studies underestimated how much they agreed with opponents⁶. A question helps you find that overlap.

Step 5: Agree on a pause word. Pick a phrase either of you can use, such as “Let’s park it.” When one person says it, both stop, no hard feelings.

Step 6: Remember the whole person. Before a visit, list three things you value about them that have nothing to do with health. The person who rejects your remedies may also be the one who drove you to the hospital at 2 a.m.

How to repair after an argument

Every close relationship has fights. Gottman argues that the couples who do well aren’t the ones who never fight, but the ones who repair and recover⁸. These steps adapt that idea for any relationship.

1. Cool down first. Wait until you can speak without heat. A short note helps: “I didn’t like how that went. Can we talk tomorrow?”
2. Own your part, and only yours. “I got sarcastic about your doctor. That wasn’t fair.”
3. Show you heard them. Sum up their concern in words they would accept: “You’re worried I’m spending money on things that don’t work.”
4. Restate the relationship. “I don’t need you to agree with me. I want us to be OK.”
5. Agree on one change. Move the topic to the yellow or red zone, or set a time limit for next time.

This is a short script for a phone call the day after a holiday blowup: “I’m sorry I pushed so hard yesterday. I still see this differently than you do, and that’s OK. I’d rather we stick to the garden and the grandkids at dinner. Can we try that?”

What the evidence says

These ratings use our four-level evidence scale. Most of the research tested couples or political topics, not family arguments about health.

Claim	Evidence rating	What the research shows
Hearing the other side feels as bad as you expect	Evidence says no	In five studies, people overestimated how bad hearing opponents would feel6.
Correcting your expectations makes you less likely to avoid the other side	Promising but early	Five studies of 2,455 people; tested on politics6.
Intellectual humility keeps disagreements more open	Promising but early	Linked to openness and less character-judging; one experiment raised it1012.
Couples can thrive while living with unsolved differences	Promising but early	Rests largely on Gottman’s own account of his follow-ups (the 69% figure), plus long-term lab studies of married couples89.
Contempt and control are harmless parts of disagreeing	Evidence says no, or unsafe	Contempt predicted divorce in Gottman’s earlier work, and HHS lists control and put-downs as signs of abuse914.

When it isn’t a disagreement anymore

Two people can disagree about fluoride, fasting or flu shots and still treat each other well. Some behavior, though, is not about viewpoints at all.

The federal Office on Women’s Health lists warning signs of abuse in a relationship. They include controlling your money, your use of medicines or your birth control, and making everyday decisions for you, such as what you eat¹⁴. Putting down your intelligence, humiliating you in front of others and keeping you from seeing friends or family are also on the list¹⁴.

That matters in health disputes. A partner who says “I don’t trust that supplement” is disagreeing. A partner who throws out your medicine, forbids your doctor visits or mocks you in front of the kids is controlling you.

If that sounds familiar, you can call the abuse hotline listed by the Office on Women’s Health, 800-799-7233¹⁴. If you’re in danger right now, call 911. A licensed couples or family therapist can also help when disagreements keep turning into fights.

Watch your own side, too. If you catch yourself mocking a relative’s sources or treating their view as proof they aren’t smart, that’s the contempt the research warns about. Step back and try again later.

Questions readers ask

The bottom line

Health views now carry some of the same identity weight as politics, and research shows that kind of divide can shorten family gatherings and strain friendships. Yet many lasting disagreements in close relationships never get resolved, Gottman says, and the relationships that thrive learn to live with them.

Expect the conversation to sting less than you fear, stay humble about what you know, sort your topics, and repair after hard moments. Hold firm on one line: disagreement is normal, but contempt and control are not.

Related reading

• What helps in a family health argument, since facts alone rarely win
• People come to wellness groups for answers and stay for belonging
• How medical decisions are supposed to get made with you
• What a peer who’s been there can do that a clinician can’t

Sources

1. Chen MK, Rohla R. “The Effect of Partisanship and Political Advertising on Close Family Ties.” Science, 2018 (preprint version). arxiv.org
2. Washington State University. “Another cost of 2016 Election: Shorter Thanksgiving visits.” WSU News, 2018. news.wsu.edu
3. Pew Research Center. “Americans’ confidence in scientists.” Pew Research Center, 2026 (survey conducted Oct. 20–26, 2025; methodology at pewresearch.org). pewresearch.org
4. Pew Research Center. “Public Trust in Scientists and Views on Their Role in Policymaking.” Pew Research Center, 2024. pewresearch.org
5. South Dakota State University. “Disagreements over COVID-19 prevention measures strain relationships with friends and family” (SDSU Poll). SDSU News, 2021.
6. Dorison CA, Minson JA, Rogers T. “Selective exposure partly relies on faulty affective forecasts.” Cognition, 2019. hks.harvard.edu
7. Harvard Kennedy School. “Just Listen” (on research by Julia Minson). Harvard Kennedy School Magazine, 2020. hks.harvard.edu
8. Wyatt RC. “John Gottman on Couples Therapy” (interview). Psychotherapy.net, 2000.
9. Gottman JM, Levenson RW. “A two-factor model for predicting when a couple will divorce: Exploratory analyses using 14-year longitudinal data.” Family Process, 2002. bpl.studentorg.berkeley.edu
10. Leary MR, Diebels KJ, Davisson EK, et al. “Cognitive and Interpersonal Features of Intellectual Humility.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2017. scholars.duke.edu
11. Duke University. “For A Modest Personality Trait, ‘Intellectual Humility’ Packs A Punch.” Duke Today, 2017. today.duke.edu
12. Porter T, Schumann K. “Intellectual humility and openness to the opposing view.” Self and Identity, 2018. researchwithrowan.com
13. Jarrett C. “Something we could use a little more of” (on Porter and Schumann’s intellectual humility studies). British Psychological Society Research Digest, 2018. bps.org.uk
14. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office on Women’s Health. “Signs of abuse.” Updated 2025. womenshealth.gov