Most Americans want to connect with others who are different. So why don’t they?

I used to love to hitchhike, back when it was respectable, common, and seemed safe, at least to a six-foot tall, young, white guy. What I loved was that it was an invitation not just into someone’s car, but into someone’s life.

People didn’t tend to pick up a hitchhiker unless they were feeling generous and talkative. I once crossed the country from Montana to Maryland in three days, spending hours getting to know people I would never have met any other way. A firefighter told me how he and his wife had adopted and raised children with Down’s Syndrome because they loved seeing the kids’ delight in learning things other kids took for granted, like tying their shoes. 

A female executive spent an hour showing me around her rural hometown as she explained how she gave up a soaring career and the big city because she missed family, friends, and a sense of belonging. A trucker told me of his lonely life on the road.

We have lost many of the ways we once felt invited into other lives, according to new research by the group More in Common. The good news is that 56% of Americans say they want to connect with people who are different. 66% say they believe they can learn something valuable that way. So why don’t they do it?

The top reason, cited by more than a quarter of people, is that they don’t have the opportunity. While some say it just isn’t important to them, many express fear – fear that others won’t be interested, won’t like or understand them, or might be offended by what they say. 

“People want to come together and focus on what unites them, not what divides them,” says Daniel Yudkin, a senior advisor at More in Common who co-wrote the report. “They want to work shoulder to shoulder with each other to make their communities better.”

If there was ever a clear call to be the weaver in your community, the person who brings folks together around what we share and lowers the fear, this is it. 74% of those polled said they were most interested in working together to achieve a goal that would improve their community. The last thing people say they want to talk about, especially with someone from a different political camp, is their tensions.

When journalist and author David Brooks started Weave seven years ago, he did it because he saw disconnection and distrust as a growing cultural problem that kept America from solving its social problems. He believed weavers were the force that could change our culture, by teaching us a new way of showing up in the world. More in Common’s research agrees.

Yudkin’s group found the one factor that most strongly increases someone’s interest in connecting with others is if their community has a social norm that makes connecting a shared value. “Simply put, when individuals believe that others in their community value (and engage) across lines of difference, they are more likely to show interest in doing so themselves.”

The study has many more interesting, and subtle, findings that help explain what keeps people from weaving and how we might convince others to become weavers. You can learn more and download the full report here. 

Perhaps the most promising finding of all is the simplest and perhaps most obvious – something weavers have known all along. Connection experiences can build on themselves in a reinforcing cycle. 

Researchers found the more people have an opportunity to connect, the more interested they are in connecting. So weavers truly can change American culture from the bottom up, just by doing what they do naturally. Connecting us.

Michael Skoler, Weave’s former Sr. Director, Communications & Strategy