Daniella Moyles and Dr Richard Hogan are set to present Dinner with the Enemy tonight on Virgin Media One at 9pm.
Over the course of the explosive series, dinner guests will join the table to discuss cultural hot topics, as well as moral and societal questions that reveal how we're all shaped by our cultures, experiences, and values.
To share his tips for getting along with people you have differing opinions from, Psychotherapist Dr Hogan joined Laura Fox on RTÉ 2FM.
"We mightn't have the skills - I've seen it myself, working with teenagers - there's a depletion in being able to deal with people with differing ideas," he says. "It's such an important thing, to be able to argue your side and to have the confidence to hear somebody else's point of view."
"I think we're very fearful of conflict," he continues, noting that social media has ushered us into our own corners of the internet, leading us to find echo chambers where everyone agrees with our own opinions.
As well as being able to argue our own points, Dr Hogan believes that people should have the ability to actively listen to differing opinions and keep their minds open.
"That's the problem with social media: we can just block people!" he laughs. "Even in our dating world, we're looking for absolute accurate details."
This narrow search for an exact experience prevents us from widening our perspectives and adapting to change or even welcoming new experiences.
"I think what's happened in recent times is that our belief systems, what we hold as our opinion, has become somehow intersected with our identity," says the Psychotherapist. "Therefore, if you hold a different idea to me about, say, Donald Trump, you're challenging my very identity, rather than sitting there and thinking, 'why would [this person] particularly like this person?"
According to Dr Hogan, actively listening to a person you don't agree with has become a lost skill - one that is leading to a chasm in communication.
"Those with differing opinions are not different; they're just opinions," he insists, suggesting that those with polar opposite views can still find a path to friendship.
"You can and you should," he suggests. "There are five big personality traits, and one of those is openness. The higher levels that you have of openness, the more optimal chance you have of bringing joy into your life because the more you restrict and reduce your life down to what is the same, the more your life is restricted to that prism, so you don't get to see the absolute multitude-ness of life."
"The more open you are, the more chance you have of listening to somebody," he says, noting that we should all be more willing to listen actively, apologise when we're wrong, and be open to changing our minds.
Listen back to Psychotherapist Dr Hogan's conversation with Laura Fox in full above.
