We usually learn much more from people whose views we share than from people whose views contradict our own; disagreements can cause stress and inhibit learning.
My response:
For some people, a lot may be drawn from people whose views share with them; for others, in contrast, they tend to believe that they learn much more from people who disagrees with them. As far as I'm concerned, I'm in favor of the idea that we learn much more from people whose views contradict our own in that disagreements not only lead us to make further reflection on a specific problem and thus arrive at more accurate conclusions but also equip us with different and comprehensive perspectives of a matter.
In the first place, people who disagree with us effectively motivate us to meditate over a matter and help keeping ourselves away from curtness and hastily drawing a conclusion. They somewhat serve as a reminder of the saying "Look before you leap.", and through questioning and opposing, they seem objectively to assist us to comprehend the complexities of a problem or connotations of a term or saying, whether they or even ourselves are conscious of it or not. More important, after thinking thrice on the controversial matter, it is facile for us to find some fallacy and half-mature or even ill-grounded statements in our point of view, which may otherwise contribute to the total collapse of our standpoint. Consequently, we actually benefit from people who hold different views with us and they, it should be added, also benefit from us in the same way. This kind of reciprocal behavior is no rare thing in our daily life. In most western countries, the parliament is always a must required by the whole system of democratic constitution. The parliament in a sense provides a platform where politicians and government officials can sit around the same table in the hope of hearing what other people think and comment, from which everyone would benefit, especially the society as a whole and the people. It is through this way of putting a masses of dissident views together and exposing them in confrontations with each other that effective and comprehensive approaches can be ultimaly formed in every politician's brain which makes the final arrival at a consensus possible. Besides, in this process, the well-being of the whole society learns and benefits no less than any single individual.
In the second place, we can definitely gain more perspectives towards the same problem from people thinking differently from us. The bifurcation between people lies in the variant angles they look at things in most occasions and we may not conclude absolutely who is right and who is wrong. As a result of this kind of diversity and difference of people, we are expected to try to look at the same thing from a totally different point of view and thus are able to acquire surprisingly some new ideas. Why are currently so many debate competitions at different levels of educational administration and even junior high schools organize debating team? Why people always have inclinations to watch these televised debates? Because people can entertain more and moreover learn more from the new perspectives and new thoughts embraced by these different opinions. Without this characteristic, the debates, I believe, may not appeal to such a great number of people.
It is no denying, however, that undue disagreements and overemphasis on the power of different opinions may also result in stress and frustration. When people around us seldom agree with us, we are inclined to grow agitated and psychologically frustrated. Not that people are constantly showing an attitude of rejection, but that we gradually become diffident about ourselves for we are unable to gain agreements and recognition from the outside world. In fact, we do need people who agree with us.
In conclusion, taking all factors into account, I believe we are most likely to gain new and useful ideas from people holding different views with us. We can learn a lot more towards looking at things and addressing matters from these people than from those who just think alike as us. Yet, we are unwilling to live in a world without people who agree with us. We aren't expected to be alone.
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