Misunderstand or Disagree

Often when discussing things in life with another the following occurs:

A: X is the truth
B: I disagree with your theory of X is the truth
A: You just don’t understand, if you understood you would agree that X is the truth
B: I disagree for these reasons…
A: No, you misunderstand
B: I do not misunderstand your theory of X is the truth, I just disagree
A: No! You misunderstand. If you understood you would agree with me.

What is the psychological process that allows this sort of discussion to occur?

One or both of A/B is distorting reality as both of them cannot be correct.

I found this article interesting (and felt it was true but I could be wrong):
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/pieces-mind/201208/few-the-many-ways-we-distort-reality

A few of the Many Ways we Distort Reality

1. How you focus your attention affects your perceptions.
2. Most people don’t like uncertainty so they classify people and experiences into categories.
3. Your first perception affects your later perceptions and decisions.
4. If you imagine an event occurring, your view of the likelihood of that event actually occurring increases.
5. You don’t see all that happens right in front of your eyes.
6. Sometimes making a decision that you aren’t the kind of person who does something helps you stop doing that behavior.
7. When you’re in a negative mood you tend to expect more negative outcomes and see yourself and others more negatively.
8. Sometimes you let myths govern your responses.
9. It’s really difficult to have the whole truth.
10. You reconstruct your memories.

There’s a practical set of processes involved before we even get to psychological issues (not that these easily separated).
We use language in idiosyncratic ways - semantics, for example, varies.
We have different experiences (of the same things, of different things, if one wants to put it in terms that fit with realist metaphysics).

So there are instances where both are correct.

In a classic culture clash, two people might radically mininterpret the context and this might lead to violence.
Each could be right.

Every encounter is to some degree a culture clash.

But in the conversation you mention the parties are not going into their terms and experiences. They are staying at the I am right, you are wrong level, so no progress can be made. They are not unraveling potential semantic and experiential differences.

I am not suggesting that if one does this, all problems go away, but without doing it you are down to what dogs do in a new encounter when they shift around for dominance. They are not having a discussion, those guys are not having a discussion.

Second note: there is a great optimism in both parties in that silly conversation. You are I are really alike and so if you actually focused on what I believe, learned it, you would realize you agree. But that’s just not the case. People want different things. People experience different things. And this is not simply cultural, it is down to the modes of life/experience people are capable of, situation in. And some people are, for example, terrible people. A psychopath sadist is never going to honestly agree about limits on his behavior. It’s not because he does not understand, he simply thinks morals are a straightjacket people all agree, out of bizarre custom, to wear. And empathy he will only see as guilt or hallucination.

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Though the same processes that lead to these outcomes are also extremely helpful and help us navigate reality and connect to it. And some people are better at these intuitive processes - not because they are positive (the slave in the South who thought things were fucked up was not distorting reality. And each of us is better at some types of intuitive assessment - which is often very quick - than other types.

Often very rational people - call’em left brain - denigrate these mental processes,w ithout realizing that they depend on them themselves AND someone who did not would be crippled.