It's called "courtesy" on the subway, but the analogous traits are "empathy" and "earnestness" in general discourse. My point was less about the specific trait

It's called "courtesy" on the subway, but the analogous traits are "empathy" and "earnestness" in general discourse. My point was less about the specific trait and more that often times we can encourage/evoke the traits we want to see in others by first developing and portraying them in ourselves. I guess I am looking at the grey area between someone being unfair to you and someone who is misunderstanding you. I think that trying to empathize and understand the "other" often results in finding out that someone isn't actually being "unfair" to us, but rather, is actually "misunderstanding" us. That working point can give way to deeper understanding in a conversation/venture that might have otherwise been discarded because of "irreconcilable differences."