Counseling Psychology and Polarization: Assessing the Better Angels Workshops

• In Event: Seeking Solutions to Polarization: The United States in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

Can marriage therapy help polarized citizens? In our paper, we perform an impact evaluation of the Red-Blue Workshop, one of the better-known national programs of the Better Angels foundation. The R-B Workshop is a perspective-taking exercise building on Contact Theory from social psychology and best practices in counseling psychology (especially marriage therapy), in which small groups of political conservatives and liberals meet to describe and critique themselves in front of each other. Since 2016, Better Angels has held more than 250 of these events across the United States; however, their impact has been gauged only through a post-test focusing on respondents’ feelings about the workshop. To better evaluate the workshop, we designed a new pre- and post-test using standard measures of affective polarization and political ideology, then had these administered to participants in several states. The R-B Workshops are not designed to change participants’ issue positions, and indeed we find that these do not shift as a result of participation. But the R-B workshop is designed to reduce prejudice, and we find that participation is associated with a significant decline in affective polarization and a rise in social engagement. Somewhat more surprising (since this is not an intended consequence of the program), we also find that participation is associated with movement in ideological self-placement towards the moderate middle, likely as a result of the perspective that workshop participants gain about the issue positions of their fellow citizens.

Authors

• Eliza Tanner Hawkins, Brigham Young University

• Joshua Ronald Gubler, Brigham Young University

• Kirk A. Hawkins, Brigham Young University

• Christopher F. Karpowitz, Brigham Young University