Reducing Affective Polarization through Common Humanity and Perspective-Taking

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

Abstract

This paper employs a large online survey experiment in the United States to test social psychology mechanisms of reducing partisan affective polarization that harms democracy. The strengthening of affective or identity-based political polarization is theorized to harm democracy through the intergroup conflict dynamics it provokes: the Us Vs. Them rhetoric of polarizing electoral strategies contributes to affective polarization with sympathy toward the in-party and antipathy toward the out-party. Deepening affective polarization, in the extreme, produces perceptions of the policies and political project of the “Other” as an existential threat and incentivizes violations of democratic norms.
This experiment employs two mechanisms previously identified in social psychology to reduce out-group bias among social groups to determine if they also reduce the out-party dislike and stereotyping characteristic of partisan affective polarization: stimulating a sense of common humanity as a superordinate identity, and stimulating perspective-taking. Two national pilot survey experiments (n=600) in the U.S. showed a positive reduction in measures of affective polarization from both of the treatments (elaboration tasks in response to scenarios). A large (n=3000) national survey experiment is planned for January 2020 on Luc.id, testing each of these mechanisms as well as conditioning variables of partisan social identity and group status loss perceptions.

Authors

• Jennifer McCoy, Georgia State University

• Levente Littvay, Central European University Foundation

• Gabor Simonovits, New York University