A New Solution to Polarized Disagreement: Priming a Sense of Common Humanity

• In Event: Polarization: Causes, Consequences and Remedies

Abstract

Today’s polarization has made it nearly impossible for people to talk to those they disagree with (e.g., Iyengar et al., 2019; Marchal, 2021). In this study, I take a new approach to this problem by considering whether priming people to think of the “common humanity” (Neff & Pommier, 2013) among people could help them to perceive of their political outgroup more favorably. Common humanity involves recognizing that it is a common human experience to feel down or upset about one's own failings (Neff & Pommier, 2013). Common humanity is one of three sub-concepts of self-compassion, which has been linked to compassion for others (Neff & Pommier, 2013).
This study has three parts. First, I surveyed a representative sample of the U.S. adult population (n = 1,010) through NORC’s AmeriSpeak Panel to understand whether common humanity was correlated with attitudes toward political outgroups. Findings of an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis showed that the more of a sense of common humanity people had, the significantly more likely they were to feel they had the skills to develop relationships with outgroup members (β = 0.12, p = .001).
The second part was an experiment that tested whether a sense of common humanity could be induced as a means of helping people have more positive attitudes toward those with whom they disagree. I fielded a four-condition, single-level experiment (n = 682) with participants obtained through CloudResearch, which provides higher-quality data using Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) participants by screening out people with suspicious geo-locations. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three self-compassion inductions—priming common humanity, mindfulness, or self-kindness—or to a control condition. In all the conditions, participants were prompted to think about a “painful or difficult situation involving politics” and write it, but the conditions varied in terms of the specific approach that was primed. The script for the inductions was adapted from a protocol validated by Neff et al. (2020).The common humanity prompt encouraged people to “consider that experiencing difficult situations is a part of being human, and that you are not alone.” The mindfulness prompt suggested people “notice your feelings and see if you can validate your attitude of acceptance and non-judgment.” The self-kindness prompt primed them to “write any words of support, encouragement, and kindness to yourself that would be helpful to hear right now.” In the control condition, they were told to describe the difficult situation in detail. Results showed that the common humanity induction made people feel significantly more positive toward their political outgroup, compared to the control, [F (3, 671) = 4.06, p = .01, η2 = 0.02]. Sidak post hoc tests showed that participants exposed to the common humanity induction had significantly more positive attitudes toward their outgroup (M = 3.43, SE = 0.12) than those exposed to the control condition (M = 2.84, SE = 0.12, p = .01). The other two inductions produce no significant effects. Findings were robust regardless of whether participants aligned with Republican or Democrat beliefs, as a tested interaction was not significant, [F (3, 671) = 2.30, p = .08, η2 = 0.01].
The third part of the study, which is under way, will test whether memes on Facebook could be used to prime people to think in a common humanity fashion and, as a result, improve people’s perceptions toward the outgroup. Two interactive replicas of working Facebook feeds were created as the stimuli for the experiment. The feeds have a mix of memes and generic posts (e.g., posts asking for book recommendations or celebrating birthdays). They are identical except in one feed—the experiment condition—the memes prime a sense of common humanity and in the other—the control condition—they do not. For example, a meme in the common humanity conditions reads “If you’re struggling tonight, please know you’re not alone. You matter very much. Don’t give up.” I expect to field this experiment in early February, testing whether the experimental condition makes people feel a greater sense of common humanity and, as a result, increases their positive attitudes toward their political outgroup.
References
Iyengar, S., Lelkes, Y., Levendusky, M., Malhorta, N., & Westwood, S.J. (2019). The origins and consequences of affective polarization in the United States, Annual Review of Political Science, 22(1), 129–46.
Marchal, N. (2021). “Be Nice or Leave Me Alone”: An Intergroup Perspective on Affective Polarization in Online Political Discussions. Communication Research, Advance online publication.
Neff, K. D., & Pommier, E. (2013). The relationship between self-compassion and other-focused concern among college undergraduates, community adults, and practicing meditators. Self and Identity, 12(2), 160–176.
Neff, K. D., Tóth-Király, I., Knox, M., Kuchar, A. & Davidson, O. (2021). The development and validation of the State Self-Compassion Scale (long and short form). Mindfulness, 12, 121-140.

Author

• Gina M. Masullo, University of Texas at Austin