Depolarization and Its Discontents: Partisan Animosity and Unintended Outcomes

• In Event: Experimental Research on Partisan Polarisation and Misinformation

Abstract

Partisan animosity in the US has grown dramatically in recent years. This has been matched by concomitant growth in interventions aimed at reducing partisan animosity as well as potentially associated phenomena like diminished support for democratic norms. While many interventions successfully reduce partisan animosity, at least in the short-term, they often do not consider the potential for adverse or unintended consequences to result. One primary adverse consequence is conflict-avoidance. In order to reduce any signs of overt animosity, these interventions might unintentionally prompt participants to abandon other normatively desirable values like confronting racism or countering misinformation. Conflict-avoidance has an especially significant resonance in the United States context given a national history of prioritizing cross-partisan harmony over racial equality. By way of a notorious example, the “golden age of bipartisanship” in the decades following World War II was made possible by an alliance between southern Democrats and midwestern Republicans united in their opposition to civil rights.

This paper seeks to elucidate these unintended consequences in the context of successful online depolarization workshops implemented by Braver Angels. Two distinct mechanisms of depolarization were employed: intergroup contact and in-group policing. The workshops were designed to balance durability and scalability: each workshop could accommodate more than 100 participants and lasted roughly two hours—much longer than the “light touch” interventions that have become popular in prejudice reduction research, but much shorter than other workshops that have been shown to reduce partisan animosity. We test the effects of the workshops using a combination of attitudinal and behavioral outcomes measured on average one month after the workshops were completed, then again more than six months later. Participants entered these workshops through either a mass email sent to a large nationwide sample of voters (L2) or Braver Angels’ internal listserv (BA).

The workshops reduced partisan animosity, but only among the L2 participants who were unfamiliar with Braver Angels’ philosophy, having entered through the nationwide voter database. Additionally, and more troublingly, we find that the workshops diminished L2 participants’ willingness to counter misinformation and racially insensitive language when doing so would require potentially contentious interactions with out-partisans. Also troublingly, we find that while the workshops’ effects on partisan animosity among L2 participants decayed over time, the effects on willingness to counter misinformation did not, and if anything became stronger. This apparent adverse consequence of the workshops seems to be driven by a heightened aversion to conflict rather than a diminished sensitivity to racism and misinformation per se. We offer a discussion of the complex normative implications of these results and join a growing call for research on partisan animus-reduction to thoughtfully consider negative and unintended consequences.

Authors

• Christopher Woods, Brown University

• Robert A. Blair, Brown University

• Jessica Gottlieb, University of Houston

• Marie Schenk, Lehigh University