Interacting as Equals: Contact Can Promote Tolerance among Opposing Partisans

• In Event: Putting Social Identities to Work for Democracy

Abstract

In many contemporary democracies, political polarization increasingly involves deep-seated intolerance of opposing partisans. The decades-old contact hypothesis suggests that cross-partisan interactions might reduce intolerance if individuals interact with equal social status. We test this idea by implementing collaborative contact between over one thousand pairs of citizens with opposing political sympathies, using the online medium to credibly randomize participants’ relative social status within the interaction. Interacting as equals enhanced tolerant behaviors towards political opponents three weeks after contact, compared to interacting under conditions of inequality or to not interacting. These results demonstrate that a simple, scalable intervention that puts people on equal footing can reduce political polarization and make online contact into a prosocial force.

Authors

• Kenneth F. Greene, University of Texas at Austin

• Erin Rossiter, University of Notre Dame

• Enrique Seira, ITAM

• Alberto Simpser, Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico