A Text-Based Assessment of the Mechanisms of Contact

• In Event: New Approaches for Prejudice Reduction and Depolarization

Abstract

Political scientists are drawing increased attention toward interventions to reduce affective polarization, whereby American partisans increasingly dislike and distrust other Americans who belong to the opposite political party. One proposed antidote to affective polarization is engaging in interpersonal conversations with opposing party members as a form of intergroup contact. However, the mechanisms through which these conversations may improve affective polarization remain unclear. In particular, political scientists have examined empathy as a key mechanism underlying the effects of intergroup contact, but previous work has focused on the role of dispositional empathy or has identified how confederate canvassers may induce empathy as a pathway to changing outgroup attitudes. Thus, it remains unclear what role empathy may play during everyday conversations and amongst interlocutors untrained in giving or eliciting empathetic responses. Using a novel dataset of hundreds of online conversation transcripts and measures of participants' post-conversation levels of affective polarization, I assess whether empathy expressed during a conversation with an opposing party member mediates the effect of conversation as a form of inter-partisan contact. Contact itself is often difficult for researchers to observe (e.g., interactions amongst students in a classroom); therefore, existing work examining the mechanisms of contact is largely based on survey self-reports. By examining the nature and content of conversations themselves, I provide a unique insight into the processes underlying the potentially depolarizing effects of this form of contact.

Author

• Erin Rossiter