Editor’s summary
Scholars and the public have raised concerns about the recent erosion of US democratic values, which has been exacerbated by hostility between rival political groups (partisan animosity) and acceptance of violent or nondemocratic styles of political engagement (antidemocratic attitudes). Voelkel et al. conducted large-scale field experiments with 25 interventions designed to decrease American partisan animosity and antidemocratic attitudes (see the Policy Forum by Nyhan and Titiunik). Most interventions reduced partisan animosity when they established common ground among partisans. However, reducing partisan animosity did not necessarily decrease support for political violence or nondemocratic practices. Therefore, partisan animosity may be more conceptually distinct than previously thought. —Ekeoma Uzogara
Structured Abstract
INTRODUCTION
Scholars, practitioners, and politicians have raised concerns about deepening partisan divisions and the health of American democracy. However, it remains unclear what strategies are most efficacious in reducing antidemocratic attitudes and partisan animosity in the American mass public. We tested the effects of 25 crowdsourced treatments on antidemocratic attitudes and partisan animosity. Moreover, we examine whether the same treatments were similarly impactful across different outcomes, or whether different treatments are needed to meaningfully reduce different outcomes.
RATIONALE
Understanding what general strategies efficaciously reduce antidemocratic attitudes and/or partisan animosity can support the development of effective intervention on these outcomes. We issued an open call to academics and practitioners, who submitted 252 ideas for treatments designed to reduce partisan animosity, support for undemocratic practices, and/or support for partisan violence. Working with an expert panel of researchers and practitioners, we selected 25 treatments to test, evaluating their effects in an online survey experiment (n = 32,059 participants) with a sample quota-matched to be representative of the population of Democrats and Republicans in the US on key demographics.
RESULTS
In preregistered analyses, we found that 23 of the 25 treatments significantly reduced partisan animosity [by up to 10.5 percentage points (pp)], six treatments significantly reduced support for undemocratic practices (by up to 5.8 pp), and five treatments significantly reduced support for partisan violence (by up to 2.8 pp). Efficacious strategies for reducing partisan animosity included highlighting sympathetic, politically dissimilar individuals and emphasizing common identities. Efficacious strategies for reducing support for undemocratic practices included correcting misperceptions of rival partisans’ views and highlighting the risk of democratic collapse. Efficacious strategies for reducing support for partisan violence included correcting misperceptions of rival partisans’ views and endorsements of democratic principles by political elites. Additionally, we find that several treatments reduced other attitudes that are potentially problematic for healthy democratic functioning—support for undemocratic candidates, opposition to bipartisan cooperation, social distrust, social distance, and biased evaluation of politicized facts. Analysis of patterns of covariance among 200 treatment effects suggests that some antidemocratic attitudes—support for undemocratic practices and partisan violence, in particular—are clearly distinct from partisan animosity. Yet, treatments that reduced partisan animosity also tended to reduce social distrust; social distance; opposition to bipartisan cooperation; biased evaluation of politicized facts; and, notably, support for undemocratic candidates.
CONCLUSION
We find that many treatments reduce partisan animosity. Additionally, several treatments reduced antidemocratic attitudes, filling an important gap in a literature that has focused almost exclusively on reducing partisan animosity. Further, we find that, in general, different treatments were most efficacious in reducing partisan animosity versus antidemocratic attitudes, which indicates that partisan animosity is not a unifying construct underpinning the psychology of polarization and democracy. Yet, we also find that partisan animosity is important because it is linked to a number of polarization-related constructs and to a critical threat to democratic societies—Americans’ willingness to support undemocratic candidates.
Megastudy identifies many efficacious treatments that reduce partisan animosity and/or antidemocratic attitudes.
Abstract
Scholars warn that partisan divisions in the mass public threaten the health of American democracy. We conducted a megastudy (n = 32,059 participants) testing 25 treatments designed by academics and practitioners to reduce Americans’ partisan animosity and antidemocratic attitudes. We find that many treatments reduced partisan animosity, most strongly by highlighting relatable sympathetic individuals with different political beliefs or by emphasizing common identities shared by rival partisans. We also identify several treatments that reduced support for undemocratic practices—most strongly by correcting misperceptions of rival partisans’ views or highlighting the threat of democratic collapse—which shows that antidemocratic attitudes are not intractable. Taken together, the study’s findings identify promising general strategies for reducing partisan division and improving democratic attitudes, shedding theoretical light on challenges facing American democracy.