Megastudy Testing Interventions to Strengthen Democratic Attitudes

Deep partisan conflict in the mass public threatens the stability of American democracy. We conducted a megastudy of American partisans (n = 32,059) testing 25 interventions designed by academics and practitioners to reduce partisan animosity and anti-democratic attitudes.

We find that nearly every intervention reduced partisan animosity, most strongly when highlighting sympathetic outparty exemplars. In contrast to concerns about the intractability of anti-democratic attitudes, we also identify interventions that successfully reduced support for undemocratic practices and partisan violence, most strongly when correcting misperceptions of the views of outpartisans. Furthermore, factor analysis and patterns of intervention effect sizes provide convergent evidence for limited overlap between these sets of outcomes, suggesting that, contrary to popular belief, distinct psychologies underlie partisan animosity versus support for undemocratic practices and partisan violence. Taken together, our findings provide a toolkit of promising strategies for practitioners and shed new theoretical light on challenges facing American democracy.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Robb Willer is a professor of sociology, psychology (by courtesy), and organizational behavior (by courtesy) at Stanford University. He is the director of the Polarization and Social Change Lab and the co-Director of the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.