Rachel Hartman et al. — Interventions to Reduce Partisan Animosity

24 published claims from this book.

• Common ingroup identity interventions fade while community-based shared identities endure
• Community-based common identities may last where national identity priming fades.
• Correcting misperceptions reduces partisan animosity across at least 26 countries.
• Deeper-engagement interventions likely reduce partisan animosity more durably.
• Depolarization interventions can succeed while creating unintended harms.
• Effective depolarization interventions target thoughts, relationships, and institutions.
• Effective intergroup contact requires seven preconditions in political contexts.
• Few prejudice reduction experiments show strong evidence of widespread success.
• Identity-based depolarization interventions can carry unintended side effects
• Institutional incentives amplify partisan caricatures
• Media coverage of polarization itself can worsen polarization via descriptive norms
• Misperceived outgroup extremity drives real polarization through a self-fulfilling spiral.
• Observing warm interactions between political rivals reduces outgroup animosity
• Participant preparation is a prerequisite for depolarization interventions to work
• Partisan animosity is asymmetrically driven by rising outgroup dislike rather than fading ingroup loyalty.
• Partisans across many countries exaggerate outgroup hostility toward their ingroup
• Partisans hold systematic misperceptions that exaggerate their opponents’ extremism and hostility.
• Partisans massively overestimate disliked traits in the opposing party
• Perceived ideological extremity of outgroups drives a self-reinforcing cycle of polarization
• Platform incentives structurally favor anger over kindness toward outgroups
• Public lamenting of polarization may itself deepen partisan animosity.
• Reducing partisan animosity will not suppress policy activism if policy disagreement remains legitimate.
• Researchers and practitioners hold complementary but poorly aligned intervention incentives
• Unprepared intergroup contact can backfire and worsen polarization.