Article Summary
Introduction
Much of the classic research on bigotry, discrimination, and intergroup bias finds that positive intergroup contact—that is, simply having positive interactions with members of the disliked group—can substantially reduce bias. These authors argue that affective polarization—the dislike many Americans feel toward members of the other political party—is a special case of intergroup bias, and that interparty contact should accordingly reduce affective polarization. In other words, people should feel less hostile toward members of the other party when they have positive contact with them.
The authors suggest that this interparty contact can take several forms. Direct contact like face-to-face conversations is rare between members of opposing parties, but people can also interact with members of the other party indirectly (e.g., by learning that a member of your own party is friends with a member of the other party), vicariously (e.g., by watching members of your own party and the other party interact), or even in their imaginations (e.g., by imagining a positive interaction with a member of the other party). Past work in intergroup bias suggests that direct positive contact is beneficial, but so are indirect, vicarious, and imagined contact; this article hypothesizes that all four methods will also reduce affective polarization. Not all contact is positive, of course, so the authors also investigate the effects of negative interparty contact.
The context of contact also matters. Simple positive contact is good, but intergroup bias is reduced most when people interact cooperatively toward a common goal or with a common identity (one that supersedes partisanship). As such, the authors argue that vicarious and imagined cooperative contact will reduce affective polarization more than simple positive contact. Psychologically, the authors suggest that these beneficial effects will be driven by reduced anxiety, enhanced empathy, and a greater sense of commonality with the other party.
Of course, people don’t only interact with the other party. When people interact with their own party, their partisanship is strengthened and they may become more biased against the other party. Thus, the authors suggest that in-party contact increases affective polarization.
Analytical Approach
The authors conduct three studies to test their expectations. In Study 1, they focus on the effects of direct and extended interparty contact. To do so, they recruit a sample of 755 Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. They ask each participant several questions about how many friends they have from the other party (capturing direct contact) and how many friends they have who themselves have friends in the other party (capturing extended contact). Then, they asked each participant to fill out standard measures of affective polarization including feeling thermometers toward the other party, perceived positive and negative stereotypical characteristics of the other party, and social distance from the other party (i.e, comfort at the prospect of interacting with or knowing members of the other party).
The authors also follow up on this with a smaller study of secondary data from Pew (labeled here as Study 1.5) focusing just on direct contact, this time with a nationally representative sample of Democrats and Republicans. This survey asks participants how many of their close friends are members of the other party, then how favorable or unfavorable their opinion is of the other party and how well each party represented their values.
In Study 2, the authors focus on the effects of vicarious contact, compare simple positive contact to cooperative and negative contact, and examine the psychological mechanisms that may explain contact’s beneficial effects. They conduct a survey experiment in which participants (all Democrats and Republicans) are randomly assigned to read one of four different mock news articles about a local cooking competition. Each article presents a different kind of vicarious contact. The first story shows the two contestants from different parties enjoying each other’s company (simple positive contact). The second shows the two contestants actively cooperating to win the competition (cooperative contact). The third shows the two contestants getting in an argument and being forcibly separated by competition organizers (negative contact). The fourth condition shows two contestants, but this time both contestants were from the participant’s own party, thus creating no vicarious interparty contact (control).
| Experimental Conditions in Druckman et al. 2019 | Civility | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Civil | Uncivil | ||
| Partisan Source | MSNBC | 1 | 2 |
| Fox News | 3 | 4 | |
Both before and after reading the mock news articles, participants are asked to report feelings toward both parties using feeling thermometers. After reading the stories, participants are asked how anxious and empathetic they feel, as well as how much they think they have in common with the other party. Finally, participants are asked to report their stereotypes and social distance from the other party as in Study 1.
In Study 3, the authors focus on the effects of imagined contact and evaluate the effects of contact with the ingroup (i.e., participants’ own party). They conduct a survey experiment in which participants (again, all Democrats and Republicans) are asked to imagine scenarios involving positive or cooperative contact with a member of the same party or a member of the other party. In the first, they imagine being seated at a restaurant and striking up a pleasant conversation with a stranger who is randomly either a member of the same party or the other party (positive contact). In the second scenario, they imagine entering a cooking competition, being paired up with a stranger who is randomly either a member of the same party or a member of the other party, and cooperating with the stranger to win the competition (cooperative contact). Finally, in the third scenario, participants are asked to imagine a similar situation as the restaurant in the first scenario but with no information about the stranger’s partisanship (control). With the first two scenarios each having an in-party and out-party variant, that makes four experimental conditions plus a fifth control condition.
| Experimental Conditions in Druckman et al. 2019 | Civility | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Civil | Uncivil | ||
| Partisan Source | MSNBC | 1 | 2 |
| Fox News | 3 | 4 | |
The measures used in this study are the same as in Study 3. Participants are asked their feelings about out-party supporters (both before and after the imagined scenarios), their anxiety, empathy, feelings of commonality with the other party, and their stereotypes and social distance from the other party.
Main Findings
Overall, this study paints a complex picture of interparty contact. Study 1 clearly shows that direct and extended contact are correlated with lower affective polarization, but these results are only correlational, not causal. Study 2 finds that vicarious cooperative contact causally reduced affective polarization, but simple positive contact did not. Study 3 finds no direct evidence that imagined contact with out-party members is beneficial or that imagined contact with in-party members is harmful. However, in both Study 2 and Study 3, the authors argue that vicarious and imagined cooperative contact may be able to reduce affective polarization by increasing perceived commonality with the other party.
In Study 1, the authors find support for the idea that direct and extended interparty contact are negatively correlated with affective polarization. They find that people with more direct contact with out-party supporters tend to be less affectively polarized. The same was true for extended contact via in-party friends with their own out-party friends. In Study 1.5 with the nationally representative Pew data, they find essentially the same pattern. People with more out-party friends have more favorable opinions of the out-party, think it represents their values better, and are less likely to report feeling their friendship would be strained if their friend voted for the other party’s candidate in 2016.
In Study 2, the authors find mixed evidence regarding the effects of vicarious contact. Vicarious positive contact did not substantially reduce affective polarization. Vicarious cooperative contact did, but the difference between the two conditions was not itself significant. The authors find no evidence that positive or cooperative vicarious contact decreased anxiety or increased empathy, although both increased perceived commonality with the other party. The authors suggest that this mediates the effects of positive and cooperative vicarious contact on affective polarization, although they note that mediation analyses typically cannot provide direct evidence of causality.
In Study 3, the authors find no evidence of beneficial effects of imagined interparty contact (either positive or cooperative) or harmful effects of imagined in-party contact. As in Study 2, they find some evidence that the imagined cooperative contact with the out-party increased perceived commonality with the other party, and they again argue that this mediates the effects of imagined cooperative contact on affective polarization.
Implications
This study extends a classic literature in psychology on intergroup contact, adapting it to the context of U.S. party politics. The results show that interparty contact may have promise as a method for reducing affective polarization. This contact needn’t be face-to-face. Even reading about interactions between members of opposing parties can reduce affective polarization. Given that most people in the U.S. have relatively few friends from the other party, this is an important finding. However, the type of contact clearly matters. Simple positive contact appears insufficient; opposing partisans need to actively cooperate for onlookers to experience benefits.
The authors also find no support for intuitions about the role of anxiety and empathy in intergroup contact. In both Studies 2 and 3, the experimental manipulations had essentially no effect on either anxiety or empathy. Rather, the authors argue that the manipulations shaped participants’ perceived commonality with the other party, which in turn reduced affective polarization. This interpretation is partially speculative given the limitations of mediation analyses, but the results nonetheless suggest that perceived commonality may be an important factor in shaping affective polarization. Future research will have to evaluate it further to be sure.
Questions left unanswered
The authors note that they measured affective polarization immediately after experimentally manipulating contact. As such, the effects they found may have been short lived rather than an enduring antidote to partisan animosity. This is true of many studies on affective polarization, and future work needs to take seriously the value of long-lasting interventions to reduce affective polarization.
The authors also note that their finding about perceived commonality functioning as a mediator between contact and affective polarization is somewhat circumspect. To be more confident about the causal role of perceived commonality, future work should adopt designs intended to directly manipulate this mediator.
Methods and Analysis
Was the study and its analyses pre-registered?: No
Did the study rely on proxy variables to measure polarization?: Yes
In Study 1.5, the nationally representative extension of study 1, they use three different proxies for affective polarization. Participants in this study were asked to report their opinion favorability toward each party (from mostly favorable to mostly unfavorable), how well they feel the parties represent their values (from very well to not at all), and whether it would put a strain on their friendship if a friend told them they had voted for the other party’s candidate in the 2016 election.
Were standard p-value thresholds used (p<.05 or 95% Confidence Intervals that don’t overlap zero)?: Yes
- Largest p-value presented as significant: 0.05
Were correlational results interpreted with causal language?: No
Limitations / Weaknesses
It is unclear why the authors’ expectations about emotional and psychological mechanisms (i.e., anxiety, empathy, and perceived commonality) are only relevant to vicarious and imagined contact. Their theoretical outline of these mechanisms suggests that they are not relevant to direct contact. Of course, the authors do not have access to data on the mechanisms in the context of direct contact, and they should not be faulted for not testing this component of the theory. Nonetheless, their theoretical argument could be clearer in this area.
As the authors set up their mediation analyses in Studies 2 and 3, they correctly note that most mediation analyses are unable to provide direct causal evidence that a treatment effect causes an outcome because of a particular mechanism. However, their discussion of the results is less circumspect and implies a clear causal direction. Readers should be cautious about overinterpreting the results regarding perceived commonality as a mechanism for the beneficial effects of inter-party contact.
Open Data & Analyses
Does the article make the replication data publicly available?: Yes
Does the article make the replication analysis scripts publicly available?: No
Article Citation
Wojcieszak, M., & Warner, B. R. (2020). Can interparty contact reduce affective polarization? A systematic test of different forms of intergroup contact. Political Communication, 37(6), 789–811. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2020.1760406
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@article{doi:10.1080/10584609.2020.1760406,
author = {Magdalena Wojcieszak and Benjamin R. Warner},
title = {Can Interparty Contact Reduce Affective Polarization? A Systematic Test of Different Forms of Intergroup Contact},
journal = {Political Communication},
volume = {37},
number = {6},
pages = {789-811},
year = {2020},
publisher = {Routledge},
doi = {10.1080/10584609.2020.1760406},
URL = {https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2020.1760406},
eprint = {https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2020.1760406}
}