Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science / Revue canadienne des sciences du comportement, Vol 56(3), Jul 2024, 175-186; doi:10.1037/cbs0000379
We designed an intervention to teach people about false polarization and the concept of naïve realism, which involved a short educational video combined with an interactive exercise in which participants were shown that they had engaged in false polarization. Our goal was to examine if this intervention reduced political polarization of three types: extremity of attitude, disliking of political opponents, and perceptions of others as more extreme than those others really are. In two studies, one with Canadian undergraduate participants and the other with a nationwide all-ages sample in Canada, we found that the intervention reduced how extreme people perceived political opponents to be. The undergraduate sample study also found that the observed effects persisted at 3-week follow-up. In the undergraduate sample, but not the all-ages sample, we found that the intervention reduced perceptions that the other side is biased and immoral. In neither study did we find the intervention reduced attitude extremity or disliking of political opponents. We discuss the implications of these results for designing interventions to reduce political polarization. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)