Fulcrum Democracy Forum: Maxine Rich

As we face ever-growing partisan polarization in American society, the need for large-scale action becomes increasingly urgent. As James Coan and I have written about in the Fulcrum during my time at More Like US, there are approaches grounded in a significant body of social psychological research that can help address this rapidly growing problem, namely different variations of social contact theory, especially vicarious contact. Until recently, much of the research and thus much of the basis for our articles has been focused on applying social contact theory to other problems facing society: prejudice against members of the LGBTQ community, individuals with autism, and immigrant schoolchildren, among other examples.

It was therefore exciting when last fall I saw the publication of an article in Political Science Research and Methods titled "Content That's as Good as Contact?: Vicarious Intergroup Contact and the Promise of Depolarization at Scale." The study, conducted in 2022 in conjunction with YouGov, finally attempted to measure the effectiveness of indirect contact as a path to depolarization, primarily through the vicarious experience of productive political conversation. Encompassing over 2,000 participants gathered from a nationally representative sample recruited by YouGov’s online panel, the study looked to test affective polarization, measured attitudinally, and interest and investment in depolarization, measured behaviorally. To this end, the study tested multiple media interventions, namely a 50-minute Braver Angels documentary featuring a “Red-Blue” depolarization workshop; a 50-minute placebo nature documentary about wildebeest migration; a 5-minute version of the Braver Angels documentary; a second 5-minute version that emphasized partisan misperception correction; and a pure control group, with no treatment.