More Like US is excited to introduce Arts for America, a workshop for college students to use their talent in the arts to better portray fellow Americans across the political spectrum. The first cohort meets during the fall 2025 semester, and college students are encouraged to apply by September 14.
"Arts" is broad in Arts for America, including audio, video, visual art, stories, live performances, games, social media posts, and more.
Arts for America is needed to correct overly negative distortions of fellow Americans across the political spectrum at scale. These distortions are dangerous. Thankfully, using the arts is a powerful way to have better and more accurate views of each other. By engaging college students in their formative years, Arts for America can help build a generation of creatives who strengthen America.
Negative distortions of fellow Americans across politics are rampant and dangerous
Substantial research shows Perception Gaps, differences between perceptions and reality when thinking about fellow Americans across the political spectrum. Unfortunately, these distortions are nearly all skewed in overly negative ways.
Compared with reality, Americans see those across politics as more ideologically extreme, interpersonally hostile, threatening (see here, here, and here), and inferior and stereotypical.
These distortions have problematic—or even dangerous—consequences.
At an interpersonal level, they increase “ingroup anxiety,” which More in Common found is the single most important factor affecting whether Americans want to connect across political lines of difference. Americans with these Perception Gaps who are unnecessarily anxious about each other are less likely to interact with each other or may have unnecessarily awkward or difficult conversations when trying to interact. Additionally, research shows that day-to-day anxiety can reduce cognitive ability, like working memory, so this anxiety may reduce the capacity to engage in productive conversations.
And at a societal level, these Perception Gaps can cause or worsen all sorts of issues.
- As I previously wrote with a co-author in The Fulcrum, they can increase desire for authoritarianism and potentially censorship, since authoritarian predispositions are activated in the context of perceived threats to one’s safety and security. Many Perception Gaps exacerbate this sense of threat of each other.
- Similarly, Perception Gaps can encourage Americans to vote for leaders who are “fighters” rather than collaborators. These leaders can be seen as protecting “us” from a distorted sense of an overly threatening “them.” Also, having collaborative leaders can seem futile when Americans incorrectly perceive little or no common ground on policy, even though we at More Like US and AllSides have found >700 instances of common ground.
- Research shows outright discrimination is another possible consequence.
- Finally, there can be greater acceptance of misinformation and disinformation. If a new piece of information seems to align with an overly negative view of another group, then that information will often be accepted, even if it is not accurate. It can feel right, rather than being factually right. This result is an aspect of confirmation bias, which includes a tendency to “give greater credence to evidence that fits with our existing beliefs.”
Arts for America focuses on correcting these dangerous distortions of each other
In the Arts for America workshop, participants learn More Like US’s CAST (Complex, Admirable, Similar, Together) framework. This framework aims to re-CAST fellow Americans in a better and more accurate light. The artistic content that Arts for America participants make aligns with one or more aspects of the CAST framework.
The CAST framework flips the script on how Americans across the political spectrum are often portrayed: as stereotypical, inferior, highly different, and worthy of avoidance. These lead to an overblown sense that conversations across the political spectrum are likely to be uncomfortable and unproductive, and that fellow Americans pose a threat to us and the country.
The CAST framework is aligned with how characters are portrayed in the arts and with scientific ideas for how to improve attitudes and behaviors between groups of people.
Arts are powerful and have the capacity to reach millions
Using the arts, messages, and powerful stories can reach large numbers of Americans. As I previously wrote with a co-author in The Fulcrum, entertainment can improve how Democrats and Republicans see each other. In the article, we mostly focused on movies and TV, but entertainment and the arts in many forms have this capacity.
Substantial academic work supports “indirect contact” methods perfect for the arts. What Americans see and hear about each other matters. The term is “indirect” because individuals do not necessarily have to interact with each other in real life directly in order for messages and stories—often from the arts—to have an impact.
Examples of indirect contact include vicarious contact (seeing positive interactions between members of groups), along with parasocial contact. Parasocial contact involves developing one-sided relationships with characters. For instance, viewers can develop a positive relationship with Will Truman from the show Will and Grace (who many would assume is a Democrat, as a gay lawyer in New York City), or Dan Conner from Rosanne and The Conners (who many would assume is a Republican, as a straight working-class white man in the suburban Midwest).
The arts are so important because Americans are busy and have many interests, reducing time for dialogues and other interpersonal interactions across politics. Yet nearly all Americans are media consumers that the arts can reach.
The pipeline for a larger movement
The Arts for America workshop supplements the work of organizations that are working with professionals in the arts to improve the political environment. These include the organization Resetting the Table, via its programs such as Hollywood Impact Fellows and Bridge Entertainment Labs. Both are working with existing showrunners in Hollywood. Braver Angels’ Braver Angels Music program is working with songwriters.
Arts for America focuses on students who will be the next generation of showrunners, songwriters, and leaders in many other artistic fields.
Details of the Arts for America workshop
The Arts for America workshop is for students enrolled at an institution of higher learning (e.g., community college, college, university) in the fall 2025 semester. It lasts six sessions, starting the week of October 6.
The approximate eight students in this cohort work with and learn from each other, though each develops their own artistic content. We welcome all types of “arts”: audio, video, visual art, stories, live performances, games, social media posts, and more.
Encourage students to apply by 9/14!
Encourage college students in your life to apply! Applications are due Sunday, September 14.
Students will be chosen based on demonstrated artistic talent in at least one area and a clear interest in working to improve the future of the U.S. Ideally, working group participants will have some demonstration of using the arts for social good in the past and show some capabilities to showcase their work (e.g., previous displays of their work, an existing social media presence).
Artistic content will be shown on the Arts for America Instagram page, and More Like US will work with the students to find other avenues for content dissemination.
More Like US is committed to improving the political environment at scale. More Like US’ Arts for America program starts to build a generation of young Americans in the arts with the commitment, capabilities, and networks to help achieve this goal.
James Coan is the co-founder and executive director of More Like US. Coan can be contacted at James@morelikeus.org
