Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

If I describe you as a moderate, you'll believe me. (But you're not.)

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton at a presidential debate

Researchers conducted an experiment with people attending the first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in September 2016. The result: Most people were were open to moderating their viewpoints.

Pool/Getty Images

Researchers from Canada and Sweden are offering the results of a newly published study as a sign there may be hope for easing the harsh political polarization that has left the United States and its governing institutions in perpetual gridlock.

All it takes is a little trickery and a little nudge.


Working with doctoral students from Lund University in Sweden and McGill University in Montreal, researchers approached 136 people at the first presidential debate in September 2016 in New York.

Participants completed a survey evaluating Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton on a number of personality traits, such as "visionary" and "courageous." For each category they were asked to place a mark on a sliding scale closer to the candidate they thought was stronger for that trait.

About three-fourths of the responses favored one candidate.

Then the researchers secretly changed the surveys so the majority of the responses were more in the middle. A similar experiment was done online with a more diverse sample of 498 participants.

More than 9 in 10 from the first group accepted the changed results as their own — and provided more moderate views to match those results.

One person who had initially favored Clinton said after the change: "I guess I fall somewhere in the middle — I'd like to think I'm a little moderate."

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Another person who favored Trump said after the results were moderated that "Trump is more exact and confident in his decisions, so that could be viewed as being decisive. But then Hillary has a track record in which she's changed her mind about a lot of issues, but that's kind of like her educating herself and having developed thought."

At the end of the experiment, participants were asked to rate the overall competence of each candidate and still stuck with their original choice.

Researcher Jay Olson, a doctoral student at McGill, said in an interview that he found it hopeful that people were willing to express open-minded views. He didn't see it as proof that people can be easily manipulated.

Olson said he started working with principal author Thomas Strandberg of Lund University because the two happened to be stationed next to each other during the presentation of papers at several conferences.

The paper, published last week, concludes that the "us versus them" mentality in American politics may be exaggerated: "Our study reveals that American voters at either end of the political spectrum are willing to endorse more open views about political candidates. Here, suggesting to people that they are more open-minded removed their political blunders and nudged them to consider and argue for more moderate views."



Read More

Chicago South Siders impacted by air pollution can help shape future environmental policy
factory chimney emitting smoke
Photo by Ria on Unsplash

Chicago South Siders impacted by air pollution can help shape future environmental policy

Communities in the southwest and southeast sides of Chicago impacted by the adverse effects of air pollution from truck traffic, warehouses, and factory operations have the opportunity to change their future. But what exactly are they experiencing, and how can they change it?

For the greater part of the last year, officials, including State Sen. Javier Cervantes (D-1) and 12th Ward Ald, Julia Ramirez and others from organizations such as the Environmental Defense Fund have been drafting Senate Bill 838. The bill aims to curb environmental injustices, such as air pollution caused by heavy truck traffic and industrial practices, that overburden Chicago’s Southwest and Southeast communities.

Keep ReadingShow less
Behind the “Lie of the Year,” some bitter truths

Diners watch as Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. President Donald Trump, and Democratic presidential candidate, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, debate for the first time during the presidential election campaign on September 10, 2024 at the Bar Tabac in New York City.

(Photo by Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)

Behind the “Lie of the Year,” some bitter truths

As it has been doing yearly since 2009, the fact-checking organization PolitiFact has chosen the Lie of the Year (2024). There was an abundance of nominees.

And, it turns out, they chose the same whopper I identified as a top contender months ago: President-elect Donald Trump’s unfounded claim that Haitian migrants were eating the household pets of Springfield, Ohio.

Keep ReadingShow less
Moderate voices are vanishing. Here’s how to get them back.
Moderate voices are vanishing. Here’s how to get them back.

Moderate voices are vanishing. Here’s how to get them back.

Fifty years ago this month, the US Congress established the Harry S. Truman Scholarship, which brings together service-minded college juniors who span the ideological spectrum – from Neil Gorsuch, now a Supreme Court Justice, to Stacey Abrams, founder of Fair Fight, to Bill Gates, who served as the Chair of Maricopa County Board of Supervisors during the 2020 presidential election. The scholarship is intended to serve as a living memorial to our 33rd President’s commitment to public service by building a diverse community committed to upholding public institutions.

After receiving the scholarship in 1997, I spent two intense summers with my fellow Trumans, soaking in diverse viewpoints, debating policy, wrestling with ethical dilemmas, and dreaming about how we might serve our country. During the Clinton impeachment's seemingly unprecedented partisan tensions, we discussed running on cross-partisan slates – not promising to always agree, but committing to respectful engagement and understanding our differences. Twenty-five years later, watching my 17-year-old son write about losing his faith in politics, I wonder what happened to that vision.

Keep ReadingShow less