Deep partisan conflict in the mass public threatens the stability of American democracy. We conducted a megastudy (n=32,059) testing 25 interventions designed by academics and practitioners to reduce Americans’ partisan animosity and anti-democratic attitudes. We find nearly every intervention reduced partisan animosity, most strongly by highlighting sympathetic and relatable individuals with different political beliefs. We also identify several interventions that reduced support for undemocratic practices and partisan violence, most strongly by correcting misperceptions of outpartisans’ views – showing that anti-democratic attitudes, although difficult to move, are not intractable. Furthermore, both factor analysis and patterns of intervention effect sizes provide convergent evidence for limited overlap between these sets of outcomes, suggesting that, contrary to popular belief, different strategies are most effective for reducing partisan animosity versus anti-democratic attitudes. Taken together, our findings provide a toolkit of promising strategies for practitioners and shed new theoretical light on challenges facing American democracy.
The purpose of this exploratory qualitative study was to discover how a single, relational intervention in a digital space focused on civil, respectful conversation across difference might influence digital media literacy (DML) among college students, with the goal of increasing college students' sense of belonging and level of curiosity. The researcher used a phenomenological approach, exploring and describing the lived experiences of students who participated in a microengagement with an other through interviews (Creswell, 2014). This study investigated the main question: (a) How does a semi-structured, relational micro-intervention focused on civil, respectful conversation across difference influence college students' sense of belonging and level of curiosity? This research was guided by the Framework for Individual Diversity Development (Chavez, Guido-DiBrito, & Mallory, 2003), which provided a theoretical model for the process of moving from lack of awareness and othering to awareness and acceptance. Findings that emerged involved students' recognition that a semi-structured micro-intervention with an other in a digital space enlightened them to the value of story sharing to navigate differences, find commonality, and establish smallscale relationships. These key findings indicate that the time and structure involved in a relational micro-interventions across difference in a digital space can influence DML, sense of belonging, and level of curiosity.
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