Is Talk Enough to Depolarize America?

In 2022, NBC conducted a poll in which 70 percent of Americans agreed that “America has become so polarized that it can no longer solve the major issues facing the country — and that those differences will only continue to grow.” With so many people discontent with our current direction, it is no wonder Americans feel hostile when sharing opinions. Organizations in the “bridge-building” movement intend to cross partisan divisions that separate family, friends, and coworkers around the country, but is one conversation enough?

Setup

To answer this question, I conducted an experimental intervention with the Civic Leaders Center (CLC) at Indiana University. I hypothesized that one conversation could move the needle for the average participant. I randomized students into two groups. One attended a bipartisan speaker event hosted by Professor Paul Helmke, former mayor of Fort Wayne, IN and director of the CLC. The other group attended one of two moderated discussion sessions responding to a set of questions on the same topic. I served as moderator for one of the discussion subgroups and Koby Davis, the BridgeUSA at IU Vice President of Internal Operations, moderated the other. Students gathered in their assigned subgroups for an hour to discuss a variety of topics.

The students in both groups were given a pre-survey to complete before the intervention and a post-survey as the session ended. The questions on the survey assessed students along four dimensions: pluralist norms, intergroup empathy, understanding/respect, and intellectual humility. I analyzed survey results to answer three questions:

1. Did the randomization work?
2. Did students in either the speaker event or the discussion groups see a meaningful change after one discussion?
3. How do the results from the speaker event and discussion groups compare?

Findings

The randomization worked effectively, with nearly identical groups across demographic and ideological lines. The discussion group was 67 percent female, 31 percent male, and three percent other, while the speaker event was 68, 28, and four percent respectively. Ideologically, the discussion group was 52 percent liberal, 40 percent moderate, and eight percent conservative, while the speaker event was 48, 30, and 22 percent respectively. The sample for each group was still small, with 40 responses from the discussion group and 25 responses from the speaker event.

Figure 1: the discussion group showed no statistically significant change in any of the measures of participants’ depolarization along the four measures.

Figure 2: the speaker event showed no statistically significant change in any of the measures of participants’ depolarization along the four measures but with near confidence in the decrease in intellectual humility.

The responses from the surveys showed that there were no statistically significant changes in the average participant’s political polarization after the discussion or speaker event. I could not reject the null hypothesis from my findings. It may have been that the sample was not large enough, but the most likely result is that there is no measurable change after a single intervention. In comparison, the discussion results do not differ significantly from the speaker event, showing that perhaps even engaging in the same sorts of topics with a diverse range of ideas – either from speakers or between discussion groups may produce similar effects.

Limitations and Implications

This discussion did not impact the average participant in a moderated discussion. Some participants reported a positive change and a few reported a negative experience, but the majority showed no measurable change at all. Future studies should increase both the number of participants and the diversity of experiences they bring to the conversation. Replication of this work must extend beyond a single discussion to find at what point moderated discussions become effective for a critical mass of participants. The longevity of results should also be analyzed to see if there is any lasting change.

Leaders of the “bridge-building” movement speak of the effectiveness of listening to the experiences of others to decrease the tensions that divide us. It remains to be seen how these conversations can be made effective for participants uninterested in depolarizing society. I hope that from this study, organizations can adapt their programming to appeal to a broader audience and reformat interventions to achieve their goals. Depolarization is not a quick process. By better understanding the impact of these conversations, organizations can begin to figure out how to depolarize society at large.

Braden Chapman is a senior at Indiana University Bloomington receiving his Bachelor of Science in Public Affairs from the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs and his Bachelor of Arts from the College of Arts & Sciences. Braden is majoring in Law and Public Policy and History. After graduating he hopes to spend a year working on political depolarization with BridgeUSA before pursuing a law degree.