How Crowdsourcing Identified Effective Strategies to Reduce Political Polarization

Jan Voelkel discusses the Strengthening Democracy Challenge, a joint project between academics and practitioners aimed at reducing anti-democratic attitudes, support for political violence, and partisan animosity among Americans. The challenge involved testing 25 different interventions to determine their effectiveness in shifting people's attitudes. The results showed that many of the interventions were successful in reducing partisan animosity, with strategies such as highlighting sympathetic exemplars and emphasizing a common identity as Americans proving to be particularly effective. The challenge has received positive feedback from both researchers and practitioners, and there is optimism about the potential for these interventions to have a real-world impact.

Key Takeaways:

• The Strengthening Democracy Challenge tested 25 interventions to reduce anti-democratic attitudes, support for political violence, and partisan animosity.
• Strategies such as highlighting sympathetic exemplars and emphasizing a common identity as Americans were effective in reducing partisan animosity.
• The challenge has received positive feedback and there is optimism about the potential for these interventions to have a real-world impact.

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