Does Interaction With Out-Party Elites in a Classroom Setting Diminish Negative Partisanship?

Abstract

The American electorate is increasingly affectively polarized. Partisans dislike members of the opposing party, even going so far as to discriminate against opposing partisans in nonpolitical domains. Given the potentially pernicious consequences of affective polarization, especially in nonpolitical settings, scholars have suggested facilitating contact between members of opposing parties as a means of reducing affective polarization. We test this approach in the context of a large introductory American government class comprised almost entirely of Democrats. Our pre-registered experiment randomly assigned recitation sections to treatment or control conditions, where the treatment was an hour-long discussion with a county chair from the Republican Party, and the control was an hour-long discussion with an attorney with no party connection. Partisan attitudes and evaluations were measured extensively at baseline, within a few days of the intervention, and two months later. We find no evidence that the treatment changed students’ partisan evaluations. We conclude by considering theoretical avenues for future experiments that change the nature and extent of cross-party social interaction.