Civil Politics exists to help educate the public on evidence based methods to improve inter-group relations, especially those intractable conflicts that have a moral dimension to them, such as the partisanship that paralyzes US politics.  Part of this effort involves compiling all of the existing evidence that may exist in this domain, so that we can more authoritatively bring this evidence to others who are doing the work on the ground.

Evidence can include many things.  It certainly includes empirical research, both in its published and unpublished form.  It includes examples from the news that echo this research, where people talk about what does or does not lead them toward more or less cooperation vs. animosity across groups.  It includes both the empirical study of the effects of programs that focus on improving inter-group dialogue, as well as the lessons that those who run those programs have learned through years of practice.    The basis of psychometrics and crowdsourcing is the aggregation of results across methods, each of which has it’s own sources of error, with the hope that convergent evidence is reached across methods.  It is the same reason that we want to ask multiple people, ideally with diverse tastes, before passing judgment on a new restaurant or movie, and we hope to bring the same thoughtfulness to the evidence that we present on improving intergroup relations.  The links in this paragraph are examples of how we support the collection and dissemination of each of these types of evidence.

We are currently working on projects that aim to be more systematic about evidence in each of these categories and we could use your help.  Specifically, if you know of academic research that provides evidence for the role of specific variables in increasing or decreasing inter-group civility, please do use this form to provide us with details.  Before adding any specific papers, you can use this link to check what has already been added to the database.  Questions and comments welcome (email me at ravi at civilpolitics dt org) and feel free to provide as much information as you have, even just filling in the first part about specific papers, as we can have others fill in the rest of the information.

Please do feel free to forward this blog post to anyone who does research bearing on this question or who knows of such research.  We are also happy to acknowledge your contribution publicly and/or to provide rewards to students who contribute to this project (e.g. travel support to academic conferences) to both incentivize participation and hopefully encourage their interest in this domain.  Thank you for your interest and consideration.

In summary:

• Click here to check the current set of papers already in our database.
• Click here to add new papers/studies.

– Ravi Iyer

Once upon a time, it was socially normative for society to divide itself along racial lines.  Thankfully, that time has passed and while racism still exists, it is generally considered to be a bad thing by most people in society.  The same trajectory is occurring with respect to attitudes toward homosexuals, with increased acceptance being not only encouraged, but mandated as the right thing to do.  However, in many circles, it remains normative for individuals to discriminate against those with the opposite political views.  Recent research indicates that this occurs amongst both parties.

Despite ample research linking conservatism to discrimination and liberalism to tolerance, both groups may discriminate. In two studies, we investigated whether conservatives and liberals support discrimination against value violators, and whether liberals’ and conservatives’ values distinctly affect discrimination. Results demonstrated that liberals and conservatives supported discrimination against ideologically dissimilar groups, an effect mediated by perceptions of value violations. Liberals were more likely than conservatives to espouse egalitarianism and universalism, which attenuated their discrimination; whereas the conservatives’ value of traditionalism predicted more discrimination, and their value of self-reliance predicted less discrimination. This suggests liberals and conservatives are equally likely to discriminate against value violators, but liberal values may ameliorate discrimination more than conservative values.

In addition, recent research out of Stanford University indicates that “hostile feelings for the opposing party are ingrained or automatic in voters’ minds, and that affective polarization based on party is just as strong as polarization based on race.”  Tackling this at the societal level is a daunting task for anyone, but there are things that one can do at the individual level.  Both research and practice indicates that positive relationships between individuals across such divides are likely to ameliorate such feelings.  Mixing group boundaries are likely to make competition less salient as well, perhaps allowing superordinate goals that we all share to come to the fore, as often happens when national emergencies strike.  Just as with discrimination based on race and sexual orientation, discrimination against opposing ideologies can be combated with similar techniques.

– Ravi Iyer