Discussions with the Enemy:How Exposure to the Other Side Can Moderate Extremity

You’re invited to join Emily West, Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh, for an American Politics Speaker Series discussion sponsored by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and the Center for American Political Studies.

This event will be part of Harvard Kennedy School’s Candid and Constructive Conversations series in the fall of 2024. The Candid and Constructive Conversations (CCC) Initiative provides HKS students, staff, and faculty consistent opportunities to learn and practice skills for constructive disagreement across differences with the goal that all members of our community feel heard and respected. As a school-wide initiative for the next generation of public servants and leaders, CCC programming aims to cultivate an environment of openness, humility, and respect to support the robust exchange of ideas within the HKS learning community.

Registration is encouraged but not required. This event series will not be recorded.

This event is open to Harvard ID holders only. Lunch will be served.

Abstract: How do partisan politics and polarization affect the way partisans revise their policy positions? Do partisans shift their views on social policies more when they receive typical or counter-typical partisan messages from in or out partisan discussion partners? I use a large-scale field experiment where subjects engage in intra or inter party moderated policy discussions to answer these questions. Findings largely confirm theoretical hypotheses derived from existing literature on polarization and persuasion: counter-typical positions, particularly those taken by members of one’s own party, but also those taken by members of the out-party, are the most persuasive when partisans consider revising their own positions. Developing our understanding of the consequences of polarization, the latitude for persuasion and attitude-change, and source credibility in the context of sectarianism, these results have implications for debates surrounding the negative effects of such sectarianism on democracy.