Talking across the Aisle

Luca Braghieri, Peter Schwardmann and Egon Tripodi

No 19753, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: We conduct an experiment that engages U.S. Democrats and Republicans in video conversations about policy-relevant facts. We study self-selection into conversations and their effect on information aggregation and affective polarization. Participants prefer co-partisan conversations, believing cross-partisan conversations to be less informative and less pleasant. There is more to learn from counter-partisans, but participants find it harder to extract knowledge from them. Our rich audiovisual data reveal that coand cross-partisan conversations are strikingly similar in content and tone. Yet, knowledge extraction is impeded by participants’ persistent lack of trust in the knowledge of counter-partisans. In contrast, cross-partisan interactions prove more enjoyable than anticipated and significantly reduce affective polarization, an effect that persists in an obfuscated follow-up survey three months later. More emotionally engaged conversations produce larger reductions in affective polarization. Policies encouraging cross-partisan interactions may be more successful at reducing affective polarization than at promoting information aggregation.

Keywords: Echo; chambers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D83 D9 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
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Working Paper: Talking Across the Aisle (2026)
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