Before we get to the study you conducted on methods to reduce polarization, just put the situation in perspective for us. How divided would you say this country is right now . More divided than it has ever been since the civil war . Caller i would say that the u. S. Is as divided as it has been at any point since the civil war. As a political researcher and a sociologist, i tend to focus on the public opinion, which is one way to look at this. Public opinion data on polarization and attitudes in the American General public is really concerning. It is not looking very good. For example, we see concerning levels of support for condoning violence. Those levels are not high, but i would still describe them as concerning because you want to see that near zero or so. Antisemitic attitudes are pretty high as well. Americans report being willing to tolerate antidemocratic moods from political leaders in their own party for partisan gains. And then finally, we seem steadily increasing partisan animosity between rival parties in the u. S. For four or five decades now. So we have a halfcentury trend of increasing animosity between democrats and republicans. That is just the general public. Elected representatives are more ideologically distant than they have been in a century, but we study the public the most and look at the trends. Host when you say antidemocratic attitudes, you are talking democratic with a small d, right . Guest exactly right. The way we and other political researchers have often studied it. How likely would you be to vote for a candidate from your party if that candidate reduced polling places in districts that disadvantaged them or prosecuted journalists for doing negative coverage of them and their party, or refused to acknowledge the results of an election . These are the things that we think of as antidemocratic moves that politicians might do, and we are interested in how the general public feel about that. A critical check on democratic factfinding is the risk of not being elected. If people are willing to go see you all you are doing undemocratic things, politicians for the most part will not do undemocratic things. But as long as you do have free and fair elections, it is important to hold politicians accountable and check democratic factfinding. Host why is division so bad right now . What is different about today . Guest there is so much going on with a friend that is this big and has gone on for this long. I think the thing that really triggered the trend in emotional polarization, increasing dislike between democrats and republicans, i think the first thing that happened was that congress or politicians in general, the political elite, polarized first in terms of how distinct they were in their attitudes and policy views. If you go back to the 50s, the 60s, even the 70s, you see kind of overlap in the distribution in the middle with some liberal republicans or moderate republicans who are scoring more liberal than the most conservative democrats, and now we see a total halloween out of the middle. And there is no overlap in the u. S. Congress, democrats and republicans. Politicians and party platforms, they have never been more different. They are totally distinct. When that is the case, the general public can sort more cleanly into being democrat or republican. It used to be there were people with a bunch of liberal views who voted republican at a time and vice versa, conservative folks voting democrat. But now that would be very strange to do. You have to make clear which team you should be assigned to. And has led to a bunch of other trends, including demographics being more associated with party, race and ethnicity highly associated with party. Gender highly associated with party. Whether you live in a rural or urban area is more associated with party than it has ever been. It has kind of turbocharged that party identity, and those animosities that rural people have for urban people, now feels partisan animosity. A very long answer to your question, but we now have a situation with distinct Party Identities that are really different, people dont see i to i and they increasingly dislike one another. Host your study tested solutions to reduce partisan polarization. What solutions did you test and what you find . Guest what we did to try to address this problem of increasing polarization and antidemocratic attitudes in the general public was to conduct will be called a mega study, which was an effort to gather a lot of ideas for what could reduce these views. We tested 25 ideas in a massive experiment with 32,000 american democrats and republicans, a representative sample of american partisan. The way that we got the ideas that we tested was pretty innovative. We decided it was a big problem, weve got a couple ideas for have to try to improve democratic attitudes and partisan animosity. But of course, we dont have all the good ideas, not even close. So we sent out a call on social media to academics, practitioners and nonprofits, activists, working in advocacy groups and social movements. Send in your best ideas and we will test them against one another to see what i the best ideas for improving these attitudes in the american mass public. And people sent in all sorts of stuff. It had to be something we could embed in an Online Survey experience. That is how probably most of the polling data that you see these days is generated, that is also how we do political experience like this. It had to be something you can experience in an Online Survey. So we got video, audio, chat box, all kinds of stuff. We got 250 submissions from 400 researchers, 17 other countries. Their response was really incredible. Much bigger than we had hoped for. We found 25 ideas and tested them. Some of the results were really interesting. One of the results, one overarching strategy that was effective in a few of the most effective interventions that really stuck out, it would probably be correcting inaccurate or exaggerated stereotypes of the views of rival partisans. So this strategy and the interventions that reflected the strategy kind of leverage something that is pretty wellknown, which is that american democrats and republicans have some radical misperceptions of the other sides levels of toxic polarization and antidemocratic attitudes. We are concerned about that for sure, but democrats and republicans both even overestimate the concerning levels that we observe. In one study we found that american democrats and republicans overestimate the levels of support for Political Violence on the other side, Something Like 300 400 . A radical overestimate. And if you correct that, you tell them actually, republicans in general report this level of support for Political Violence, the people you are correcting will themselves lower their own support for Political Violence. This suggests that a lot of what were seeing here is people mirroring the attitudes that they believe the other side has. They say i dont want to bring a knife to a gunfight here. If these folks urban to sacrifice, i need to as well. These people are willing to support civil violence, i will as well. But it turns out we have these gross misrepresentations of the other side and correcting that can bring down the partisan conflict were seeing in the general public. Host a concrete example of a solution that needs tested, simply play a video from the candidate for the utah governor back in 2020. And to test the attitudes before and after that video. Here is that Campaign Advertisement. I am your republican candidate for utah governor. And im chris peterson. We are currently in the final days of campaigning against each other. But our common values transcend our political differences and the strength of our nation rest on our ability to see that. We are both equally dedicated to the American Values of democracy, liberty and justice for all people. We just have different opinions on how to achieve those ideals. But today, we are setting aside those differences to deliver a message that is critical for the health of our nation. So whether you vote by mail or in person, we will fully support the result of the upcoming election regardless of outcome. Although we sit on different sides of the aisle, we are both committed to americans ability and a peaceful transition of power. And we hope utah will be an example to the nation because that is what our country is built on. Please, stand with us on behalf of our great state and nation. We approve this message. Host again, that Campaign Advertisement from 2020. Guest this was one of the more effective interventions that we tested. When people saw this video, even though it is about a Gubernatorial Race that was over a year and a half before they saw it and went public in a stately were not living in for a vast majority of the participants, maybe they had never even heard of these guys, nonetheless, people reported less anger and animosity toward the rival partisans, whether they were democrat or republican, and also greater support for democratic principles. Less willingness to sacrifice democratic principles for partisan gain. In other words, willing to vote against an inparty candidate who broke democratic rules. And what is with the cool about this is it is totally scalable. You can imagine a larger movement, perhaps funded by Campaign Donors from both sides of the aisle, which is candidates in elections like our president ial election to film ads like this and putting them on tv. You can imagine social media platforms like meta or facebook to promote these by contributing bipartisan or even nonpartisan ad spots, or by commissioning the content in the first place directly on their site. This is the kind of thing that helps to stabilize our democracy by reminding people there are common democratic rules that both sides should be agreeing to, and at some level in an election you are not just competing, youll also plot operating. You are also cooperating. You are cooperating on basic rules, that elections are binding in legitimate unless evidence shows otherwise. Having that service turns out to be important. Host plenty of calls. Rob willer with us until the bottom of the hour. This is josh out of illinois. You are up first. Caller good morning. Can you hear me ok . Good morning. I can tell you exactly why there is such divide in the country. It startled with it started with donald trump every day saying the media was fake news at the media is the enemy of the state and all of the other things he would say. All of his constituents believe everything they read or anything anybody says is a lie and he tells the truth, which is basically the opposite. And then on top of it the main thing is fox news. When you hear the republicans call in, they are all angry. You can tell they watch fox news because we have tucker carlsen, sean hannity, jesse waters, they come home from work and see these people yelling on the screen save the democrats are trying to destroy our country and promoting a bunch of lies. That is all i have to say. I did not really have a question. Host we will take them up. Rob willer on former President Trump and the media environment right now . Guest thanks, josh. I agree that donald trump is in terms of influence and in terms of his behavior as the leading undemocratic politician in the u. S. Today. It is interesting to think of donald trump as both cause and effect. There is no question donald trump has stoked unfounded skepticism about the 2020 election and that has been damaging to american elections, americans faith in elections which is lower than it has ever been, and a lot of that is misinformation that donald trump has propagated. It is also worthwhile to think of donald trump as an effect. There were forces of polarization that made it possible for donald trump to win the presidency. For a lot of republicans in 2016 because of the high levels of polarization, they did not view voting for a democrat or staying home and indirectly helping the democrat win the presidency as an option. In interviews on donald trump voters from 2016 show a lot of people did not like the way he tweeted or did not like a lot of his behavior and personal life or how domineering he could be personally, but they could say i cannot vote for Hillary Clinton because her views are in a completely different place from my own. Or i hate her or i hate the democrats. Polarization can play a real role in driving the election of undemocratic leaders as partisans hold their noses and say there is stuff about this candidate i do not like but i will still vote for him or her because i do not have a choice. It does not make any sense for me to defect to the other party. I might agree with josh, a lot of that is the product of a skewed information environment, but it is also the reality of the situation and that polarization is partly how we got donald trump as a political leader. Host kevin on twitter wants you to talk about joe biden, saying address these remarks of joe biden in which he said the maga crowd is the most extreme Political Organization that has existed in american history. Guest a really good question. Joe biden started off his presidency trying to represent everybody using a lot of antipolarization rhetoric, rhetoric around unity, and we notice he has tried to more recently label a faction within the Republican Party as the maga faction, that is a terminology that has been going around over the last few months. It reflects a specific political strategy to try to marginalize a purportedly antidemocratic faction within the party. Host we encourage coffee on the washington journal. Go ahead. Guest thanks for your support. It is a bit of a strategic move. We still want to be welcoming to moderate republicans who might want to vote democrat or still have faith in elections or do not support the capitol riot as a legitimate act of protest and so on, trying to keep them in the tent politically and marginalize what they are calling the maga faction that has the increasing skepticism around elections or seems to be getting more extreme and radicalized as the months tick by. It is a political strategy and it is definitely different than the initial rhetoric of the biden presidency. Host to chicago, this is carl, a democrat. Good morning. Caller good morning. I want to pose a question. When you do your surveys is it possible you can interview republicans and ask them if they support getting money from the stimulus. Did they give money back in 2008 when obama was in. They always complain, but they take money. Then they say the democrats are horrible when the Democratic Party tries to look out for all of the people, whether republicans, or they look out for people in their district. Host i will let you take that up. Guest in our research we did study peoples Political Attitudes to see if the sorts of interventions we were testing change them at all, and interestingly for the most part these interventions which were targeting Peoples Democratic principles and animosity towards political rivals, it did not change peoples actual attitudes on issues. There is one exception i found interesting. An intervention that tried to increase peoples concerns about the threat of democratic collapse, this was maybe the second most effective intervention we tested for improving americans democratic attitudes, and what it did was it showed video footage of scenes of societal unrest and rioting and Police Repression in the streets of countries that had just been enduring democratic collapse. It true a connection to the u. S. Saying that could happen here, and used imagery from the capitol riots in january 2021. What we found is this intervention tended to increase democrats and republican commitments to democratic principles and decrease their animosity towards rivals. It also increased how it made participants in the studies attitudes in general more liberal, including on Economic Issues like the size and generosity of welfare programs. This is very interesting because it suggests when you attach more stakes to the threat of democratic collapse and the risks associated with democratic backsliding that democrats and many republicans turned towards the left, they turned towards democratic principles but also away from the Republican Party and a little bit more towards liberal positions on a number of political issues. Host the line for republicans. Keith in florida. Good morning. Caller good morning. I have been calling and talking since brian lamb and steve were the only two hosts on your show. My 60th birthday was january 6. I am beginning to not like my birthday anymore. Ive heard more in my life in the last year and half that i ever in my whole life. The government and the media come in my opinion, is the cause of this what ive have seen in my lifetime. The government have been buying votes on both sides, making promises they cannot keep. They cannot keep the promises of medicare, social security, veterans come already. They are going bankrupt and we are starting new programs. It divided the public into little groups. I label myself as an american that happens to believe in god and his son and i am not hyphenated because i am adopted and i do not know so i can pick on everybody. I do not know what is in my dna. I think we are running our country into the ground dividing ourselves. I am a maga, i went to november 14 when we had a chance to do something legally. I knew from bush gore that the Supreme Court said after december 12 there was no legal means to change the vote. From the 14th the electors and sue providers and supervisors from december 14 it was ceremonial. What they did was wrong. I think the fbi had their hand into the organizations, the oath keepers and the proud boys. I hung around by harrys pub. Ive been marching there since the tea party. The country is divided so much by the government. Both sides are not factbased reporting. There are emotional media for cooked bacon getting people mad. That is all i have to say. Host you have been watching us a long time. What solution would you propose . Caller i would go back to the beginning where you did not label republicans or democrats or anything, it was open lines. Host keith in florida. Guest thanks, keith. He brings up a lot of interesting threads that one can pull on. When he brings up is this idea the media is stoking partisan division, which i think there is Good Research and good common sense to support this idea. With the decline of the three networks as the primary outlets for news and the emergence of partisan media sources that play a much bigger role in peoples information consumption and also the rise of social media platforms that people can purposely or inadvertently curates their own information environment, we find more that americans can select into or find themselves in different information environments where they are hearing information that is consistent with their ideology and confirms their preconceptions and they can probably stop watching some news that is partisan or ideologically extreme. It is a big problem that helps to create the situation where we cannot agree on basic facts. One of the interventions that was submitted to the challenge by a team headed by christopher bryant. They try to leverage this as a unifying force. They can understand that part of the partisan animosity and rank or you feel is a product of media stoking those animosities, and it had excerpts from a book by matt taibi who talked about how editors would say explicitly the partisan anchor stoking content is good and people click on it. This does really well. They would produce more of it because it got clicks. You could see it is not just the emergence of partisans in ideological Media Outlets that is popular, it is also that those outlets have become more ideological and clearly plays a role. Telling democrats and republicans there is a role in the media and there benefited from stoking your anger at your political rivals in the u. S. , this increased dashboard decreased animosity towards rival partisans and people were thinking i should not play into this dynamic that is bigger than me, i should try to defect from this dynamic and not be so angry at my rivals. It also had a small effect on improving peoples willingness to support undemocratic candidates. People reflected i need to not play into this dynamic and continue to vote for candidates for my party no matter what they do. That would be a part of this polarization that is being partly driven by media pursuing profits. Whether this intervention is exactly the way we would understand this dynamic as analysts, it was effective for improving polarized attitudes among americans. Host about 15 minutes left with Stanford University professor rob willer, the director of the polarization and social change lab at Stanford University. If you would like to take a deeper look at this study, you can find it online, strengtheningdemocracychallenge. Org is where you can go. You can also call in as michael did out of redding, california. Caller thanks for taking my call. My biggest comment is something that has been bothering me all this year. That is that the media continues to portray democracy as a failing system. I do not believe that is true. Democracy works all over the world. Our democracy is not failing. Democrats and republicans can no longer play nice together. They cannot work together. The democrats and republicans, the two party system is failing us. The media is responsible for that. We ignore the warning signs in the 1980s when they consolidated media conglomerates and now i listen to the overall narrative and it is the media that is beating this drum. That concerns me. What is the hidden agenda behind this message our government is sending . Are they like you like to call the deep state . Are there entities obviously trump to destroy our democracy and remake our government . Host guest this is a really interesting line of reasoning that i agree with to a great extent. One aspect of this icy is there is a potential selffulfilling prophecy dynamic where we talk so much about partisan conflict and polarization and democratic backsliding and flagging commitments to democracy and high support for Political Violence, we talk about that so much, we create a lot of it because it is in intergroup conflict dynamic, and if you think that the other side, you think the other side is trying to attack you you do not want to bring a knife to a gunfight so you have to up your own commitment to the conflict. You have to up your own animosities, you hearing information about conflict and hate and a flagging commitment to democracy. What choice do you have but to also tolerate antidemocratic moves among politicians and overlook or not criticize bad arguments on your side you disagree with. You cannot afford to do that because it is your team with the other team that can lead to a radicalization of each side, and escalation of rhetoric and escalation of intergroup animosities that can get dangerous. The whole dynamic that was being exaggerated in the first place because it sold clicks or it sold newspapers or its old tv spots, that dynamic and become very real or at least more real. That was the one of the central insights from the experiment we did was that these interventions that try to pop that bubble and say you are really overestimating how much the voters on the others support these undemocratic moves and support democratic backsliding on their side. That is not that popular. Youre overestimating that two fold or the case of violence three or four fold. Getting that information was helpful for ratcheting things down. The absence of that corrective information people are going to likely go up and up and up in their partisan animosities and their willingness to verse eight democratic principles. All of this starts with a narrative that worries people, gets them to consume more news, but can make itself real. This is one of the dynamics i get concerned about with polarization of democracy. As someone who runs a lab committed to us being polarization committed to studying polarization, i worry about contribute into that dynamic by shining a light on the problems. He did not want to do it in a weight you are exaggerating these perceptions or making people not see them clearly because of the self fulfilling prophecy risk, which is quite real. Guest host a tweet from a couple minutes ago. As Republican National committee at the democratic National Committee push their platforms to the edges it creates more space for a independent candidate to come in. Lets break the two system. Is that possible . Guest i agree is one of the most Attractive Solutions to create an option in the middle to create counter pressure. I do not know that i would necessarily be voting for that party but i would like its effects on the Political Landscape and i imagine a lot of people would i each side. A great difficulty with winner take all election structures that are not proportional like parliamentary systems, there is a real disadvantage to third parties. It is very difficult for third parties or individual candidates to gain a competitive foothold in the system. They start from so far behind it is incredibly difficult. They face assumptions their candidates are not electable, the party is not viable, and huge startup costs to be taken seriously in the competition. We tend to see these one offs like ross perot running as an independent, but not really creating any kind of coattails or any larger Party Apparatus behind him. It is extremely difficult, but i agree Something Like that would be a positive force in american politics. There are other structural democratic reforms that might be easier to achieve, including proportional representation systems at the state level. It will be hard to pass a lot of democratic Structural Reforms given how powerful the republican is in the united states. Not really more powerful than the democrats but powerful enough to block a lot of structural democratic reforms which the Democratic Party is more interested in passing. I see that as a major impediment. If you want to do Something Like abolish the Electoral College or give d. C. Statehood or some of these democratic Structural Reforms that have been put on the table, you not really going to be due that going to be able to do that in the short term given the almost total opposition to most of these proposals from republicans. Host you think abolishing the Electoral College would help . Guest i think abolishing the Electoral College would be a democratic move. I do not see any benefit in elevating the voices of certain states over the citizens of states with larger populations, which is in effect of the Electoral College, but maybe im biased as a california. Host this is mark from a democrat, good morning. Caller good morning and as always thank you for cspan. Listening on the phone i almost lost track of what i originally called in about. Jumping on something in earlier caller from florida mentioned, he said he had been listening to cspan forever going back to the days of brian lamb. I have, too. John, you asked him about what would be a good way to improve cspan. I think you need to get better Fact Checking and use Fact Checking during your collins during your call ins, and maybe you need to fact check the guest a little better. Not so much this man. I have looked him up and it looks like he has been at this trying to get the party together, trying to get people working together for many years, which looking at the way things are going now is not having a lot of success, it has only gotten worse. I might be an example of that because i am pretty polarized as a democrat who was once a regular republican. An example is earlier when you have the tax lady on. You read an article about 87,000 tax agents attacking all the middle class and how it was false and it was debunked. Two calls later one of the republican callerss sake all of those agents are coming after the middle class. You have to have editors or background people on cspan to follow up on this stuff instead of treating it as because it is speech and free speech is equivalent. Host i think the cast we had on repeated it is not 87,000 agents and talked about the total number of agents and responded to that caller. Caller yes. But they still call and say the same thing later on during commentary. Maybe that is the reason for the polarization. Nobody believes. Your guest has had a couple of callers that say the reason we are polarized is because of the media and the government. That means they do not trust the media, they do not trust the government. Where you go from there . If nothing is true you cannot believe nothing. Host rob willer on that and how long you have been working on this issue. Guest a lot of great points there. We have been working on this i have been working on fullers asian related problems on polarization related problems for the better part of a decade. My research started around 2009 with research on political persuasion and how it would be possible to persuade people across r. G. Partisan divide. That research was focused on the moral basis of political persuasion. In a nutshell we find in political Psychology Research that liberals and conservatives in the u. S. And around the world tend to have very different moral values, or substantially different moral values, but people overlook this when they make persuasive appeals intent to make persuasive appeals in terms of their own moral values, not the values of the people they are trying to persuade. If they articulate their appeals in terms of moral values of the other side from them their arguments often sound quite intended to be more persuasive. We find making the argument for samesex marriage in terms of patriotism and benefit to the country, which is doable, saying things like day americans are patriotic americans who serve in the military and contribute to our society, those appeals resonate more with conservatives than equality based appeals. That research was the first work out of my lab oriented towards trying to work with political divides. That work was focused on how do you still persuade people, how you still win elections, build large blocks of the public in support of issues that i cared about and care about now, and now we are doing work on restoring and defending democratic principles if we see the system under a threat. The long answer to a good question. We started off thinking lets be most focused on how you can make social change in a polarized society. Over last couple of years weve been more focused on how can we defend basic commitments to democracy in a divided country. Hopefully we can wrap up that work soon and get back to how to effect social change in a highly polarized society because it is a little more fun and also we would like to not be so concerned about the base of democratic principles everything rests on. Host last call, sandy, houston, independent. Caller i just recently heard on cspan they did a study that 50 of registered voters they have lost 25 of their voters to independents, which means most people are moderate. You were talking earlier about the hollowed out center. Could you address that . Guest a really good question. Independents are fascinating folks. One thing that is worth noting about independents as well is most Research Shows there are more independents than democrats or republicans, i would say it is south and 50 . The gist of the question is exactly right. A ton of independents and a larger number than democrats or republicans. A big chunk of those independents are effectively democrats or republicans. The way we ask the question is are you a democrat, republican, independent . And we asked a followup question saint you lean or lead republican . Two thirds of independents will identify they lean towards one of the parties. Research suggests they also act like they are registered democrats or republicans in terms of being roughly as inclined to do straight ticket voting, having animosity towards the other party that are quite high, that explanation is these are folks who are more or less partisan. 60 of independents are roughly speaking partisans, but maybe they are tired of polarization and may be do not love the party they tend to vote for in terms of Party Apparatus and topdown structure, or they are tired of the polarization narrative where they just like the idea of being independentminded, which i think is entirely reasonable. For our Research Purposes we find it important to treat leaders as part of them. This study we focused on democrats and republicans views of one another and democracy and we included leaners because if we did not we would be neglecting a huge portion of the american voting public that votes like partisans. Host this study is strengtheningdemocracychallenge. Org. We will have to end it there. The director of the polarization and social change lab at Stanford University. Cspans washington journal, every day we take your calls live on the air and just because policy issues that impact you. Coming up friday, former acting director of the cdc talks about the institutions plan to reorganize following failures during the pandemic. Professor brian shares his book, the listeners a history of wiretapping in the united states. Live at 7 00 eastern on cspan or on cspan now. Join the discussion with your phone calls, texts and tweets. Coming up on the cspan now video app a discussion on the future of the marine corps. Also nasa holds a News Conference to discuss mondays launch of its artemis one. Both events start at 10 00 a. M. Eastern. On cspan we have Jerome Powell live when he speaks at an economic imposing in wyoming at 10 00 a. M. Reporters from afghanistan and the u. S. Discuss challenges facing independent journalists in afghanistan after withdrawal of u. S. Troops at 11 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan and the cspan now video app. Are a lot of places to get political information but only at cspan do you get it straight from the source. No matter where you are from, or where you stand on the issues, cspan is americas network. Unfiltered, unbiased, word for word. If it happens here or here or here or anywhere that matters, america is watching on cspan. Powered by cable. A discussion on how recent
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