Interventions to Reduce Polarization: The Case of Wealth Redistribution by the Government

In this talk, I will present experimental work testing the efficacy of mechanisms to reduce polarization on politicized topics. Precisely, we focus on the topic income inequality and wealth redistribution by the government. We test three distinct mechanisms: (i) psychological framing, (i) uni-directional social influence, and (iii) an open-ended deliberative chat. We match participants at different positions of the opinion spectrum and measure the relative effect of strong vs mild stance in favor or against redistribution. Furthermore, we build participants profile pages based on common survey answers on non-political features, such as musical taste and hobbies, which are used to to create a sense of empathy and emotional closeness across participants. Can we eventually reduce polarization?

Joint work with Duncan Watts, Lise Getoor, and Dan Goldstein