Positive beliefs about cross-partisan empathy can strengthen Americans' support for democracy.

ABSTRACT: Undemocratic practices, such as voter suppression and election interference, threaten democracies worldwide. Across four studies (N = 4,350), we find that informational and motivational factors drive Americans' support for such practices. Partisans drastically overestimate how much opponents support undemocratic practices, which decreases people's willingness to defend democracy themselves (S1-S2). One remedy for this dynamic is to inform people about the extent to which their rivals actually support democracy, but in polarized contexts, people are incurious about the true beliefs of outpartisans. To address this, we test a new method for improving democratic attitudes-changing beliefs about cross-party empathy. Empathizing across disagreements can improve connections and boost pers

SUBMITTER: Santos LA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11475743 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature