October 20, 2022 • 30 mins
In this episode Laura interviews Jan Gerrit Voelkel, who is a Ph.D. Student in Sociology at Stanford University. Jan's research studies intergroup and interpersonal relationships with two guiding research questions. First, what causes people's willingness to harm others and defend inequalities? And second, how can personal or societal change be achieved that increases equality and/or reduces harm? Jan has developed interventions that increase support for policies that aim to reduce economic inequality or increase opportunity for immigrants. Jan has also led the Strengthening Democracy Challenge, a megastudy that tested 25 crowdsourced interventions for reducing anti-democratic attitudes and partisan animosity.
Jan's academic page: https://sociology.stanford.edu/people/jan-gerrit-voelkel Jan's twitter: https://twitter.com/jgvoelkel Project: https://www.strengtheningdemocracychallenge.org/ Lab twitter: https://twitter.com/pascl_stanfordMark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Laura (00:10):
Hello and welcome to the Conflict Tipping Podcast from mediate.com,
the podcast that explores socialconflict and what we can do about it.
I'm your host, Laura May, and today Ihave with me Yan, we, who recently led
the Strengthening Democracy Challengemega study that tested 25 crowdsource
interventions for reducing anti-democraticattitudes and partisan animosity.
(00:34):
He's also currently finalizinghis PhD at Stanford, where his key
interest is morality and politic.
Welcome young.
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (00:42):
Thanks so much for having me.
Laura (00:44):
I'm very glad to have you here.
As we get started then, you've gotthis interest in morality and politics.
What drew you to thisconvergence of these two ideas?
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (00:56):
Yeah, I've always been fascinated by moral dilemmas and.
Trying to figure out like like how toapply moral principles in practice.
And I think like one.
Area where it really matters how we applymoral principles in practice is politics.
And I've since then been veryinterested in terms of do we apply moral
(01:20):
principles differently to differentgroups or like what policies actually
follow from certain moral values.
Yeah.
And it has been, it's been a.
A great search for for answers ever since.
Laura (01:38):
I love that because some people might say that politics is an immoral
arena, but that's not quite true.
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (01:45):
Yeah.
Like I make one implication of theearlier book in my PhD and I've
been doing with Rob Willer andMatt Feinberg, is that you can.
Arrive at certain policies fromvery different moral angles.
So like when we think of a typical.
Progressive policies.
It is possible to motivate thatfrom a desire for reducing harm or
(02:11):
a desire for increasing equality.
But it's also possible, to motivatethat from a more conservative angle
of trying to do what is best for a.
Your own in group.
Oftentimes, like people from thesame country are trying to show
respect for certain great traditions.
So it's it's very tricky to figure outwhat really follows directly because
(02:32):
when you have these abstract principles,you can go in many different ways.
Laura (02:36):
No, Fantastic.
It sounds like these moralfoundations theory has been very
influential in, in the work you're.
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (02:44):
Yeah.
There's certainly been one of theinspiring papers and books I've read.
Like I have my owncriticisms of the theory.
But I still think, like that it has,that, it has inspired a lot of thought.
And and I think in in researchthat's already a big achieve.
No,
Laura (03:02):
absolutely fantastic.
It certainly has reallysculpted the discourse, about
politics and how it works.
So then tell me about theStrengthening Democracy Challenge.
What was it and how did it
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (03:13):
work?
Yeah.
So the Strengthening DemocracyChallenges best thought of
really as a team science project.
. So what we did is our teamwhich, which consists.
People are from the Polarizationand Social Change Lab.
Were just led by Rob Willer at Stanford.
(03:34):
Yeah, together with JamieDrachman, Dave Friend.
Like we put together the frameworkfor what we called a challenge.
So we wanted to challengeother people to submit their
best ideas for how to improve.
Probably problematic attitudes in theAmerican public, and particularly we were
(03:56):
interested in reducing anti-democraticattitudes, support for partisan
violence and partisan animosity.
And after having tried to set upthe framework for that for two
years we put out an open call.
Yeah, so missions both to academics,but also to practitioners in this
(04:21):
space because we knew that a lot ofpeople were working on the ground way
far away from the ivory tower on this.
And we hoped to also gain theirinsights and test them with with
experimental methods in order to see.
Where do we have good evidence that theunderlying principles actually work?
We were very concerned that wewouldn't get a lot of submissions.
(04:45):
Ended up getting 252 submissionswe thought, which we thought
were a lot that resulted in a newproblem because we only had spots.
25 interventions.
So we had a great advisory boardwho helped us to select the most
promising interventions or likewhat we and they thought were the
(05:06):
most promising interventions basedon Estimated likelihood that these
interventions would actually work.
And also novelty of the intervention.
And yeah, then ran one of thebiggest social science experiments
of Atkins with approximately 32,000participants, which gave us a lot of
(05:27):
power or like in a less academic term.
The ability to estimate the effectsof these interventions very precisely
on a bunch of different outcomes,including the ones that I had mentioned,
anti-democratic attitudes, support forpartisan violence and partisan animosity.
And so we were able to find out notonly which of these interventions
(05:48):
work, but also which one from.
The interventions submitted andselected were the most effective
in in improving these attitudes.
It,
Laura (05:58):
it sounds absolutely wonderful and it's a staggering achievement because,
I know from personal experience howdifficult it is to manage a project
across countries with different kinds ofstakeholders and all in a timely fashion.
I always had this vision for myself thatit's trying to get a whole bunch of geese
on leads to go in the same direction.
And so I am an absolute awe that you'veaccomplished this incredible project.
(06:19):
And so I also find it quite funny that,I'm here as an Australian in Europe
and you're a German in the US andwe're talking about this specifically
American challenge from the sounds ofthe project, because that was the scope,
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (06:30):
right?
Yes, that's right.
Laura (06:33):
And so then when you talk about partisan animosity and these
anti-democratic attitudes that werethe subject of the study, are they
real issues or are they just soundbite.
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (06:42):
Like I do think that there are real issues.
Like it's some of the work thatwe have been doing in the lab app
was really asking us this questionbecause we were like, if we invest.
So much effort and resources anda challenge, it should better be a
challenge where it's actually worth it.
(07:02):
So we did some work during the twoyears where at first we thought that we
would only focus on partisan animosity.
And so we we had assumed that if youtreat partisan animosity that you would
also move More obviously problematicattitudes for example, support for
undemocratic candidates, and we did notfind a lot of evidence for that, and that
(07:27):
is why we like opened up the challengefor multiple Target outcomes that people
could try to move with their intervention.
However, there, there is good evidenceout there that partisan animosity has
other important consequences, such asinfluencing people in their social, but
also in their economic interactions.
(07:48):
. So it can make a peaceful.
Good relationships in your in your family.
So relationships that people oftenreally care about, more difficult, it
can undermine like taking advantageof economic opportunities and yeah,
like when we look at anti democraticattitudes, Our very important outcome
(08:13):
because we find that anti-democraticattitudes are linked to to.
Implications of public opinion thatare really consequential, such as the
support for undemocratic candidates.
And we see that undemocratic candidateshave had plenty of success, not only
(08:33):
in the US but throughout the world.
So strengthening people'scommitment to democratic principles
is a really important pathwayto make it harder for under.
Candidates to win.
And one of the interesting insights thatwe found as a result of the challenge is
that if you reduce partisan animosity,so the dislike for the other side
(08:55):
by a lot, not just a little, that'snot sufficient, but by a lot, then
you also open people up to considerPolitical opponents against undemocratic
in party candidates that otherwisethey typically wouldn't consider.
Laura (09:13):
That, That's so interesting because as I understand it, you've
got these two separate things.
So partisan animosity and supportfor undemocratic practices and
while on the face of things, onedoesn't necessarily mean the other,
reducing animosity means a bit moreopenness to democratic principles.
Is that right?
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (09:33):
No.
So OK , yeah, so it is,it's, it is very tricky.
It's like we, we find no relationshipbetween partisan animosity and
support for undemocratic practices.
But we do find links between both ofthese constructs, support for undemocratic
practices and partisan animosity.
And support for undemocratic candidates.
(09:54):
So by reducing patent animosity, wehave some evidence in in the results
from the challenge that also reducessupport for undemocratic candidates,
whereas reducing positive animosityisn't really associated with reduced
support for undemocratic practices.
Laura (10:16):
How interesting.
Thank you UL for the clarification.
I think we're on the same page now.
Okay.
And so then thinking a moment aboutthe interventions, cuz there was
25 of them that were in the finalproject, which was your favorite?
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (10:32):
Yeah, that is that is a great question.
Like I thought, like one of themost creative intervention was an
intervention called CounterfactualCells, which was developed by.
Team of philosophers and psychologists,and the idea there was to reflect on,
(10:53):
like what are your what are your politicalattitudes now on certain hot button
issues and what would your inter andwhat you attitudes on these issues have
been under different life circumstances.
, I thought that was really.
Yeah.
Really helpful to, to understandthe fluidity and importance, not so
much of personal factors, but alsoof the systemic and environmental
(11:17):
factors that play into our politicalattitudes and may help us to have a
bit more understanding of why differentpeople end up in different places.
So I personally really like, likethat intervention it didn't do
as well as some of the others.
But I also wanted to give a shoutout because, like that was like
one, one takeaway from the challengeas well, that some ideas are great
(11:41):
but we don't find them to be aseffective and empirically as.
I think that's, I can understandwhy that would've been one of your
favorite interventions as Sure.
It sounds really interesting and almostintuitive in a way that if, of course
if we start empathizing with a differentlife story we could have had, then
we might end up differently, right?
Laura (12:01):
Yeah.
And so then thinking of theinterventions, which were really
promising, can you tell me a bit aboutthose, which ones worked the best?
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (12:10):
Yeah one group.
Very effective interventions werewhat we would call misperception
correction interventions.
So you can think of this as that Americanpartisans hold very strong stereotypes
about supporters of the other side.
They typically assume the worst.
(12:32):
Of the other side.
And so one that it was the mosteffective in reducing people's
support for undemocratic practices.
Ask participants first to toestimate how supportive I supporters
of the other party would be.
(12:53):
Many different undemocratic practices andthen provided them with real data from
another survey that they had conducted.
And usually the real data showed thatthese that the supporters of the other
side were actually much less supportiveof these undemocratic practices.
And that in turn, if you thinkof it as like in a world where
(13:15):
the other side is really un.
And also under democratic practices,you yourself may feel a need that
you now need to move away from thesedemocratic principles yourself, just
to Ha half a shot at winning at all.
But if the other side likedoesn't support these practices
as much, there's less of a need.
(13:36):
And as a result people in our study alsosupported these under Democratic practices
less, and yeah, that intervention alsoreduced support for partisan violence.
It reduced partisananimosity, not as much as.
As as others, but overall it wasa very successful intervention.
Laura (13:57):
And that was the one from uc?
Berkeley, is that right?
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (14:01):
That's right.
Developed by a team led by Leader Grayleyand and Gabe Lands from uc, Berkeley.
And then also severalmembers from from mit.
Laura (14:14):
Fantastic.
And so I will confess, I wrote downsome of the other interventions
which prove really promising.
So I'm gonna ask you about them.
It's like a pop quiz almost.
Cuz I've got here as well that therewas one from the Uni of Pennsylvania,
which was about correcting meta percepts.
And I understand therewas a video involved.
Can you tell me a bitabout how that worked?
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (14:33):
Yeah, so there was a great collaboration between academics
and practitioners from beyond conflict.
Who Oh, great.
Who did this very interest.
Project of doing something similar tothe intervention that I just described.
So I'm correcting like Ms.
(14:54):
this time about immigration attitudesand the tendency to, to dehumanize
Supporters of the other side, but theydid this in this nice format where
you saw a video of people reactingto these results in real time.
Relatable supporters from fromeach side would first give their
(15:17):
own opinion, then say what?
They thought the other sidewould think their attitude was,
and then afterwards saw . So theestimated and actual overlap in in.
Attitudes from Democrats and Republicans.
And that intervention was mostlyeffective in reducing support for
(15:38):
partisan violence in our study.
It also reduced entity support forunder democratic practices, and
I think it was like number fivein reducing partisan animosity.
So also, wow, very successful throughoutthe different target outcomes,
which was not a typical outcome.
Laura (15:59):
All right.
So it, what you've just describedactually reminds me of that UK TV
program, Goggle Box, where you watchother people watching TV to see how they
react to news and soap operas, right?
So I love that this has become newscience ified and used to test these
partisan ideas and democratic ideas.
They're fantastic.
I've got two more I wanna ask you about.
(16:21):
Cuz one was about storytellingand expanding the pool of people
who matter, and I'm very curiousabout this and how it worked.
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (16:28):
Yeah.
There was, I was a great interventiondeveloped by practitioners . So C'S
actually less interested in we do thinkpartisan animosity specifically, they're
just like interested in fosteringsocial relationships across divides.
. And so they didn't really mentionparty very much throughout their
(16:53):
intervention, which was fascinating.
Instead, they had a seriesof five videos from.
From people who share, like things thatother people oftentimes miss about them.
Like for example, there was a like Brianwho like said that like one of her most
useful skills is that she speaks Spanishvery well, even though people would
(17:16):
never know that when they would justlook at her or would never guess that.
And so it was a nicedeep dive into like, how.
How complex and and hard it isto like, know what's really going
on when you don't know a person.
And so like this exposure to to thesefive, five different videos led to
(17:38):
a a small decrease in support forundemocratic practices and to a very
strong decrease in partisan animosity.
We had a group of four top performinginterventions for partisan animosity,
and it was it was among those,I'm not sure if it rank three
or if it rank third or fourth.
Laura (17:59):
That's really fascinating.
And the reason I was drawn to thisone as far as at least names go right,
it's this idea of expanding the pool ofpeople that matter because a lot of the
listens to this podcast are mediatorsand especially, Group mediators or
occasionally even peace mediators.
And this notion of really expandingthat pool is very central.
It's very central to the whole practice.
(18:20):
So thank you for sharing about that.
And then the last one I wannaask about was the one about media
trades and incentivizing engagement.
What does that mean?
What, what actually doesthis media trade mean?
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (18:33):
Yeah.
Yeah like this was afascinating intervention.
It.
Two important componentsdeveloped by a team of economic
economists and psychologistsled by Daniel Stone and yeah.
And so it was basically you orparticipants were asked to watch
(18:56):
a video and they were told that ifwatch the the video attentively.
They would get to send eitheran article or that video to to
supporter of the other side.
So like that was the media tradecomponent that you were able to
(19:18):
determine what another participant Wouldwatch if you were able to answer some
questions about the video correctly.
And that was to to maximize theamount of attention participants
would pay to the video.
And yeah.
And the video was Famous Heineken adeven though we like took the Heineken
part out of the video where peoplewith very different ideological beliefs
(19:43):
met up, built a bar together, and thendrank a beer, which was a Heineken beer.
And as part of the processparticipants learned.
That they actually had verydifferent ideological beliefs.
For example, there was a, therewas a climate change activist
and a climate change skeptic.
And and like after that first.
(20:05):
Started to to build this bar, theywould see how the other person had
talked about climate change in the past.
And yeah.
And.
All of the conversationswere very respectful and
caring for the other person.
People wanted to stay in touch afterwards,so it was an example of showing relatable
(20:32):
examplers from like both sides, havinga positive interaction with each other.
That's
Laura (20:38):
fantastic and you've reminded me actually of an episode I recorded a
couple of months ago with a mediator whonoted just the, There was an initiative
where people of one party, I thinkit was democratic and I think highly
democratic went to a very Republicanarea and I think was delivering stu or
some such and having this communal mealwas a way to reengage perceptions and
(21:00):
ideas about who each other is, right.
And bring everyone together.
Swapping out the stew for beer,in this case, having, together
they could be a good meal, right?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
All right, so pop quiz part over then.
So thank you so much for sharing about allthat information about those interventions
and I'd like to ask you next, what, ifanything else surprised you about the
(21:22):
project or a particular intervention?
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (21:26):
Yeah, so can like I think that one main takeaway that
came as a bit of surprises that in thespace of polarization and democracy,
you need to be really really thoughtfulof what you are trying to move.
Like we, we may think of allof these different constructs
(21:47):
as being like, closely related,maybe even basically the same.
But we find that thatthese outcomes are moved.
Very different types of interventions,or at least that there, the
strength of like how strongly theyare moved are quite different.
And, the field of practitionersand academics has done a tremendous
(22:10):
job in developing effectiveinterventions for partisan animosity.
We found 23 out of 25 interventionsin our study had an effect that that
reduced partner animosity, which,was totally surprising for us.
There's a lot of criticism out therethat like that interventions in the
(22:30):
social sciences, don't actually do a lot.
So we were like, this is prettyrobust literature with a lot of
promising dimensions, but thingslook a bit different when we when
we think about support for underdemocratic practices and support for
partisan violence, where we foundfive or six successful interventions.
(22:51):
It's so that, that tells usit's not enough to focus on one
thing and assume that that will.
All of the problems.
I'm not saying that like peopleactually think that, it is like
you, you like need to be veryaware of what do I want to treat?
What do I think is a reallyimportant outcome in this space?
And then really think about interventionsthat can that can treat this outcome.
(23:15):
Okay.
Fantastic.
Laura (23:17):
And so I guess the next question has to, How do we apply these findings?
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (23:23):
Yeah.
So there were different pathways, soit's one idea or one, one, like main
outcome of of the challenges that we aretrying to put the theoretical knowledge
that we have gained about how to.
These problematic attitudes thatwe are trying to put that knowledge
or make that knowledge availableto as many people as possible.
(23:46):
There, there are so manyimportant stakeholders in this.
It, it arrangements from like politiciansto, to journalists, to activists, and
also members of the general public.
So when more people know about what is.
What is important and what actuallyhas an effect then, agree with people
(24:08):
who can come up with smart ideas.
So like that is, that'slike one, one big thing.
And we organize the A conference.
Yesterday where we focused onpractitioners in particular because
like they were such an importantpart of the success of the project.
And so we like tried to tell them,here's something that we did in in,
(24:32):
in our own setting where we focuson short and scalable interventions.
Here is the knowledge that wegain from this, namely certain
few Certain theoretical principlesabout how to move these outcomes.
And now we hope that you can use this inthe kind of interventions that you run in
practice, which are usually, repeated overtime, way longer than just eight minutes.
(24:58):
And we have a grant programwhere we are trying to.
Trying to see if we can develop likemore, more prolonged interventions
in the field and also demonstratethat these are effective now.
. And then, the other big stakeholdershere who who we hope to have an
(25:20):
impact on is people in social media.
Organizations because they,like for them the focus on
short and scalable interventionsactually makes a lot more sense.
And so you, if you could.
Get people from a, from Facebook torealize that the way that content is
(25:41):
displayed may really play into buildingup these mission from stereotypes
of supporters of the other side.
That would be super valuable.
We had several people from socialmedia organizations at the conference
yesterday and then, like politicians.
(26:02):
Another category of interventions thatwe hadn't talked about so far was that
cues from elite politicians were alsoinfluential in shaping people's attitude.
There was this great intervention fromtwo candidates for governor in Utah who.
Filmed this ad together, talking abouthow they would both accept the results
(26:25):
of the 2020 election independentof who, who of them would win.
And.
Like that was very successfulin reducing the outcomes.
So if more politicians would put step up,realize that what they say really matters
and in also shaping public opinions or.
(26:47):
On these matters and ideally, dobipartisan announcements that they
endorse democratic principles to takethat of the plate and like reinforce
people to support for these principles.
That would go a long way.
And if you're a donor to acampaign, you could also try to.
(27:08):
your candidate for exactly that.
. Laura: Yeah.
Hopefully not a donor,hopefully a constituent as well.
Could also write, ask . Yeah.
I retain my optimism, it seems.
And so it sounds like this grantprogram is largely for academic research
going forward for longer interventionsor maybe pracademic type mixes.
Now I'm wondering for people listeningto, Who might be more practice focused
(27:32):
or might be working at smaller orcommunity scales, Is there a way
they can access the results in a waythat's, straightforward for them?
Yeah.
First of all, I want to clarify thatthe grant program is specifically for
academic practitioner collaboration.
So we really want practitioners to,to work with with academics so that we
(27:54):
can use the strength from , both sides.
If you don't know an academic you'revery welcome to, to contact us and we are
happy to connect you with with people.
. Yeah.
In order to like how to how to get accessto the findings in an applicable way.
We have a website, whichhas a lot of information.
(28:14):
We put all of the.
25 interventions up there so thatpeople can take them themselves if they
want to get a sense of what they are.
, if you want to use them they're freeto do they can contact us, contact
their original authors and and we.
(28:35):
With not a paper which, peoplecan read if they want to.
We have also with some summaries thatmight be more accessible, which are also
on the website, such as a press release.
Rob and I have published an oped inthe Washington Post recently, which we
hope is written in an accessible way.
(28:55):
Yeah.
And our team is super excitedabout about these issues.
So if you want to contact us, allof our details for contacting
our team is also on the website.
Laura (29:08):
That's really fantastic, honestly.
And it sounds like the projecthas a lot of promise ahead of it.
You've already accomplished a lot andit looks like it's gonna have more
in the future, which is fantastic.
So thank you so much for joining me today.
For those interested in learningmore about your work and more about
these results, where can they find.
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (29:27):
Yeah.
So as I've said there, thereis a rep set with a lot of
information@strengtheningdemocracychallenge.org.
Then you can find me on Twitter at JG vo.
And you can also find the lab onTwitter, other members of our team
(29:48):
on Twitter in particular JamesChew, Rob Willer and Dave Rand.
Yeah, and feel free to,to reach out via email.
Always happy to discuss ideas in this.
Laura (30:01):
Fantastic.
Thank you so much again, and foreveryone else, until next time,
this is Laura May with a ConflictTipping podcast from media.com.
Hello and welcome to the Conflict Tipping Podcast from mediate.com,
the podcast that explores socialconflict and what we can do about it.
I'm your host, Laura May, and today Ihave with me Yan, we, who recently led
the Strengthening Democracy Challengemega study that tested 25 crowdsource
interventions for reducing anti-democraticattitudes and partisan animosity.
(00:34):
He's also currently finalizinghis PhD at Stanford, where his key
interest is morality and politic.
Welcome young.
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (00:42):
Thanks so much for having me.
Laura (00:44):
I'm very glad to have you here.
As we get started then, you've gotthis interest in morality and politics.
What drew you to thisconvergence of these two ideas?
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (00:56):
Yeah, I've always been fascinated by moral dilemmas and.
Trying to figure out like like how toapply moral principles in practice.
And I think like one.
Area where it really matters how we applymoral principles in practice is politics.
And I've since then been veryinterested in terms of do we apply moral
(01:20):
principles differently to differentgroups or like what policies actually
follow from certain moral values.
Yeah.
And it has been, it's been a.
A great search for for answers ever since.
Laura (01:38):
I love that because some people might say that politics is an immoral
arena, but that's not quite true.
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (01:45):
Yeah.
Like I make one implication of theearlier book in my PhD and I've
been doing with Rob Willer andMatt Feinberg, is that you can.
Arrive at certain policies fromvery different moral angles.
So like when we think of a typical.
Progressive policies.
It is possible to motivate thatfrom a desire for reducing harm or
(02:11):
a desire for increasing equality.
But it's also possible, to motivatethat from a more conservative angle
of trying to do what is best for a.
Your own in group.
Oftentimes, like people from thesame country are trying to show
respect for certain great traditions.
So it's it's very tricky to figure outwhat really follows directly because
(02:32):
when you have these abstract principles,you can go in many different ways.
Laura (02:36):
No, Fantastic.
It sounds like these moralfoundations theory has been very
influential in, in the work you're.
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (02:44):
Yeah.
There's certainly been one of theinspiring papers and books I've read.
Like I have my owncriticisms of the theory.
But I still think, like that it has,that, it has inspired a lot of thought.
And and I think in in researchthat's already a big achieve.
No,
Laura (03:02):
absolutely fantastic.
It certainly has reallysculpted the discourse, about
politics and how it works.
So then tell me about theStrengthening Democracy Challenge.
What was it and how did it
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (03:13):
work?
Yeah.
So the Strengthening DemocracyChallenges best thought of
really as a team science project.
. So what we did is our teamwhich, which consists.
People are from the Polarizationand Social Change Lab.
Were just led by Rob Willer at Stanford.
(03:34):
Yeah, together with JamieDrachman, Dave Friend.
Like we put together the frameworkfor what we called a challenge.
So we wanted to challengeother people to submit their
best ideas for how to improve.
Probably problematic attitudes in theAmerican public, and particularly we were
(03:56):
interested in reducing anti-democraticattitudes, support for partisan
violence and partisan animosity.
And after having tried to set upthe framework for that for two
years we put out an open call.
Yeah, so missions both to academics,but also to practitioners in this
(04:21):
space because we knew that a lot ofpeople were working on the ground way
far away from the ivory tower on this.
And we hoped to also gain theirinsights and test them with with
experimental methods in order to see.
Where do we have good evidence that theunderlying principles actually work?
We were very concerned that wewouldn't get a lot of submissions.
(04:45):
Ended up getting 252 submissionswe thought, which we thought
were a lot that resulted in a newproblem because we only had spots.
25 interventions.
So we had a great advisory boardwho helped us to select the most
promising interventions or likewhat we and they thought were the
(05:06):
most promising interventions basedon Estimated likelihood that these
interventions would actually work.
And also novelty of the intervention.
And yeah, then ran one of thebiggest social science experiments
of Atkins with approximately 32,000participants, which gave us a lot of
(05:27):
power or like in a less academic term.
The ability to estimate the effectsof these interventions very precisely
on a bunch of different outcomes,including the ones that I had mentioned,
anti-democratic attitudes, support forpartisan violence and partisan animosity.
And so we were able to find out notonly which of these interventions
(05:48):
work, but also which one from.
The interventions submitted andselected were the most effective
in in improving these attitudes.
It,
Laura (05:58):
it sounds absolutely wonderful and it's a staggering achievement because,
I know from personal experience howdifficult it is to manage a project
across countries with different kinds ofstakeholders and all in a timely fashion.
I always had this vision for myself thatit's trying to get a whole bunch of geese
on leads to go in the same direction.
And so I am an absolute awe that you'veaccomplished this incredible project.
(06:19):
And so I also find it quite funny that,I'm here as an Australian in Europe
and you're a German in the US andwe're talking about this specifically
American challenge from the sounds ofthe project, because that was the scope,
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (06:30):
right?
Yes, that's right.
Laura (06:33):
And so then when you talk about partisan animosity and these
anti-democratic attitudes that werethe subject of the study, are they
real issues or are they just soundbite.
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (06:42):
Like I do think that there are real issues.
Like it's some of the work thatwe have been doing in the lab app
was really asking us this questionbecause we were like, if we invest.
So much effort and resources anda challenge, it should better be a
challenge where it's actually worth it.
(07:02):
So we did some work during the twoyears where at first we thought that we
would only focus on partisan animosity.
And so we we had assumed that if youtreat partisan animosity that you would
also move More obviously problematicattitudes for example, support for
undemocratic candidates, and we did notfind a lot of evidence for that, and that
(07:27):
is why we like opened up the challengefor multiple Target outcomes that people
could try to move with their intervention.
However, there, there is good evidenceout there that partisan animosity has
other important consequences, such asinfluencing people in their social, but
also in their economic interactions.
(07:48):
. So it can make a peaceful.
Good relationships in your in your family.
So relationships that people oftenreally care about, more difficult, it
can undermine like taking advantageof economic opportunities and yeah,
like when we look at anti democraticattitudes, Our very important outcome
(08:13):
because we find that anti-democraticattitudes are linked to to.
Implications of public opinion thatare really consequential, such as the
support for undemocratic candidates.
And we see that undemocratic candidateshave had plenty of success, not only
(08:33):
in the US but throughout the world.
So strengthening people'scommitment to democratic principles
is a really important pathwayto make it harder for under.
Candidates to win.
And one of the interesting insights thatwe found as a result of the challenge is
that if you reduce partisan animosity,so the dislike for the other side
(08:55):
by a lot, not just a little, that'snot sufficient, but by a lot, then
you also open people up to considerPolitical opponents against undemocratic
in party candidates that otherwisethey typically wouldn't consider.
Laura (09:13):
That, That's so interesting because as I understand it, you've
got these two separate things.
So partisan animosity and supportfor undemocratic practices and
while on the face of things, onedoesn't necessarily mean the other,
reducing animosity means a bit moreopenness to democratic principles.
Is that right?
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (09:33):
No.
So OK , yeah, so it is,it's, it is very tricky.
It's like we, we find no relationshipbetween partisan animosity and
support for undemocratic practices.
But we do find links between both ofthese constructs, support for undemocratic
practices and partisan animosity.
And support for undemocratic candidates.
(09:54):
So by reducing patent animosity, wehave some evidence in in the results
from the challenge that also reducessupport for undemocratic candidates,
whereas reducing positive animosityisn't really associated with reduced
support for undemocratic practices.
Laura (10:16):
How interesting.
Thank you UL for the clarification.
I think we're on the same page now.
Okay.
And so then thinking a moment aboutthe interventions, cuz there was
25 of them that were in the finalproject, which was your favorite?
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (10:32):
Yeah, that is that is a great question.
Like I thought, like one of themost creative intervention was an
intervention called CounterfactualCells, which was developed by.
Team of philosophers and psychologists,and the idea there was to reflect on,
(10:53):
like what are your what are your politicalattitudes now on certain hot button
issues and what would your inter andwhat you attitudes on these issues have
been under different life circumstances.
, I thought that was really.
Yeah.
Really helpful to, to understandthe fluidity and importance, not so
much of personal factors, but alsoof the systemic and environmental
(11:17):
factors that play into our politicalattitudes and may help us to have a
bit more understanding of why differentpeople end up in different places.
So I personally really like, likethat intervention it didn't do
as well as some of the others.
But I also wanted to give a shoutout because, like that was like
one, one takeaway from the challengeas well, that some ideas are great
(11:41):
but we don't find them to be aseffective and empirically as.
I think that's, I can understandwhy that would've been one of your
favorite interventions as Sure.
It sounds really interesting and almostintuitive in a way that if, of course
if we start empathizing with a differentlife story we could have had, then
we might end up differently, right?
Laura (12:01):
Yeah.
And so then thinking of theinterventions, which were really
promising, can you tell me a bit aboutthose, which ones worked the best?
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (12:10):
Yeah one group.
Very effective interventions werewhat we would call misperception
correction interventions.
So you can think of this as that Americanpartisans hold very strong stereotypes
about supporters of the other side.
They typically assume the worst.
(12:32):
Of the other side.
And so one that it was the mosteffective in reducing people's
support for undemocratic practices.
Ask participants first to toestimate how supportive I supporters
of the other party would be.
(12:53):
Many different undemocratic practices andthen provided them with real data from
another survey that they had conducted.
And usually the real data showed thatthese that the supporters of the other
side were actually much less supportiveof these undemocratic practices.
And that in turn, if you thinkof it as like in a world where
(13:15):
the other side is really un.
And also under democratic practices,you yourself may feel a need that
you now need to move away from thesedemocratic principles yourself, just
to Ha half a shot at winning at all.
But if the other side likedoesn't support these practices
as much, there's less of a need.
(13:36):
And as a result people in our study alsosupported these under Democratic practices
less, and yeah, that intervention alsoreduced support for partisan violence.
It reduced partisananimosity, not as much as.
As as others, but overall it wasa very successful intervention.
Laura (13:57):
And that was the one from uc?
Berkeley, is that right?
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (14:01):
That's right.
Developed by a team led by Leader Grayleyand and Gabe Lands from uc, Berkeley.
And then also severalmembers from from mit.
Laura (14:14):
Fantastic.
And so I will confess, I wrote downsome of the other interventions
which prove really promising.
So I'm gonna ask you about them.
It's like a pop quiz almost.
Cuz I've got here as well that therewas one from the Uni of Pennsylvania,
which was about correcting meta percepts.
And I understand therewas a video involved.
Can you tell me a bitabout how that worked?
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (14:33):
Yeah, so there was a great collaboration between academics
and practitioners from beyond conflict.
Who Oh, great.
Who did this very interest.
Project of doing something similar tothe intervention that I just described.
So I'm correcting like Ms.
(14:54):
this time about immigration attitudesand the tendency to, to dehumanize
Supporters of the other side, but theydid this in this nice format where
you saw a video of people reactingto these results in real time.
Relatable supporters from fromeach side would first give their
(15:17):
own opinion, then say what?
They thought the other sidewould think their attitude was,
and then afterwards saw . So theestimated and actual overlap in in.
Attitudes from Democrats and Republicans.
And that intervention was mostlyeffective in reducing support for
(15:38):
partisan violence in our study.
It also reduced entity support forunder democratic practices, and
I think it was like number fivein reducing partisan animosity.
So also, wow, very successful throughoutthe different target outcomes,
which was not a typical outcome.
Laura (15:59):
All right.
So it, what you've just describedactually reminds me of that UK TV
program, Goggle Box, where you watchother people watching TV to see how they
react to news and soap operas, right?
So I love that this has become newscience ified and used to test these
partisan ideas and democratic ideas.
They're fantastic.
I've got two more I wanna ask you about.
(16:21):
Cuz one was about storytellingand expanding the pool of people
who matter, and I'm very curiousabout this and how it worked.
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (16:28):
Yeah.
There was, I was a great interventiondeveloped by practitioners . So C'S
actually less interested in we do thinkpartisan animosity specifically, they're
just like interested in fosteringsocial relationships across divides.
. And so they didn't really mentionparty very much throughout their
(16:53):
intervention, which was fascinating.
Instead, they had a seriesof five videos from.
From people who share, like things thatother people oftentimes miss about them.
Like for example, there was a like Brianwho like said that like one of her most
useful skills is that she speaks Spanishvery well, even though people would
(17:16):
never know that when they would justlook at her or would never guess that.
And so it was a nicedeep dive into like, how.
How complex and and hard it isto like, know what's really going
on when you don't know a person.
And so like this exposure to to thesefive, five different videos led to
(17:38):
a a small decrease in support forundemocratic practices and to a very
strong decrease in partisan animosity.
We had a group of four top performinginterventions for partisan animosity,
and it was it was among those,I'm not sure if it rank three
or if it rank third or fourth.
Laura (17:59):
That's really fascinating.
And the reason I was drawn to thisone as far as at least names go right,
it's this idea of expanding the pool ofpeople that matter because a lot of the
listens to this podcast are mediatorsand especially, Group mediators or
occasionally even peace mediators.
And this notion of really expandingthat pool is very central.
It's very central to the whole practice.
(18:20):
So thank you for sharing about that.
And then the last one I wannaask about was the one about media
trades and incentivizing engagement.
What does that mean?
What, what actually doesthis media trade mean?
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (18:33):
Yeah.
Yeah like this was afascinating intervention.
It.
Two important componentsdeveloped by a team of economic
economists and psychologistsled by Daniel Stone and yeah.
And so it was basically you orparticipants were asked to watch
(18:56):
a video and they were told that ifwatch the the video attentively.
They would get to send eitheran article or that video to to
supporter of the other side.
So like that was the media tradecomponent that you were able to
(19:18):
determine what another participant Wouldwatch if you were able to answer some
questions about the video correctly.
And that was to to maximize theamount of attention participants
would pay to the video.
And yeah.
And the video was Famous Heineken adeven though we like took the Heineken
part out of the video where peoplewith very different ideological beliefs
(19:43):
met up, built a bar together, and thendrank a beer, which was a Heineken beer.
And as part of the processparticipants learned.
That they actually had verydifferent ideological beliefs.
For example, there was a, therewas a climate change activist
and a climate change skeptic.
And and like after that first.
(20:05):
Started to to build this bar, theywould see how the other person had
talked about climate change in the past.
And yeah.
And.
All of the conversationswere very respectful and
caring for the other person.
People wanted to stay in touch afterwards,so it was an example of showing relatable
(20:32):
examplers from like both sides, havinga positive interaction with each other.
That's
Laura (20:38):
fantastic and you've reminded me actually of an episode I recorded a
couple of months ago with a mediator whonoted just the, There was an initiative
where people of one party, I thinkit was democratic and I think highly
democratic went to a very Republicanarea and I think was delivering stu or
some such and having this communal mealwas a way to reengage perceptions and
(21:00):
ideas about who each other is, right.
And bring everyone together.
Swapping out the stew for beer,in this case, having, together
they could be a good meal, right?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
All right, so pop quiz part over then.
So thank you so much for sharing about allthat information about those interventions
and I'd like to ask you next, what, ifanything else surprised you about the
(21:22):
project or a particular intervention?
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (21:26):
Yeah, so can like I think that one main takeaway that
came as a bit of surprises that in thespace of polarization and democracy,
you need to be really really thoughtfulof what you are trying to move.
Like we, we may think of allof these different constructs
(21:47):
as being like, closely related,maybe even basically the same.
But we find that thatthese outcomes are moved.
Very different types of interventions,or at least that there, the
strength of like how strongly theyare moved are quite different.
And, the field of practitionersand academics has done a tremendous
(22:10):
job in developing effectiveinterventions for partisan animosity.
We found 23 out of 25 interventionsin our study had an effect that that
reduced partner animosity, which,was totally surprising for us.
There's a lot of criticism out therethat like that interventions in the
(22:30):
social sciences, don't actually do a lot.
So we were like, this is prettyrobust literature with a lot of
promising dimensions, but thingslook a bit different when we when
we think about support for underdemocratic practices and support for
partisan violence, where we foundfive or six successful interventions.
(22:51):
It's so that, that tells usit's not enough to focus on one
thing and assume that that will.
All of the problems.
I'm not saying that like peopleactually think that, it is like
you, you like need to be veryaware of what do I want to treat?
What do I think is a reallyimportant outcome in this space?
And then really think about interventionsthat can that can treat this outcome.
(23:15):
Okay.
Fantastic.
Laura (23:17):
And so I guess the next question has to, How do we apply these findings?
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (23:23):
Yeah.
So there were different pathways, soit's one idea or one, one, like main
outcome of of the challenges that we aretrying to put the theoretical knowledge
that we have gained about how to.
These problematic attitudes thatwe are trying to put that knowledge
or make that knowledge availableto as many people as possible.
(23:46):
There, there are so manyimportant stakeholders in this.
It, it arrangements from like politiciansto, to journalists, to activists, and
also members of the general public.
So when more people know about what is.
What is important and what actuallyhas an effect then, agree with people
(24:08):
who can come up with smart ideas.
So like that is, that'slike one, one big thing.
And we organize the A conference.
Yesterday where we focused onpractitioners in particular because
like they were such an importantpart of the success of the project.
And so we like tried to tell them,here's something that we did in in,
(24:32):
in our own setting where we focuson short and scalable interventions.
Here is the knowledge that wegain from this, namely certain
few Certain theoretical principlesabout how to move these outcomes.
And now we hope that you can use this inthe kind of interventions that you run in
practice, which are usually, repeated overtime, way longer than just eight minutes.
(24:58):
And we have a grant programwhere we are trying to.
Trying to see if we can develop likemore, more prolonged interventions
in the field and also demonstratethat these are effective now.
. And then, the other big stakeholdershere who who we hope to have an
(25:20):
impact on is people in social media.
Organizations because they,like for them the focus on
short and scalable interventionsactually makes a lot more sense.
And so you, if you could.
Get people from a, from Facebook torealize that the way that content is
(25:41):
displayed may really play into buildingup these mission from stereotypes
of supporters of the other side.
That would be super valuable.
We had several people from socialmedia organizations at the conference
yesterday and then, like politicians.
(26:02):
Another category of interventions thatwe hadn't talked about so far was that
cues from elite politicians were alsoinfluential in shaping people's attitude.
There was this great intervention fromtwo candidates for governor in Utah who.
Filmed this ad together, talking abouthow they would both accept the results
(26:25):
of the 2020 election independentof who, who of them would win.
And.
Like that was very successfulin reducing the outcomes.
So if more politicians would put step up,realize that what they say really matters
and in also shaping public opinions or.
(26:47):
On these matters and ideally, dobipartisan announcements that they
endorse democratic principles to takethat of the plate and like reinforce
people to support for these principles.
That would go a long way.
And if you're a donor to acampaign, you could also try to.
(27:08):
your candidate for exactly that.
. Laura: Yeah.
Hopefully not a donor,hopefully a constituent as well.
Could also write, ask . Yeah.
I retain my optimism, it seems.
And so it sounds like this grantprogram is largely for academic research
going forward for longer interventionsor maybe pracademic type mixes.
Now I'm wondering for people listeningto, Who might be more practice focused
(27:32):
or might be working at smaller orcommunity scales, Is there a way
they can access the results in a waythat's, straightforward for them?
Yeah.
First of all, I want to clarify thatthe grant program is specifically for
academic practitioner collaboration.
So we really want practitioners to,to work with with academics so that we
(27:54):
can use the strength from , both sides.
If you don't know an academic you'revery welcome to, to contact us and we are
happy to connect you with with people.
. Yeah.
In order to like how to how to get accessto the findings in an applicable way.
We have a website, whichhas a lot of information.
(28:14):
We put all of the.
25 interventions up there so thatpeople can take them themselves if they
want to get a sense of what they are.
, if you want to use them they're freeto do they can contact us, contact
their original authors and and we.
(28:35):
With not a paper which, peoplecan read if they want to.
We have also with some summaries thatmight be more accessible, which are also
on the website, such as a press release.
Rob and I have published an oped inthe Washington Post recently, which we
hope is written in an accessible way.
(28:55):
Yeah.
And our team is super excitedabout about these issues.
So if you want to contact us, allof our details for contacting
our team is also on the website.
Laura (29:08):
That's really fantastic, honestly.
And it sounds like the projecthas a lot of promise ahead of it.
You've already accomplished a lot andit looks like it's gonna have more
in the future, which is fantastic.
So thank you so much for joining me today.
For those interested in learningmore about your work and more about
these results, where can they find.
Jan Gerrit Voelkel (29:27):
Yeah.
So as I've said there, thereis a rep set with a lot of
information@strengtheningdemocracychallenge.org.
Then you can find me on Twitter at JG vo.
And you can also find the lab onTwitter, other members of our team
(29:48):
on Twitter in particular JamesChew, Rob Willer and Dave Rand.
Yeah, and feel free to,to reach out via email.
Always happy to discuss ideas in this.
Laura (30:01):
Fantastic.
Thank you so much again, and foreveryone else, until next time,
this is Laura May with a ConflictTipping podcast from media.com.
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