The Ideological Turing Test for Moderation of Outgroup Affective Animosity
David Gamba, Daniel M. Romero, Grant Schoenebeck

TL;DR
This study introduces the Ideological Turing Test, a gamified approach to reduce societal polarization by encouraging perspective-taking through debate and writing, showing different short-term and long-term effects on animosity and ideological shifts.
Contribution
It presents the first experimental evaluation of the Ideological Turing Test as a scalable method to decrease affective animosity and polarization across ideological divides.
Findings
Writing from the opposite perspective reduces immediate animosity more effectively.
Debate modality sustains long-term reduction in affective animosity.
Adopting the opposite perspective causes significant immediate ideological shifts.
Abstract
Rising animosity toward ideological opponents poses critical societal challenges. We introduce and test the Ideological Turing Test, a gamified framework requiring participants to adopt and defend opposing viewpoints, to reduce affective animosity and affective polarization. We conducted a mixed-design experiment () with four conditions: modality (debate/writing) x perspective-taking (Own/Opposite side). Participants engaged in structured interactions defending assigned positions, with outcomes judged by peers. We measured changes in affective animosity and ideological position immediately post-intervention and at 2-6 week follow-up. Perspective-taking reduced out-group animosity and ideological polarization. However, effects differed by modality (writing vs. debate) and over time. For affective animosity, writing from the opposite perspective yielded the largest immediate…
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Taxonomy
TopicsSocial and Intergroup Psychology · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment · Action Observation and Synchronization
