The Ideological Turing Test for Moderation of Outgroup Affective Animosity
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| _version_ | 1866908708610506752 |
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| author | Gamba, David Romero, Daniel M. Schoenebeck, Grant |
| author_facet | Gamba, David Romero, Daniel M. Schoenebeck, Grant |
| contents | 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 ($N = 203$) 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 reduction ($Δ=+0.45$ SD), but the effect was not detectable at the 4-6 week follow-up. In contrast, the debate modality maintained a statistically significant reduction in animosity immediately after and at follow-up ($Δ=+0.37$ SD). For ideological position, adopting the opposite perspective led to significant immediate movement across modalities (writing: $Δ=+0.91$ SD; debate: $Δ=+0.51$ SD), and these changes persisted at follow-up. Judged performance (winning) did not moderate these effects, and willingness to re-participate was similar across conditions (~20-36%).
These findings challenge assumptions about adversarial methods, revealing distinct temporal patterns: non-adversarial engagement fosters short-term empathy gains, while cognitive engagement through debate sustains affective benefits. The Ideological Turing Test demonstrates potential as a scalable tool for reducing polarization, particularly when combining perspective-taking with reflective adversarial interactions. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_12187 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | The Ideological Turing Test for Moderation of Outgroup Affective Animosity Gamba, David Romero, Daniel M. Schoenebeck, Grant Computers and Society Human-Computer Interaction Physics and Society 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 ($N = 203$) 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 reduction ($Δ=+0.45$ SD), but the effect was not detectable at the 4-6 week follow-up. In contrast, the debate modality maintained a statistically significant reduction in animosity immediately after and at follow-up ($Δ=+0.37$ SD). For ideological position, adopting the opposite perspective led to significant immediate movement across modalities (writing: $Δ=+0.91$ SD; debate: $Δ=+0.51$ SD), and these changes persisted at follow-up. Judged performance (winning) did not moderate these effects, and willingness to re-participate was similar across conditions (~20-36%). These findings challenge assumptions about adversarial methods, revealing distinct temporal patterns: non-adversarial engagement fosters short-term empathy gains, while cognitive engagement through debate sustains affective benefits. The Ideological Turing Test demonstrates potential as a scalable tool for reducing polarization, particularly when combining perspective-taking with reflective adversarial interactions. |
| title | The Ideological Turing Test for Moderation of Outgroup Affective Animosity |
| topic | Computers and Society Human-Computer Interaction Physics and Society |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.12187 |