Learning to Like the Enemy: Moral Learning Reduces Affective Polarization

Affective polarization, the growing gap between negativity toward political outgroups and positivity toward political ingroups, threatens democracies. This preregistered research tested the effectiveness of a novel moral learning treatment, which combines the significance of morality with basic learning principles, in reducing affective polarization in the U.S. context. A pre-study demonstrated in-party preference, which was challenged in Experiment 1, which assigned moral behaviors to one political group (e.g., Republican) and immoral behaviors to the other political group (e.g., Democrat). As predicted, the learning treatment reduced self-reported and automatic preference for in-party individuals both immediately and after a 2-day delay. Experiment 2 replicated this finding, using neutral control to rule out that immoral behaviors caused the reduction in in-party preference. Experiment 3 showed the effect extended beyond individual party members to the entire out-party. Highlighting out-party members’ moral behavior could strengthen shared values and be useful in political campaigns or education.