How deep a divide do we tolerate? Measuring the willingness to engage with differently minded others (WEDO)

Abstract Fostering contact across political camps is crucial to combat affective polarization and to sustain healthy democratic discourse. Researchers therefore have become increasingly interested in better understanding the factors that promote or hamper political exchange. The present research contributes to this goal by introducing WEDO, a new measure to assess the willingness to engage with differently minded others based on behavioral preferences in hypothetical scenarios. This measure integrates the advantages of topic‐specific assessment, fine‐grained response, and economical administration. Across four studies ( N = 1215) conducted in diverse sociopolitical contexts, we examine WEDO's associations with conceptually related variables. Our findings indicate that WEDO is linked to various individual characteristics (e.g., analytic thinking, intellectual humility) and further predicts behavior in a selective exposure task. Overall, WEDO offers a nuanced tool for understanding how personal characteristics, situational factors, and sociopolitical contexts influence individuals' openness to political discourse.