Feeling seen as human may reduce disgust and encourage political compromise - General science

Five experiments involving 1,541 participants in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada found that people became more open to negotiation after reading messages portraying their political group as fully human rather than as “animals and brutes.” Reduced disgust toward the opposing party, rather than lower anger or greater empathy, was the main emotional pathway linked to reconciliation.

A study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin suggests that people who believe political opponents see their group as fully human may be more willing to negotiate, compromise and work across party lines. The researchers found that this effect was mainly associated with a reduction in disgust toward the opposing party.

The research focused on affective polarization, in which political differences become personal and supporters distrust or dislike members of another party. The authors examined meta-perceptions, or beliefs about how one’s own political group is viewed by outsiders. Feeling that the opposing side regards one’s group as irrational, animalistic or less than human is known as meta-dehumanization. The reverse perception, in which people believe the other side sees their group as fully human, is called meta-humanization.

Across five experiments, 1,541 participants from the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada read fictional social media posts attributed to supporters of a rival party. The messages either described their own party as “animals and brutes lacking in self-control,” portrayed it as “sophisticated,” or, in some studies, were replaced by a control condition with no such posts.

In the first experiment, 353 British adults who read the humanizing messages reported lower anger, disgust and hostility toward the opposing party, as well as less desire for social distance. The study included supporters of both the Conservative and Labour parties.

Two experiments conducted shortly before the 2024 U.S. presidential election involved 301 Republicans and 302 Democrats. In both groups, participants exposed to humanizing messages felt more strongly that the opposing party viewed them as human. Statistical analyses indicated that this perception was linked to lower disgust, which was then associated with viewing political opponents as more human and civilized and with greater support for negotiation, compromise, bipartisan teamwork and future contact.

The researchers did not find statistically significant pathways involving anger or empathy in these U.S. experiments. The results were similar in two Canadian studies involving 310 Conservative supporters and 300 Liberal supporters. Humanizing messages were again associated with reduced disgust, greater recognition of the opposing party’s humanity and more conciliatory attitudes.

The Canadian Liberal group produced one exception: under low to moderate perceived threat to social cohesion, greater empathy also acted as a parallel link between feeling humanized and reconciliation when compared with the control group. However, reduced disgust remained the more consistent pathway across the studies.

The researchers also assessed whether concern that political divisions were damaging shared values, trust and belonging affected the results. The indirect pathway through reduced disgust was most consistently observed when participants reported a moderate level of threat to social cohesion. It extended to higher threat in some analyses involving conservative and Republican participants, and to lower threat in several analyses involving liberal and Democratic participants.

The authors say the findings indicate that feeling respected as fully human may remove a psychological barrier to dialogue. Disgust is associated with perceptions of moral contamination and can motivate people to avoid an opposing group. Reducing that reaction may therefore make it easier to regard political rivals as fellow citizens with whom cooperation is possible.

Melissa Pavetich, an assistant professor at Heriot-Watt University in Dubai and the study’s lead researcher, said the team was interested not only in what partisans think about each other, but also in what they believe the other side thinks about them. She said the results suggest that “when people feel seen as human, they feel less moral disgust toward the other side, and that makes room for reconciliation.”

The researchers cautioned that the findings do not prove that reduced disgust directly causes greater willingness to negotiate. Although the messages were experimentally manipulated, emotional responses, perceptions of the opposing party and conciliatory attitudes were measured at the same time through survey questions.

They also noted that the perceived threat to social cohesion was measured rather than experimentally manipulated, and that the humanization measure used in the study is widely used but debated. The experiments took place in three Western countries with political systems centered largely on two major rival parties, so the findings may not apply to multi-party systems or conflicts involving entrenched violence.

The authors emphasize that the effects were small to moderate and are unlikely to eliminate partisan hostility by themselves. They also warned that humanizing messages should reflect genuine signals from the opposing group rather than unsupported claims that the other side respects one’s humanity. The study was authored by Melissa Pavetich and Sofia Stathi and is titled “Bridging the Political Divide: Meta-Humanization and Moral Emotions Shape Partisan Reconciliation.”

Sources: PsyPost.