Can America’s political environment be detoxed?

Four years ago, the campaigns for Utah’s opposing gubernatorial candidates teamed up to produce and distribute a 30-second ad affirming their mutual respect and a shared commitment to democratic norms.

The ad aired in stark contrast to the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign, marked by venom, smears and conspiracy theories that culminated with the post-election Jan. 6 assault on Congress, highlighting an ongoing stain on American democracy that is even more evident in the current election cycle.

Back in 2020, Utah Republican Spencer Cox, now the state’s governor seeking re-election, and Democrat Chris Peterson, a University of Utah law professor, were onto something healthy with their #StandUnited ad, which new research shows performed well in mellowing political hostility.

Ben Lyons, a University of Utah assistant professor of communication who studies disinformation, handled the #StandUnited research in a much larger study led by Stanford University’s Polarization and Social Change Lab (PaSCL).

The  Strengthening Democracy Challenge “megastudy” was published on Oct. 18, 2024, in the journal Science. The results offer actionable insights and pathways for political leaders, civil society organizations, tech platforms and others to de-escalate partisan division and strengthen Americans’ commitment to democracy.

“To strengthen American democracy, it is critical that politicians who violate democratic principles face consequences with voters, particularly voters who generally support the politicians’ party,” said project leader Robb Willer, a Stanford professor of sociology and psychology and director of PaSCL. “Voters can be a critical backstop for democracy if they seriously consider rejecting undemocratic moves by leaders from their own party. We learned a lot about what can motivate that in this project.”

The  Strengthening Democracy Challenge tested 25 video interventions—selected from a crowd-sourced pool of 250 ideas—for their effectiveness in mitigating three divisive elements afflicting the United States’ political culture today: partisan animosity; anti-democratic attitudes; and support for political violence.

Utah’s #StandUnited ad and another video analyzed by Samantha Moore-Berg, a U assistant professor of psychology, were among just three that were effective in reducing all three negative outcomes.

The 25 selected treatments were designed by both academics and practitioners and shared with 32,059 study participants from across the country. The study found that all but one of the treatments reduced partisan animosity, “most strongly by highlighting relatable sympathetic individuals with different political beliefs or by emphasizing common identities shared by rival partisans.”

“The interventions really varied. Some of them are showing people sitting down for conversations. The Heineken ad was one that was used and it was maybe the most effective on partisan animosity,” Lyons said. “But the other two categories of outcomes we looked at—anti-democratic attitudes and support for violence—were harder for these interventions to target. This partly suggests these things don’t have a common cause, so you can’t target them all at the same time necessarily. They’re less linked than we would’ve thought.”

For her contribution, Moore-Berg and colleagues created a four-minute video in collaboration with the Boston-based nonprofit Beyond Conflict that corrects misperceptions political partisans have of each other.

A long-time collaborator with Beyond Conflict, Moore-Berg’s prior research found that Democrats and Republicans think the other side dehumanizes, dislikes and disagrees with them far more than in reality.

“When people learn that the other side views them more positively than initially expected, it both decreases how much they dehumanize the other side and makes them feel better about the other side,” she said. The video, produced by an Emmy-winning filmmaker, was a translation of those research findings into practice. It juxtaposes political partisans giving their views of the other side, then asks them what they think the other side would say about them on immigration policies and dehumanization.

“We give them the correct information and they realize that the other side does not dehumanize them as much and does not disagree with them as much as they thought,” said Moore-Berg, who directs the Peace and Intergroup Conflict Lab. “And you see this ‘aha’ moment happen through the people on the screen.”

The Stanford-led megastudy concluded this strategy—correcting exaggerated perceptions—is among the most effective for reducing support for undemocratic practices and partisan violence.

In his contribution, Lyons submitted Utah’s 2020 gubernatorial ad in which both candidates pledged to honor the election results in a collegial, tightly scripted banter:

Peterson: We are currently in the final days of campaigning against each other to be your next governor.

Cox: While I think you should vote for me

Peterson: But really you should vote for me.

Cox: There are some things we both agree on.

Peterson: We can debate issues without degrading each other’s character.

Cox: We can disagree without hating each other.

Peterson: Win or lose, in Utah, we work together.

Cox: So let’s show the country that there’s a better way.

While the ad was tailored to a Utah audience, its message resonated with voters from other states, according to Lyons. Deep-red Utah might have a yawning political divide, but its political actors don’t display—in most instances—the level of vitriol and distrust commonly seen in other states.

“It’s not applicable everywhere. Not all states have the civic culture Utah does. Not all governors are willing to sit down with their opponents and film that sort of campaign. But based on all the theories that we have, this sort of thing should work,” Lyons said. “We thought it would be effective in Utah, but it was nationally effective. So that’s pretty promising as well. People don’t even know who our governor is outside Utah. It didn’t really matter. They just knew it was a Republican and a Democrat.”