Research
We use course assignments incorporated into introductory courses to deliver our intervention. In each study, we contrast randomly assigned control courses to those that include our assignments. In both conditions, we assess our variables of interest at the beginning of the semester and after the assignment(s) have been completed.
Variables of Interest
Perspective Taking
Perspective taking is an essential cognitive skill for understanding viewpoints that differ from one’s own (Todd & Galinsky, 2014). It is also associated with a number of other prosocial effects as well: .
High levels of perspective taking reduce intergroup bias by leading to more favorable explicit (Batson et al., 1997; Dovidio et al., 2004) and implicit (Todd et al., 2011) evaluations of the outgroup.
High levels of perspective taking also increase behaviors like positive non-verbals (Todd et al., 2011) and helping behavior (Clore & Jeffery, 1972; Mallett et al., 2008; Shih et al., 2009).
We find perspective taking decreases among students who do not complete our intervention, and stays stable among those who do.
Intellectual Humility
Intellectual humility is recognizing that one’s own beliefs may not be correct and has a range of positive effects, both interpersonal and societal (Leary et al., 2017).
High levels of intellectual humility are associated with tolerating of views that conflict with one’s own (Hook et al., 2017), more satisfying relationships (Leary, 2018), and lower acrimony towards people who differ in beliefs and ideology (Hook et al., 2017; Krumrei-Mancuso, 2017; Leary et al., 2017; Porter & Schumann, 2018).
We find intellectual humility decreases among students who do not complete our intervention, and stays stable among those who do.
Open-Minded Cognition
Open-minded cognition is a “willingness to consider a variety of intellectual perspectives, values, opinions, or beliefs—even those that contradict the individual’s opinion” (Price et al., 2015).
Higher levels of open-minded cognition are associated with greater empathy toward and more favorable opinions of the out-group, as well as better performance in diverse groups (Mitchell et al., 2012; Price et al., 2015).
We find that open-minded cognition decreases among students who do not complete our intervention, and stays stable among those who do.
Assessment of Attitudinally Dissimilar Others
Other’s assessment is the perception that people one disagrees with are rational.
This is a scale we developed ourselves, based on two questions: “This person has based their opinions on facts” and “I respect the opinion of this person.” Both questions are measured on a scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree.
We find that students who participate in our assignment judge those they disagree with as more rational, while those who do not do our intervention do not change in their assessment.
Moral Absolutism
Moral absolutism is a moral attitude that views an action as intrinsically right or wrong regardless of consequences (McConnell, 1981).
People high in moral absolutism think that “wrong” actions should not be done, even if they have good consequences, while “right” actions should be taken, even if they have negative effects.
We find moral absolutism decreases slightly but not significantly.
Attitude Extremity
Attitude extremity measures how strongly people feel about an issue.
We use a 6 point scale from totally in favor to totally against. People in the middle of the scale are less extreme.
We find that attitude extremity decreases slightly but not significantly.
Moral Conviction
Moral conviction captures how connected a specific issue is to one’s core beliefs (Skitka et al., 2005)
When people discover differences between their viewpoint and others, moral conviction decreases tolerance and willingness to reach a compromise with attitudinally dissimilar others (Skitka et al., 2005). It even makes people more accepting of political violence (Workman et al., 2020). Those holding a conflicting viewpoint are seen as ignorant, irrational, or actively seeking to undermine the “truth” (Ross & Ward, 1996).
We find our effects are not moderated by how morally convicted students are about an issue; our intervention works on issues students feel are morally based as well as not morally based.