Map My Words: Argument Diagrams & Polarization

We are pre-registering a series of experiments designed to better understand depolarization in discourse about controversial policies. Like playing mental chess, comprehending real-life political arguments presented in prose can be cognitively demanding. So many people may simplify their representation of the argument and rely on other effort-minimizing heuristics. While efficient, these mental shortcuts may be susceptible to biases such as confirmation or myside bias. If this explanation of biased policy argument evaluation is correct, then certain concrete methods may be able to reduce political polarization. In a preliminary study (Cullen & Sharma, 2018), we found that presenting an argument visually, using color, line, and shape to display its logical structure dramatically reduced biased argument evaluation compared to presenting the exact same argument in identical prose. Further, the argument visualizations reduced the belief that one's political opponents are evil among those who performed poorly on a reflection test (ibid.) Subsequent pilot research found that the depolarizing effects of visualizing arguments may not work as well when participants evaluate arguments which do not (a) support policies that they are inclined to reject and (b) appeal to their own values or “speak their moral language”. To test this hypothesis, we are developing arguments for one party’s policies that appealing to the values of the other party (e.g., a pro-choice argument that appeals to the value of law and order or a pro-life argument that appeals to the interests of marginalized groups). We also developed more conventional arguments for these policies (e.g., a pro-choice argument that appeals to gender equality or a pro-life argument that appeals to traditional family values). We predict that the depolarizing power of visual argument presentation is real, but that it may be more potent for arguments that “speak our moral language.” For example, liberals may think better of a pro-life argument that appeals to liberal values than one that does not. The goal is to test as many of the following effects as funding allows: the effect(s) of presenting arguments for or against particular policies (a) in diagram form (vs. prose) and (b) that appeal to politically conservative (vs. political progressive) values. We predict that debiasing relies on both making the logical structure of the arguments perspicuous (with argument diagrams) and showing how that structure appeals to values that participants share. A secondary goal is to test the interaction of these effects with individual differences in factors like reasoning (e.g., belief bias tasks, reflection tests, etc.). Cullen, S., & Sharma, V. (2018). Short Report on Initial Political Polarization/Argument Visualization Study.