Preempting Polarization: An Experiment on Opinion Formation

Blind adoption of opinions put forward by political parties and influential figures can sometimes be harmful. Focusing on cases where the partisan gap on policy support has not yet arisen, we investigate whether its formation can be prevented by encouraging prior active engagement with non-partisan information. To address this question, we recruited N=851 Republicans for a study about net neutrality, an issue largely unfamiliar to the electorate. In a pre-registered experiment, we randomly changed the order in which the following two types of information were provided: (i) partisan, underscoring Republicans' opposition and Democrats' support, and (ii) non-partisan, where the participants evaluated factual arguments about the pros and cons of the policy. Despite holding total information constant, we found that those who saw the non-partisan block first donated 46% more to a charity advocating for net neutrality (p=0.001). We also report that the partisan information altered which arguments Republicans found convincing when viewing the non-partisan block. Lastly, as a robustness check, we provide evidence that the treatment effect on support for the issue persisted in an obfuscated follow-up study, conducted several weeks after the intervention.