Moral perspective-taking can reduce polarization around climate policy in the United States

Abstract

Polarization is a barrier to the large-scale collective action urgently needed to address the climate crisis. Moral perspective-taking combines counter-attitudinal argument generation with moral framing as a strategy for reducing polarization. Across four online studies with participants in the United States, we experimentally tested the efficacy of moral perspective-taking for depolarization around divisive climate-related topics (transition from fossil fuels, fracking bans). We found consistent evidence that moral perspective-taking can help moderate views on a divisive environmental topic, thus helping to decrease polarization. All four studies found significant effects of moral perspective-taking on policy support. Further, Studies 1 and 2 found that the intervention increased cognitive empathy for people with opposing views and Studies 3 and 4 found it decreased resistance to opinion change and influenced willingness to take action on the issue. Our findings suggest that moral perspective-taking can be used as a flexible tool to reduce polarization that is scalable and adaptable across multiple contexts.