ArticleNature human behaviour2025
Interacting as equals reduces partisan polarization in Mexico.
Article in Nature human behaviour, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Partisan Animosity as Blame: A Unifying and Generative Framework for Understanding and Transforming Affective Polarization in the Political Sphere.Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc · 2026Article
- Political polarization in low- and middle-income countries.Nature human behaviour · 2026Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In many contemporary democracies, political polarization increasingly involves deep-seated intolerance of opposing partisans. The decades-old contact hypothesis suggests that cross-partisan interactions might reduce intolerance if individuals interact with equal social status. Here we test this idea by implementing collaborative contact between 1,227 pairs of citizens (2,454 individuals) with opposing partisan sympathies in Mexico, using the online medium to credibly randomize participants' relative social status within the interaction. Interacting under both equal and unequal status enhanced tolerant behaviour immediately after contact; however, 3 weeks later, only the salutary effects of equal contact endured. These results demonstrate that a simple, scalable intervention that puts people on equal footing can reduce partisan polarization and make online contact into a prosocial force.
Indexed as
Identifiers
39528763What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.