Cross-Cutting Social Networks - Testing Democratic Theory in Practice

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Annenberg School for Communication

Departmental Papers (ASC)University of Pennsylvania Year

Cross-cutting Social Networks: TestingDemocratic Theory in Practice

Diana C. MutzUniversity of Pennsylvania, [email protected]

c Cambridge University Press. Reprinted from American Political Science Review ,Volume 96, Issue 1, March 2005, pages 111-126.Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0003055402004264

NOTE: At the time of publication, the author Diana C. Mutz was affiliated with Ohio StateUniversity. Currently, she is a faculty member of the Annenberg School for Communication.

This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons.

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American Political Science Review Vol. 96, No. 1 March 2002

Cross-cutting Social Networks: Testing DemocraticTheory in PracticeDIANA C. MUTZ Ohio State University

E xposure to conicting politicalviewpoints is widelyassumed to benet thecitizens of a democratic polity. Nonetheless, the benets of exposure to heterogeneous political viewpoints have yet to bedemonstrated empirically. Drawing on national survey data that tap characteristics of peoples

political discussion networks, I examine the impact of heterogeneous networks of political discussionon individuals awareness of legitimate rationales for oppositional viewpoints, on their awareness of rationales for their own viewpoints, and on levels of political tolerance. Finally, utilizing a laboratoryexperiment manipulating exposure to dissonant and consonant political views, I further substantiate thecausal role of cross-cutting exposure in fostering political tolerance.

R ecent social and political theory has elevatedpolitical conversation among democratic citi-zens to new heights. Political talk is central tomost current conceptions of how democracy functions(Schudson 1997). According to many prominent socialtheorists, democracy has a future only if citizens comeback outof their bunkers andstart talking (Gray1995,1; seealso Elshtain 1995; Lasch 1995).The quantity andquality of political conversation have become a stan-dard for the accomplishment of democracy (Sanders1997, 347). Theorists extol the virtues of political talk,foundations spend millions of dollars to encourage it,and civic journalists and others plan special meetingsto foster more of it. Yet what do we really know aboutbenecial outcomes of political talk as it occurs in dayto day life?

For themost part, arguments for thecentrality of po-litical discussion among ordinary Americanshave beenhighly theoretical in nature. In other words, the contri-butions to democratic ends that political conversationsaresupposed tomake dependcriticallyon whether suchtalk reaches thestandardsnecessary to be deemedde-liberation, discourse,or, in Habermas (1989) terms,an ideal speech situation. It is one thing to claimthat political conversation has the potential to producebenecial outcomes if it meets a whole variety of asyet unrealized criteria, and yet another to argue thatpolitical conversations, as they actually occur, producemeaningful benets for citizens (Conover and Searing1998).Because the list of requirements fordeliberationtends to be quite lengthy, 1 it is difcult, if not impossi-ble, to test theories of this kind empirically.

Diana C. Mutz is Professor of Political Science and Journalismand Communication at Ohio State University, 2140 Derby Hall,154 North Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210-1373 ([email protected]).

I am grateful to the Spencer Foundation for funding the surveydata collection for this project, to the Center for Advanced Study inthe Behavioral Sciences for time to work on it, and to Paul Martinand Justin Taylor for their research assistance.1 For example, to qualify, political discussion must take place amongcitizens of equal status who offer reasonable, carefully constructed,and morally justiable arguments to one another in a context of mu-tual respect (Gutmann and Thompson 1996). Such interactions mustexclude no one or, at least, provide free and equal access to all(Knight and Johnson 1994). In addition, the opinions of participantsin deliberativeencounters mustall weigh equally (e.g.,Fishkin1991),andall participantsmustbe free of thekinds of materialdeprivationsthat hinder participation, such as a lack of income or education.

If one limitsthepolitical communication phenomenaworthy of study to those conversations that meet thenecessary and sufcient conditions invoked by demo-cratic theorists, then one is left with a near-empty setof social interactions to study. Instead, the goal of thisresearch is to examine a very minimalist conception of political discussion, butone thatmay, nonetheless,havesignicant consequences for the citizens who engage init. For these purposes I relax many of the requirementsinvoked in discussions of deliberationand focus strictlyon the extent to which political conversations exposepeople to dissimilar political views. My results sug-gest that although cross-cutting exposure is disappoint-ingly infrequent in the contemporary United States,it mayeven in its highly imperfect manifestationshold some benecial consequences for democraticcitizens.

THEORETICAL ASSUMPTIONS ABOUTTHE CONSEQUENCES OF CROSS-CUTTING

EXPOSUREPerhaps the most often cited proponent of commu-nication across lines of difference is John Stuart Mill(1859, 21), who pointed out how a lack of contact withoppositional viewpoints diminishes the prospects fora public sphere: If the opinion is right, they are de-privedof theopportunity of exchanging error for truth;if wrong, they lose what is almost as great a benet, theclearer perception and livelier impression of truth pro-duced by its collision with error. Likewise, Habermas(1989) assumes that exposure to dissimilar views willbenet the inhabitants of a public sphere by encour-aging greater interpersonal deliberation and intraper-sonal reection.

Exposure to conicting political views is also said toplay an integral role in encouraging enlarged mental-ity, that is, the capacity to form an opinion by consid-eringa givenissuefrom differentviewpoints, bymakingpresent to my mind the standpoints of those who areabsent. . . . The more peoples standpoints I have pre-sent in my mind while I am pondering a given issue,and the better I can imagine how I would feel andthink if I were in their place, the stronger will be mycapacity for representative thinking and themore validmy nal conclusions, my opinion (Arendt 1968, 241).Interactions with others of differing views is assumed

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to be essential for us to comprehend and to cometo appreciate the perspective of others (Benhabib1992, 140).

Cross-cutting exposure also is assumed to promotegreater awareness of oppositional views because no in-dividual person thinking in isolation can foresee thevariety of perspectives through which political issuesmay be perceived (Manin 1987). Thus political deliber-ation teaches citizens to see things they hadpreviouslyoverlooked, including the views of others . . . (p. 351).Awareness of rationales for oppositional views is a par-ticularly important typeof political knowledge becauseof its close ties to legitimacy. One purpose served byconveying rationales for oppositional views is to helprender the ultimate decision or policy legitimate in theeyes of others (Manin 1987). If rationales are not madepublic, the losers in a given controversy will not knowwhat reasons or arguments the winners judged to bestronger in deciding the merits of the case: Hencediscussion rather than private deliberation would benecessary to put on the table the various reasons andarguments that different individuals had in mind, andthus to ensure that no one could see the end result asarbitrary rather than reasonable and justi able, even if not what he or she happened to see as most justiable (Fearon 1998, 62).

Exposure to diverse political views is obviouslytied to a wide range of outcomes that are valued indemocratic systems. But it would be quite naive to sug-gest that only good can ow from cross-cutting inter-actions; conversations among those of differing viewsalso have the capacity to result in bitter arguments,violence, and/or a hostile and uneasy silence (Scorza1998). Thus Kingwell (1995) has stressed the impor-tance of civility or politeness in maintaining conversa-tions across lines of political difference. To sustain re-lationships that make cross-cutting discourse possible,discussants must at times refrain from saying all theycould say in the interests of smooth social interaction.This type of civility via not-saying . . . contributes tosmoothsocial interaction,makes for toleranceof diver-sity and conditions a regard for the claims and interestsof others (Kingwell 1995, 219). In this view, exposureto differing views holds the potential for tremendousbene ts, but only if it occurs in a context in which thecollective project of getting along with one another insociety is primary and the elucidation of differencessecondary.

THE ROLE OF CROSS-CUTTING EXPOSUREIN EMPIRICAL RESEARCHIn addition to the assumptions of political theory,many empirical relationships have been credited toexposure to dissonant views. For example, in his clas-sic study of tolerance, Stouffer (1955, 127) suggestedthat exposure to con icting views was the main rea-son that education and tolerance were so closelyconnected:

. . . Schooling puts a person in touch with people whoseideas and values are different from one s own. And this

tendstocarryon,afterformalschoolingis nished, throughreading and personal contacts. . . . To be tolerant, one hasto learn further not only that people with different ideasare not necessarily bad people but also that it is vital toAmerica to preserve this free market place. . . . The rststepinlearningthismaybemerelytoencounterthestrangeand the different. (original italics)

Although other explanations for the education toler-ance relationship have been proposed in subsequentresearch, most later studies also reference the idea thateducation increase(s) awareness of the varieties of human experience that legitimize wide variation in . . .values (Nunn, Crockett, and Williams 1978, 61). Theextent to which people are exposed to differing viewsalso has been invoked in explanations for why womentend to be less tolerant than men and why those inurban environments may be more tolerant than thosein rural areas (Stouffer 1955; Sullivan, Piereson, andMarcus 1982; Nunn, Crockett, and Williams 1978).

Interpretations of tolerance levels have stressed thediversity of people s contacts, but this concept hasseldom been directly measured. Nonetheless, closely

related concepts support the likelihood of such animpact. For example,a personality dimensionknown asopenness to experience is strongly positively relatedto tolerance (Marcus et al. 1995), and authoritarianshave been found to live relatively sheltered lives withlittle exposure to alternative lifestyles and beliefs(Altemeyer 1997). In a recent study of Russian socialnetworks, Gibson (1999) also found that support fordemocraticinstitutionswas correlatedwith thenumberof weak ties (i.e., nonrelatives) in a person s socialnetwork.

Finally, the popularity of specially organized delib-erative forums also rests on the assumption that cross-cutting exposure is particularly bene cial. Although

such events may successfully educate people on pub-lic policy issues (for a review, see Gastil and Dillard1999; Cook et al. 1999), it is unclear from research todate whether learning is in uenced by the cross-cuttinginteractions themselves or some other aspect of theforums such as the educational materials given to par-ticipants by organizers. Americans report that they arevery unlikely to talk about politics at public meetings(Conover and Searing 1998) so the generalizability of ndings fromspeciallyorchestratedforums toeverydaypolitical life is also an open question. 2

The most important point to be gleaned from ana-lyzing the role that the political diversity of social net-works has played in political science research to date

is that outside of work on persuasion, cross-cutting ex-posure typically has been an unmeasured concept, oneoffered in post hoc explanations forother relationshipsrather than as the central focus of research. Despite

2 Experimental studies using small groups in contexts outside of political decision-making have suggested that an emphasis on con-troversyoverconcurrence-seeking promotesgreatermastery andre-tention of information (Lowry and Johnson 1981; Smith et al. 1981)and greater epistemic curiosity, thatis, interest in and commitment tothe immediate search for more information about a problem (Smithet al. 1992; Lowry and Johnson 1981; Smith et al. 1981).

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the important role that cross-cutting exposure plays inpolitical theory, little empirical research has examinedits consequences.

THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICALPLAUSIBILITY OF BENEFICIALCONSEQUENCES

Embedded in these assertions are hypotheses about atleast three potential bene cial effects of cross-cuttingnetworks. Communication environments that exposepeople to non-like-minded political views have beenassumed to promote (1) greater awareness of ratio-nales forone s ownviewpoints, (2)greater awarenessof rationales for oppositional viewpoints, and (3) greatertolerance. Howplausiblearesuchbene tsfromtheper-spective of what is known about the social psychologyof human interaction?

The rst hypothesis rests on the assumption thatconfronting differences prompts people to re ect onthe reasons for their own beliefs. This process is as-sumed to occur either in preparation for defending

one s own positions or as a result of an internal needto rationalize or explain why one s own views dif-fer from others . Studies of cognitive response gen-erally support the plausibility of such a reaction;exposure to counter-attitudinal advocacy enhancesthe production of counter-arguments, particularly forhighly involving topics (e.g., Petty and Cacioppo 1977,1979).3

The second hypothesis, that cross-cutting exposurepromotes greater awareness of oppositional view-points, simplyassumesthatexposure todissimilarviewsimparts new information. Psychologically thishypothe-sisdemandsnothing more than a straightforwardlearn-ing process whereby rationales are transmitted from

one person to another. The greatest limitation on itsplausibility is the infrequency with which political con-versations are likely to reach the level of depth inwhich rationales are articulated. But a good deal of this process may occur at the intrapersonal rather thanthe interpersonal level. In other words, when exposedinterpersonally to political views noticeably differentfrom their own, people may be prompted to think in-trapersonally about thereasons that mayhave ledthoseothers to hold such views (Mutz 1998). This mental re-hearsal of thoughts andsearch for rationales mayoccureven when the discussants do not explicitly articulatesuch reasons themselves (Burnstein and Sentis 1981;Burnstein, Vinokur, and Trope 1973).

The third hypothesis embedded in arguments aboutthe importance of cross-cutting exposure is that itshould lead to greater political tolerance. On initialconsideration, this assertion sounds very similar to

3 Consistent with this argument, Green, Visser, and Tetlock (1999)found that people became more aware of and able to balance validargumentson both sidesof anissuewhen they were exposed tostrongarguments on both sides of an issue and anticipated having to justifytheir views to opinionated representatives of the con icting sides,an experimental condition that simulates a cross-cutting personalnetwork.

Allport s (1954) classic intergroup contact hypothesis,which suggests that face-to-face interaction amongmembers of different groups can, under certain condi-tions, reduce prejudice. Although the contact hypoth-esis has been known for producing mixed evidenceat best (see, e.g., Amir 1969, 1976), more recent as-sessments suggest that intergroup contact usually doeshave positive effects, even when the situation does notmeet all of the conditions enumerated by Allport andsubsequent researchers (see Pettigrew 1998, Pettigrewand Tropp 2000). 4 Moreover, among the various typesof groups that one might consider, contact amongthose of differing political views is ideally situated toproduce bene cial effects from cross-cutting exposure.The best sequence of events for purposes of promot-ing bene cial effects is one in which people rst getto know one another as individuals, then only laterrecognize each other as representatives of dislikedgroups (Pettigrew 1997). People s political views areseldom obvious upon rst meeting, and conversationsabout politics do not occur with suf cient regularity sothat people always know when they are in the com-pany of people holding cross-cutting views. Thus a per-son may easily develop a liking for another personlong before discovering their differences of politicalopinion.

On the other hand, the kind of people or groups oneis asked to tolerate on civil libertarian grounds are sel-dom exactly the same as the people of opposing viewsthat one encounters at work or in the neighborhood.Nonetheless, within the large literature on intergroupcontact,a smaller groupofstudiesof generalizedinter-groupcontact conrms that contact acrossgroup linescan generalize to reduce prejudice even toward out-groups that are not part of the intergroup contact (e.g.,Reich and Purbhoo 1975; Cook 1984; Pettigrew 1997;

Weigert 1976). In other words, these ndings supportthe possibility that exposure to everyday differencesof political opinion may translate to an appreciationof the need to tolerate differences of political opin-ion among disparate groups within the larger society.People who have had to learn how to agree to dis-agree in their daily lives better understand the needto do so as a matter of public policy. For example, insupport of the generalizability of contact effects, theextent of interpersonal contact across lines of religion,race, social class, culture, andnationalitypredictednon-prejudicial attitudes toward groups not involved in thecontact, even when taking into account potential recip-rocal in uences (Pettigrew1997). Moreover, the extent

of contact across lines of difference also generalized toimmigrationpolicy preferences, a morepolicy-orientedoutcome similar to tolerancemeasures. Although stud-ies of intergroup contact have tended to useprejudicialattitudes as their dependent variables, their ndingsalso appear to generalize to perspective-taking ability(see Reich and Purbhoo 1975); that is, cross-cuttingcontact improves people s abilities to see issues from

4 Moreover, many of the additional necessary conditions tacked onin subsequent research turn out to be facilitating but not essentialconditions (Pettigrew 1998; Pettigrew and Tropp 2000).

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FIGURE 1. Cognitive and Affective Mechanisms for the Effects of Exposure to Dissimilar PoliticalViews on Political Tolerance

the perspectives of others, even when they personallydo not agree. 5

As illustrated in Fig. 1, there are at least two mech-anisms by which exposure to oppositional politicalviewpoints might lead to political tolerance. 6 First,as suggested by the second hypothesis, cross-cuttinginteractions may convey information. Through whatpsychologists call the process of deprovincialization, people learn that their norms, customs, and lifestylesare not the only ways to deal with the social world(Pettigrew 1997, 174). To the extent that cross-cuttingexposure leads to greater awareness of legitimate ra-tionales for oppositional views, such awareness should

give people good reasons for upholding the civil lib-erties of those with whom they personally disagree;one sees that there are at least legitimate reasons forsuch views, even if one personally nds them uncom-pelling. The top half of Fig. 1 illustrates this proposedchain of events whereby exposure to people of differ-ing political views increasesawarenessof rationales fordiffering viewpoints and thus increases political toler-ance. This link is further supported by theorists such asMead (1934) and Piaget (1932), who stressed the im-portance of perspective-taking ability to attitudes andbehaviors that subordinate the self s perspective to thelarger society as does political tolerance.

5 Changing prejudice is clearly not the same thing as altering levelsof tolerance, because the former involves altering negative attitudestoward groups and the latter involves support for civil liberties in spite of ongoingnegativeattitudes toward groups.Nonetheless, thereis suf cient conceptual overlap for these literatures to be relevant toone another.6 Kuklinski and colleagues (1991) and Theiss-Morse and colleagues(1993) identify a similar distinction between cognitive and affectivebases of political tolerance judgments, but in their experiments thecognitive basis means that people are induced to think about toler-ance judgments, as opposed to thinking speci cally about rationalesforthe opposite view as suggestedby thecognitive mechanism in thisstudy.

In addition to this cognitive mechanism for trans-lating cross-cutting exposure to political tolerance, asecond potential mechanism emphasizes affect overcognition. To paraphrase Stouffer (1955), one couldlearn from personal experience that those differentfrom one s self are not necessarily bad people. Ac-cording to this mechanism, the content and extent of people s political discussions are less important thanthe quality of the personal relationships that develop.It is not important that they learn about the rationalesfor one another s political views, but it is importantthat they develop close relationships with those theyknow to hold quite different political viewpoints. Once

formed, these cross-cutting relationships make it lesslikely that people will support restrictions of the civilliberties of those of differing views. The bottom half of Fig. 1 illustrates how exposure to people of differingpolitical views may lead to more intimate cross-cuttingassociations, and thus greater tolerance.

To summarize, interactions involving exposure toconicting views have been assumed to bene t peo-ple largely (1) by encouraging a deeper understand-ing of one s own viewpoint, (2) by producing greaterawareness of rationales for opposing views, and (3) bycontributing to greater tolerance. With respect to thethird hypothesis, if exposure to cross-cutting politicalviews increases tolerance via its effects on awareness

of rationales for oppositional points of view, then thiswould lend credibility to thecognitive interpretation of the bene ts of cross-cutting contact. If close personalrelationships across lines of political difference in u-ence tolerance levels, then this provides support forthe affective mechanism.

SURVEY DESIGN

To examine these hypotheses, I utilized data from arepresentative national telephone survey sponsoredby

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theSpencerFoundationandexecutedby theUniversityof Wisconsin Survey Center in the fall of 1996, immedi-atelyprecedingthepresidential election in November. 7This survey included a battery of items tapping thefrequency with which respondents talked about poli-tics with up to three political discussants and the fre-quency with which respondents agreed or disagreedwith the views of the political discussants that werenamed. In addition, all respondents were asked aboutwhether they perceived their views to be generallythe same as or different from their discussants andwhether the discussant generally shared or opposedtheirpolitical views. The survey also included questionstapping whether each of the respondent s discussantsfavored Republicans or Democrats, and which pres-idential candidate they preferred. By combining thelatter two questions with information on the respon-dent s own partisanship and candidate preference, itwas possible to create additional measures of the ex-tent to which thediscussantsheld political viewssimilarto or different from the respondent s views. Since theextent of discussion with politically dissonant and con-sonant discussion partners is not a zero-sum situationwhereby more discussion with agreeable partners mustlead to less discussion with partners who disagree, Iused these ve items to create separate measures of the frequency of discussion with politically consonantand dissonant partners (see Appendix A for detailson the wording of survey items and construction of measures). 8

Although the impactof discussions with like-mindedothersis not thecentral focus of this study, I include thisvariable in the analyses to sort out effects that may beattributed to political discussion in general, as opposedto discussions that cross lines of political difference inparticular. Moreover, since political discussion of alltypes is likely to characterize those more politically in-terested, knowledgeable, and involved, controls are in-cluded for these predispositions. To the extent that theeffects of exposure to dissonant views are unique andnotattributable to contact that involves political agree-ment or to political interest andinvolvement more gen-erally, then the bene ts suggested by so many theoristsgain support. In addition to the frequency of consonantand dissonant contact, the survey also included itemsthat made it possible to tap the level of intimacy withindyads(see AppendixA).Foreachrespondent, separatemeasures were created to represent levels of intimacy

7 Each number was screened to verify that it was associated witha household. The person selected for the interview was randomlychosen from among household members at least 18 years old, withnosubstitutionsallowed. The responserate was47% whencalculatedas the proportion of completed interviews divided by the total sam-ple (which includes those who never answered and all other nonre-sponses and refusals)minus the nonsamplenumbers. This is virtuallyidentical to the rate obtained in similar telephone surveys (see, e.g.,Huckfeldt et al. 1995). Interviews averaged 25 minutes. A maximumof 30 calls was made to each unresolved telephone number.8 For eachof thethree political discussants named, theseitemsscaledrelatively well, with Cronbach s s for Exposure to dissonant viewsof 0.77, 0.80, and 0.81, for the rst, second, and third named discus-sants, respectively, and for Exposure to consonant views, s of 0.73,0.83, and 0.85, respectively.

with consonant, dissonant and politically neutral dis-cussion partners. 9

To tap the dependent variables for the rst and sec-ond hypotheses, awareness of legitimate rationales forown and for opposing views, open-ended questionswere used to solicit issue-speci c rationales for threeseparate controversies including preferences amongthe 1996 presidential candidates, opinions about af-rmative action for women and minorities, and opin-ions about state versus federal control of the wel-fare system. 10 Randomizing the order in which ownand opposing view questions appeared, 11 respondentswere asked what reasons they could think of for thevarious viewpoints. The open-ended responses werecoded into individual rationales by two independentcoders. To produce an indicator of awareness of ra-tionales for opposing viewpoints, respondents wereasked, Regardless of your own views, what reasonscan you think of for. . . . 12 In other words, they wereasked to view the issues through the eyes of theopposition.

As expected, the number of rationales that peoplecould give for their own positions were, on average,signicantly higher than those they could give for whysomeone might hold an opposing view ( p < 0. 001 inall three cases). As shown in Table 1, the measures of

9 Consistent with previous research on social and political net-works (e.g., Huckfeldt and Sprague 1995), the political discussantsin this sample may be characterized as fairly homogeneous. Forexample, respondents reported that only 14% of their discussantswere of a different political party, and only 13% favored a differ-ent presidential candidate than the main respondent. Only 11% of discussants held views very different from the respondent s own,compared to 61% whose views were described as much the same. Finally, 60% of discussants were said to share most of the mainrespondents views, while only 10% were opposed to their views.The relationships among the independent variables also were asexpected based on past research: close relationships and frequentinteractions tended to be among those who agreed, while cross-cutting exposure characterized weak ties and less frequent politicaldiscussion.10 Based on a pretest, these issues were chosen because they werecurrent at the time the survey was done, and formed a likely basisfor tapping awareness that could result from recent political discus-sions. They are also issues for which substantial controversy exists,so respondents with differing views on both sides of the issues wereavailable.11 Analyses showed no signi cant difference between the two order-ings in the number of rationales offered for either own or opposingpositions, and thus the order variables were dropped from furtheranalyses.12 Volunteered rationales for own and opposing views were takenat face value and not evaluated by any external standards of so-phistication. But coders did eliminate from their counts rationalesthat served to delegitimize the other viewpoint. For example, if a re-spondent explained why others supported Clinton with reference tonegative personal traits of the opinion holder ( Other people mightvote for him because they are stupid ) or negative traits of Clinton(He s so slippery andslick anda good puppet ), then these were notcounted asacknowledgments ofa legitimate basis forthe oppositionalviewpoint. To test the reliability of coding, two independent codersboth coded a subsample of 105 of respondents answers to the open-ended awareness of rationales forown andopposingviews questions.The correlation between the measures produced by the two codersranged from 0.74 to 0.89 acrossthe sixopen-endedquestions,withanaverageof 0.80. For respondents whoheldnoopiniononagiven issue,their rationales for the two questions were divided equally betweenawareness of own and oppositional views.

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TABLE 1. Awareness of Rationales for Ownand Opposing Political ViewsIssue Mean Range Correlation t ValueState versus federal welfare control

Own view 0.89 04 0.21 15.31

Opposing view 0.41 03Afrmative action

Own view 0.65 05 0.32 9.90

Opposing view 0.38 03Presidential candidateOwn view 1.36 09 0.26 13.06

Opposing view 0.67 07Combined measure

Own view 2.90 014 0.48 19.77

Opposing view 1.46 011Note : t values arebasedon paired t tests comparing the numberof rationales given for own and oppositional views. p < 0 . 001.

rationales for the two sides of a given issue were, alsonot surprisingly, signi cantly correlated with one an-other, thus indicating general knowledge of or interestin politics or in these speci c issues. Three issues wereused to get a broader sense of a given person s knowl-edge of dissimilar viewpoints than one issue alonewould make possible and were then combined into twoadditive indices representing a person s overall aware-ness of rationales for oppositional views and overallawareness of rationales for their own viewpoints.

Political tolerance was measured using SullivanPiereson and Marcus s (1982) content-controlledmethod whereby respondents rst volunteer theirleast-liked group and are then asked a series of sixquestionsabout extendingcivil liberties to these partic-ular groups, including the extent to which they shouldbe banned or outlawed, be allowed to hold rallies intheir city, be allowed to teach in public schools, and besubject to government phone tapping. 13

EFFECTS ON AWARENESS OF RATIONALESFOR OWN AND OPPOSITIONAL VIEWS

The rsthope of advocatesof greater network diversityis that exposure to con icting views will bene t citizenseither by familiarizing them with legitimate reasonsfor holding opposing viewpoints or by deepening theirunderstanding of their own views by having to defendthem toothersand/or to themselves. The rst2 columnsof data in Table 2 show regression equations exam-ining these two questions, 14 one predicting awarenessof rationales for one s own side of the issues and thesecond predicting awareness of rationales for the op-posingviewpoints. In addition to thevariables included

13 The index produced a Cronbach s of 0.83.14 To prevent loss of cases due to listwise deletion in the multivariateanalyses (i.e., Tables 2 and 3), Amelia was used to impute missingvalues for several variables. In no analysis did this procedure changethe substantive ndings of the study. For details on this procedure,see King et al. (2001) and Honaker et al. (1999).

to control forgeneral levels of political interest, knowl-edge, and extremity of opinions, in each equation Ihave included the variable representing awareness of rationales on the other side of these same issues. Thosewith high interest in these three particular issues areobviously likely to score high on both measures. Thusin analyses predicting awareness of rationales for op-positional views, awareness of rationales for one s ownviews also was included, and vice versa for the analysispredicting rationales for own views. 15 As evidenced bythe large size of these coef cients, each served as apowerful control for the equation in which the otherwas the dependent variable. Also as expected, politicalknowledge was a signi cant positive predictor of polit-ical awarenessof eithervariety, and extremity of politi-cal views had predictable effects, increasing awarenessof rationales for one s own views, while reducing thenumber of rationales that could be offered for others views.

For purposes of evaluating the rst two hypotheses,what is important in Table 2 is the coef cient corre-sponding to exposure to dissonant political views. Asshown in column 1, counter to the rst hypothesis, ex-posure to dissonant views does not appear to have asignicant impact on awareness of rationales for peo-ple s own political views. Even when examined amongthe most likely subgroups within the population (suchas those with strongly held views or high levels of ed-ucation), there is no evidence that those with cross-cutting politicalnetworks have more rationales in mindin support of their viewpoints.

However, consistent with thesecond hypothesis, col-umn 2 shows that exposure to oppositional viewpointsincreases awareness of legitimate rationales for op-posing views. The highly signi cant positive coef cientsupports the hypothesis that exposure to oppositionalviewpoints is particularly important for purposes of familiarizing people with legitimate reasons for view-points that differ from their own. Nonetheless, to makea solid case for this hypothesis, it is essential to deter-mine that it is exposure to dissonant views, and not justpolitical discussion in general, that is driving aware-ness of rationales for oppositional views. Comparingthe coef cients for exposure to consonant and disso-nant views lends additional support to this hypothesisbecause the consonant coef cient is negative and sig-nicantly different from the coef cient for exposure todissonant views.

With cross-sectional data how con dent can onebe that exposure to con icting political views actu-

ally brings about greater awareness of rationales foropposing views? Because a person knows a lot aboutpolitics, he/she may be more con dent of defendinghis/her own views, and thus be more willing to engagein cross-cutting interactions (see Conover and Searing

15 For these variables, one need not assume a speci c causal direc-tion between awareness of rationales for own and others views. Thepurpose is to conduct a stringent test of the key hypothesis but toavoid confounding results with characteristics that may be speci c tothe three issues used to create measures of awareness of rationalesfor own and others views.

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TABLE 2. The Inuence of Exposure to Consonant and Dissonant Political Views on Awareness ofRationales for Own and Opposing Political Views

Awareness of Rationales forOpposing Views

Own Views Opposing Views with Interaction

Network characteristicsExposure to dissonant views 0.125 0.242 0.155

(1.198) (3.384) (2.048)Exposure to consonant views 0.182 0.045 0.032

(1.727) (0.624) (0.441)Intimacy within dissonant dyads 0.096 0.302 0.328

(0.344) (1.571) (1.715)Intimacy within consonant dyads 0.032 0.081 0.087

(0.262) (0.979) (1.049)Density of network 0.006 0.042 0.037

(0.094) (0.883) (0.789)Number of discussants 0.037 0.026 0.026

(0.341) (0.350) (0.351)Issue-specic awareness

Awareness of rationales for own views 0.342 0.339

(15.696) (15.607)Awareness of rationales for opposing views 0.721

(15.705)Political involvement

Political knowledge 0.192 0.099 0.091

(3.464) (2.581) (2.401)Political interest 0.118 0.093 0.082

(1.521) (1.734) (1.526)Extremity of issue opinions 0.840 0.333 0.345

(5.679) (3.215) (3.358)Education 0.072 0.240 0.245

(1.032) (5.192) (5.358)Partisanship

Republican 0.361 0.067 0.078(4.321) (1.153) (1.353)

Democrat 0.028 0.018 0.018(0.339) (0.327) (0.323)

Conservative 0.011 0.023 0.023

(0.164) (0.497) (0.496)Liberal 0.069 0.008 0.012(0.861) (0.152) (0.221)

Orientation to conictOrientation to con ict 0.158

(1.614)Orientation Exposure to dissonant views 0.333

(3.444)

Constant 0.484 0.355 0.429(1.172) (1.249) (1.512)

Sample size 780 780 780R 2 0.497 0.463 0.474

Note : Entries are unstandardized OLS regression coef cients, with t values in parentheses. Gender, race, age, income, marital status,and underage children also were included in the equations estimated above. p < 0 . 001; p < 0 . 01; p < 0 . 05.

1998). I have attempted to rule out the most ob-vious spurious in uences by including controls forgeneral political knowledge, interest, and awarenessspecic to these issues, but reverse causation remainsa possibility. The problem with this rival interpreta-tion is that, if true, it ought to apply equally well, if not more so, to knowledge of rationales for one s ownviews; the more deeply committed one is to his/her

position, and the more rationales in one s arsenal, theless threatened one should be by oppositional view-points. Table 2 shows that awareness of rationales forone s own views is not related to exposure to con ictingviews in one s personal network. Although this repre-sents a null nding with respect to the rst hypothe-sis, ultimately this pattern strengthens the case for theidea that exposure to con icting views contributes to

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greater awarenessof legitimate rationales for opposingviews.

Howlargeis theeffectofexposure todissimilarviewson awareness of legitimate rationales for oppositionalviews? To provide a general idea, I calculated the pre-dicted values of awareness of legitimate rationales foroppositional views for those with the highest and low-est levels of exposure to dissonant political views. Onaverage, those with high levels of exposure to disso-nant views should be expected to be familiar with justover two additional rationales compared to a similarperson with a homogeneous network. Given that themean number of oppositional rationales that people inthis sample could generate was 1.46, the increase dueto cross-cutting networks could have quite signi cantconsequences for the perceived legitimacy of politicaloutcomes.

Finally, in the third column in Table 2, I testKingwell s suggestion about the importance of civilityin generating bene cial outcomes from cross-cuttingpolitical dialogue. Drawing on a scale widely used toclassify patterns of communication within families, Ioperationalized the civil orientation tocon ictasonethat combines acknowledgment of the importance of expressing dissenting views with an emphasis on socialharmony. 16 In other words, a civil orientation is onethat does not duck con ict but that simultaneously ac-knowledgesthe importanceof maintainingharmonioussocial relationships.

As shown in the third column in Table 2, people witha civil orientation towardcon ict areparticularly likelyto bene t from exposure to dissonant views. Althoughthe inclusion of an interaction between Orientation toconict and exposure to dissonant views slightly re-duces the size of the original coef cient correspondingto exposure to dissonant views, the interaction signif-icantly strengthens the overall model ( p < 0. 05), thusindicating that those who value both frank opinion ex-pression and social harmony learn the most from theircross-cutting interactions. The size of the effect amongmembers of this group is more than twice the size of the effect on the population as a whole.

To summarize, exposure to cross-cutting views doesnot appear to play a signi cant role in deepening peo-ple s knowledge of their own issue positions, but itdoes have an important impact by familiarizing themwith legitimaterationalesforopposingviewpoints. Thisimpact is particularly pronounced among people whovalue the expression of dissenting opinions, but simul-taneously care about social harmony; in other words,

those who would engage in cross-cutting conversationsbut who would remain silent rather than risk con ictthat might end a cross-cutting association altogether.

16 In this study as in many previous studies using these items (seeMcLeod and Chaffee 1972; McLeod et al. 1982), the two dimen-sions of communication patterns within the family (known as the so-cial harmony and concept orientations) were independent ( r = 0. 03, p = 0. 46), thus it was possible to identify a quarter of the sample inwhich differences of opinion were valued along with the need forsocial harmony; in other words, those with a civil orientation towardconict (see the Appendix A for wording).

TABLE 3. The Cognitive and AffectiveInuence of Discussant Networks on PoliticalTolerance

Original 2SLSData Model

Exposure to dissonant views 0.019 (0.534)

Exposure to consonant views 0.024 (0.648)

Intimacy within dissonant dyads 0.150 0.116

(2.208) (2.352)Intimacy within consonant dyads 0.064 0.029

(1.632) (1.050)Density of network 0.043 0.038

(1.303) (1.1250)Number of discussants 0.062 0.016

(1.529) (0.482)Awareness of rationales 0.061 0.061

for opposing views (3.194) (3.236)Awareness of rationales 0.012 0.011

for own views (0.957) (0.900)Political knowledge 0.122 0.118

(5.105) (4.754)

Political interest 0.058

0.058

(2.015) (2.050)Extremity of issue opinions 0.109 0.096

(1.998) (1.758)Education 0.068 0.065

(2.305) (2.215)Parents education 0.022 0.024

(0.853) (0.963)Mean education in county 0.098 0.099

(2.466) (2.507)Liberal 0.040 0.039

(1.485) (1.452)Conservative 0.004 0.005

(0.174) (0.208)Republican 0.051 0.048

(1.709) (1.772)Democrat 0.046 0.037

(1.629) (1.413)

Constant 1.259 1.233

(6.144) (6.691)

Sample size 780 780R 2 0.298 0.293

Note : Entries are unstandardized regression coef cients, witht values in parentheses. Tolerance ranges from 1 to 4 basedon an average of responses to all tolerance items. The equa-tions in both columns also included gender, race, marital status,age,and thepresence of underage children.The second columnuses two-stage least squares and treats awareness of ratio-nalesfor oppositional views and Intimacywithin dissonantdyadsas endogenous. First-stage R 2 values were 0.46 and 0.49 forawareness of rationales for oppositional views and Intimacywithin dissonantdyads, respectively. See Table2, column 3, andAppendix B for details on rst-stage regression. p < 0 . 001; p < 0 . 01; p < 0 . 05.

CONSEQUENCES OF POLITICALTOLERANCE

The rst column in Table 3 takes a rst pass at eval-uating Fig. 1 s proposed mechanisms for translating

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exposure to dissonant views into political tolerance.If the affective ties between people are what is im-portant for purposes of translating cross-cutting tiesinto political tolerance, then one would expect close-ness within dissonant relationships to be particularlyimportant to political tolerance. If the cognitive bene-ts are primary, then people s awareness of rationalesfor those views should be most predictive of politicaltolerance.

Consistent with the expectations in Fig. 1, exposureto dissonant views has no direct effects on political tol-erance, but awareness of rationales for oppositionalviews and intimacy within dissonant dyads are bothsignicantly related to tolerance. Closer relationshipsacross lines of difference and greater knowledge of ra-tionales for these differences both predict tolerance,even after controlling for political knowledge, politi-cal interest, extremity of issue opinions, and so forth.Notice, in contrast, that awareness of rationales forown views does not contribute signi cantly to politi-cal tolerance. Despite the fact that the two measuresare highly correlated (see Table 1), awareness of ra-tionales for own and opposing views represent dis-tinctly different types of knowledge with very differentconsequences.

The problem with a causal interpretation of theserelationships is that tolerance may have reciprocal ef-fects on these variables. More tolerant people may bemore likely to form close relationships with those of differing political views and/or may be more likely,as a result of their tolerance, to be open to learningabout reasons for others views. Although I do notcarry out an analysis of the full simultaneous system,2SLS provides a useful means of obtaining less biasedestimates of the strength of the key causal relation-ships examined here. Fortunately, there are variablesavailable that predict awareness of rationales for op-positional views and that predict Intimacy within dis-sonant dyads but that do not predict tolerance, thusmaking them ideal as instrumental variables in a 2SLSanalysis. For example, as shown in Table 2, aware-ness of rationales for oppositional views is predictedby exposure to dissonant views and by awareness of rationales for own views, but they are unrelated totolerance. Likewise, intimacy within dissonant dyadsis predicted by exposure to dissonant views, exposureto consonant views, and Number of discussants in thenetwork, but none of these variables is signi cantlyrelated to tolerance judgments (see Appendix B). 17These two equations produced rst-stage R2 values

for awareness of rationales for opposing views andintimacy within dissonant dyads of 0.46 and 0.49,respectively. 18

17 Exposure to dissonant views turned out to be a stubbornly ex-ogenous independent variable, predicted by virtually nothing withinthe data set except two structural characteristics that alter a person ssupply of available discussion partners whether they work outsidethe home and if their parents were of differing political parties.18 The rst-stage equations are shown in Table A1 (Appendix B) forIntimacy within dissonant dyads and are almost identical to the thirdcolumn in Table2 forawarenessof rationales for opposingviews. The

In the second column in Table 3, the endogenousvariables produced by the rst-stage estimations areused in a 2SLS model treating both intimacy withindissonant dyads and awareness of rationales for op-posing views as endogenous. As shown in the secondcolumn, the coef cients are virtually identical whentaking potential reciprocal causation into account, thuslending additional support to theproposed pathways inFig. 1. Most interestingly, they con rm that both cog-nitive and affective mechanisms are at work simulta-neously in translating exposure to dissonant views togreater political tolerance. If one generally perceivesthose opposed to one s own views to have some legiti-mate, if not compelling, reasons for doing so, then onealso will be more likely to extend to disliked groupsthe rights of speech, assembly, and so forth. Likewise,close ties with those who hold differing political viewscan increase tolerance. It should also be noted that thiseffect is not a mere function of attitude extremity orgeneral or issue-speci c forms of political knowledge,as variables of this kind are already included in themodel.

Given that these ndings only indirectly relateexpo-sure to dissonant political views to political tolerance,what is the size of the net impact of cross-cutting expo-sure in the network on political tolerance? Using thecoef cients in Tables 2 and 3 as a basis for estimatingthe size of the impact of the cognitive mechanism sug-gests that, if all else remained constant, a person atthe high end of the exposure to dissonant views indexwould score just over 4% higher on the tolerance scalethan someone with the lowest levels of exposure to dis-sonant views. 19 Thus the magnitude of the cognitivemechanism is small by most standards. Using the sizeof the coef cients in Table 3 and Appendix B, we canestimate the corresponding size of the affective mech-anism as just over an 11% increase in tolerance fromthose least tomost exposed topeoplewith cross-cuttingpolitical views.

From a technical standpoint, there are two ways onemight view the strength of these ndings. On the onehand, two of the three hypotheses have sustained ex-tensive controls for plausible rival interpretations, theimplementation of instrumental variables to take intoaccount simultaneitybias, anda relatively small samplesize. On the other hand, the effects that emerge aremodest, though they are clearly statistically signi cantand thus lend some credibility to the many claims of democratic theorists about thebene ts of cross-cuttingexposure.

The relationships may be viewed in a more impres-sive light if one takes into consideration the crudenessof some of theoperationalmeasures relative to thecon-cepts they represent. For example, ideally one wouldlike a measure of awarenessof legitimate rationales foroppositional views that takes into account all potentialcontroversies. Insteadthislarger concept is represented

analysis used for the rst-stage 2SLS is different only in that it omitsthe intimacy variables to avoid potential endogeneity problems.19 The range for the index of exposure to dissonant views was from 1. 97 to 6.73.

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in this study by only three political controversies. Like-wise, the measure of the extent to which people s net-works involve cross-cutting exposure has been limitedby constraining respondents to only three discussants,when a more extensive network battery might gener-ate a more valid measure including a greater numberof weak ties, people with whom politics is discussedvery seldom but who are politically dissimilar to themain respondent. The type of contact I examine in thisstudy is by its very nature infrequent and often eet-ing and, thus, dif cult to measure. In addition, if betterrst-stage predictors of the endogenous variables wereavailable, thena strongerpatternof relationships mightbe visible.

From a theoretical perspective, it is also worth notingthat I do not make stringent assumptions about thekind of exposure to cross-cutting views that is tappedby these items. When exposed to con icting views, Ido not assume that people are truly deliberating ac-cording to any particular theoretical de nition, nor isit assumed that when people are exposed to con ictingviews the context is one in which people have equalstatus, reciprocity, and so forth. In this study expo-sure to dissonant political views requires only that peo-ple talk politics with someone who has political viewsthat are, to some recognizable degree, different fromtheir own (and vice versa for exposure to consonantviews). Even though this is a far cry from what theo-rists and others envision as ultimately the most bene-cial, exposure to con icting views even at the leveldened here appears to have the capacity to producesome bene cial effects. In short, there is undoubtedlya great deal of noise in these measures, and this needsto be taken into account in evaluating the more gen-eral theories these relationships represent. Althoughreplication of these analyses on other data sets wouldbe a natural next step to increase con dence in thesendings, unfortunately there are few, if any, additionalnational surveys addressing the constitution of Amer-icans political networks that also measure politicaltolerance. 20

AN EXPERIMENTAL CONFIRMATION

Recognizing that statistical techniques can only go sofar in strengthening causal inferences in survey data,I subjected part of this model to an experimental test.Ideally, one could test all of the relationships shownin Fig. 1 in a controlled laboratory environment, ma-nipulating exposure to cross-cutting political views andobserving the consequences. However, for the bottom

20 The General Social Surveys have at times included both tolerancemeasures and network measures, but there is no information avail-able about political agreement or disagreement among discussionpartners. Severaldata setsmakeit possibleto examinepoliticalagree-ment within networks (e.g., Huckfeldt and Sprague 1995; Dalton,Beck, and Huckfeldt 1998), but they do not make it possible to con-nect these network characteristics to tolerance judgments. Althoughdata on U.S. networks and tolerance are lacking, see Gibson (1999)for similar data on Russia.

half of Fig. 1, that is, the affective mechanism transla-ting cross-cutting exposure into political tolerance, anexperimental design is not feasible. At least within thecontextofa short-term laboratoryexperiment, onecan-not forge cross-cutting friendships and evaluate the ef-fects of their intimacy.

Nonetheless, the cognitive mechanism shown in thetop half of Fig. 1 is amenable to experimentation. Al-though it is not possible to simulate the effects of on-going, accumulated exposure to cross-cutting politicalviewpoints in a lab, even a large, one-time expo-sure to the rationales behind multiple views differ-ent from one s own could be adequate. If one learnsfrom such an experience that those with views differ-ent from one s own have their reasons, despite thefact that one may disagree with them, such exposureshould promote support for the general principle of tolerance.

Using a simple, three-group design in which 82 stu-dent subjects 21 were randomly assigned to a controlgroup or to political views that were either consonantwith or contrary to their preexisting views, I evalu-ated the impact of cross-cutting exposure on politicaltolerance. All subjects lled out a pretest question-naire that asked basic demographic and political in-formation as well as opinions on eight controversialissues. 22 Inaddition,scaleswere included to tapperson-alitycharacteristicsincludingperspective-takingability(see Davis 1983) anddogmatism(see Altemeyer1997).Dogmatism is a stable personality trait known to pre-dict political tolerance. Although perspective-takingability has not been studied in relation to political tol-erance, it makes sense to measure in this theoreticalcontext because it represents the capacity to entertainothers points of view, as proposed by the purely cog-nitive mechanism in the upper half of Fig. 1. 23 This ca-pacity should condition people s ability to appreciatethe legitimacy of con icting political perspectives. Ex-posure to cross-cuttingpolitical perspectives combinedwith perspective-taking ability should give subjects aparticularly good reason for upholding others rightsto speech, assembly, and so forth.

After the pretest, each subject was exposed to ratio-nales for dissonant or consonant views or to nothing atall. Because the cognitive mechanism in Fig. 1 hypoth-esizes a purely informational effect from cross-cuttingexposure on tolerance, themanipulation was limited tosimplyconveying informationaboutarguments behindoppositional positions, without any face to face contactwith another human being. Further, because this hy-

pothesis is about the effects of generalized exposure to

21 Students were undergraduates attending classes in the politicalscience department at Ohio State University.22 These included the death penalty, same sex marriage, the use of mammals in medical research, af rmative action for women and mi-norities, theemphasis insex educationprogramsonabstinenceversusbirth control/STD prevention, vouchers for private and parochialschools, stricter environmental policies, and hate crime laws.23 Theperspective-taking scalerepresents a cognitive, nonemotionalform of empathy and is not related to empathy s emotional compo-nents (Davis 1983).

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contradictory views on tolerance, and not about effectsfrom exposure to any one topic or area of controversy,each subject was exposed either to multiple rationalesfor multiple political viewpoints that matched theirown, rationales for views they were known to oppose,orno newinformation. To strengthen themanipulation,exposure to consonant or dissonant views was carriedout by exposing respondents to consistently agreeableor disagreeable arguments for three separate issues. Arandomizedscheduledictatedforwhichofeightpretestissue controversies each subject received stimuli and inwhich order. 24

In the dissonant and consonant exposure conditions,three brief assignments provideda context forexpos-ing people to rationales in support of, or in oppositionto, their own views. For each assignment, subjects weregiven a stack of ve cards, each bearing a rationalein support of an issue position. 25 The rst assignmentasked subjects to order the cards by strength of argu-ment from strongest to weakest and then copy themonto a separate sheet of paper; the second asked thesubject to imagine him or herself as a speechwriter fora political candidate endorsing that issue position, andto embed the arguments into a speech they write forhim; thethirdassignment simply replicated the rstonebut with a third issue. 26 So in total each experimentalsubject not in the control condition was exposed to

24 If a subject chose the midpoint on the scale, another issue wassubstituted according to a random schedule.25 A sampleof what thestacks of cards were like is as follows for twodifferent sides of just one of the 8 issues. Death Penalty, Pro: 1) Thedeath penalty is a fair and appropriate form of justice for the mostsevere crimes against human lives. 2) The death penalty sometimesprovides grieving families with the closure they need after the deathof a loved one. 3) Most violent criminals can t be rehabilitated andthe costs of life imprisonment are higher per year than the costs of many colleges. 4) It is unfair to expect the American public to payhigher taxes out of their own pockets in order to pay the costs of building more prisons and feeding, clothing, and providing medicalcarefor criminals whomake no usefulcontributionto society. 5)MostAmericans support theuse of thedeath penalty in some situations, soit should continue to be legal. Death Penalty, Con: 1) It is immoral totake a human life, no matter what the circumstances. 2) Sometimesinnocent peopleare convicted, andthere is no waymistakes caneverbe corrected when innocent people are put to death. 3) Most studiesshow that the death penalty does not reduce crime rates. 4) Becausedeath sentences are usually appealed many times in court, it ends upbeing moreexpensive thanlife imprisonment.5) Government shouldnot condone violence against human life under any circumstances. Itmakes us as bad as the criminals we want to stop.26 The assignments read as follows. Assignment 1/3: Please takethe stack of cards supporting a particular issue position and readthem carefully. Next sort them by how strong an argument for theissue position you think each reason is. After you have sorted theminto a pile from strongest argument to weakest argument , start withthe strongest reason, and copy it onto line 1 below. Continue rankingthe arguments from 1 to 5 with the strongest argument at the top, theweakest at the bottom of the page. Assignment 2: You work for amember of congress and have been asked to write part of his speechfor a talk he will give to a large group of people, some of whomsupport his issue positions and many who do not. Use the stack of arguments for the issue position that you have been given in orderto write a few paragraphs of the speech justifying his position onthis one controversial issue. All the facts have already been checkedby your staff for accuracy. We realize this may or may not be yourpersonalposition.Nonetheless, pleasemakethe speech asconvincingas possible!

15 arguments concerning three issue positions, all of which were either systematically consistent with or in-consistent with some of the many political views thesubject had expressed in the pretest. The goal of theassignments was to encourage subjects to fully pro-cess all of the rationales on the cards. After complet-ing the assignments, a posttest was administered thatincluded a content-controlled measure of politicaltolerance virtually identical to theone administered bytelephone in the survey. 27

The raw mean comparisons resulting from this ex-periment were in the expected direction with lowertolerance in the control condition ( x = 2. 73) relativeto the dissonant views condition ( x = 2. 81), but thesedifferences were not statistically signi cant among anyof thethreegroups. However,when theef ciency of themodel was improved by including covariates and tak-ing intoaccount subjects perspective-takingability anddogmatism, signi cant effects on tolerance were evi-dent among those respondents with high perspective-taking ability. As predicted, perspective-taking abilitywas directly related to political tolerance, but it alsoserved as an important contingent condition for theeffects of cross-cutting exposure. In contrast, analysesrevealed no signi cant differences or interactions inanalyses comparing the control condition to subjectsexposed to rationales for consonant views. 28

As Fig. 2 demonstrates, among those high in per-spective-taking ability, mean levels of tolerance werehigher when subjects were exposed to rationales fordissonant views. However, among those low in pers-pective-takingability, tolerancelevelswere lowerwhensubjects were exposed to dissonant views, although thehigher variance among this group makes this a sugges-tive, though not signi cant difference. 29

To assess the size of this effect while taking othervariables into account, Table 4 presents these results asregression equations. Column 1 in Table 4 shows thatamong those with high perspective-taking ability, thosereceiving exposure to rationales for dissonant views onthree issues scored about 14% higher on the tolerancescale. Although the small, relatively homogeneous stu-dent sample used in this experiment is by no means a

27 Cronbach s for the six-item index of political tolerance was 0.80.28 The signi cant differences between subjects in the dissonant con-dition and the control condition were con rmed using an analysisof variance with two between-subject factors (experimental con-dition and high or low perspective-taking ability), plus covariatesfor strength of Republican/Democratic party identi cation, income,parental education levels, ideology, and dogmatism. Dogmatism wasa signicant predictor of tolerance levels ( F = 2. 99, p < 0. 05), as wasperspective-taking ability ( F = 5. 39, p < 0. 05). Those accustomedto thinking about controversies from more than one perspectivealso tended to be more tolerant. But the interaction between ex-perimental condition (control versus exposure to dissonant views)and perspective-taking ability (low versus high) also con rmed thatthose withhighperspective-takingability bene tedsigni cantly fromexposure to rationales for cross-cutting views ( F = 2. 96, p < 0. 05).29 This may result from the fact that exposing people to counter-attitudinal arguments when they are not able to see things throughanother s eyes causes them to counter-argue and strengthen their re-solve, believing perhaps even more ardently that those who disagreewith them are unworthy opponents.

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FIGURE 2. Effects of Exposure to DissonantPolitical Views by Perspective-Taking Ability

representative one, it is impressive that an effect of thissize wasgeneratedby onesingledisembodied exposure

tocross-cutting politicalviews. Asthesecond columninTable 4 shows, exposure to viewpoints consonant withthe subject s own views produced no such effects, thusconrming that it is exposure to dissonant views that isencouraging tolerance rather than simply exposure topolitical viewpoints more generally.

DISCUSSION

Exposure to dissimilar views has been deemed a cen-tral element if not the sine qua non of the kind of political dialogue that is needed to maintain a demo-cratic citizenry: Democratic public discourse does notdependon preexistingharmony or similarity amongcit-

izens. . .

but rather on the ability to create meaningfuldiscourses across lines of difference (Calhoun 1988,220). The extent to which people are exposed to cross-cutting political viewpoints has become of increasingconcern to observers of American politics as a result of trends toward increasingresidentialbalkanization (e.g.,Harrison and Bennett 1995; Frey 1995). If people self select into lifestyle enclaves with similar-minded oth-ers, their exposure to dissimilar political views shouldsuffer.

To theextent thatresidential balkanizationandothertrends translate to a decline in communication acrosslines of political difference, one of its adverse effectsmay include fewer opportunities for people to learn

aboutlegitimaterationales foroppositional viewpoints.Particularly when policies or candidates other thanone s own top preferences carry the day, the ndings of this study suggest that the perceived legitimacy of thewinning people and policies may be hindered by a lackof awareness of legitimate reasons for opposing views.If people are surrounded by people who think muchlike they do, they will be less aware of the legitimatearguments on the other side of contemporary politicalcontroversies.

Beyond legitimacy, the extent of exposure to dis-sonant political views may also be important for its

TABLE 4. Experimental Effects of Exposureto Rationales for Consonant and DissonantPolitical Views on Political Tolerance

Dissonant ConsonantViews ViewsVersus VersusControl Control

Experimental treatment 0 . 44 0.13(1.11) (0.34)

Perspective-taking ability 0.13 0.03(0.38) (0.09)

Experimental treatment 1.01 0.30by perspective-taking ability (1.99) (0.53)

Dogmatism- 0.32 0.27(1.68) (1.36)

Ideology (conservative) 0.19 0.12(1.42) (0.85)

Republican (strength of) 0.34 0.00(1.32) (0.02)

Democrat (strength of) 0.10 0.15(0.46) (0.69)

Income 0.06 0.08(1.13) (1.36)

Parents educational

0.07

0.02attainment (0.86) (0.26)

Constant 4.24 4.12

(5.79) (5.53)

R 2 0.27 0.18Sample size 57 50

Note : Entries are ordinary least-squares coef cients, witht values in parentheses. The change in R 2 due to the additionof the interaction in column 2 is signi cant ( F change = 4 . 31,p < 0 . 05). p < 0 . 001; p < 0 . 01; p < 0 . 05 (one-tailed test).

indirect contributions to political tolerance. The ca-pacity to see that there is more than one side to anissue, that a political con ict is, in fact, a legitimatecontroversy with rationales on both sides, translatesto greater willingness to extend civil liberties to eventhose groups whose political views one dislikes a greatdeal.

This cognitive mechanism is augmented by in u-ence that ows through the affective ties that peoplemaintain across lines of political difference. Close per-sonal ties with those of differing political views con-tribute to greater political tolerance. It is interesting tonote that, from this perspective, the fact that Ameri-cans so seldom discuss politics in any depth is prob-

ably a feature, not a liability. Because politics is sucha small part of people s day-to-day lives, when theycome into contact with people of opposing views, itis relatively easy for them to ignore this dimension of difference or to discover it late enough that a friend-ship of some kind has already been initiated or estab-lished. Political views need not be at the forefront of daily life or daily conversation to produce bene cialconsequences.

Moreover, the positive role played by affective tiesto politically dissimilar others suggests a need to re-consider the role of emotion in democratic judgment.

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Particularly in research on political tolerance, there isa tendency to think of emotion as something that pro-motes intolerance and prejudicial reactions to others(cf. Kuklinski et al. 1991; Theiss-Morse, Marcus andSullivan 1993). Although evidence on this point re-mains unresolved, the emotional versus deliberativecitizen dichotomy often fails to acknowledge thatthrough social interaction people form relationshipswith affective components as well as judgments basedon the information that is conveyed.

Although in this study I have attempted to separatenetworkcharacteristics suchas intimacy, frequency, andagreement for analytic purposes, it should be acknowl-edged that in the real world they are inextricably inter-twined. People generally feel closer to those who sharetheir values, political andotherwise, andthey talk morefrequently with those to whom they are close. Thus it isimportant to note that efforts to increase exposure todisagreement may necessitate trade-offs in other net-work characteristics that are also generally valued. Forexample, to increase levels of exposure to oppositionalviews in the population, people will need to have agreater numberof weak ties andprobably less intimacyon average within their networks. And although trustis not directly examined in this study, it also goes handin hand with homogeneity of views (e.g., Gibson 1999;Baldassare 1985); thus dense networks of tight-knit so-cial relationships and their characteristic high levelsof trust may come only at the expense of exposureto cross-cutting views. Close relationships obviouslyhave their virtues, but large pluralistic societies suchas the United States undoubtedly need citizens with agood number of weak ties in their social networks tosustain support for democratic freedoms in the midstof great heterogeneity (e.g., Simmel 1955; Karatnycky1999).

Ultimately, political tolerance is about formalizedways in which people agree to disagree. It is primar-ily about restraint and not doing, rather than politicalaction. Thus people s capacity to carry on conversa-tions across lines of political difference, conversationsin which one must agree to disagree at a micro level,may teach important lessons about the necessity of po-litical tolerance, the public policy rendition of agreeingto disagree at the macro level.

These ndings also have implications for the bur-geoningempirical literatureon deliberative democracy.A spate of recent studies, primarily experimental orquasi-experimental in nature, has attempted to manip-ulate deliberation by bringing people together to talk

in small groups (see, e.g., Morrell 2000; Muhlbergerand Butts 1998; Price and Cappella 2001; Simon andSulkin 2000; Weber 1998). While such studies haveprovided many new insights on what happens whenpeople are compelled to talk to one another aboutcontroversial issues, the broad and variable nature of their interactions also makes it dif cult to determinewhich aspects of the experience are producing the ob-served effects. Moreover, because every small groupexchange is somewhat different from the next, causalarguments have been more dif cult to make than inmost experimental studies. For example, it is dif cult

to know if effects are due to information gains throughsocial interaction, thecamaraderie of social interaction,group dynamics, and so forth. In reality, deliberationis a conglomeration of many variables, and it is oftenimpossible to disentangle their effects when they areall varied simultaneously. From a social psychologicalperspective, theadvantage of this study is that it isolatesone particular aspect of the deliberative encounter,the extent of cross-cutting exposure, and examinesits consequences using both survey and experimen-tal evidence. While advantageous for methodologicalreasons, and for purposes of understanding underly-ing processes of in uence, this narrowness also lim-its the scope of the conclusions that should be drawnfrom it.

Does the composition of people s social networkshave meaningful consequences for political toleranceanddemocratic legitimacy? My tentativeanswer to thisquestion is yes, though they are relatively modest onesbased on this survey and experimental evidence. Al-though these ndingsdo not support theargument thatmore deliberation per se is what contemporary Amer-ican politics need most, they do lend supporting evi-dence to arguments about the bene ts of cross-cuttingnetworks of political communication.

APPENDIX A: WORDING OF SURVEY ITEMS

Discussant Generator. From time to time, people dis-cuss government, elections and politics with other people.We d like to know the rst names or just the initials of peopleyou talk with about these matters. These people might befrom your family, from work, from the neighborhood, fromsome other organizationyoubelongto, or they might be fromsomewhere else. Who is the person you ve talked with mostabout politics? [Discussant 1] Aside from this person, whois the person you ve talked with most about politics? [Dis-cussant 2] Aside from anyone you ve already mentioned, isthere anyone else you ve talked with about politics? [Discus-sant 3]. If at any point the respondent couldnot give a name:Well then, can you give the rst name of the person withwhom you were most likely to have informal conversationsduring the course of the past few months?

Frequency of Political Discussion. When you talk with[discussant], do youdiscusspolitics a lot, some,a little, or veryrarely? (Coded 0 if no discussant was named or R reports nopolitical discussion with the discussant, 1 if very rarely, 2 if alittle, 3 if some, and 4 if a lot.)

Exposure to Dissonant Political Views. The followingve items were coded as indicated below, standardized,and then combined into an additive index representingthe extent to which each discussion partner held differ-ing views. To produce an indicator of the respondent soverall extent of exposure to dissonant political views,these three measures were weighted by the frequency of the respondent s interactions with that particular discus-sant, and then combined across each of the three discus-sants for a summary measure. To facilitate interpretation of coef cients, thesummary measure across discussants alsowasstandardized.

(1) Compared with [discussant], would you say that yourpolitical views aremuch thesame,somewhatdifferent,

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or verydifferent? (Coded2 if very different, 1 if some-what different, 0 if else.)

(2) Do you think [discussant] normally favors Republi-cans or Democrats, or both, or neither? (Coded 2 if discussant and respondent clearly favor opposing par-ties, 1 if therespondent leanstowardan opposingparty,and 0 if else.)

(3) Which presidential candidate,if any, does[discussant]favor?Clinton,Dole,Perot, or someothercandidate?

(Coded 1 if discussant and respondent disagree onchoice of candidate, 0 if else.)(4) Overall, do you feel [discussant] shares most of your

views on politicalissues, opposes them,or doesn t [per-sons name] doeitherone? (Coded1 if opposes views,0 if else.)

(5) When you discuss politics with [discussant], do youdisagree often, sometimes, rarely, or never? (Coded0 if never disagrees (or never talks), 1 if rarely, 2 if sometimes, and 3 if often.)

Exposure to Consonant Political Views. The sameprocedure as for Exposure to Dissonant Views was followed,but items were coded so as to award higher scores for greateragreement between respondents and their discussants. (1)

Coded 1 if much the same, 0 if else. (2) Coded 2 if discus-sant and respondent clearly favor the same party, 1 if therespondent leans toward the same party, and 0 if else. (3)Coded 1 if discussant and respondent are in agreement onchoice of candidate, 0 if else. (4) Coded 1 if shares views, 0 if else.

Intimacy Within Dissonant and Consonant Dyads.Question 4 above was used to sort discussants into categoriesof consonant, dissonant, and politically neutral relationships.For discussantswithin eachof thesecategories, an indicatorof the level of intimacy in the relationship wasbased on answersto the question, Is [discussant] a close friend, just a friend,or just someone that you regularly come into contact with? (Coded 0 if no discussant, 1 if acquaintance only, 2 if a friend,

3 if a close friend, 4 if a spouse/family member.) The meanlevel of closeness was calculated across the 0 to 3 dyads thatwere consonant, dissonant, or neutral, thus producing threeseparate measures of Intimacy.

Political Interest. Some people seem to follow what sgoing on in government and public affairs most of the time,whether there s an election going on or not. Others aren tthat interested. Would you say you follow what s going on ingovernment and public affairs most of the time, some of thetime, only now and then, or hardly at all? (Coded 1 if hardlyat all, 2 if only now and then, 3 if some of the time, 4 if mostof the time.)

Issue Opinions. (1) Until recently, welfare programs likefood stampsand aid to families with dependentchildren werefunded and run by the federal government. Do you favortransferring most of the responsibility for welfare programsto the individual state governments or keeping most of theresponsibility for welfare programs with the federal govern-ment? (2) Do you favor or oppose af rmative action pro-grams for women and minorities? (3) I d like to get yourfeelings toward the major candidates for president by askingyou to rate each one on a scale that runs from 0 to 10. Zeromeans you feel most unfavorable toward the candidate, 10means you feel most favorable, and 5 means you feel neutraltoward thecandidate. Using anynumberfrom 0 to 10,overall

how do you feel toward BOB DOLE/BILL CLINTON?Coded by taking the difference (DOLE CLINTON) and tri-chotomizing the sum into pro-Dole, pro-Clinton, and neutralscores.

Awareness of Rationales for Own and OpposingViews. We are interested in hearing about the reasonspeoplehave for [supporting differentpresidential candidates/favoring different sides of this issue] Regardless of your ownviews, what reasons can you think of for [supporting BillClinton/Bob Dole for President] [keeping responsibility withthe federal government/transferring responsibility to the in-dividual state governments] [favoring/opposing af rmativeaction programs]?

Tolerance. Average of responses to six questions askedwith respect to the group named by the respondent. Imgoing to read you a list of groups in politics. As I read itplease follow along and think about which of these groupsyou like the least. If there is some other group you likeeven less than the groups I read, please tell me the nameof that group. Communists, white supremacists, homosexu-als, militia groups, abortion rights activists, pro-life activists,neo-Nazis, religious fundamentalists, atheists, the Ku KluxKlan, and feminists. Which of these groups do you like the

least, or is there some other group you like even less? All items were answered on a 4-point agree disagree scale:[Named group] should be banned from being president of the United States/should be outlawed/should be allowed tomake a speech in your town/city./should be allowed to holdpublic rallies in your town/city./should be allowed to teach inthe public schools./should have their phones tapped by ourgovernment.

Political Knowledge. Additive index of the number of correct responses to the ve items recommended by DelliCarpini and Keeter (1996, 305 6).

Extremity of Political Opinions. This is the averageof how strongly respondents favored or opposed the threeopinion questions. Do you strongly or only somewhat fa-vor (opinion given)? For presidential candidates, those forwhom theabsolutevalueof thethermometerdifferencescore(Dole Clinton) was greater than 5 were coded as high ex-tremity (2), those for whom it was less than 5 were coded 1,and those who rated the candidates equally were coded 0.

Liberal/Conservative. For each variable (liberal/conser-vative), respondents were coded 0 if the respondent reportedno partisanship, 1 if the respondent only leaned in a partisandirection, 2 if a not very strong partisan, and 3 if the respon-dent reported strong partisanship.

Republican/Democrat. Coded 1 if Republican/Demo-crat and 0 otherwise.

Civil Orientation Toward Conict. Scored 1 for re-spondents over the median on both social harmony andconict scales, otherwise 0: Social harmony orientation: (a)When you were growing up, about how often did your par-ents take the position that certain topics are better left undis-cussed? (b) How often did they encourage you to give inon arguments rather than risk antagonizing people? Con-cept orientation: (a) When you were growing up, how oftendid your parents emphasize that getting your point across isimportant even if others don t like it? (b) How often didthey have spirited discussions of controversial matters likepolitics or religion

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APPENDIX B

TABLE A1. First-Stage Predictors of IntimacyWithin Dissonant DyadsNetwork characteristics

Exposure to dissonant views 0.32

(19.49)

Exposure to consonant views 0.04(1.96)Intimacy within consonant dyads 0.07

(4.15)Density of network 0.01

(0.81)Number of discussants 0.08

(4.74)Political involvement

Political knowledge 0.00(0.26)

Political interest 0.01(0.34)

Extremity of issue opinions 0.08

(2.65)Education 0.01

(0.82)Partisanship

Republican 0.02(0.97)

Democrat 0.02(0.97)

Conservative 0.02(1.52)

Liberal 0.02(1.25)

Constant 0.06(0.68)

Sample size 780R 2 0.49

Note : Entries are unstandardized ordinary least-squares regres-sion coef cients with t values in parentheses below. Gender,race, age, income, marital status, and the presence of underagechildren also were included in the equation estimated above.

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