Thread by @AliaBraley

🎉Amazing news!🎉 Our team came in FIRST PLACE in lowering anti-democratic attitudes in a massive online experiment @Stanford, the✨✨Strengthening Democracy Challenge✨✨. We ALSO significantly reduced partisan animosity and support for political violence in the US. 👇🧵1/8.

Our team includes @GabeLenz, @_dval_, @hosinux, and @alex_pentland from @UCBerkeley, @MIT, @MediaLab, and @TorontoMet. It started in 2019 with the question: what kind of #polarization is most toxic for #democracy and how can it be remedied? 🧵2/8.

What is the Strengthening Democracy Challenge? This innovative project crowdsourced intervention designs from over 400 people in 17 countries for a massive online experiment (N>31,000). For more info, see this thread

https://twitter.com/RobbWiller/status/1558973819842203648

by @RobbWiller 🧵3/8.

Our intervention reduces exaggerated beliefs that opposing partisans (Democrats/Republicans) are willing to undermine democracy. With less fear, both sides become more willing to uphold democratic norms. You can read our preprint under review here: osf.io/my987/ 🧵4/8.

All of the outstanding interventions and findings from this challenge will advance our collective understanding of how to strengthen democracy amid its many challenges. Check out all the interventions: strengtheningdemocracychallenge.org/winning-interv… and the working paper: strengtheningdemocracychallenge.org/paper 🧵5/8.

So many thanks to @civichealthproj, @StanfordPACS and the SDC PIs: @RobbWiller, James Druckman, and @DG_Rand as well as the whole research team and advisory board including Chrystal Redekopp, @AdamBerinsky, and @namalhotra 🧵6/8.

For their valuable feedback thanks to @mlandauwells, @ceciliamo, @dshyde, @matanock, @mstevenfish, @Matt_Graham, @andyguess, @DanBischof, @dbroockman, @hakeemjefferson, @jenjpan, members of @MIT Connection Science Group, @medialab, and the @UCBerkeley IR/CP Workshop 🧵7/8.

Proud to be a graduate-student-led team in the Strengthening Democracy Challenge and hope to encourage other graduate students to put themselves out there! 💪💪💪 Follow me for updates on this research to decrease toxic polarization and increase democratic resilience!!! 🧵8/8.