To help with political depolarization efforts, share this video

Research found this video reduces us-versus-them animosity amongst Americans

When it comes to simple things any American citizen can do to help reduce us-versus-them animosity, sharing the video below on social media is one of those things.

The root cause of extreme polarization in America is that so many of us have distorted, overly pessimistic views of people on “the other side.” The “low hanging fruit” of depolarization work is attempting to talk about and correct those views. This is the easiest work to do, and it has, disappointingly, barely been done (more thoughts on why that is below the video).

The video below, titled America’s Divided Mind, was created by the organization Beyond Conflict. The video was “found to be the most impactful intervention to reduce support for political violence and was among the top five interventions in reducing partisan animosity and anti-democratic attitudes.” Also, “among all of the entries tested, Beyond Conflict’s video was one of only three interventions to affect all three outcomes.”

Please share this video on social media, and, when you post it, ask others to also share it. Here’s the youtube URL: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzDGV1p_u_E

For more about the methodology and research that went into making this video, see Beyond Conflict.

If politicians and pundits and journalists wanted to help, they’d talk more about these things. And part of the reason many do not do that is that conflict exerts pressure on us to not examine or acknowledge how conflict dynamics work. Examining the fact that many Americans in both political groups have distorted views of each other would mean acknowledging that both groups contribute to the problem, and for obvious reasons this is something that many people would rather not do: they’re either afraid of being criticized for talking about that, or they genuinely believe that “it is not our problem; it is their problem.”

Conflict creates an environment where many of us are allergic to even talking about the nature of how conflict works, and our collective avoidance of these topics is what makes our problems worse.

Contributors to this video include Samantha Moore-Berg, Michael Pasek, Rebecca Littman, Nour Kteily, Roman Gallardo, filmmaker Wayne Price, and Beyond Conflict.