Designing social media to promote productive political dialogue
- 1MIT, Sloan School of Management
- 2Department of Computer Science, Duke University
- 3Duke University, Sanford School of Public Policy
Abstract
Social media are frequently blamed for exacerbating ideological divides. We evaluate whether it is possible to design a social media platform that instead promotes productive, open-minded dialogue among users. We recruited 1,043 Americans to test a new social media platform by installing a mobile app we developed for iOS and Android devices. Participants were randomly assigned to spend ten minutes on one of two versions of a simulated social media platform. The first was a control condition designed to resemble typical text-based social media sites, and users were told that people whose posts are liked very often receive a “popular user” badge. The second version was identical to the first, but participants were instead told users receive an “open-minded” badge if they respectfully engage with opposing viewpoints. Participants using both versions were asked to join an ongoing discussion about either gun control or immigration, which was populated with chatbots powered by generative AI. We find that participants assigned to the experimental condition exhibited more intellectually humble language in their posts and comments and reported experiencing more positive emotions. We do not find significant treatment effects on participants’ self-reported intellectual humility, affective polarization, or issue attitudes. These results have important implications for future research on social media and social psychology and introduce new methods for conducting randomized controlled trials using generative artificial intelligence.
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BibTeX
@article{loon2026designing,
title = {{Designing social media to promote productive political dialogue}},
author = {Austin van Loon and Srikar Katta and Christopher A. Bail and D. Sunshine Hillygus and Alexander Volfovsky},
journal = {Scientific Reports},
year = {2026},
month = jul,
doi = {10.1038/s41598-026-63437-8},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-63437-8},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Designing social media to promote productive political dialogue
AU - Austin van Loon
AU - Srikar Katta
AU - Christopher A. Bail
AU - D. Sunshine Hillygus
AU - Alexander Volfovsky
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/07/01
JO - Scientific Reports
DO - 10.1038/s41598-026-63437-8
UR - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-63437-8
AB - Social media are frequently blamed for exacerbating ideological divides. We evaluate whether it is possible to design a social media platform that instead promotes productive, open-minded dialogue among users. We recruited 1,043 Americans to test a new social media platform by installing a mobile app we developed for iOS and Android devices. Participants were randomly assigned to spend ten minutes on one of two versions of a simulated social media platform. The first was a control condition designed to resemble typical text-based social media sites, and users were told that people whose posts are liked very often receive a “popular user” badge. The second version was identical to the first, but participants were instead told users receive an “open-minded” badge if they respectfully engage with opposing viewpoints. Participants using both versions were asked to join an ongoing discussion about either gun control or immigration, which was populated with chatbots powered by generative AI. We find that participants assigned to the experimental condition exhibited more intellectually humble language in their posts and comments and reported experiencing more positive emotions. We do not find significant treatment effects on participants’ self-reported intellectual humility, affective polarization, or issue attitudes. These results have important implications for future research on social media and social psychology and introduce new methods for conducting randomized controlled trials using generative artificial intelligence.
SN - 2045-2322
ER -