  The intensification of affective polarization worldwide has raised new
questions about how social media platforms might be further fracturing an
already-divided public sphere. As opposed to ideological polarization,
affective polarization is defined less by divergent policy preferences and more
by strong negative emotions towards opposing political groups, and thus
arguably poses a formidable threat to rational democratic discourse. We explore
if prompting perspective-taking on social media platforms can help enhance
empathy between opposing groups as a first step towards reducing affective
polarization. Specifically, we deploy a randomized field experiment through a
browser extension to 1,611 participants on Twitter, which enables participants
to randomly replace their feeds with those belonging to accounts whose
political views either agree with or diverge from their own. We find that
simply exposing participants to "outgroup" feeds enhances engagement, but not
an understanding of why others hold their political views. On the other hand,
framing the experience in familiar, empathic terms by prompting participants to
recall a disagreement with a friend does not affect engagement, but does
increase their ability to understand opposing views. Our findings illustrate
how social media platforms might take simple steps that align with business
objectives to reduce affective polarization.
