Tom Stafford

Understanding our ideological opponents is crucial for the effective exchange of arguments and the avoidance of escalation, and the reduction of conflict. We operationalize the idea of an “Ideological Turing Test” to measure the accuracy with which people represent the arguments of their ideological opponents. Crucially, this offers a behavioral measure of open-mindedness which goes beyond mere self-report. We recruited 200 participants from opposite sides of three topics with potential for polarization in the UK of the early 2020s (1200 participants total). Participants were asked to provide reasons both for and against their position. Their reasons were then rated by participants from the opposite side. Our criteria for “passing” the test was if an argument was agreed with by opponents to the same extent or higher than arguments made by proponents. We found evidence for high levels of mutual understanding across all three topics. We also found that those who passed were more open-minded toward their opponents, in that they were less likely to rate them as ignorant, immoral, or irrational. Our method provides a behavioral measure of open-mindedness and ability to mimic counterpartisan perspectives that goes beyond self-report measures. Our results offer encouragement that, even in highly polarized debates, high levels of mutual understanding persist.