Posted on 01/07/2026 6:10:11 AM PST by Red Badger
Analytical thinking, humility, and reflection predicted greater tolerance to opposing views. Emotional reasoning correlated with closed-mindedness. In A Nutshell Framing conversations as learning opportunities might help, but evidence is mixed. Swiss students accepted wider opinion ranges when told discussions were for intellectual stimulation vs. getting along. But this didn’t replicate with Americans discussing partisan politics, showing context matters in ways researchers are still figuring out.
Visual sliders predict behavior better than surveys. Researchers created WEDO, which asks people to mark acceptable opinion ranges on visual scales. These responses predicted which opposing-viewpoint news articles people selected, even after accounting for traditional self-report measures.
How you think matters more than where you lean politically. People who scored higher on analytical thinking, intellectual humility, and cognitive reflection showed greater tolerance for opposing views. Black-and-white thinking and emotional reasoning predicted lower tolerance.
Left-leaning participants showed wider tolerance on the tool, but right-leaning ones said they were more open. This gap suggests WEDO may capture real boundaries that self-reports miss, possibly by reducing social desirability concerns about what’s “right” to say.
Ask Americans if they’re open to hearing opposing political views, and most will say yes. Of course, whether or not that supposed tolerance holds up when presented with a list of news articles, sources, and opinions is another story entirely.
Researchers at the University of Basel found that WEDO, a new measurement tool, adds unique predictive value beyond traditional self-report surveys, suggesting it captures constraints on political tolerance that direct questions miss.
Research teams created WEDO (Willingness to Engage with Differently-minded Others), a measure designed to reduce the usual problems with asking people directly about their political tolerance. Instead of relying on self-reported attitudes, WEDO presents people with visual sliders representing the full spectrum of opinions on controversial topics and asks them to mark which views they’d accept in a discussion partner. Then came the test: researchers tracked whether those responses predicted which news articles people actually selected.
In a study of 268 U.S. adults, participants who scored higher on WEDO (meaning they indicated acceptance of a wider range of opinions) were significantly more likely to select news articles challenging their own views. Critically, this pattern held even after accounting for how receptive people said they were to opposing viewpoints in standard survey questions.
Testing Political Tolerance With Real News Articles The research, published in Political Psychology, unfolded across four studies involving 1,215 participants in the United States, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. A key study put behavior to the test with actual article selection.
In Study 2, researchers presented the aforementioned 268 American adults with 30 news headlines covering five controversial topics: abortion rights, immigration policy, gun ownership, gay rights, and universal basic income. Each headline clearly signaled whether it supported or opposed a particular position.
Participants first completed the WEDO measure, using sliders to indicate their own position on each issue and then marking the range of others’ opinions they would find acceptable in a discussion group. They also filled out questionnaires asking directly about their openness to opposing views, including an 18-item scale called Receptiveness to Opposing Views.
When given the list of 30 headlines and asked to select articles, participants showed clear patterns. On average, people selected articles that aligned with their existing views over those that challenged them, confirming decades of research on selective exposure.
But WEDO scores predicted who broke that pattern. Participants with higher scores selected significantly more articles opposing their views. When researchers compared WEDO to standard self-report measures, WEDO added predictive value beyond what the Receptiveness scale captured. Both measures independently predicted less selective exposure, but WEDO explained unique variance in article selection behavior.
A later study (Study 4) with 403 US adults recruited to match census demographics replicated the associations between WEDO and thinking patterns like intellectual humility and analytical reasoning, strengthening confidence in those relationships.
How Thinking Patterns Predict Engagement With Opposing Views Research revealed consistent patterns in who scored higher on WEDO across multiple studies using different populations and topics. Political ideology mattered less than how people think.
Participants who showed more categorical thinking (the tendency to see things in strictly black-and-white terms) demonstrated lower tolerance for opposing views. Those who relied more heavily on emotional reasoning (using feelings rather than facts to make judgments) also scored lower. People with higher need for cognition (a preference for analytical over intuitive thinking) were more willing to engage with differently minded others. Those who scored better on the Cognitive Reflection Test, which measures the ability to override intuitive but incorrect responses, also showed higher WEDO scores.
One personality trait stood out: intellectual humility. In both U.S. and U.K. samples where this was measured, participants who scored higher on measures of intellectual humility, reflecting recognition that their own beliefs might be wrong, consistently showed greater willingness to engage with opposing views.
Political orientation showed a curious pattern. In studies conducted in the U.K. and U.S., participants who leaned left had higher WEDO scores. Yet when asked directly about their receptiveness to opposing views, those on the right reported being more receptive. The authors suggest WEDO’s visual approach may reduce social desirability bias, though this remains a plausible interpretation rather than a proven mechanism.
When Context Changes Political Tolerance Research teams tested WEDO across varied contexts. In Study 1 with 180 Swiss students discussing sustainability topics, half were told their hypothetical discussion group’s goal was for everyone to get along well (affiliative goal), while the other half were told the goal was to have an intellectually stimulating discussion (accuracy goal). Those in the accuracy goal condition indicated acceptance of significantly wider ranges of opinions, with average WEDO scores of 0.71 compared to 0.54 in the affiliative goal condition.
However, when researchers tried to replicate this finding in Study 4 with 403 U.S. adults discussing partisan political topics, the effect disappeared, highlighting that political tolerance responds to context in ways that require more investigation.
Connections between controversy and tolerance also proved complicated. In Study 3 with 364 U.K. participants, WEDO scores showed no relationship to how controversial participants perceived each topic. But in Study 4’s US sample of 403 adults, people showed higher WEDO scores on topics they rated as more controversial, an unexpected pattern the researchers noted warrants further investigation.
When 137 participants from the U.K. study retook WEDO approximately three months later, their scores showed moderate stability with an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.55.
Why This Method Works Better Than Asking People Directly Traditional approaches to measuring political tolerance rely on direct questions that assume people have accurate insight into their own openness. But research on social desirability indicates people’s responses may reflect how they want to see themselves rather than the actual boundaries of their tolerance.
WEDO attempts to work around this by asking people to make concrete choices in hypothetical scenarios. When someone moves sliders to indicate the range of opinions they’d accept in a discussion group, they’re making a specific decision rather than offering a general self-assessment. Participants saw statements like “Abortion should be legal” or “The U.S. needs stricter immigration policies” on an 11-point scale from “completely disagree” to “completely agree,” first marking their own position and then selecting the range of others’ positions they’d accept in their discussion group.
Article selection tasks provided crucial evidence that WEDO captures something meaningful. WEDO scores predicted which articles people selected even after accounting for standard measures of receptiveness, showing the tool taps into constraints on political tolerance that direct questions don’t fully capture. One interpretation is that WEDO may reduce social desirability concerns that affect self-report measures; people may answer more honestly when making concrete visual choices rather than responding to abstract questions about their openness.
What This Means for Bridging Political Divides Results point to potential strategies for increasing political tolerance. If black-and-white thinking and emotional reasoning constrain openness, interventions promoting more analytical approaches could help. If intellectual humility matters, educational programs emphasizing recognition of uncertainty might make a difference.
Research also shows that framing may matter. When Swiss students were told their discussion aimed for intellectual stimulation rather than social harmony, they indicated acceptance of wider opinion ranges. While this effect didn’t replicate with US adults discussing partisan topics, it points to the possibility that how we frame political conversations (as learning opportunities versus relationship risks) could influence willingness to participate.
Cross-cutting political discussions help people refine beliefs, understand different perspectives, and make informed decisions about political choices. Yet survey data shows around 60% of Americans find it frustrating to discuss politics with differently minded others. WEDO offers a tool for identifying both individual characteristics and situational factors that promote or hinder engagement across political lines.
The research reveals something worth noting: what people report about their political openness doesn’t always align with the range of views they actually indicate they’d accept in concrete scenarios. Many people may believe they’re open to opposing views. But when asked to mark specific boundaries on where they’d draw the line, those boundaries prove narrower than their general self-assessments suggest.
My Father-in-Law is very proud of his approach to reading the news. He subscribes to two newspapers: one Far Left and one Far Right.
The Far Left newspaper is the New York Times.
The Far Right newspaper is the Wall Street Journal.
I have tried to tell him that they are both Left-wing. Both hate Trump. Both disagree with everything Trump says. They are, essentially, the same.
He just brushes that off because I clearly “don’t get it”. You see, one of them is Far Left and the other one is Far Right.
I think those of us normal, thinking individuals reject much left leaning ‘information’ because it is so predictable. The left spews the same nonsense ad nauseam. It’s tiresome drivel. We have heard it all before.
The left tends to be emotion driven, while the right is more analytical.
LOL. Most people (myself included) really aren’t that open to opposing political views. I think conservatives naturally understand liberal views better than liberals understand conservative views because liberal views are shoved down our throats daily by the mainstream media. But even with that, I’ve developed a defensive shell. I try at times to understand the other side. For instance, I understand the frustration with the cost of living that got Mamdani elected. The Right simply calling him a Communist fell on deaf ears.
Back in the day, nobody knew who voted for whom. Was it a better time? Who knows.
I used to have a high WEDO, but after learning that the other side is based on satanic views my WEDO is almost zero. Hearing that those guided by satan are still listening is hopeful.
Buy him a subscription to a good right newspaper or magazine..............
The lie in the article is that “Tolerance” is presented as a Cardinal virtue. I would challenge that assumption right off the bat.
Are there any?
The study is biased in its selection of topics.
All “virtues” have excesses. Tolerance is fine until something becomes intolerable. At that point that virtue becomes a sin.
How do i discuss policy with people that start off by calling me a fascist/racist?
Good post.
Framing the issue is critical.
If the frame is wrong then everything else will be wrong after that.
“The lie in the article is that “Tolerance” is presented as a Cardinal virtue. I would challenge that assumption right off the bat.”
The left is immensely tolerant of the left. But the left is also viciously intolerant of anything that deviates from the received left wisdom de jour
Bkmk
“The lie in the article is that “Tolerance” is presented as a Cardinal virtue. I would challenge that assumption right off the bat.”
The left is immensely tolerant of the left. But the left is also viciously intolerant of anything that deviates from the received left wisdom de jour.
Keeping up with the ever changing de jour is one of the challenges the left poses for every normal person. Eventually they will get you and cancel you.
Exactly. Abortion rights versus right to life. Abortion rights deliberately leaves out the actual baby in the discussion. Like the early 19th Century argument of property rights and states rights versus freedom from slavery or abolition.
Gun ownership? How about right to keep and bear arms and self defense?
Gay rights? Who is throwing gays off tall buildings? In the USA, if you’re gay, nobody cares. What rights are not being allowed?
Universal basic income is so one sided it doesn’t even have an opposite name. The government should take money from some and give it to others is all it is. Governments don’t have free money. There is no free money to give to people. It always will come from other people’s labors.
Tolerance is an ethical fixed pie. Nobody is more “Tolerant” than anybody else because tolerating “A” means not tolerating “B.”
You can’t simultaneously tolerate diametrically opposed positions
I wouldn’t consider dislike for Trump to be a defining factor in ‘leftism’.
As much as many of us like him, Trump can be polarizing. I think there are lots of people who are Conservative in terms of political philosophy but simply dislike Trump or the way he goes about things.
Keeping up with the ever changing de jour is one of the challenges the left poses for every normal person. Eventually they will get you and cancel you.
So the solution is to have clear goals on what you want and stay focus. Trump has clear goals and tests his decisions on if they help achieve the goal.
If I shake you awake in the middle of the night and ask you what you are fighting for, after you reach for your gun, what do you tell me?
I repeat:
If I shake you awake in the middle of the night and ask you what you are fighting for, after you reach for your gun, what do you tell me?
We should all have an answer.
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