For over a century, Americans have engaged in debates about the issues that matter most to them. Despite a recent uptick in political polarization, debates remain a hallmark of our democratic process and a key tool for promoting civic engagement.
Debates are held by and among candidates for public office, typically in a structured format involving one moderator and two or more participants, each given equal time to speak about their views on a topic. They can be conducted in-person, via television, radio, or online and are often attended by large audiences.
Political debates have been shown to improve citizens’ understanding of the opposing positions on a topic. However, we know very little about the experience of people who engage in these debates. This research aims to fill this gap.
Misperceptions of how frequently debate occurs may have important consequences for our democracy. For example, if we overestimate how often debates occur, they may appear costly and ineffective. This could lead individuals to question the legitimacy of our democracy and to feel hopeless about its future, both of which have been found to predict self-reported voting intentions.
This study will use a unique method to directly compare participants’ own experiences of political debates with their predictions of how often other people have such experiences. Participants are randomly assigned to either report their own debate experiences or to predict the likelihood that other people have such experiences. As a result, this experiment provides an excellent control for studying the effect of different factors that influence debate perceptions and experiences.
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