Challenging Stereotypes

Goal: Reduce partisan animosity Evidence rating (PDN): Emergent Civic signal: Connect — Build bridges between groups When to use: Proactive

What it is

A feed-ranking algorithm that promotes posts in which members of one political group express views usually associated with the other group (e.g., a conservative account voicing a liberal position.)

Intended impact

The goal is to interrupt caricatured views and misperceptions about political opponents by showing the other side is less uniform than stereotypical depictions suggest, and, in turn, reduce political animosity.

Evidence that it works

Stray et al. (2026) tested this approach as one arm of a large independent field experiment across Reddit, Facebook, and X during the 2024 U.S. electoral cycle. They used a browser extension and a Large Language Model (GPT-4o) to identify and promote stereotype-challenging posts. The results demonstrated a small, but non-significant, reduction in partisan animosity (-0.02 standard deviations) (Note: all effects we include are statistically significant, unless otherwise stated. We report effect sizes using the metrics in the authors’ paper.) Two secondary effects did reach significance, however: users reported a worse experience on the platform (-0.06 standard deviations), but the condition also resulted in the largest increase in engagement of any algorithm tested in the study.

Why it matters

Stereotyping and misperceptions of political opponents have been associated with partisan animosity, and there is a long history of research proposing exposure to diverse viewpoints and counter-stereotypical examples can produce more humanized perceptions of others. Though this study offers an initial large scale test of this idea in the field, the lack of significant evidence leaves this an emergent option requiring further testing.

Special considerations

Examples

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This intervention entry currently lacks photographic evidence (screencaps, &c.)

Citations

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From the Prosocial Design Network's Digital Intervention Library (https://www.prosocialdesign.org/library/challenging-stereotypes), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Reformatted for the RT Commons; text otherwise as published. Library citation: Prosocial Design Network (2024), Digital Intervention Library, https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/Q4RMB. Anything built from this pattern should credit the Prosocial Design Network and the researchers cited above.

Details

• goal: Reduce partisan animosity
• citations: [object Object]
• image url: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/647f696dc653a97c26f42a0b/6a58d5aa9a547e878c03a6bb_Challenging%20Stereotypes.png
• pdn rating: Emergent
• when to use: Proactive
• civic signal: Connect
• pdn library doi: 10.17605/OSF.IO/Q4RMB
• civic signal goal: Build bridges between groups