In Need of the Devil’s Advocate? The Impact of Cross-Cutting Exposure on Political Discussion

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Cross-cutting exposure (i.e., the exposure to dissonant views) is a central component of political discussion among citizens. Although political discussion is a crucial form of political engagement and a well-known source of dissonance, little is known about the impact of cross-cuttingness (vs. like-mindedness; CCLM) elicited by media news on political discussion. In the present pre-registered online experiment ( N = 725), news stories were manipulated to induce CCLM and investigate its positive effect on political discussion via a specific path: deliberative thinking and the repertoire of arguments. Although no total effect of CCLM on participating in a political discussion (operationalized as discussion intent) was found, a structural equation model showed specific indirect positive effects via our hypothesized paths. Our study therefore lends support to the positive democratic implication of cross-cutting exposure. Data and material are publicly available via https://osf.io/cpnzy/ .