Communicating social perspective taking creates common ground and improves relational perceptions

Establishing common ground between individuals with divergent opinions appears more difficult than ever. How can people with opposing points of view establish common ground when preexisting shared experiences, traits, or values are not easily uncovered? Drawing from an online sample of U.S. adults (N = 558), this preregistered randomized controlled experiment tested social perspective taking (SPT) as a promising approach for creating common ground. Paralleling many digital contexts, we focused on a hot-button issue—educational policy related to climate change—in a context where similarities and shared values were unlikely to be readily discovered. Specifically, in two treatment conditions, a fictional teacher with an opposing point of view took the perspective of participants by identifying, acknowledging, and affirming the merit of either their (a) arguments or (b) intentions. These interventions created a sense of common ground and improved multiple relationship-related outcomes as evidenced through higher levels of perceived perspective-taking, perceived similarity, perceived fairness, and anticipation of a positive relationship with the fictional teacher. Estimated effect sizes further suggested that affirming the other party’s arguments was about twice as effective as affirming their intentions. In the present historical moment when society faces multiple challenges in enabling productive conversations, our study uses a social perspective-taking intervention to provide a recipe for creating common ground between people who may not otherwise discover any. This preregistered RCT (N = 558 U.S. adults) tested perspective-taking on a divisive environmental education topic. Affirming either arguments or intentions of the opposing side built common ground and improved relations; the former twice as effective.