Divergent Paths to Depolarization: Dialogue Design Determines the Prosocial Benefits of AI-Assisted Political Argumentation

2026-05-22

AI Summary

Amid rising political polarization, scalable structured dialogue mechanisms to foster cross-ideological understanding remain scarce. This study addresses this gap through a two-phase longitudinal online experiment in which an AI chatbot guided participants in engaging in either attitude-congruent or attitude-incongruent deliberative dialogues on contentious issues, with psychological assessments measuring impacts on affective polarization, opinion polarization, and empathy. Findings indicate that attitude-congruent dialogue more effectively reduced immediate affective and opinion polarization, whereas attitude-incongruent dialogue, despite temporarily diminishing state empathy, significantly enhanced trait empathy two weeks later. The results demonstrate that stance congruence is a critical moderator in AI-mediated depolarization interventions, offering empirical support for designing empathy-oriented depolarization technologies.

Abstract

Argumentative dialogues across political divides can reduce polarization, yet opportunities for citizens to engage with opposing views in accessible and structured ways remain limited. AI dialogue partners offer a scalable framework for such open-mindedness exercises, but how the format of human-AI dialogues shapes their benefits remains unclear. In a two-session online experiment, 469 US participants were assigned to argue either for or against their own attitude on a contested political issue with an AI chatbot. Our experimental findings show attitude-congruent dialogues produced greater immediate reduction in both affective and opinion polarization than attitude-incongruent dialogues. By contrast, attitude-incongruent dialogues elicited weaker cognitive state empathy than the non-AI reference task but increased cognitive trait empathy in the two-week period between sessions, suggesting the effects of active generation of attitude-incongruent arguments may emerge over time. These findings highlight dialogue design as a key determinant of effective AI-mediated behavioral interventions.

Problem

• political polarization
• AI-assisted dialogue
• attitude-congruent argumentation
• empathy
• dialogue design

Innovation

• AI-mediated dialogue
• political polarization
• dialogue design
• cognitive empathy
• attitude-congruent argumentation