Short report on initial polarization/argument visualization study

Background Partisan antipathy is rife among both Democrats and Republicans, with over half of the members of each party reporting “very unfavorable” opinions of the other (PEW, 2017). Today, more than half of conservatives and liberals prefer to live in like-minded communities and say that most of their close friends share their views. Communicating political arguments using prose may contribute to this damaging political polarization. Because people tend to be bad at extracting arguments from prose, prose-based media may increase people’s reliance on "interpretive heuristics"—rules of thumb that are highly susceptible to biases.