People Say They’re Open-Minded About Political News. This Test Predicted What They Chose.

Analytical thinking, humility, and reflection predicted greater tolerance to opposing views. Emotional reasoning correlated with closed-mindedness.

Ask Americans if they’re open to hearing opposing political views, and most will say yes. Of course, whether or not that supposed tolerance holds up when presented with a list of news articles, sources, and opinions is another story entirely.

Researchers at the University of Basel found that WEDO, a new measurement tool, adds unique predictive value beyond traditional self-report surveys, suggesting it captures constraints on political tolerance that direct questions miss.

Research teams created WEDO (Willingness to Engage with Differently-minded Others), a measure designed to reduce the usual problems with asking people directly about their political tolerance. Instead of relying on self-reported attitudes, WEDO presents people with visual sliders representing the full spectrum of opinions on controversial topics and asks them to mark which views they’d accept in a discussion partner. Then came the test: researchers tracked whether those responses predicted which news articles people actually selected.

In a study of 268 U.S. adults, participants who scored higher on WEDO (meaning they indicated acceptance of a wider range of opinions) were significantly more likely to select news articles challenging their own views. Critically, this pattern held even after accounting for how receptive people said they were to opposing viewpoints in standard survey questions.

Testing Political Tolerance With Real News Articles

The research, published in Political Psychology, unfolded across four studies involving 1,215 participants in the United States, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. A key study put behavior to the test with actual article selection.

In Study 2, researchers presented the aforementioned 268 American adults with 30 news headlines covering five controversial topics: abortion rights, immigration policy, gun ownership, gay rights, and universal basic income. Each headline clearly signaled whether it supported or opposed a particular position.

Participants first completed the WEDO measure, using sliders to indicate their own position on each issue and then marking the range of others’ opinions they would find acceptable in a discussion group. They also filled out questionnaires asking directly about their openness to opposing views, including an 18-item scale called Receptiveness to Opposing Views.

When given the list of 30 headlines and asked to select articles, participants showed clear patterns. On average, people selected articles that aligned with their existing views over those that challenged them, confirming decades of research on selective exposure.

But WEDO scores predicted who broke that pattern. Participants with higher scores selected significantly more articles opposing their views. When researchers compared WEDO to standard self-report measures, WEDO added predictive value beyond what the Receptiveness scale captured. Both measures independently predicted less selective exposure, but WEDO explained unique variance in article selection behavior.

A later study (Study 4) with 403 US adults recruited to match census demographics replicated the associations between WEDO and thinking patterns like intellectual humility and analytical reasoning, strengthening confidence in those relationships.

How Thinking Patterns Predict Engagement With Opposing Views

Research revealed consistent patterns in who scored higher on WEDO across multiple studies using different populations and topics. Political ideology mattered less than how people think.

Participants who showed more categorical thinking (the tendency to see things in strictly black-and-white terms) demonstrated lower tolerance for opposing views. Those who relied more heavily on emotional reasoning (using feelings rather than facts to make judgments) also scored lower. People with higher need for cognition (a preference for analytical over intuitive thinking) were more willing to engage with differently minded others. Those who scored better on the Cognitive Reflection Test, which measures the ability to override intuitive but incorrect responses, also showed higher WEDO scores.

One personality trait stood out: intellectual humility. In both U.S. and U.K. samples where this was measured, participants who scored higher on measures of intellectual humility, reflecting recognition that their own beliefs might be wrong, consistently showed greater willingness to engage with opposing views.

Political orientation showed a curious pattern. In studies conducted in the U.K. and U.S., participants who leaned left had higher WEDO scores. Yet when asked directly about their receptiveness to opposing views, those on the right reported being more receptive. The authors suggest WEDO’s visual approach may reduce social desirability bias, though this remains a plausible interpretation rather than a proven mechanism.

When Context Changes Political Tolerance

Research teams tested WEDO across varied contexts. In Study 1 with 180 Swiss students discussing sustainability topics, half were told their hypothetical discussion group’s goal was for everyone to get along well (affiliative goal), while the other half were told the goal was to have an intellectually stimulating discussion (accuracy goal). Those in the accuracy goal condition indicated acceptance of significantly wider ranges of opinions, with average WEDO scores of 0.71 compared to 0.54 in the affiliative goal condition.

However, when researchers tried to replicate this finding in Study 4 with 403 U.S. adults discussing partisan political topics, the effect disappeared, highlighting that political tolerance responds to context in ways that require more investigation.

Connections between controversy and tolerance also proved complicated. In Study 3 with 364 U.K. participants, WEDO scores showed no relationship to how controversial participants perceived each topic. But in Study 4’s US sample of 403 adults, people showed higher WEDO scores on topics they rated as more controversial, an unexpected pattern the researchers noted warrants further investigation.

When 137 participants from the U.K. study retook WEDO approximately three months later, their scores showed moderate stability with an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.55.

Why This Method Works Better Than Asking People Directly

Traditional approaches to measuring political tolerance rely on direct questions that assume people have accurate insight into their own openness. But research on social desirability indicates people’s responses may reflect how they want to see themselves rather than the actual boundaries of their tolerance.

WEDO attempts to work around this by asking people to make concrete choices in hypothetical scenarios. When someone moves sliders to indicate the range of opinions they’d accept in a discussion group, they’re making a specific decision rather than offering a general self-assessment. Participants saw statements like “Abortion should be legal” or “The U.S. needs stricter immigration policies” on an 11-point scale from “completely disagree” to “completely agree,” first marking their own position and then selecting the range of others’ positions they’d accept in their discussion group.

Article selection tasks provided crucial evidence that WEDO captures something meaningful. WEDO scores predicted which articles people selected even after accounting for standard measures of receptiveness, showing the tool taps into constraints on political tolerance that direct questions don’t fully capture. One interpretation is that WEDO may reduce social desirability concerns that affect self-report measures; people may answer more honestly when making concrete visual choices rather than responding to abstract questions about their openness.

What This Means for Bridging Political Divides

Results point to potential strategies for increasing political tolerance. If black-and-white thinking and emotional reasoning constrain openness, interventions promoting more analytical approaches could help. If intellectual humility matters, educational programs emphasizing recognition of uncertainty might make a difference.

Research also shows that framing may matter. When Swiss students were told their discussion aimed for intellectual stimulation rather than social harmony, they indicated acceptance of wider opinion ranges. While this effect didn’t replicate with US adults discussing partisan topics, it points to the possibility that how we frame political conversations (as learning opportunities versus relationship risks) could influence willingness to participate.

Cross-cutting political discussions help people refine beliefs, understand different perspectives, and make informed decisions about political choices. Yet survey data shows around 60% of Americans find it frustrating to discuss politics with differently minded others. WEDO offers a tool for identifying both individual characteristics and situational factors that promote or hinder engagement across political lines.

The research reveals something worth noting: what people report about their political openness doesn’t always align with the range of views they actually indicate they’d accept in concrete scenarios. Many people may believe they’re open to opposing views. But when asked to mark specific boundaries on where they’d draw the line, those boundaries prove narrower than their general self-assessments suggest.

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