Seek and ye shall be fine: Attitudes toward political perspective-seekers

Six pre-registered studies (N = 2421) examine how people respond to co-partisan political perspective-seekers: political allies who attempt to hear from shared opponents and better understand their views. We find North American adults and students generally like co-partisan seekers (meta-analytic Cohen’s d = .83 across 4231 participants, including an emptied file drawer). People like co-partisan seekers because they seem tolerant, cooperative, and rational, but this liking is diminished because seekers seem to validate—and may even adopt—opponents’ illegitimate views. Participants liked co-partisan seekers across a range of different motivations guiding these seekers’ actions but, consistent with our theorizing, their liking decreased (though rarely disappeared entirely) when seekers lacked partisan commitments, or when they sought especially illegitimate beliefs. Despite evidence of rising political intolerance in recent decades, these findings suggest people nonetheless celebrate political allies who tolerate and seriously consider their opponents’ views.