Bridging the Divide? Reducing Hostility Without Increasing Acceptance: A Commentary on Moritz et al. (2026)

In their manuscript entitled “Bridging the divide: Using metacognitive training to reduce hostility between the political left and right” published in Political Psychology, Moritz et al. (2026) apply metacognitive training (MCT), a well-established method from clinical psychology, to reduce hostility toward political outgroup members. The authors argue that presenting counterstereotypical information about the outgroup during MCT may help mitigate political polarization. In the present commentary, we do not provide a detailed methodological critique of the study. Some methodological limitations—such as the absence of preregistration, the lack of a control group, possible demand characteristics, and the absence of evidence for long-term effects—are already acknowledged by the authors themselves. Instead, our focus is on theoretical and conceptual issues that, in our view, remain central to evaluating the proposed intervention and its implications.A reply to our commentary by Steffen Moritz can be found here: https://clinical-neuropsychology.de/political_psychology/.