The Ideological Turing Test: a behavioural measure of open-mindedness and perspective-taking

Truly understanding the position of ideological opponents is challenging, yet crucial if our goals are to avoid escalation or further polarisation, identify areas of agreement, and ultimately reduce misunderstanding. We operationalise the idea of an ‘Ideological Turing Test’, as a behavioural measure of the extent to which people are able to accurately represent the position of their ideological opponents. The original ‘Turing Test’ challenged any artificial intelligence to successfully mimic human dialogue- the test would be passed if a human was convinced that the machine was a human. The Ideological Turing Test has been proposed (Caplan 2011 Econlib) as a requirement for would-be human debaters - can they successfully mimic their ideological opponent’s arguments to the extent that their opponent endorses the argument as strongly as their own? Crucially, this ‘Test’ offers a behavioural measure of open mindedness which goes beyond self-report measures. It is not possible to pass an Ideological Turing Test by believing you understand the other’s perspective - you must articulate those arguments to the satisfaction of those who hold them. In this study, we operationalise the Ideological Turing Test by recruiting participants from opposite sides of commonly polarising debates (Covid-19 Vaccines, Brexit, Veganism), and asking them to provide reasons both for and against their position. These reasons were rated by participants from the opposite side of the debate. Our criteria for “passing” the Ideological Turing Test is if an argument is agreed with by opponents to the same extent or higher than arguments made by proponents. We found no difference in minority or majority positions in their ability to pass the Ideological Turing Test (i.e. no difference in passing rate between those who are for or against Covid-19 vaccines). However we did find that those who pass the Ideological Turing Test are less judgemental towards their opponents, in that they are less likely to rate them as ignorant, immoral or irrational. The Ideological Turing Test not only provides a behavioural measure of open-mindedness, it also provides insights into the scope and diversity of arguments within and between polarising topics.