Affective polarization, the extent to which political actors treat each other as disliked outgroups, is challenging political exchange and deliberation, for example, via mistrust of the "political enemy" and unwillingness to discuss political topics with them. The present experiments address this problem and study what makes people approach, and not avoid, potential discussion partners in the context of polarized political topics in Germany. We hypothesized that intellectual humility, the recognition of one's intellectual limitations, would predict both less affective polarization and higher approach and lower avoidance tendencies toward contrary-minded others. Across four preregistered online-survey experiments (N = 1,668), we manipulated how intellectually humble a target person was perceived and measured participants' self-reported (topic-specific) intellectual humility. Results revealed that participants' intellectual humility was consistently negatively correlated with affective polarization. Additionally, intellectual humility of both the target person and the participants was beneficial, and sometimes even necessary, to make participants approach, and not avoid, the target person. Intellectual humility was more important than moral conviction, opinion, and opinion strength. Furthermore, the effects on approach and avoidance were mediated by more positive expectations regarding the debate, and the effects on future willingness for contact by higher target liking. Our findings suggest that intellectual humility is an important characteristic to enable political exchange as it leads to seeing political outgroups more positively and to a higher willingness to engage in intergroup contact. Implications for intergroup contact of political groups as well as ideas for future research are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

---

情感两极分化背景下知识谦逊的影响：在有争议的政治讨论中接近和回避他人。


情感极化，即政治行为者将彼此视为不受欢迎的外群体的程度，正在挑战政治交流和审议，例如，通过对“政治敌人”的不信任和不愿意与他们讨论政治话题。目前的实验解决了这个问题，并研究了在德国两极分化的政治话题背景下，是什么让人们接近而不是回避潜在的讨论伙伴。我们假设，智力上的谦逊，即承认一个人的智力局限性，可以预测更少的情感两极分化，以及对思想相反的人更高的接近和更低的回避倾向。在四项预先注册的在线调查实验（N = 1,668）中，我们操纵了目标人在智力上的谦逊程度，并测量了参与者自我报告的（针对特定主题的）智力谦逊。结果显示，参与者的智力谦逊始终与情感极化呈负相关。此外，目标人和参与者的智力谦逊对于使参与者接近而不是回避目标人来说是有益的，有时甚至是必要的。理智上的谦逊比道德信念、观点和观点强度更重要。此外，对接近和回避的影响是通过对辩论的更积极的期望来调节的，以及对未来接触意愿的影响是通过更高的目标喜好来调节的。我们的研究结果表明，知识分子的谦逊是实现政治交流的一个重要特征，因为它可以使人更积极地看待政治外群体，并更愿意参与群体间接触。 讨论了政治团体间接触的影响以及未来研究的想法。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。