What Mitigates Affective Political Polarization in Russia: Experimental Evidence

Affective political polarization, or emotional hostility toward political opponents, has been extensively studied in democracies but remains underexplored in authoritarian regimes, where political divisions are structured around regime support rather than party affiliation. In Russia, these divides have intensified since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, generating hostility that affects both political attitudes and personal relationships, including friendships and family ties. This paper examines affective polarization in contemporary Russia and tests whether psychological interventions developed in democratic contexts can reduce political hostility. Since dialogue is a necessary condition for any form of political deliberation and potential democratic change, understanding how political hostility can be mitigated in autocratic contexts represents an important empirical question. The study employs an online survey experiment in Russia with 144 participants randomly assigned to three treatment groups or a control group. It evaluates three social-psychological interventions aimed at reducing affective polarization: - Re-categorization, which appeals to a shared human identity; - Imagined contact, which encourages perspective-taking with a political opponent; - Narrative exposure, which presents how an individual with opposing views arrived at their position. While these approaches have been effective in democratic contexts, their applicability in autocratic regimes remains an open empirical question. Participants were recruited via a mixed strategy combining a crowdsourcing platform and politically oriented Telegram groups to ensure variation in political engagement and regime attitudes. Respondents’ political positions were assessed indirectly due to the sensitivity of political topics in an autocratic context, and affective polarization was measured as the difference in feelings toward political allies versus opponents. Additional outcomes captured attitudes toward opponents and willingness to engage in close social relationships with them. Analyses were conducted using multiple regression models with socio-demographic controls. The results indicate that all three interventions significantly reduce affective political polarization, with the largest effect observed for the personal narrative treatment. This reduction is primarily driven by more positive affect toward political opponents rather than changes in feelings toward allies. While positional polarization is associated with hostility, it does not fully account for affective polarization, suggesting that emotional and identity-based mechanisms operate independently of ideological distance. Overall, the findings demonstrate that affective polarization in autocratic contexts can be mitigated through accessible psychological approaches, extending experimental research beyond democracies and contributing to a comparative understanding of political hostility and its potential reduction.