A Harvard-developed online game, Tango, has shown significant success in reducing partisan animosity. Published in Nature Human Behaviour, the study demonstrates how playful collaboration can foster bipartisan warmth and generosity among nearly 5,000 U.S. participants.
In an era where algorithm-driven social media platforms often deepen the divide between red and blue America, a new online tool developed by a team of Harvard researchers is ushering in hope for national unity. The interactive game, Tango, has shown the potential to reduce partisan animosity significantly.
The findings are published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.
Tango pairs Democrats and Republicans into cooperative teams, fostering an environment where bipartisanship becomes a valuable asset.
“It’s really the opposite of the nasty, divisive posting you find on social media,” co-author Joshua D. Greene, a Tango co-creator and a Harvard professor of psychology, said in a news release.
The study, conducted on nearly 5,000 U.S. participants from opposing political parties, revealed that the game significantly decreased negative partisanship. Participants experienced increased warmth towards their political counterparts and even demonstrated greater financial generosity.
According to the researchers, the effect was comparable to reversing approximately 15 years of rising political polarization in America.
One of the key experiments involved giving participants $100 to allocate as they wished. Those who had engaged in the game with someone from the opposing party showed a marked increase in generosity toward their political rivals.
Remarkably, these positive changes persisted over time.
“We see over and over again that the effects last at least a month and often up to four months from playing just once,” Greene reported.
Greene, who also authored “Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them” (2013), has long focused his research on mutually beneficial cooperation. He emphasized that collaboration is a fundamental principle in both life and social sciences: “At every single level, the reason the world isn’t just primordial soup is because parts can come together to form wholes that can accomplish more together than they can separately.”
Alongside Greene, psychology doctoral candidate Lucas Woodley ’23 played a crucial role in this project as the lead author of the new paper. Woodley has been dedicated to finding scalable interventions for fostering cooperation. His previous work included co-authoring a negotiation book with hands-on exercises for students and faculty.
Tango’s gameplay involves three rounds of trivia questions that blend cultural knowledge and challenge partisan beliefs. Some questions cater to Democrats or Republicans specifically, while others introduce facts that may be uncomfortable for both sides.
For instance, questions highlight that immigrants in the United States commit relatively few crimes and that few gun deaths involve assault-style weapons.
“We build in uncomfortable truths for both sides,” Woodley said in the news release. “People still left us comments saying they want to play again.”
The interactive nature of the game, which encourages players to discuss and celebrate their contributions, is a key factor in its success. As the Tango team continues to refine and distribute the game, they envision it being available for regular sessions where Americans can connect and play at letstango.org.
The game has already seen success with U.S. undergraduates and is now being tested among employees at a Fortune 500 company.
Recognizing the global surge in political polarization, the team is also tailoring Tango for international contexts. Pilot tests are currently underway in Israel, with similar initiatives planned for India and Northern Ireland.
Source: Harvard University