Social scientists have shown how easily individuals are moved to exclude outgroup members. Can we foster inclusion instead? This study leverages one of the most significant humanitarian crises of our time to test whether, and under what conditions, American citizens adopt more inclusionary behavior toward Syrian refugees. We conduct a nationally representative survey of over 5,000 American citizens in the weeks leading up to the 2016 presidential election and experimentally test whether a perspective-taking exercise increases inclusionary behavior in the form of an anonymous letter supportive of refugees to be sent to the 45th President of the United States. Our results indicate that the perspective-taking message increases the likelihood of writing such a positive letter by two to five percentage points. By contrast, an informational message had no significant effect on letter writing. The effect of the perspective-taking exercise occurs in the short run only, manifests as a behavioral rather than an attitudinal response, and is strongest among Democrats. However, this effect also appears in the subset of Republican respondents, suggesting that efforts to promote perspective taking may move to action a wide cross-section of individuals.

社会科学家已经证明，个体很容易被排除在外群体成员之外。我们可以促进包容性吗？这项研究利用我们这个时代最重大的人道主义危机之一来测试美国公民是否以及在什么条件下对叙利亚难民采取更具包容性的行为。我们在 2016 年总统选举前几周对 5,000 多名美国公民进行了一项具有全国代表性的调查，并通过向第 45 任总统发送一封支持难民的匿名信的形式，通过实验测试换位思考是否会增加包容性行为美国的。我们的研究结果表明，换位思考的信息使写一封积极的信件的可能性增加了两到五个百分点。相比之下，信息性消息对信件写作没有显着影响。换位思考的效果仅在短期内发生，表现为行为而非态度反应，并且在民主党人中最为强烈。然而，这种效应也出现在共和党受访者的子集中，这表明促进观点采择的努力可能会转向广泛的个人行动。