Can Arts Change Political Perceptions?

With Joe Salvatore, Sorana Acris, Amanda Blewitt, Laura Cabochan and Keith Huff

In the United States today, Americans are more ideologically divided and antipathy is greater than at any time in the past 20 years (Pew, 2014). While scholars and practitioners suggest that arts-based, media, and perspective-taking interventions may help reduce prejudice, increase prosocial behavior, and decrease bias, evaluations of such interventions are largely inconclusive and the mechanisms through which impacts may be occurring remain underspecified. Through qualitative focus groups and a web-based randomized control trial (RCT), we explore the work of NYU Steinhardt’s Verbatim Performance Lab (VPL) — an innovative theatre project that has been featured on MSNBC and in an off-Broadway production — to assess if and how this arts-based intervention may help uncover biases and change the ways Americans perceive political leaders.

Learn more about the project and project team here.

With funding from the American Political Science Association