TY - RPRT A1 - Braghieri, Luca A1 - Schwardmann, Peter A1 - Tripodi, Egon T1 - DP19753 Talking across the Aisle T2 - CEPR Discussion Paper No. 19753 N2 - We conduct an experiment in which U.S. Democrats and Republicans engage in naturalistic video conversations about policy-relevant facts. We investigate self-selection into politically homogeneous interactions and how these interactions affect information aggregation and affective polarization. Participants exhibit a preference against cross-partisan conversations, explained by lower expectations about their informational and hedonic value. Indeed, participants find it significantly more difficult to extract knowledge from counter-partisans and, thus, tend to learn less from them. In contrast, cross-partisan interactions prove more enjoyable than anticipated and lastingly reduce affective polarization. Overall, cross-partisan contact may better serve to reduce affective polarization than to improve information aggregation. Y1 - 2024 UR - https://cepr.org/publications/dp19753 PB - CEPR Press CY - Paris & London ER -