This study asks whether reducing affective polarization — people’s negative feelings toward opposing partisans — causally changes intentions to share true or false political news online. Using an experimental approach, the authors report that improving feelings toward out-party members relative to one’s own party produced no measurable change in intentions to share true news, false news, or in the gap between them (truth discernment). They also test an accuracy reminder and find modest evidence that such a prompt can improve truth discernment for respondents who report sharing political news. The paper argues these experimental results call for reexamining the assumed causal role of affective polarization in misinformation spread, while preserving the conditional and limited nature of the observed effects.
