Political scientists designing experiments often face the question of how abstract or detailed their experimental stimuli should be. Typically, this question is framed in terms of trade‐offs relating to experimental control and generalizability: the more context introduced into studies, the less control, and the more difficulty generalizing the results. Yet, we have reason to question this trade‐off, and there is relatively little systematic evidence to rely on when calibrating the degree of abstraction in studies. We make two contributions. First, we provide a theoretical framework that identifies and considers the consequences of three dimensions of abstraction in experimental design: situational hypotheticality, actor identity, and contextual detail. Second, we replicate and extend three survey experiments, varying these levels of abstraction. We find no evidence that situational hypotheticality substantively changes results in any of our studies, but do find that increased contextual detail dampens treatment effects, and that the salience of actor identities moderates results in our endorsement experiment.

Does electoral competition increase affective polarization? Can inter-party cooperation depolarize voters? Addressing these questions is challenging since both competition and cooperation are endogenous to political attitudes. Building on social identity theory and leveraging a natural experiment unfolding over seven Israeli election studies, we demonstrate that the enhanced salience of electoral competition increases affective polarization. We then consider whether inter-party cooperation can depolarize the electorate. To do so, we further build on theories of coalition ambivalence and party brands and leverage the ambiguity around coalition building following elections of Israel’s 22nd Knesset, to implement a survey experiment where we credibly shape respondents’ perceptions regarding the likelihood that a unity government will form. We find that priming party cooperation in the form of a unity government promotes tolerance across partisan lines. Our studies contribute to the affective polarization literature by identifying institutional causes and remedies of polarization in a comparative context.

Diversity in the lines of public institutions, such as hospitals, schools, and police forces, is thought to improve provision for minority group members. Nonetheless, whether and how diversity in public institutions shapes majority citizens’ prejudice toward minorities are unclear. Building on insights from the intergroup contact literature, I suggest that diversity in public institutions can facilitate positive intergroup contact between majority group members and minorities in elevated social positions. Such unique interactions, which exceed the equal status condition for effective intergroup contact, can serve to reduce prejudice and facilitate more inclusive attitudes among majority group members. To test this expectation, I focus on health care provision—a leading sector with regard to minority representation. Leveraging a natural experiment unfolding in 21 Israeli medical clinics where Jewish patients are haphazardly assigned to receive care from Jewish or Arab doctors and embedding prejudice-related questions in a routine evaluation survey, I demonstrate that brief contact with an Arab doctor reduces prejudice. Specifically, contact with an Arab doctor reduces Jewish patients’ exclusionary preferences toward Arabs by one-sixth of an SD and increases Jewish patients’ optimism about peace by a 10th of an SD. The modest magnitude of these effects is similar to the impact of well-powered interventions recently reviewed in a meta-analysis of prejudice reduction experiments. These findings emphasize how the demographic makeup of public institutions can reduce mass prejudice, even in a context of intractable conflict.

Diversification of police forces is widely promoted as a reform for reducing racial disparities in police–civilian interactions and increasing police legitimacy. Despite these potential benefits, nearly every municipal police department in the United States remains predominately White and male. Here, we investigate whether the scale and persistence of minority underrepresentation in policing might partly be explained by a lack of support for diversification among voters and current police officers. Across two studies ( N  = 2, 661) sampling the US adult population and residents from a city with one of the least representative police forces in the country, individuals significantly overestimate officer diversity at both the local and national levels. We find that correcting these biased beliefs with accurate information reduces trust in police and increases support for hiring new officers from underrepresented groups. In the municipal sample, these corrections also cause an increase in residents’ willingness to vote for reforms to diversify their majority White police department. Additional paired decision-making experiments ( N  = 1, 663) conducted on these residents and current police officers demonstrate that both prefer hiring new officers from currently underrepresented groups, independent of civil service exam performance and other hiring criteria. Overall, these results suggest that attitudes among voters and police officers are unlikely to pose a major barrier to diversity reforms.