A new solution to political divisiveness: Priming a sense of common humanity through Facebook meme-like posts

This two-study package examines sense of common humanity—a subcomponent the psychological construct self-compassion—in relation to political divisiveness. Study 1 ( n = 1010) employs a survey with probability sample representative US population show that humanity—recognizing feeling bad about oneself is human experience—is associated competent form relationships those one disagrees politically. finding paved way for 2, an experiment 955) showed humanity can be primed using meme-like posts on Facebook, and, as result, lead people have more positive attitudes toward their outgroup. From theoretical perspective, this study demonstrates relevance self-compassion framework addressing divisiveness, and in computer-mediated space Facebook.