Political Turing Test
Playfully initiate an empathic debate on controversial topics.
In current political epistemology, cognitive empathy or the ability to empathically understand opposing positions is discussed as an important prerequisite for deliberative democracy and understood as a competence that helps to counteract so-called social polarization. According to economist Bryan Caplan, one way of determining whether a person has cognitive empathy is to carry out a political Turing test.
This works as follows: A person is asked to put him/herself in the position of his/her ideological or political opponent and be questioned from that role, defending that position. If the questioner cannot distinguish between this person and a genuine representative of the position taken, the person can be said to have cognitive empathy, according to Caplan.
We thought to ourselves: perhaps the political Turing Test is not only suitable as a measuring instrument, but also as a format for political education to promote cognitive empathy. To try this out, we transformed the basic principle of the political Turing Test into a performance for the "Build Peace" peace conference. According to our observations, the format is excellently suited to stimulating an empathic debate on controversial theses, as this is less confrontational than in conventional dialogue formats and is less suitable for agitation. With regard to the further development of the format, a combination with methods of non-violent communication could be attractive. A transfer to a workshop format or conversation card set is also conceivable. In this context, we are looking for people active in the field of political education who would like to implement the format as part of their political education work and receive more systematic support from us. If you are interested, please send an email to .
You can find more detailed information on the format in our research journal.