Andrew Carnegie Fellowship
Cultivating Civility: The Role of Ethics and Structured Peer Conversation in Reducing Political Polarization
Grant Amount: $200,000
Strong moral convictions—the deeply held beliefs about what is right and wrong—are powerful drivers of action. They inspire a range of ethically sound behaviors, but they can also fuel polarization. Because moral convictions are closely tied to personal identity, they shape how people vote, what news they consume, whom they trust, and how strongly they react to opposing views.
Popular accounts of political polarization frequently overlook is the psychological role of moral conviction itself: the emotional intensity of ethical beliefs and the skills required for constructive dialogue about deeply contested values.
Research in psychology shows that moral convictions are uniquely motivating and closely connected to political behavior, activism, and both affective and ideological polarization. Building on this research, Just Conversations is an innovative, structured peer‑to‑peer dialogue model designed to address polarization at its ethical core. The program combines trained student facilitators, carefully designed case studies, and essential ethical concepts to help participants analyze complex moral disagreements and engage one another with clarity and respect. By targeting the motivational and emotional power of moral convictions, the model not only mitigates polarization but also builds lasting skills of civil discourse and increases willingness to engage in future difficult conversations.
This initiative is focused on:
Political Polarization - Studying the connection of political polarization with moral beliefs to insight into what causes and drives polarization.
Civil Discourse - Students will gain the skills of civil discourse necessary to constructive conversations across disagreement.
Moral Convictions - Deeply-held moral beliefs are important for understanding our core motivations.
Common Ground
Grant Overview
Andrew Carnegie Fellowship
Since 2015, the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program has supported high-caliber scholarship and research in the social sciences and humanities that address important and enduring issues confronting our society.
The fellows aim to help Americans understand how and why our society has become so polarized and what can be done to strengthen social cohesion.
The criteria for their selection prioritized the originality and potential impact of the proposal as well as the capacity to communicate the findings to a broad audience.
Expected Outcomes
Online Resources:
Access videos of talks and presentations, abstractions of presented papers, and the conference program on University of Mississippi's eGrove repository and The Center for Practical Ethics website.
Special Journal Issue:
Both submitted and invited papers explore the topic of memorialization, curated into a single issue for leading research.
Public Engagement:
Links to resources and additional events on the topic provide networks for learning and research.