Thanksgiving Survival Guide: Polarization edition

Issue 92: Five tips for navigating politically polarized Thanksgiving gatherings

With the holidays and Thanksgiving coming up, many people many find themselves at a Thanksgiving dinner feeling politically tense. Are you worried about sitting through your uncle’s annual rant about American politics or your cousin’s position on the Middle East?

You are not alone!

We have felt that too, and research has revealed that political identification may impact how people spend their Thanksgiving dinners. Here’s a post from our newsletter archive that dives into the issue and five tips for how to survive.

In 2018, researchers analyzed ~25 billion smartphone location data pings from ~10 million Americans and found that that politically diverse Thanksgiving dinners were “30 to 50 minutes shorter” than ones with politically aligned guests. In 2020, the study was replicated with a meta-analysis and found that across multiple studies, politically diverse dinners were on average about 24 minutes shorter.

The authors found that political diversity was associated with a less pleasant …