Attempts to encourage diplomacy in online interactions: Three informative failures

Online discussions about controversial topics seem more prone to misunderstanding and even polarization than similar discussions held face-to-face. Recent research uncovered an important reason why: certain behaviors that are used to communicate diplomacy and tact in face-to-face discussions – specifically, responsiveness and ambiguity – are more difficult to enact online. To improve online interaction experiences and understand the underlying mechanisms better, we ran three exploratory studies in which we tried to manipulate these diplomatic behaviors in online and face-to-face conversations.