Victimhood Narratives Increase Support for Opponents’ Political Participation by Promoting Empathy

Research suggests that in increasingly polarized societies, individuals are often willing to restrict their political opponents’ political participation. Less is known, however, about the factors that may increase support for opponents’ political participation. Across two experiments conducted in the U.S., we tested whether reading victimhood narratives from political opponents increased both support for opponents’ political participation and participants’ own political action intentions, and whether these effects were driven by increased empathy toward political opponents. In Study 1, participants (N = 245) read about a gun-policy opponent whose position was framed as either rooted in a victimhood narrative or a non-victimhood narrative. Study 2 replicated this with a larger sample (N = 434), the addition of a factual information condition, and a political action intention measure. In both studies, victimhood narratives increased empathy toward the opponent, which in turn increased support for both the individual opponent’s and the broader outgroup’s political participation. In Study 2, the same indirect pattern emerged for participants’ political action intentions, measured via willingness to sign up for updates from a bipartisan organization. Together, the findings have important theoretical and practical implications suggesting that communicating political beliefs through narratives of suffering can foster empathy and in turn increase willingness to support opponents’ civic and political inclusion.