Political Empathy Lab (PEL)

About the Political Empathy Lab Project

Researchers at Penn and beyond are studying affective polarization.  PEL continues this work and applies it by equipping Penn students to connect with others by attuning themselves to their own thoughts and feelings as they listen to different points of view.  It strives to develop and cultivate practices for both the outer conversation and the inner conversation.  These practices and the regular exercise of them, especially the practice of listening, builds social trust and is a necessary precondition for deliberative democracy. Some of the practices are explored, refined, and exercised in the spring course PSCI 4201 Political Empathy and Deliberative Democracy.

PEL Phase I

Additional practices were discovered with undergraduates democratically, collaboratively, ethnographically, and inductively through a trip during the Summer of 2024 to visit counties across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania beyond the Philadelphia region.  The research experience consisted of several mini trips to encounter Pennsylvanians across the state who hold different socio-political views.   This research experience was deliberately not canvasing and not polling (though we worked with Penn’s Public Opinion and Election Studies (PORES) team to inform our practices).  It was not intended to extract policy positions from Pennsylvanians but instead to engage with them using specific practices to cultivate emotional regulation while listening to diverse political opinions.¹

PEL’s research trip was also not tourism but an opportunity to meet fellow residents of Pennsylvania within the state acknowledging that we experience different lived realities and want to try to better understand each other.  The hope was that this experience would sharpen and awaken our intellectual humility and curiosity around ideologies and beliefs that differ from our own. An additional aspiration was that we might understand how place may  connect to ideology as well as the role that super-ordinate identities may hold to our sense of belonging.  Finally, this trip provided diverse immersive opportunities to regularly exercise our practices around dialogue and engagement.

Why did PEL choose PA?

PEL Phase II

Phase II of PEL (May 26-30, 2025) launched spring 2025 as a larger group of students take a one-week trip to visit some important parts of Pennsylvania to continue building upon our strategies of connection and developing our skills of political empathy. 

To learn more, read the PEL Phase II Press Release.