With the help of the Congressional Management Foundation, we worked with 12 sitting United States representatives and one senator, both Republicans and Democrats. We recruited a random sample of each congressperson’s constituents to participate, and randomly assigned some to talk about important issues (immigration reform and anti-terrorism policy) with their member online in small groups. We also had a “control group”—citizens who just read the briefing materials that we prepared for the sessions, but didn’t participate in a conversation. The events were online and lasted roughly an hour each, with constituents typing in their questions and the members replying via voice. We recently published the results in a paper with William Minozzi and Kevin Esterling in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Judging by the town-hall shouting matches that one sees on TV, you might expect that our events would just recycle the same incivility and partisan red-meat. What we found, however, was entirely different. The discussions were remarkably civil and substantive. We surveyed the constituents and the members before and after the events, and found that members of Congress actually had persuaded their constituents about the merits of their views on the policy issues. They also rated their members as much more trustworthy, qualified and accessible. Even months later, the participants were about 10 percent more likely to vote for their member. Remarkably, the members were persuasive not only to people from their own party, but to those from the opposing party as well.

There are other, broader benefits to serious conversations between voters and their representatives. For example, in previous research we found that participants learned a lot about the policy discussed (and politics more generally), and felt more engaged with the political process.