What kind of democrat are you?

Posted on 30 September 2025 • Arts and social sciences, Psychology, Society and politics

Remember those explosive Brexit-style dinner-table discussions throughout the country?

Now an international team of researchers led by the UK’s Open University, has devised a simple FREE interactive test to show people whether the actions they see as being democratic might be considered politically extreme to others.

The £2.72 million EU Horizon-Europe/Innovate UK funded project has been devised to promote constructive debate in the run up to key political events without people becoming at loggerheads with each other.

See your views in a different light

Whether you get hot under the collar with issues surrounding climate change, immigration, taxes or the NHS, this 20-minute test might help you see your views in a different light.

It is called i-Attune and is shared on the OU’s OpenLearn site. It was developed by academics alongside 16 other partners in what has become known as the OppAttune Project across Europe.

Whilst it doesn’t promise to put an end to explosive political debate at home and in the workplace, the political attunement model is designed to show the public a new way of developing their political literacy and of measuring any extremist views.

It will provide tools to help people navigate information, or disinformation received either by news, social media, forums and political events and to understand their tendency to engage in ‘everyday extreme’ behaviours. That could be sharing something inflammatory or controversial on social media in order to get others to side with their views.

Anonymised test

The anonymised test will help people see their own views in a different light. What emerges are five political “stances” which reveal the ways they tend to approach political and democratic discussions.

Such as someone who bases decisions on the evidence but risks underestimating the emotions involved in politics. Others might prefer to smooth over tensions and build bridges yet underestimate the power of conflict.

Professor Kesi Mahendran, the lead author and social and political psychologist at The Open University (OU), said:

“The Political Attunement Model is designed to skill citizens to enter a healthy political debate.”

She likens it to a tennis match:

“Opponents don’t want to meet in the middle. Both want to win but equally both players accept the rules and rarely attempt to jump over the net to restrict the other player. Political literacy develops through the back-and-forth processing of anticipating and responding to the oppositional player.”

i-Attune’s co-designer and political psychologist Dr Anthony English, post-doctoral research fellow at the OU, explains:

“i-Attune is a virtual coach that allows people to find out a little more of what kind of player they are and how they can play the game of putting their point of view across more constructively.” 

If you want to put your own political views to the test and get an inside track on how you tend to play the game, visit i-Attune

Picture by Freepik