Polarization remains a pressing challenge for modern democracies, contributing to growing divides on political issues. Recent research suggests that political communication between individuals who share non-political characteristics but differ on political attitudes can promote consensus on divisive topics, but often fail to materialize due to individuals’ reluctance to engage and the limited exposure to divergent views. In this study, we conducted a large-scale, preregistered two-wave survey experiment among 10,000 participants to overcome these barriers by randomly matching participants with peers who shared incidental, non-political similarities (e.g., demographics, hobbies, music taste), but held varying stances on two divisive political topics: wealth redistribution and mandatory vaccination. In the first wave, we questioned respondents about a large number of non-political topics and asked them to write a short essay about either redistribution or mandatory vaccination. In the second wave, participants were randomly matched based on non-political similarities and viewed the social media profile of their match highlighting numerous similarities followed by a personal, argumentative essay form their match. Our findings have important implications for the debate how to overcome polarization.